ABOUT

A young man enters the seminary hoping to make a positive difference in the Church and then finds that the Catholic Church is not as he believed. He discovers a world where priests have partners, gay men use sex for advancement, and paedophiles are protected. The decision to give up his vocation was delayed by his belief that just one good man can change a system and evil thrives because good men doing nothing.

I am not the first person to identify serious flaws in the way the Catholic Church deals with allegations of sexual abuse. That priests are living double-lives and contradictions are apparent in the way they actually live with the way they profess to live is not in dispute.

In her scandalous but rarely read 2005 book, Priests in Love, Jane Anderson makes an admission to widespread sexual infidelity amongst Australian Catholic clergy.

The author surveyed thousands of priests promised anonymity and presented a compendium of confessions from men who have turned their back on mandatory celibacy to follow their own consciences.

She rightly observed that “prior to Vatican Council II (1962-65) the liturgical practice reflected the firm belief that the Mass was a sacrifice in which the priest and his actions were distinctly separate from the people. Everything was centred on the priest at the altar.” [1]

The priest was separated from the people and his role was so central to the lives of Catholics that they became revered as cultic leaders, almost the personification of Jesus on earth.

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The publicly promoted premise behind the insistence on celibacy was that the priest needed to be as pure and spotless as the offerings that he handled. A vow of chastity was what qualified a man to hold such an esteemed preaching position within the church.

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Of course, to maintain this façade, the priest must at least appear to be chaste even if he were not. Bishops, who rely on a number of such willing men to celebrate the daily Mass, will never pry into the priests’ personal lives to determine whether or not he was, for fear of finding out to the contrary.

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Today, in Catholic parishes throughout the world and particularly in Australia, men are pretending to be celibate in order to hold the exalted office of priest. They are keeping up the image for a church that is losing its way in secular society. Catholicism is significantly losing its influence with the community and even with its own remnant adherents.

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If it were not for its ubiquitous parochial school system and the government grants sustaining them, the Catholic Church would have died out long ago.

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The ongoing financial success and academic leadership of Catholic schools are propping up the Church’s flagging identity and topping up the church coffers depleted after endless sexual abuse compensation claims.

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But the church still needs to have enough men willing to celebrate the Sunday Mass o give the impression that it is business as usual. It doesn’t matter whether or not these men are in fact celibate, as long as they look like they are.

No one within the organisation speaks publicly about this although most are aware of the hypocrisy.

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I should know…

​I am one of them.

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In his 20 year career Father Kevin has made a difference in the Catholic Church. Not all of his initiatives have been welcomed by the Catholic hierarchy, but there is little doubt that his influence will extend beyond the termination of his employment by the Catholic Church.

 

His humorous preaching style, and positive approach to priesthood should have been welcomed by the elders in his organisation, but his inability to accept elements of the Catholic dogmas and unwillingness to be strait-jacketed into archaic models of the Church, has made him unpopular among fellow clerics.

 

But it was his decision to dob in fellow priests whom he saw as living duplicitous lives that landed him into really hot water with the hierarchy. His recollections of the falsehoods that he witnessed in the priests around him, coupled with the confessions he heard from unchaste celibates that forced him to publicise his own sins, so as to uncover the charade of celibacy.

 

In his 14 years as Chaplain to the NSW Police he was also given privileged insights into police department's awareness of priests in trouble with the law, and the lengths that the Church authorities would go to make sure these errant clerics were never punished.

 

His book will have you wondering about your own confidence in the Church, the Police and the government that gives huge grants that prop up this ailing institution. If not for the government funding the Catholic Church would not be solvent enough to exist in Australia, and if the evidence of sexual abuse by religious Brothers and teachers in Catholic schools were brought to light, there would be a mass exodus of students into the public education system.

If this occurred, the public schools could not cope with the volume of students, therefore they are forced to subsidise the elitist Catholic schools and continue to support them financially to the tune of almost $12,000 per student per annum.

 

In his book, Father Kevin Lee explains why the government and police appear collusive in allowing the paedophile crisis in the priesthood to go unpunished.