Father Mark (65:58)
Yeah. Well, I mean, I think, you know, there was a point of crisis where, you know, it had to do. I don't like to name names, if you don't mind, but there was. There was a very prominent cardinal in the US who. It. It was obvious, you know, it was. It became known that. That he. He was just, you know, abusing seminarians, young priests for the longest time. And they kept promoting him, and they knew what he was doing, and they kept promoting him and promoting him. And at that same time, there was just more kind of revelations of a lot of impropriety of a certain type of. Among the clergy and even, you know, hierarchy of the Church. And a lot of us were wondering what the heck is going on. You see, we were always under the impression that the bishops were chosen from the best of the best priests, you know, and they have this questionnaire, this secret questionnaire I forget Otis Khalil put out, you know, and so they made sure that any priest who becomes a bishop is. I mean, he's obviously not perfect, you know, but he's exceptional. He's the Best of the best. And the process they go through to select the bishops is very thorough, very rigorous. So that when a bishop is selected again, he's very, very good. Of course he's not perfect. Of course he's human, you know, and struggles with, you know, weakness like every other human being. And then you would hope that among those bishops, those who would be promoted to become archbishops or have bigger dioceses or become cardinals, they too would be the best of the best of the best. That was the impression we all had. And with this crisis in the Church, there was kind of a lot of us, including priests, were wondering, like, okay, someone in the Vatican is supposed to have the job of promoting the good people and demoting the bad people. That's not complicated. You know, why was that not happening in this one particular case and now other cases? There was a number of weird things going on. And even Pope Benedict himself, so I'm not making this up, he commented how in Germany, in the semi seminaries, there were these homosexual cliques among the leaders of the seminary. You know, that's the Pope, Pope Benedict. I mean, he was Pope Benedict Emeritus. And so I think, you know, a lot of us were kind of not shy to say, not on my watch. You know, like, if there is something wrong with how things are working, I'm not going to stand back and just pretend everything's hunky dory. I don't care about whether or not I get fired. I don't care about whether or not I never get promoted again for the rest of my life. I don't care what people think about me. To me, a shepherd fights wolves. A shepherd who just stands back and watch wolves ravage the sheep is not a true shepherd. He's a hireling, you know. And so for me, it was just. It was just a time where, like, I don't care about anything. I don't care about losing my job. I don't care about what people think about me. I don't care about never getting promoted again. I'm not standing back and watching, you know, whatever the sheep ravage or the wolves ravage the sheep. So I spoke out. I spoke out boldly. I spoke out. I might have still been in, I guess maybe early 40s at the time. So I consider I was still kind of young and crazy. So it was, you know, kind of in that context. And a lot of people didn't like. Well, you know, I'll tell you something. A lot of people liked what I was saying. Some of the religious leaders didn't like what I was saying, but, oh, boy, there was countless Catholics, including a lot of priests, they were saying, thank you, thank you, thank you for speaking up, you know. And so, again, a lot of the faithful were very appreciative of my speaking out. And, yeah, I got a little bit of trouble for it. You know, maybe some of the things I said and how I said them. But then I guess I'm trying to think, like, the series of events, I guess there was some indication that there was some efforts to, I don't know what, you know, have some more transparency. And so, I mean, I guess I toned that down. I don't know. If there's something ridiculous, I'll still speak up. I mean, I've never felt like my mission in life is to kind of be the conservative watchdog for the Church. You know, like, some people, anything that happens, they're on it, they react to it, they complain about. I don't. Like. I have nothing against people who do that, but I don't want to do that. I don't want to be that person. But if there's something ridiculous going on because, you know, because of, you know, what I feel the Lord has called me to, I'll say something, you know, for love of the church. And I guess I've always looked up to say, Mother Angelica, you know, like, when a lot of this stuff started coming out, Mother Angelica had already gone home to the Lord. But I remember a number of people saying, oh, can you imagine if Mother Angelica were alive today? She would be scathing, you know, and so we appreciate people who have the, you know, the courage to speak out. It has to be done.
