Here is the root cause for my upset or anger when priests cross the boundary lines with women and then fault the Church for their trespass. The famous Father Cutie episode in Florida is a case in point. When his affair was exposed, he defected to the Episcopalian church and attempted marriage with a divorcee. Evidently their sins or broken promises, his to priesthood and hers to marriage, did not trouble him enough to check his wrongdoing. The secular world took his side regardless of fornication and adultery. If a man had left his loving wife for another woman; there might have been some recrimination. But our society dismisses marriage vows between a priest and his Church. It chronicles a terrible double standard. I would insist that we must all play by the same rules. Good morality and a properly formed conscience must always be exhibited by the Catholic man in his relations with females. There should be no wrongful encouragement, no selfish seduction, no premeditated entrapment, and no empty promises. No relationship or intimacy should be fostered that cannot rightly be satisfied. The principle of “no harm” applies to all relationships, but especially to interactions between priests and the People of God. A priest is ordained to save souls, not to become an accomplice in damning them. A man who truly loves a woman should be willing to preserve her virtue and to safeguard the presence of saving grace. Anything less or different is not just an expression of weakness but of the demonic. A man, priest or not, cannot say with sincerity, “I love you,” to a woman while blackening her soul and possibly casting her into hell.
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