Please be a Catholic, Father.

By ( articles ) | May 02, 2004

A valuable Zenit interview with psychiatrist Dr. Rick Fitzgibbons discusses questions of seminary screening and reparative therapy for homosexual candidates for ordination, and ends with this question.

Zenit: In view of the John Jay report what do you think the Catholic laity can do?

Fitzgibbons: The laity should ask priests to preach chastity and the fullness of the Church's truth on sexual morality.

I cite only the first part of Fitzgibbons's response, because the ironic truth it expresses is wryly amusing. In effect, the laity must preach to its preachers, begging as a gift what belongs to it by right, asking as an indulgence that which a priest's duty is to give without ceasing.