More on priests and problems

In the last few weeks and months there have been disturbing reports about problem priests. One was accused of raping a minor, another of maltreating a sacristan. A couple of years ago a priest from a Catholic school was publicly denounced for making erotic advances on his altar boys. In Manila, a popular bishop got a media exposure when a lady worker complained of the bishop's amorous misadventure.

Are these mere isolated cases? Would to God they are. But unless one is hard of hearing, he could not fail to hear talks of this and that misbehaving priest, of parish's money making activities and fund misuse. Sexual misdemeanor is of course a frequent conversation piece, but because these things are just whispered around no one takes them seriously. Sometimes somebody gets the nerve to complain in writing, but authorities seldom take action perhaps to keep the Church from getting a black eye.

Complaints of priests' deviant behavior are indeed upsetting to the average lay man. Although he is taught that any misdemeanor from a Church minister does not affect the integrity of his Church, he cannot help but entertain some doubts on the sanctity and strength of the institution as his moral anchorage. For a priest is a creature of his Church. Everything the Church stands for has been ingrained in him - concepts of good and evil, of love and sacrifice, of self-denial and suffering. It has interiorized in him the primacy of the spiritual over the temporal, the beauty of forgiveness and the canker of pride. It has taught him the transcendence of charity over the lure of the flesh. In short, he has been transformed into a disciple of the Lord.

Yet why does the problem of scalawag priests exist? To be sure, it is not only in this country where the men of God have committed behavioral lapses. In other countries too these phenomena are happening. In the US for example, sacerdotal scandals have occurred in alarming frequency in the last two decades. As reported by the New York Times a few years back, around 1200 American clergy had committed misconducts of various types, more especially sexual abuses involving women parishioners as well as sexual molestations involving young boys.

If it's any consolation, sexual misdemeanor of clergymen is not confined only to Catholics but has also been observed among Protestants churchmen. One report released some years ago, for example, revealed that 12% of the Protestant clergy surveyed admitted to sexual intercourse with a parishioner, while 17% of lay women said that their own pastor had harassed them. Nor is the problem confined only to Protestant denominations; it has also been felt in other churches - Orthodox, Buddhism and Indaism.

In this country Church scandals usually involve Catholic men of the cloth simply because Catholicism is the dominant religion. But again, the question, why the scandal?

A priest may be a man of God. But he is also a man of the world. A social creature, he too is subject to the directive force of the mores and ethos of the community. If society has idolized the moneyed and the affluent, does this not affect the priest's worldview on wealth and possession? If sexual practices have become permissive, does this not loosen some screws in the moral cupboard of the priestly mind?

The saying that the people deserve the kind of government they have is never more true insofar as priests are concerned. What we are determines the kind of priests we have. Thus if corruption holds sway in public and private sectors, can we blame our priests if they too sometimes succumb to temptations?

Temptation - I remember a young priest who taught in one of our doctoral classes years ago. He was so prim and saintly he never seemed to notice the sexy coed, always in mini-skirt, who would sit right in front of the class. But before the term ended the priest disappeared - and the coed too - blown away, they said, to the never never land of romance.

Priest watchers like this writer have been criticized for being unfair for writing about priestly misconducts. In a way the criticism is justified. But if we don't watch our priests, who will? Our Catholic faith is so precious to us, we don't want it tarnished by excesses and malpractices. Covering up scandals will not do. Eventually, it works against the interest of the Church and the integrity of our faith. A cardinal tried this strategy years ago in America, but the scandal became so pervasive and the evidence so persuasive that he and five prelates had to resign. More alarming, a big number of priests abandoned their ministry and thousands of young men avoided the priestly vocation. Do we want this to happen in this country?

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