Remember the film "Priest"? When it was released, many Catholics were upset because it was about a young gay priest and his assignment at a liberal parish whose pastor kept a mistress. Many claimed the film was anti-Catholic. It seems more like a documentary in retrospect.
i don't know about this being documentary stuff - i am aware of the priests pedophile scandals, but that is such a small portion.
ReplyDeletei have met a few priests who struck me as especially effeminate - but i certainly won't judge that they are 'gay' just from that.
i am aware of priests leaving the priesthood and marrying.
i have occasionally heard of priests and sexual encounters with women - but i surely have not heard so many as to consider it normal.
but to make a documentary from such a small percentage would seem anti-catholic to me.
Thanks Uncle Jim - no, I don't think the shennaigans depicted in the film took place on a grande scale at all - but the way the Mass is in the film, the way the parish operates, and the experience of the two priests in the film, with their sexual conflicts all exposed, are authentic. (I hate to tell people this about me, but I actually worked in a parish in Boston, as well as in St. Paul.) So, in light of the sex scandal of the late '90's to our day (A gay priest in Texas was just assigned and then unassigned as a pastor for a parish), I think the film has merit.
ReplyDeleteSometimes Catholics interpret the truth as anti-Catholic. Just to give you an example:
My uncle was a classmate and a long time friend of our local ordinary - now deceased, Archbishop Roach. Once when the Archbishop drove drunk through a 7-11 store window, my uncle Tom, God bless him, claimed the media was being anti-Catholic when they reported the story on the news. As much as I loved the Archbishop and my uncle - that is just a little bit disengenuous.
Yes, an anti-Catholic can tell the truth, but that does not mean the truth is anti-Catholic. Just my opinion of course.
I've never seen the film, but I do remember the outrage about it when it was released. And looking at this clip -- wow. The disrespectful Mass and the liberal priest are very accurately portrayed. The young priest seems so upright and holy by comparison -- thus the message that a homosexual may be better fit than the more liberal heterosexuals? I don't know if the film showed the young priest engaged in immoral behavior himself, as I did not see it. But perhaps the real broader message of the film is to say that Chastity is too difficult to live in this over-sexualized world. But I know for a fact that this is not true, as the majority of priests and devout practicing laity do in fact live it every day. Dying to the flesh has perhaps never been so hard (at least since Roman times!) but it is certainly possible through grace and the Sacraments of the Church!
ReplyDelete"it seems more like a documentary in retrospect"
ReplyDeleteROFLLMAO!
I shouldn't laugh but that line hit me as so funny. Must be my mood.