WHAT ABOUT THE GOOD PRIESTS?

 

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.