I know several priests who are out in the cold in addition to Fr. Haley. Each has been "dumped," so to speak, by his bishop. They might be suspended or labeled impossible to assign, but the end result is the same. They inhabit a kind of no-man's-land with no residence, no parishioners, no ministry, no assignment, no brother priests, no father bishop.... Oh they have a bishop all right, but he is certainly no father to the dumpster priest. Rather he's the garbage-man bishop who labels his spiritual son junk, and such a priest might as well climb into the dumpster and wait for the compactor to come and crush him in its jaws. That would certainly provide a solution and an answer to the bishop's question, "Oh, who will rid me of this troublesome priest?" Pray for the dumpster priests, both those who still struggle against injustice and those who have shed their roman collars reluctantly and walked away - some with their faith in shreds.
God has a way of doing justice even when those who lead his Church do not. There is no injustice that will not be righted.
I wonder, if Dante were writing his Divine Comedy today, would he position dumpsters at key spots in the Inferno? And if he did, who would be inhabiting them?
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