The bishops’ priestly progeny

This somewhat rambly first-person account repeats the familiar complaint that the vocational gatekeepers in most American dioceses aren’t looking for priests of integrity and orthodoxy, they’re looking for someone who’ll fit into their feminized and bureaucratic idea of FutureChurch: If You’re Not a ‘Nice Guy’…. In a section on “The Right Kind of Guy” the author mentions something I had noticed and suffered from in the Episcopal Church, the number of priests for whom “personal crisis and confusion are the precursors to their interest in the priesthood.” Talk about “wounded healers” all you want, if you’re going to give someone pastoral authority you should find someone who’s stable, orderly, reliable and upright in the most everyday and ordinary way. I Timothy 3:1-12.

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