Review: Priests We Need to Save the Church

The author’s Uncle Tommy, a priest, said: “Naturally people want pleasure and will do anything to avoid pain.  But most will understand the depth of peace that comes from taking on a cause they didn’t want.”

Uncle Tommy was killed.  The author looked at his own life and saw hell as a possibility, and so he prayed for “a spiritual bolt of lightning.”  One month later, his brain hemorrhaged and he lay dying.  On his (assumed) last day, he was anointed and his Uncle Tommy prayed to, and his wife and friends noted “the presence of Tommy and the saints surrounded your bed; it was overwhelming.”  And to the doctor’s confusion, Kevin Wells lived, changed his life, and began writing.

This book recalls the author’s Uncle Tommy, and describes good priests, what they do and how their actions change lives --- which is what good priests took vows to do.  It’s mostly about doing and teaching the basic truths – and living them – and not bending to the culture’s call to relativity.  “We have a severe crisis in our priesthood because priests are not praying.”  Some priests “quietly accepted illicit relationships among the clergy or the laity,” and some “rarely frequented the sacrament of Reconciliation.”  “In this age dominated by relativism, the lines between good and evil and truth and falsehood are often left open to one’s own interpretation in ambiguous homilies that often seem to straddle rather than to pierce.”

The author minces no words: “Disordered sexual inclinations and gender fluidity are hailed as good, as abortions, habitual pornography viewing, shacking up, and no-fault divorce have flourished in society.  And costuming oneself in ignorance in the face of this anti-person onslaught that surrounds families is perhaps a form of priestly spiritual sloth as the Church has ever experienced.  At its best, priests’ silence on this apocalyptic complex of sins reveals a crisis of cowardice.”  And he goes on to give examples of priests who preached rightly, who were chastised in the press, but who changed lives.  And in the end, he provides a simple list, basics, of what a good priest does and how he prays. 

We need good priests.

I gave a copy of this book to all the priests I call friends.