New Priest Hope
Posted by Arwen Mosher in News on Friday, May 14, 2010 11:03 PM
“Fall in love with the Lord, and it will change everything. Fall out of love with Him, and it will change everything.”
That’s the advice given by Monsignor Steven Rohlfs, Rector of Mount St. Mary’s seminary, to his students during the last class before their ordination.
In a time when the Church is getting slammed by the media, this article in the Washington Post is a surprisingly positive interview with Msgr. Rohlfs and a few of the seminarians graduating from Mount St. Mary’s this year.
Entitled “Budding priests in a time of crisis: Seminarians enter scandal-scarred vocation,” the article references the sex-abuse scandal, but in a way that seems to recognize that such things are not the norm, and that the grace of God gives priests the ability to rise above temptation.
In an interview with one of the seminarians, he acknowledges the reality of sexual temptation, but says, “When I see a girl, I try to think, ‘If this were my daughter, how would I feel if someone looked at her that way, if someone mistreated her?’ You try to move into that role of a father, which is what you’re supposed to be, in a sense, as a priest.”
For me, it’s great to see an article showing such a morally ordered way of thinking in a [soon-to-be] priest.
My favorite parts of the article are the interviews with the monsignor, whose final words on the topic of his seminarians are these: “We can teach them everything we know, but, in the end, duty cannot do it,” he said. “It must be love—loving God more than you love sin.”
Isn’t that true for all of us?
Read the rest of the piece here.
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