What about a bad priest?

What do you do if you have a bad priest?

Hopefully, this is not a question that we have to ask often.  Just like there are bad doctors, bad lawyers, bad customer service reps, the religious sector also has their fair share of bad leaders.  Luckily, I haven’t encountered many, but as many lapsed Catholics have told me, they left the Church because of a bad priest (not sexual abuse, that is a whole different topic).  Unlike the non-church sector of our lives, if we have a bad doctor, we change doctors, bad experience at the store, we complain to the manager. But what do you do when you have a bad priest?

When you encounter a bad priest, you feel betrayed, mislead and ultimately forsaken. This is nothing new, as even in the times of Jesus (and even Old Testament times), bad religious leaders have been poisoning the well.  When we look into the bible for examples of people who exhibited such traits as these, only small handfuls are presented. Judas being one, in fact when you look up the word betray in a thesaurus, one synonym is play Judas.  

Jesus addresses this in Matthew 15:8 when he says “this people honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from me”. 

The wolf in sheep’s clothing.  We have all heard this saying in the past.

What if you have a priest who preaches the Gospel, but does not live by it?  What if this priest is taking advantage of his congregation to protect himself, by secretly ambushing the honest and innocent in order to keep his position?  This man is too proud to admit his weakness, and by that is defrauding the faithful in his community. The consequences can run deep, as his followers can become hateful and judgmental, alienating those who do not follow the same false prophet. The terrifying part of this is, most who are in the herd of sheep do not realize what they are doing, they are just following the façade of their hypocritical leader.

Pope Benedict XVI stated (this is paraphrased by Archbishop John Vlazny of Portland) “Whenever people in responsible positions fail to promote true peace and justice in all relationships, they are not properly disposed at that time to receive the Body and Blood of Christ. Serious sin, failure to embrace and promote core Catholic doctrinal and moral teachings, and all failures to give public witness to our faith…and the promotion of the common good are all inconsistent with proper disposition for Eucharistic participation.”

So what is one to do when they are made aware of this? Dr. Martin Luther King Jr had stated that “to ignore evil is to become an accomplice to it”, and even Saint James says “So for one who know the right thing to do and does not do it, it is a sin” (James 4:17). In other words, we must act and do something. For us, our actions were changing parishes, and writing a letter to the bishop.  Also, to continue to live and serve our mission, as we cannot avoid him, and finally to pray. Pray for the bad priest, and pray for those in his parish, that they come to see the truth, as we remember that even Jesus was tempted by Satan, but he cast him away. This bad priest walks with Satan, and sometimes our only action is to continuously pray.