Have you ever had to deal with Catholic priests?

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I have, and I never found them to be very nice. So I wonder why I see people who "love the church" even to the point they donate thousands of dollars yet if they ask a question they get yelled at.

One problem I had growing up was that my parents made me shake the priests hand after Mass. But this was usually after they kind of yelled to the audience. So how can I shake hands with someone who just "yelled" at everyone without feeling like I am shaking a snake? I was always afraid of confession because it is in a dark room with a priest giving a silent treatment and a guilt trip. Yet I see people going to confession and it does not scare them in the least.

I unfortunately had to talk to a priest when my father had a stroke and with him being a eucharistic minister, we were getting calls from other EMs wanting to know when dad would "work" when he was in the hospital and I had to call the priest, only to be told "We will remember him in our prayers". But what do we do about people calling expecting my dad? No answer just "We will remember him in our prayers". Once I tried to join the choir but it turns out that they did not have a director yet so the secretary turned me over to the priest who just yelled into the phone about how I am impatient and I called 5 times and to leave him alone! By the way, I never called 5 times.

Worse yet comes when my father died 2 years earlier and Father Yell comes up to me at the funeral and pretends like nothing is wrong. I told him "you yelled at me" but then tells me he forgot!

If a priest cannot handle these type of "consumer' issues how would anyone ever want to talk to a priest about personal problems? Yet even my dad would tell me "they are not perfect". But would you tolerate this from any other business, even a sleazy car dealer? Or is me being on the "spectrum" why I don't like religion. It seems I must be missing out on something, because so many people "love the Church". anyone else here a devout Catholic?

Any Altar Boys here with stories to tell?

ruveyn

I would probably be cranky, too, if I were a priest.

Terrible life plan.

Was hard growing up in a religious family when even the priest (monsignor) shunned me for being "different". Though my mother was stopped going to that church after that too.

When I was in jail/juvie, I went to the Protestant Sunday Service. These two kids were in back talking, relatively quietly, I sure didn't notice them. The Catholic priest walked into the room to get something, saw it, interrupted the service and yelled at everyone, and was like "YOU ALL SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELVES, JESUS DIDN'T MURDER PEOPLE, JESUS DIDN'T RAPE WOMEN..." and he went on a tirade like that for 3-4 minutes interrupting our service. He *might* not have been a real priest, though, as he never wore like, actual priest clothes, he might have been more of a "lay minister" or something, but yeah. Not a good advertisement for Catholicism there.

So, I've been Protestant all my life (well, during middle school and high school I lapsed and didn't go to church much and generally didn't live a very Christian life, but besides that) so I don't have like, much experienced with Roman Catholics. Now I'm Orthodox (still a catechumen) and I've dealt with my Orthodox priest alot, and he's been pretty pleasant to deal with. He's definitely got some "Aspie" traits to him, too. I think the only personal slight he's done to me was I waited around for an hour to meet with him for catechumen counseling, and he didn't show up, and he didn't explicitly apologize, but just was like "so that didn't work out." But, I might just be overanalyzing his choice of words and the like, so yeah. Most Orthodox priest type people I've met are pretty like...calm, kinda people. Pretty chill. I'd say their personalities are a lot more similar to like, Buddhists I've met. It's sorta the same ideal, even at the end of liturgies, we pray "To live our lives in peace and repentance." Orthodox Christianity I feel like is one of the few Christian denominations that legitimately has a "peaceful life" as a goal in life, and like Buddhism, we got monastics and ascetics. So anyway, I'll stop the advertisement my own faith, haha.

As far as Catholics go, I've heard pretty similar sentiments from my friends involved with Catholics. My friend went to a Catholic high school, all boys school, and all the Catholic teachers part of the Xavierian brotherhood would yell and curse at them constantly. "You talking to me like that, I've been doing this Xavierian Brotherhood s**t for years!"

The big problem Catholics have imo, is their church has gotten VERY sorta "liberal." And it's just weird they way they work, as they'll make contraception or something like that into a HUGE issue, like they're the cultural vanguard or something, and then they'll allow theological craziness to happen in their own churches. My only time as an adult going to a Catholic Church, I was told it was a class on prayer. I figured it'd be something to do with the saints, the Rosary, etc, instead it was this weird Eastern meditation thing telling you to put your hands on your shoulders and "embrace the feminine part of you, now embrace the masculine part of you" and it referred to God as mother and stuff. I was freaked out and left after like 5 minutes of it. But, other things I've heard from my friends, the passage for the day was the Fall of Man, with Adam and Eve. The priest's sermon was about how we should emulate the serpent, as he was the only one that didn't blame his problems on others. WTF? Emulate the devil?

A big thing in Catholicism, it still is VERY controversial today, is Vatican II. Vatican II was what made the mass not in Latin anymore, but it basically tried to Protestantize Catholic mass, and sorta opened the floodgate for...weird bad stuff. So you have splinter Traditional Catholic Groups now, like Society of Saint Pius X, that are unsatisfied with the way the church is being run. The way I sorta look at it, the Orthodox were smart and saw the writing on Rome's wall back in 1054, and ran. I mean, yeah, there's still good Catholics around, but it's a war between the "Progressive" groups and then on the flipside that's almost just as bad is the SSPX kinda people wanting Latin Mass back and stuff like that.

But yeah, Rome has a lot of problems going on. So priests acting like jackasses is just a symptom of a larger problem in the Roman Church. Again, there's good Roman Catholics and all that, but the Roman church has problems.

I'm not Catholic, but when I was in high school a Catholic priest came to our school and helped coach the tennis team. He was in his 70s then, still competed, and was a great guy.

While I'm sure that there might be some drunk miserable Irish priests around, I haven't met the stereotype yet. Most of the priests I've met have been from Latin America, though.

I *really* want to post that bit from the Blues Brothers where the 'penguin' is whacking them, but it's too sweary.

The priests when I was growing up were sort of miserable and removed from their congregation, and drunk. They weren't the yelling kind. Nuns are another matter.

I head the neighborhood watch and regularly have to chase priests away from the playground with cans of raid

! !! !! !!

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

When I tell something like that to my sisters I get "but they are not all like that" and other people say "but you mean you let 1 person make you judge the church" or something like that. Or "people are not perfect" and "we should pray". How can people say those things and get something out of the church when X rated things are going on?

I don't know why, because it seems like a charmed life to me. Lets see, you wake up and get dressed and you have women in the rectory who do everything for you except maybe wipe your ass, there is no physical work at all, you go visit the people in the hospital where you just say a few things, write the homily for the mass (maybe 4 paragraphs a week), hear confession where you just tell people to say a few hail marys and if you get too stressed you just hide behind your staff and the answering machine and use the excuse that you are "extremely busy". Yet people actually believe it.

But alas, I did not receive Catholic education, I have psychological problems, I am gay, I don't know religion, so they would not take me into the seminary.

I actually had to deal with Catholic priests one year I was in Catholic school, and my home room teacher was a nun (the kind that don't wear the habit, don't remember what they were called). Didn't seem out of the ordinary to me.

Priests are stressed, if you know what I mean. I saw a forty in my confessor's drawer once, and not classy stuff.

I had a bible thrown at me by one once. Does that count?

Ooh, me too. But not by a priest, by a crazy man on the bus.