Child abuse by priests
THE evil arising from the unnatural state of enforced celibacy in the Church of Rome has been highlighted once again. At Inverness Sheriff Court, Canon Joseph Terry was found guilty of lewd and indecent behaviour towards young girls when he was working in the West Highland villages of Ballachulish and Kinlochleven. He was remitted to the High Court for sentence. Although the incidents were reported to the then local Bishop three years ago, the offender was not properly disciplined. This in turn led to the police becoming involved. The Sheriff told the convicted priest, “This was a particularly gross breach of trust, using your offices as a minister of religion for sexual gratification.”
The fact that the abuse of children by priests is a significant problem in the Roman Church in Scotland is shown by its amazing admission: “We now have child protection officers in every diocese to end incidents of this nature.”
Scripture shows us that one purpose of marriage is to prevent uncleanness. It is not surprising therefore that the enforced celibacy of priests has led to numerous cases of several kinds of uncleanness but “whoremongers and adulterers God will judge”.
Delusion and drunkenness
WHAT does a Roman priest do with what remains of the consecrated wine, if any, after the blasphemous mass is celebrated? He cannot throw it away because he believes that when he spoke the words of consecration it was changed into the complete body and blood of Christ, together with His soul and divinity. Therefore the priest is “committed to draining the Eucharistic cruet after mass”, a criminal court heard last month.
This is what a Roman priest, Jacek Trochim of Kidderminster, did. As a result he was found by the police to have consumed almost double the legal limit for drivers. At the local magistrates court he admitted drunken driving.
How deluded, to say the least, are priests in believing the Romish doctrine of transubstantion. How great is their idolatry too when they then worship that bread and wine. And how much brutish blindness is evinced when a priest gets drunk on what he has been worshipping as divine.
Well does our Confession say, “That doctrine which maintains a change of the substance of bread and wine into the substance of Christ’s body and blood (commonly called Transubstantiation) by consecration of a priest, or by any other way, is repugnant not to Scripture alone, but even to common sense and reason; overthroweth the nature of the sacrament; and hath been and is the cause of manifold superstitions, yea, of gross idolatries.”
Return to Table of Contents for The Free Presbyterian Magazine – January 1998