A Letter from a "Devoted Catholic" to priests in exile.

A friend of mine sent along this commentary and letter which I post here with a request for prayers. In this year of the priest, but better gift when we offer to our faithful spiritual fathers than the promise of our prayers.
Mary Ann


In our country there are 1000 good priests out of service. Some just for telling God's truth. Some because they only offer the Ancient Mass, now called the Extraordinary Form. I call it the other priest scandal. It seems to me just as much a scandal to keep good priests from service to souls as it is to allow evil priests to continue their evil activity.

Every year a priest observes his anniversary. Many are in spring, some in the fall. Some years it is a milestone. So for 2009 I speak to a priest, All 1000, please know that you are in my prayers.

Dear Good Father,

You have demonstrated over the years that you are a good and devoted Catholic Priest. Devoted to God, His Church and His people. No one can possibly question that. What happened to you, when ever it happened, is a grave injustice. An injustice first to God, yourself, your dear Mother and to your flock, who ache for your return to minister to their souls.

Our children are confused as to how this could happen. They want their Spiritual Father back, as do we all. Even now though, Dear Father, you teach us what a good priest is by your actions. Some in your situation give up and leave. Giving discredit to the words, "You are a priest forever." Some find something called an "Independent Chapel", and continue to offer Mass and hear Confessions, validly, but illicitly.

Not you Dear Priest, you are a Roman Catholic Priest. You were not asked to do something bad, which you could justly refuse to do. You are a victim of an abuse of power. So you go on as best you can , with little to live on, and those responsible seem to have little concern for your survival, so long as you do not get to preach the truth or worship God in a manner appropriate to you. You are doing, what you no doubt taught from your pulpit, "Letting go and letting God be God." Trusting your whole being to Him.

Please know that your wonderful example of the Catholic Priesthood still speaks to our souls, just as strongly as you did from the pulpit. Know that what ever year you observe this 2009, you are still serving Him and us.

God go with you and keep you. We anxiously look forward to the day you are restored to us and we can in a more public way seek your wise council and have you feed us Him who we all love. What a day of celebration that will be.

A Devoted Catholic.

The Dumpster Priests

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?