In the last few years you have heard about the bad priests; have you heard about the Good Priests?

Question

John Paul II dies and 4,000,000 people come to his funeral in Rome. 1,000,000,000 people watch his Requiem Mass world wide.
Fr. Duffy - World War I hero - statue in Times Square.
There are thousands of good priests doing a really devoted and dedicated job every day. Why don't we hear about these guys more?

Do you have any idea how many priests died helping native peoples in the Americas, Africa and Asia?

Do you have any idea how many Catholic priest chaplains have worked in hospitals, orphanages, and asylums over the centuries?

Do you have any idea how many priests have made heroic sacrifices for their communities and the good of society at large?

It was the priests that put the brakes on the conquesitdors!

Answer 1

So...let me get this straight...I should be thankful to the priests who ripped apart families by taking children from their parents arms just so they could be assimilated into the "true way of God"?
Native Americans such as myself should be thankful for those priests that came here so that they could take our land, language and culture from us. I'm sure that I speak for most Native Americans that we are thankful to those same priests that died "helping" us by giving us such diseases as influenza, plague and small pox to wipe out entire clans and tribes. Let's not forget to be thankful to those priest lead armies the swept through the Americas with such a force raping, pillaging and murdering all "uncivilized savages" that it would outnumber the souls lost to the Holocaust.

I think that religion now has got what it has had coming for years...they beat and murdered their way to where they are now and I think that it is about time that they are exposed for what they are: murderers, hypocrites and liars.

Answer 2

I'll add another one to your list. Fr. Merdian, pastor of my parish, who is one of the most gentle, selfless, and wise people I have ever had the pleasure to meet.

Nobody ever hears about the good priests, because good priests don't jack up television ratings. It doesn't matter how many priests have gone to third world nations, bringing food and medicine for villages there, setting up schools for the children and medical clinics to care for the sick. It doesn't matter that many of them die for their troubles at the hands of drug cartels and insurgents. It doesn't matter that scores of highly educated Jesuit priests have devoted their lives to teaching the youth of America and other nations around the world. It doesn't even matter that, statistically, our children are *safer* with priests than they are with married coaches, ministers, and teachers. None of that is exciting news.

Exciting news is when the Catholic Church takes responsibility for the crimes of a few fallen priests and does its best to compensate the victims. Exciting news is when an old man is murdered in prison because of crimes he committed as a younger priest. It is absolutely proper that criminals in the priesthood be held accountable for their misdeeds. It is proper that people are aware these misdeeds took place so that we can avoid them happening again. It breaks my heart that many people neither know nor care that all but a tiny percentage of priests are good men who would rather die than harm a child. It breaks my heart that most people who see a priest now will automatically assume him to be a pedophile, when he is, in all likelihood, an upstanding clergyman devoted to the well-being of his congregation and community.

Answer 3

Will the good priests properly acknowledge that Anabaptists in Europe were being slaughtered for telling the truth? I cannot go into a Catholic church, not because I am unwilling to forgive, but because I am standing on the other side of a line drawn in my ancestor's blood. To cross it would dishonor their sacrifice for truth. Until it is properly acknowledged, I see no integrity in the Catholic church.

Answer 4

Yes, I had a family member who was a priest. He died years ago. He was one of the most decent people I ever knew in my life. I hate it when people say all priests are bad. There are plenty of preachers and ministers who have done horrific things to other people, not just priests. The priest in my family counseled prisoners in Alcatraz prison years ago. It would break his heart. He was a very kind and generous person. He also had hatred in his heart for priests who did hurtful or abusive things to children.

Answer 5

You mean like Martin Luther who translated the Bible into German?

He was a Roman Catholic Priest and Theologian.

Pastor Art

Answer 6

Good priests, like good people in general, do not make for interesting news. We are more interested in the four people who died in a car crash than we are in the millions who made it home without incident.

Answer 7

People doing exactly what they chose as their life's work is not earth shattering. People sworn to uphold the basic morals of humanity and destroying everyones faith in their ability to do so and with the support of the central agency is shattering.

Answer 8

i don't think now is a good time for this question.
i'm having a hard time with the catholics right now.