If anyone reading this happens to have had a similar experience to mine, this is a resource list for survivors of clerical assault on my blog (I have yet to port it onto this Substack).
First, I am so sorry for the pain and suffering you and your family have experienced at the hands of trusted clergy. I just finished reading Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory, and I think it does a beautiful job of portraying the fallenness of humanity in the priesthood, and the sacredness of the office. Have you ever read it? Curious about your thoughts, especially given your experiences.
I didn't have a problem with the priest character in it, especially since the main plot of the story takes place after his infidelity. It's a challenging book, but a good one.
Another one in that vein would be Silence by Endo. Scorsese's movie adaptation is actually pretty accurate to the book, except for the tail end.
One of my eight sons said to me yesterday that he bets I would be really happy if one of the boys became a priest. I told him I used to feel that way. Now I know that the priesthood is very corrupt. A small percentage are evil men, the greatest percentage are tepid and mediocre, and a very few are holy. The mediocre ones don’t stand up to the evil ones, so that makes the priesthood overwhelmingly corrupt.
Clericalism is so dangerous! The Church is infested. There are holy priests, but holy men in the priesthood are likely fewer, proportionally, than good men in the population at large. CEO’s, police officers, and all clergy are the same. Positions of power attract dangerous people. The important distinction in the Catholic Church is that the exaltation of priests is completely artificial. It’s clericalism. Priests are foot washers. All the vocations are equal. We have to be very careful about implying that the priesthood is superior. It is not. A priest has no more dignity and it’s not deserving of any more trust than any regular human man. This is the reality we need to promote.
If anyone reading this happens to have had a similar experience to mine, this is a resource list for survivors of clerical assault on my blog (I have yet to port it onto this Substack).
https://tejanagringa.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_25.html?m=1
First, I am so sorry for the pain and suffering you and your family have experienced at the hands of trusted clergy. I just finished reading Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory, and I think it does a beautiful job of portraying the fallenness of humanity in the priesthood, and the sacredness of the office. Have you ever read it? Curious about your thoughts, especially given your experiences.
I have read it. I thought it was a good book.
I didn't have a problem with the priest character in it, especially since the main plot of the story takes place after his infidelity. It's a challenging book, but a good one.
Another one in that vein would be Silence by Endo. Scorsese's movie adaptation is actually pretty accurate to the book, except for the tail end.
Frankly, reading the original post so adoring of priests makes me fear for the safety of the children in that home.
One of my eight sons said to me yesterday that he bets I would be really happy if one of the boys became a priest. I told him I used to feel that way. Now I know that the priesthood is very corrupt. A small percentage are evil men, the greatest percentage are tepid and mediocre, and a very few are holy. The mediocre ones don’t stand up to the evil ones, so that makes the priesthood overwhelmingly corrupt.
Clericalism is so dangerous! The Church is infested. There are holy priests, but holy men in the priesthood are likely fewer, proportionally, than good men in the population at large. CEO’s, police officers, and all clergy are the same. Positions of power attract dangerous people. The important distinction in the Catholic Church is that the exaltation of priests is completely artificial. It’s clericalism. Priests are foot washers. All the vocations are equal. We have to be very careful about implying that the priesthood is superior. It is not. A priest has no more dignity and it’s not deserving of any more trust than any regular human man. This is the reality we need to promote.