MINNESOTA
Pioneer Press
By Joe Soucheray
jsoucheray@pioneerpress.com
POSTED: 06/06/2014
The average parish priest is a working stiff who is on call 24 hours a day. They hear confessions, celebrate Mass, visit the sick, write sermons, lead prayer groups, organize fall festivals, collect money to stoke the boiler, and, generally speaking, don’t have two nickels to rub together for a golf game.
Some of these working stiffs go off the rails and commit sins against humanity, but certainly not the majority of them. Why, given the weakness of their leaders, their bosses, it is a miracle of the church that these working stiffs even still have a ship to run.
Archbishop John Nienstedt has been absolutely worthless in meeting the crimes against humanity — the abuse of children — square in the face. He thought everything had been taken care of by his predecessor, Harry Flynn, who was a gregarious guy out in public, to the point where you could feel comfortable calling him “Arch,” because maybe you saw him at the next table at The Lexington and you picked up his check.
Now, Flynn’s testimony has been made public and it is sad to realize that he is just as worthless as Nienstedt in facing up to the priests who have gone off the rails, the priests who are giving the average parish working stiff a bad name.
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