The double life of some priests

In continuing our post about the problem of some priests...most of them WE SEE ON TV everyday or every week!   Honestly, nothing against Fr. Glenn Paul Gomez, SVD but how he celebrates the Mass is really CRASS!  Good Lord, that guy must just sell DVDs at Quiapo and Greenhills!  Evangelical pastors would look like Greek Orthodox eparchs with his kind attitude during the Holy Mass!  Ugh!

But back on the topic...

Here we have an article, published a year ago by the National Catholic Register....not Reporter aka FISHWRAP, about the problem of Priestly Narcissism and how it is indicative of a doouble life of a priest.  Not the Bruce Wayne or Peter Parker double life kind of thing.

More like John in the morning and Johanna at night?

What do you think?

Joke.

***

OTTAWA - Despite the many cases in recent years of unfaithful priests, an expert on sexual abuse and pornography predicts a future with a “much healthier Church and healthier priests.”

Peter Kleponis is a Pennsylvania psychologist who has counselled priests who sexually abused minors as well as men addicted to pornography, his specialty. He says the Church has gone through a painful phase and, although “it’s not over yet,” there is reason for optimism.

“There is hope. There is change,” said Kleponis. But, he adds, “there is still more purification and purging that needs to be done.”

Kleponis made his remarks while discussing the case of Bishop Raymond Lahey, who received a 15-month jail sentence after pleading guilty to importing child pornography. At his sentencing hearing, a forensic psychiatrist testified that Lahey had been involved in a “number of one-night stands” before entering a 10-year relationship with a man. Kleponis and other experts who have worked with troubled priests believe the double lives they lead might partly be explained by narcissism.

“What causes a man to maintain this kind of double life for so long is basic narcissism, the idea that I’m entitled to this, I can do whatever I want; if I want to lead a double life I’ll have a double life,” said Kleponis.  [Too much attention?]

Narcissism can grow as priests climb the ladder and become bishops, regarding themselves as a Prince of the Church who is above everything, he said.  [Uhm... What do you think?  Not all those who rise from the ranks are like that.  Some, I know one, newly ordained.  Not even a decade as a priest.  When he acts, he is like a Cardinal already!]

“Narcissism is very common in addicts, because even though they know what they are doing is bad, and know it is wrong, they decide, ‘I’m going to do it anyway,’ ” Kleponis said from his office at the Institute for Marital Healing, a private Catholic practice, in West Conshohocken, Penn., where he works with colleague Dr. Richard Fitzgibbons, a psychiatrist who is a consulter to the Congregation for Clergy in the Vatican.

“Our clinical experience in treating large numbers of seminarians, priests and religious for over 35 years has demonstrated a direct link between unresolved anger from childhood and later rebellion against the Church’s teachings on sexual morality and sexual acting out,” wrote Kleponis and Fitzgibbons in the August 2011 issue of the Linacre Quarterly, the journal of the Catholic Medical Association in the United States.  [Sounds like what liberal seminary formators and faculty call "normal" in the book, Goodbye Good Men.]

“Some men are more susceptible to sexual temptations because they suffer from psychological conflicts of loneliness and sadness, weaknesses in male confidence, excessive anger, anxiety, selfishness and/or having a history of childhood sexual abuse,” they wrote.  [And the pseudo-psychiatrist, like a priest or nun who just took up a book, and even the closeted homosexual seminary staff, would tell the seminarian that it is "OK" to act it out.]

Fitzgibbons, who wrote an open letter to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in 2002 at the height of that country’s sexual abuse crisis, said at the time that those treating priests who engaged in pedophilia or ephebophilia observed they “almost without exception suffered from a denial of sin in their lives.”  [Isn't denying what is wrong, immoral and sinful the lines of liberals and those who hate the Church?  "Accept the love. Stop the hate."  that is the motto of the homosexual movement against the Church and the Pope.]

“They were also unwilling to admit and address the profound emotional pain they experienced in childhood of loneliness, often in the father relationship, peer rejection, lack of male confidence, poor body image, sadness and anger,” Fitzgibbons wrote, noting the anger was often directed at the Church, the Holy Father and religious authorities.  [And most of the liberals and aging priests and angry feminist nuns have this common problem!]

Richard Sipe, who spent 18 years as a Benedictine monk and priest and has authored eight books on clerical celibacy and/or the clerical sexual abuse crisis, said cases such as Lahey’s did not surprise him.

“It’s very easy for priests as they move up in administrative levels to establish a sexual life,” Sipe said from his office in La Jolla, Calif.

Los Angeles Bishop Gabino Zavala is one clergy who led a double life, fathering two children. 
Experts say narcissism can partially explain such behaviour.- CNS photo

Those double lives can be either homosexual or heterosexual, he stressed, noting the recent resignation of Los Angeles Auxiliary Bishop Gabino Zavala after revelations he had fathered two children.

A myth has been perpetrated that priests and bishops do not have sexual lives, Sipe said.

“There are volumes of case histories that record this kind of behaviour,” he said.

“Sometimes it lasts for a long period of time, even a lifetime of the priest or bishop, sometimes it’s a serial monogamy that a priest or a bishop will have a relationship with a woman or a man for three to five years and go to someone else.”

During the 1970s and earlier, before being “out of the closet” was socially acceptable, some men went into the priesthood so no one would ever ask them why they never married, said Kleponis. In the 1970s, there was more homosexual activity going on in seminaries than there is now, and some men who became sexually active with other men in seminary continued to remain so after ordination. Some became seminary rectors, he said.  [I know someone North of Manila.   Oops!  hehe.....and some place else....hehehe]

As for the future, Kleponis is not finding this tendency to run away from or hide one’s sexuality is as prevalent in priests 50 and younger, he said.

“Younger seminarians are there because they feel it’s a vocation, they are not there to hide their sexuality and have no intent of leading a double-life.” This is true both of men with heterosexual orientation as well as those who struggle with same-sex attraction.

Sipe said more needs to be done to train priests on how to live out their celibate vows successfully. [Not how to experience and express the repressed tendencies like what the liberals teach the seminarians!] Though he received a dispensation to marry, he said celibacy is a wonderful gift to the Church, but secrecy and cover-up over failures needs to be replaced with a full understanding of human sexuality and ways to live a celibate lifestyle in a spiritually fruitful and successful way.

Canon lawyer Fr. Francis Morrisey, who has advised the Catholic Church in Canada on the sexual abuse crisis, when asked if Lahey’s kind of double life is common, answered: “I certainly hope not.”

“Oftentimes, provincials or superiors are the last persons to know what’s going on,” he said. “Normally, let’s say somebody’s leading a double life, he is not going to tell his boss what he’s doing.

“We’re probably dealing with a psychological issue,” Morrisey said, adding that he hoped Lahey would get the assistance he needs to “address his issues.”

Morrisey said that most Catholics were shocked by the revelations.

“I’m just hoping the Holy See will be able to address this situation rather quickly so it’s not left hanging and Bishop Lahey will be able to get on with his life.”  [I seriously doubt he could get back with his old job.]

Lahey applied for laicization a year ago, his lawyer told the court, and removal from the clerical state is one of the penalties the Holy See can impose on him.  [Good for him at least he has the decency to do it without him being forced to by Church officials!]

In the last sexual abuse case involving a priest where Sipe served as an expert witness, the priest received 3,000 signed testimonies in his favour, even though he had “savagely abused this youngster.”

“People will always defend the perpetrator,” he said.

Lahey was hailed for the compassionate and generous settlement he brokered for clerical sexual abuse victims in the Antigonish diocese.

***

Latest report about Richard Lahey is that he has been laicized or removed from the clerical state, or is now a simple layman.

I am sure you have your own stories about these men who live double lives.

So a friendly note to ALL CATHOLICS!

Stop over pampering your priests!  Some take in too much it reaches their heads and forget who they are and what they are.

I even tell my friend-priests that people would not gang up on them to greet them, grab their hands, have their photos taken IF THEY ARE NOT PRIESTS.  It is the character of the Sacrament of Holy Orders that sets them apart from other men.  If they are not priests, would they think they will enjoy the same attention?  My friends all agree that they wouldn't.

On the other hand, they must let these admiration get the better of them and think that people are after them just because they are uhm, cute, handsome and what have you though sometimes there are those old ladies who still think that years of dancing in Obando gave them the answer to their prayers courtesy of Fr. Pogi or Fr. Entertaining-Mag-homily!  Darn it!  Douse some ice cold water on that poor woman and tell her to accept her vocation as a single lady!  Period!

But hep hep hep!!!  Those anti-Catholic hypocrites like the INC stop where they are because they themselves especially their BEM ministers, (I'd like to call them BUM Ministers) have their own share of atrocities.

INC ministers who are drunkards, gamblers, womanizers, wife-beaters, crooks, and yes even sex abusers.

They are all humans, like priests, they commit mistakes.

The ones who don't are those 6 feet under.

Felix Manalo agrees.

He can't rape anyone anymore.

Toinks!