Priests like any other man or woman on the earth are human and as such are by nature sinful.  When sin besets them they, like us, must fall to their knees and pray not only for forgiveness from God, but more fervently pray that God will take that sin away for all time.

 I have always believed that a mans beliefs should be a one on one basis with God.  To belong to a church or organization with others of like beliefs is good and it helps when we need some help with our problems or sins.  Those people understand how you believe and what the best approach to fixing the problems would be. 

 I also believe that organized religion has done more damage to mankind than it has helped.  I use a very simple formula to prove this.  When you have pure purity such as God and you mix pure impurity such as man you will get not a pure religion, but a hybrid.   The more you mix, the more impure it gets.  I would not walk across the street to be a Catholic and I wouldn’t walk across the street to be a Baptist.  I believe that there is plenty of room for both of them to be more Godly. When I go to meet with fellow Christians I look for a lot more than the name on the lighted sign in front of the building.

 I watched a lot of the proceedings of the bishops meeting in Dallas and was glad to see that from now on any priest who misconducts with a child will be turned out.  There will be an oversight committee to see that the person who commits the deed is dealt with.

 I also saw some things which disturbs me greatly and is the reason I feel God wept tears of bitterness.  There was no dealing with past discretion.   Those priest who have been passed from parish to parish for their pet sins are free and only if they commit such a horrible act again will they be sent off to some mountain top Abby to reacquaint themselves with forgiveness and absolution. Only after they have been cleared by the committee and the bishops will they have an opportunity to come down from the mountain.

 First of all, why did they have to have a meeting.  Simple.  Public out cry and plenty of newspaper space results in poor attendance and empty collection plates.  The church had to get some press release out.  Not enough to cause an internal shake up of the church, but enough to satisfy the feeding frenzy of the press.  At least enough to get them off  the backs of the church and back to Salt Lake for a juicy kidnapping or the latest political debacle in Washington.

If the Catholic Church believes in the Bible,  a letter from the Pope could clear everything up in an instant.  All he would have to say is this is an abominable act and will not be tolerated by the Catholic Church. Done, fini.  Since it was not done that way we can only assume that it will be left up to his lieutenants to deal with the problems as they arise.  Given the way the problem has been dealt with in the past, we can only speculate that the actions from the meeting of the bishops in Dallas were for the press and disgruntled Catholics but in reality nothing has changed. 

The young Christians of today walk around with key chains and necklaces that have WWJD printed on them or What Would Jesus Do.  I believe Jesus would have quietly gotten up at the meeting and asked for a Bible.  None would have been available and people would be scurrying around trying to find one.  A suggestion would be made that there are Gideon Bibles in the hotel rooms, but that would not do since Catholics have their own.  Someone would call a local parish and one would be brought by special messenger from the church book store.