One of the (few) advantages to not having to go to work every morning is that I can catch up on a lot of the overdue reading that I have at home, over and above the books that I have sitting by the bed. My magazines and dailies have been stacking up of late, and if I haven't read them on the metro going to and from D.C., I really haven't had much of a chance to read them at all.
Today, I had the opportunity to go through several issues of Time magazine, and I ran across this story on the latest crisis facing the Catholic Church: "When Priests Pilfer." While the article does a fairly good job of exploring (briefly) some of the reasons the priests are stealing from their church coffers, I couldn't help but be struck with how -- in some respects -- it's reminiscent of priests from the medieval church who lived high on the hog at the expense of the common man. By no means is this problem limited to the Catholic Church; I can remember that in the early 1990s, there was an issue where a staff member at the national Episcopal Church headquarters in New York had embezzeled tens of thousands of dollars right under the nose of the then-presiding bishop.
Sadly, the only news that we seem to be getting about organized religion lately is when something controversial has taken place. What in the world does a church or denomination have to do to draw some positive coverage by the mainstream press? Part of me feels that if Jesus were to return tomorrow, the headlines in the next day's papers would be, "Jesus returns; no reason given for delay."
Very dispiriting news, but I think that it means we all have to be about creating positive, good stories. Eventually, they will have to be told!
ReplyDeletebobbie over at emerging sideways posted a link to the Craig Ferguson video--a powerful message--but it was pointed out that if the church said the same thing, it would be judged, etc.
ReplyDeleteIsn't it sad that the church has become Britney Spears/Anna Nicole?