Fr. Matthew Despard's Priesthood in Crisis "is not afraid to name names..."

Fr. Matthew Despard

As Witness readers know, this blog takes a special interest in the life of the Church in Scotland, as one of our bloggers, Montfort is a Glaswegian. Further, Montfort's family knows Fr. Despard. We will continue to monitor and report on the situation. Montfort's phone calls back home have independently confirmed the main thesis of Fr. Despard's book, Priesthood in Crisis. That is, there is a homosexual crisis in the priesthood in Scotland. I have also independently confirmed a certain "couldn't care less attitude" for moral crimes committed by Scottish priests. The case of the promotion and continued pastoral work of Fr. Paul Milarvie after an admission of drunken homosexual behaviour involving "confinement" is a shocking inditement of the Scottish hierarchy's moral bankruptcy; as is the continued featuring of the disgraced active homosexual, Keith Cardinal O'Brien on the Motherwell website. 

For a review of Fr. Despard's book, I suggest you read United States blogger Jay Boyd excellent review. In part, she writes: 

Fr. Despard speaks almost exclusively from his own experience, citing instance after instance where he was pressured by homosexual priests to engage in inappropriate behavior, and was ostracized when he refused to comply.  Worse than “ostracized”, he was persecuted.

How did this collapse in the priesthood come about?  Boyd provides with the answer: 

Fr. Despard believes “there is currently a major apostasy rife in the Church, an apostasy that conceals itself under the various guises of tolerance, pro-choice, equality and other forms of social and political correctness”. He comments further:

How terrible it is for the priests of our Church to stand by and permitthe uninhibited growth of those twin modern perversions – liberalism and relativism – to flourish unchecked. How ignorant of our Christian faith and its tenets are our flocks allowed to become?

And then he asks this very pertinent question:

So why cannot our Church leaders see this? Why are they not mobilizing a Church fight-back, a re-education of its members, a challenge to the increasingly atheistic agenda that permeates our lives…?