The Catholic priesthood has taken some serious hits in
the last fifty years or more, and rightly so.
Accusations of sodomy, child molestation, homosexuality, sex abuse and
all sorts of inappropriate behavior abound.
And it is not just in the United States.
Many charges have been filed, but it may very well be just the tip of
the iceberg. Time will tell.
But many Catholics believe there are some good priests in the Church, too. I’ve seen a Catholic bumper sticker out there
that says, “I am thankful for the thousands of GOOD priests.” So why doesn’t everybody focus on them?
Perhaps there are some priests who are morally good (when compared to
others), but those who make this claim are missing the whole point of the priesthood
argument. The real question is not, “Are there any good priests?” The question is, “Does this priesthood even exist today, in God’s eyes?”
Note these analogies:
A person in an insane asylum can claim to be “perfectly normal,” but is he? A one-hundred pound weakling can believe he is a linebacker for the NFL,
but that’s obviously not true. An
unskilled and undisciplined person who is afraid of heights can think he is an astronaut, but reality
says otherwise. All these have one
important thing in common: They are all deluded – they are deceived.
Actually, when it comes to the priesthood, a more
accurate analogy would be someone claiming to be the emperor of the United States.
But this is an office that does not exist. Maybe there were emperors in another time in
history and/or in other places in the world, but not now and not here in
America. Anyone in the U.S. claiming to
be an emperor of this nation is truly deceived.
In this time and place, there are no
emperors. There is no one here with any
such title.
Likewise, the office of “ministerial priest” today is not
a biblical fact. This office was
definitely a legitimate one in the Old Testament, but it is glaringly absent
from the New Testament of that same Bible.
By this fact alone, I think God is telling us something! In fact, there is abundant biblical evidence
that there is no longer that type of
priesthood today. See these links:
https://answeringcatholicclaims.blogspot.com/2010/03/priesthood.html
https://answeringcatholicclaims.blogspot.com/2016/05/does-exodus-196-support-catholic.html
https://answeringcatholicclaims.blogspot.com/2016/06/martignoni-and-korahs-rebellion.html
https://answeringcatholicclaims.blogspot.com/2018/07/where-are-all-priests-in-new-testament.html
Of course, Catholics claim that there certainly is an
office of “priest” in the New Testament, but one must do all sorts of Scripture
torturing to come to this conclusion.
The great majority of their arguments on this topic are addressed in the
links above.
I would say that the only “good priest” is the one who
recognizes that this title is unbiblical and is willing to forfeit that title in order to honor God and to surrender to the
principles of Scripture.
