SAN GABRIEL (CA)
NBC News
September 23, 2018
By Alex Johnson
The numbers of U.S. priests and seminarians have been plummeting for decades, and it’s not just because of the church’s sexual abuse scandals.
The Rev. Matthew Wheeler believes it’s a good time to be a Roman Catholic priest.
Wheeler, associate pastor at St. Anthony Catholic Church in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, is one of the newest priests in the U.S. Catholic Church — he is 30 years old and was ordained in June.
He knows how people see the priestly sexual abuse scandals. He knows that “if people look at a young man’s decision to become a priest from simply a material perspective — to use biblical language, from a worldly perspective — in light of all these things, it doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
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