As the number of Catholics in the pews at Mass in Catholic churches dwindles Sunday after Sunday, church finances grow ever more desperate -- despite the sale of one Catholic parish after another.
Our parish, St. Gregory's Parish in Magnolia, Camden County, New Jersey, no longer exists. At the busy intersection of White Horse Pike and Evesham Road, it had a big, big parking lot. Its finances were solid, in large part because of the parking lot -- although there were fewer large families and fewer young adults married or unmarried in the nave every Sunday, Mass attendance, generally, remained strong.
Nonetheless, as a parishioner and as a member of church council, I could read the writing on the wall -- the Catholic Church was clearly in trouble, as the Diocese "consolidated" Catholic parish after Catholic parish, and confronted the declining number of pastors with the need to sell Catholic Church properties in their parishes for lack of manpower or users.
On one Sunday at Mass at St. Gregory's, I noticed something odd about the Church: A crack ran though a beam comprising a rafter in the ceiling, into the adjacent ceiling, down the wall, and into the basement. I went and got Monsignor Korda, and pointed the anomaly out to him. Monsignor called a private inspection service, who agreed that the ceiling and adjacent wall and floor were in danger of collapse due to an insufficient foundation.
He said to me, "Peter, I have to spend a quarter of a million dollars to fix this defect you discovered." I said, "Father, why do that? The Diocese is shortly going to close this parish anyway."
"Ah, Peter," he responded, "The Diocese would never close this parish. We're one of the few parishes 'in the black.' Our location and parking lot are a big draw for Mass."
I answered, "Monsignor, that is why they'll close down St. Gregory's. If they sell it, it will generate cash proceeds. It will sell for a good price because it's an excellent commercial location, with no mortgage to pay off. The Diocese needs the money because of declining overall finances generated by Catholics alienated by Humanae Vitae, the priest sex cases, and growing Catholic materialism due mostly to modern communications. Haven't you noticed the pattern in the sale of Church properties? They're selling the good stuff, and keeping the heavily mortgaged properties with bad parking lots."
Lo and behold, after Msgr. Korda's retirement and replacement, St. Gregory's Parish was ridiculously merged into Mary Mother of the Church Parish in Bellmawr, over 4 miles distant. Alarmed parishioners asked me to try to verify that St. Gregory's would not be closed and sold. I secured from the Bishop's Office a letter personally signed by the bishop promising that there were "no plans to sell St. Gregory's." Today, St. Gregory's is demolished and is being replaced by a commercial gas-station-and-convenience-store combination. So, "No plans" functionally meant, "No plans today, but, hey, tomorrow, who knows? ..." A lie in writing by a bishop?
No matter what, the prevailing role of dissonance in the Catholic Church over sexual issues in its slow decline is so important to analyze, to understand all of this.
BIRTH CONTROL. About 20 years ago, a federally financed study verified that about 72.4% of church-going Catholics made regular use of artificial birth control in their sexual relationships; among all Catholics, the numbers approximated 95%. The one son who will discuss the issue with me says, "Dad, in my generation, the number is 100%." He's wrong, but his attitude is telling. It's close to 100%.
Now, think about that. Between 72% and 100% of those regularly attending Mass when the Church passes the hat at Sunday Mass regularly disobey infallible Humanae Vitae in and outside marriage.
The priests saying Mass know this. Have you ever seen a priest decline to give communion to a parishioner he knows to be a regular and persistent violator of Humanae Vitae? I tripped into this question in this form ...
Years ago, in the early 1980s, I went to Saturday confessions at St. Gregory's for the first time. Father Robert Cairone -- a gentle, forgiving soul -- was the priest in the north side confessional. The pastor, Monsignor Edward Korda, was the priest in the south side confessional. Fr. Cairone's confessional had no line. Msgr. Korda's confessional had about 10 penitents in waiting. I said to a neighbor at the end of Msgr. Korda's line, "What gives? Why does everyone seem to be avoiding Fr. Cairone for confession?"
My neighbor smiled. "This is the birth control line. In Msgr. Korda's line, we can come in week after week and confess to use of birth control in our marriages. If Fr. Cairone catches us doing that, he finds that there is no true repentance and declares the sin 'retained.'"
I thought about that, and said, "Everyone who does that on this side is making an invalid confession. Fr. Cairone is correct. Msgr. Korda is probably abusing the sacrament." I switched sides and went to Fr. Cairone for confession.
I bumped into the issue a second time, with Msgr. Korda. I once commented to him that in my Bible study program, we had discussed one of the New Testament verses on oral contraceptives.
"Peter," said Msgr. Korda, "There's no such Bible verses!"
"Humanae Vitae doesn't cite them, Msgr., but there are actually four of them." I ran through the list, and showed him the corroborating proof -- an Early Church catechism called the Didache, and an early Epistle, respected but not included in the Scriptural canon -- the following day.
I bumped into the issue a third time as follows. One Saturday, Mgsr. Korda called me and asked me to discuss something with him at the rectory. I went over immediately and he had me read an express written order from the bishop to all priests in the Diocese to dedicate the following Sunday's homily to the moral importance of obeying Humanae Vitae vis-a-vis use of artificial birth control -- the great Contraception Sunday experiment in Camden Diocese.
"The faithful are going to hang you from the rafters," I commented.
"That was my reaction," he answered.
Nonetheless, all three priests in our parish obeyed the order. In the Diocese's dozens of other parishes, about one-third of the priests simply disobeyed the order (according to an insider I shall not identify). Masses where the order was obeyed generated hundreds of walk-outs and thousands of letters of protest to the bishop (according to the same source).
The experiment was never repeated.
And our priests regularly give communion to contributing church-going Catholics even if it is clear that they are disobeying Humanae Vitae -- where are the kids beside them in the pews? -- while the number of church-going parents with multiple kids next to them in the pews at Mass on Sunday is embarrassingly rare.
Functionally, most of the Faithful are knowingly living in a state of rebellion against the Church, week-in and week-out.
SEX ABUSE OF KIDS AND YOUNG ADULTS BY OUR PRIESTS. Even my comments here will generate controversy in an uncontroversial moral realm...
It's a gay problem.
An unimpeachable source one asked me, "Pete, how many of our priests are gay, do you think?"
"A third," I opined.
"That's my guess," he responded. "How do you feel about gays as priests?"
"My answer's complex," I said. "I believe the articles claiming that gays have trouble keeping their pants on. One was an article by a psych explaining that males are grazers and women are nesters, and that gay men retain their grazer characteristic, and lesbians remain nesters, and that male gay relationships involving two grazers are almost never genuinely committed, marriage or no; and that the reason why police hate lesbian domestics, involving two nesters, is that the couples drive each other crazy with mutual emotional smothering generating explosive battles with no insight. Another article was by a Catholic priest who said, 'I sought celibate relationships with fellow gays in the priesthood. All the other guys ever wanted was sex. It was hopeless.' If the Church discovers that a priest is gay but keeping his pants on, God bless him. I would like that gay man as my pastor. If a priest clearly isn't keeping his pants on, he's gotta go, period. If the Church wants to bar gays from the priesthood as a matter of policy because gay men are innately promiscuous, then God bless the Church.
"I also read an article by a gay guy arguing, 'Let's face it -- gay guys like prime beef, the younger the better.' Thus, the priest sex abuse cases involve young male victims in five-sixths of the cases, without question. The priest sex cases are really a gay problem. It exists because so many priests are gay. Why do we have so many gay priests? I believe that it is because 'having a vocation' comprises a good way to 'stay in the closet.'"
Most church-going Catholics are not Catholics because of their love of Catholic doctrine. Most are Catholics because of inculcated habit.
But the habit shrivels and dies easily when non-Catholic neighbors comment to them, "Oh, isn't that the Church of Perverted Priests? Why do you attend it?"
HOMOSEXUAL MARRIAGE. In essence, God makes homosexuals, to the extent that He imposes the consequences of Original Sin on humanity. I happen to ascribe to psychologist Joseph Nicolosi's "super male" analysis of male gays -- a gay male is born straight, but direly needful of an affectionate father figure to "tool around after" in his infant years. If there is such a male in his life, he "imprints "male" at or around the age of 4. Lacking a father figure, because father is rarely at home or sadly unavailable to his young son, emotionally, the son, in or around his fourth year, substitutes-in the next best source of information on the subject of gender characteristics, mom. In a study that supposedly met with great success, Nicolosi identified "super male infants," and instructed cooperating parents to make sure that dad was physically and emotionally a strong presence in the boy's life, with the consequence that homosexuality did not emerge among the maturing infant test population.
Now, if Nicolosi is correct, the mainspring of the problem is the rather-well-hidden emergence of the super-male component among our infant males created by God. And if Nicolosi isn't correct, and gays will simply be gays, the dysfunction is really God's fault in that case also. Those who argue that gays are misbehaving straights are all wet.
That doesn't morally justify gay behavior. But then my proclivity to engage in straight sex doesn't justify non-marital fornication or adultery.
But if the homosexual dysfunction is such that gay men are innately promiscuous, then I can see how God conceivably can be more forgiving of gay fornicating, in or out of the sham of gay marriage, than He is of heterosexual fornication. I.e., the moral rules are there for both, but God is less forgiving of heterosexuals because their relationships lack that innate promiscuity!
Legally, the homosexual marriage Supreme Court case is improper. The Court relied on the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment substantive due process rule and the Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection Clause to support gay marriage in the Obergefell decision. But -- think -- how possible is it that such was within the intent of the Amendments' framers? Wouldn't the Framers have declined to pass the 5th Amendment, or declined to pass the 14th Amendment and to rejoin the Union, had they been told, "You know, because of these amendments, our federal courts can order troops into your states to force judges to marry men to men and women to women"?
Nonetheless, suppose a modern amendment to the Constitution is ratified to require gay marriage where desired. How should Catholics respond?
To be non-hypocritical, Catholics must respond, "Heterosexual and homosexual masturbation, birth control, fornication, and adultery, including fornication between gays under cover of marriage, are all sinful, and must be punished criminally to an equal extent."
In other words, are "heteroes" entitled to a "free ride," sexually at the same time God punishes gays? No. If you are hetero and expect a free ride every time you slip on a rubber, then if gays want to "play marriage," or if society wants to experiment with the marriage concept, then God bless!
Because adults having sex with kids is not morally justifiable under any analysis, then gays "doing it" with the young must always be severely punished.
Most will be thoroughly dissatisfied with how I handle Catholic sexual ethics in this article:
(a) Humanae Vitae is right -- Scripture says so 4 times!; (b) Catholic priests hiding their homosexuality under the disguise of having a vocation, caught "doing it" to young male victims, should be very severely punished! The Church must cooperate with the prosecution. Catholic bishops caught abetting the gay offenders should be very severely punished! The Church must cooperate with the prosecution; (c) the Supreme Court decision in favor of gay marriage is illegal;
(d) however, Catholics enjoying freedom from criminal prosecution of their sex sins owe a hearty "welcome" to their gay neighbors engaging in sex under cover of gay marriage, sham or not. Christ hates hypocrites most of all.
None of this will staunch the chronic bleeding of contributing parishioners so badly needed to support the Church in our current age. However, I believe that we have entered the time of the 2 Thessalonians 2 "apostasy" -- the so-called Great Falling Away. So, don't fret as things fall apart. Just be faithful.
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