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the priesthood has long been a hideout for a small percentage of homosexuals and pedophiles-an explanation, perhaps, for their selection of a life of putative celibacy. However, in my own twelve years of Catholic schooling I have never been aware of either a homosexual or heterosexual impropriety on the part of a priest involving a pre-adult, nor have I heard a single such accusation from the hundreds of Catholics with whom I have gone to school or merely been acquainted.

I remained a dutiful practicing Catholic until my late teens. The Vatican II changes never sat well with me. I liked Latin Masses, polyphonic church music and Gregorian chant. I can still remember the words to my favorite liturgical music that I learned I high school: O Bone Jesu, Panis Angelicus, Ecce Sacerdos Magnus, the Stabat Mater.

I wasn't ready for guitars and folk Masses. I could not understand meat on Friday being suddenly decriminalized, even though I found it wonderful. In my altar boy days I heard Father McKiernan talk about joining some priest friends for Friday jaunts to Tijuana and points south because the abstinence from meat on Fridays did not apply in Mexico. That offended my sense of fair play. Relaxing of fasting and abstinence rules that had been drummed into my head made me wonder why I had bothered with them all those early years.

Im not sure where today's church is on the subject of pre-marital sex. Is it one of those "use your own conscience" situations like the way they now seem to handle birth control? I wonder if today's youth generation understands what is meant by the phrase "living in sin." A short form of "residing in Cincinnati? And if they hear "without benefit of clergy," they probably assume it refers to a retirement fund for men of the cloth.

The sacrament of penance, I'm told, is now the sacrament of reconciliation, and I guess all that mumbling in the confessional and the Our Fathers and Hail Marys are a thing of the past. I have forgotten the new term that has replaced Extreme Unction and Last Rites. How come anybody and his brother or sister can now hand out Communion? What happened to all that stuff about the anointing and blessing of the priest's thumb and forefinger?

The central reason for my apostasy is of a piece with what caused my late mother-in-law to stop going to Anglican services. It's the vast amount of blood that has been shed over the centuries and continues without abatement because of the quarrels of various religions, most notably Christian, Moslem, and Jew. If there are still forms to fill out that ask for one's religion, I'll check the box for Roman Catholic and feel a pang of guilt for doing so. Otherwise, the religion I currently admit to is agnostic humanism. My wife is active with the local Unitarian Universallist chapter.

I accompanyner on occasion.

Learn more about this author, Kerry Michael Wood.
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