The Detroit Tribune

Many Priests Quit The Church!
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The number who rebel against the frustration and unnaturalness of this form of life is greater than anyone knows.
No one knows how MANY PRIESTS have QUIT the Roman Catholic CHURCH in America. I KNOW OF APPROXIMATELY ONE HUNDRED. Most ex-priests do not remain their journey for fear of persecution by the hierarchy.
Of the thirteen priests in my class, four, to my certain knowledge, have 'looked back' and have doffed their clerical robes; that is about 30 per cent. My observation is that this percentage has held approximately true in all groups of priests that I have known or have heard of. On this basis, of the 45,000 priests in the United States in 1953, about 500 would SOONER OR LATER LEAVE the hierarchy and return to normal life.
"There are sincere people in every parish who believe that their priest should have some recreation even though pastor or bishop might frown upon it. If the REVEREND FATHER TIPPLEs a bit too much, they will put him to bed, sneak him back to the rectory and SWEAR THAT HE EVER HAD A DRINK. ALCOHOLISM AMONG the CLERGY is EMBARRASSINGLY COMMON - the SACRAMENTAL VINE being ALWAYS AVAILABLE. One priest I knew commonly said, 'The Pope won't let me have a wife, so I have married this bottle.'"
"... There are sincere priests within the fold, just as there are sincere ex-priests without it. Many of those within are doing mighty deeds of good, comforting the sick, helping poor, consoling the bereaved. There are thousands of nuns who are burning their lives out in sacrifice to God in Roman Catholic orphanages, hospitals, and parochial schools of America, unaware of the inconsistency of their own racial attitudes, of the narrowness of their indoctrination, of the harm their hierarchy's policies can bring to humanity."
"But for me the lack of charity, the avarice, the inconsistencies, the transgressions of priests could not be shrugged off with a meaningless phrase—the 'human element.' They were an essential element, a natural and universal flowering of the seed.
"I came to the irrevocable conclusion that the Roman Catholic Church had misrepresented itself to me. It had claimed that it was the 'bride of Christ,' that the Pope was God's representative on earth, that its teachings were the repository of eternal truth. I could not personally investigate the alleged sources for the claims of the Papacy to infallibility. There are no original documents. The ONLY PRIEST KNEW who had gone to Palestine TO STUDY ROMAN CATHOLICISM AT ITS SOURCE had QUIT THE CHURCH to teach in the University of California."
"... 'A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit; neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. By their fruits ye shall know them.'"
"I did not know what I believed. I was still—by heredity, by feeling, by lack of any other conviction—a Roman Catholic. The abstract doctrines of the Church still seemed true to me, BUT THE HIERARCHY OF THE CHURCH WAS beginning to SEEM false.
"During these years I kept my doubts to myself. I joined my fellow priests in complaining about my pastor, my Provincial Superior, the bishops, and especially the ARROGANT CARDINALS of the United States. We condemned all of these as ECCLESIASTICAL POLITICIANS, deplored the 'donations' made to Rome in return for promotions, and attributed the rash of 'scarlet fever' to every priest who aspired to the red robes of the bishopric.
CATHOLIC DESPOTISM OF THE DEVIL'S OWN!
"The hold of the Roman Catholic hierarchy over most of the clergy, as I have observed it, is not the bond of love, or of loyalty, or of religion. It is the almost unbreakable chain of FEAR FEAR of hell, FEAR of family, FEAR of the public, fear of destitution and insecurity. I firmly believe that, in place of the 30 per cent of the clergy who probably leave the priesthood today, fully 75 per cent would do so if it were not for fear."
"Nightmare of Constant Pregnancies"!
"LITTLE CHILDREN going to confession at the age of six fear hell more than parental anger. ADOLESCENT boys and girls, conscious of sex and its curiosities unable to distinguish that curiosity from 'mental' sin, see themselves hanging over that pit of fire until they can hurry to confession and cleanse their souls Young married women burdened physically and mentally with the nightmare of constant pregnancies, refuse their own and their husbands' wishes and undermine their families because of their fear that birth control means eternal torment. And that same fear of hell makes sincere, healthy young priests eat out their hearts, their minds, and their sanity rather than turn back from the plow toward a normal life."
Jesus vs. R.C. Priesthood! Devil's Dupes!
"THE STANDARD JESUS SET for salvation was not the wearing of a Roman collar, the recitation of the rosary or of the Divine Office. It was not the building of a church or a shrine, or the practice of poverty, or the non-practice of birth control, or the practice of celibacy. It was not the wearing of a robe, or sprinkling with holy water, or anointing with oils, or fasting in Lent, or abstaining on Friday, or eating in common, or kissing a knot on the end of a cord.
Jesus gave men one standard: 'Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.'"
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