Keep telling yourself there is nothing wrong with having gay priests: A New York priest was arrested after cops found unlicensed guns and gay porn in his apartment. They were investigating him on aggravated harassment charges for making threatening phone calls to staff at a Catholic high school. He also confessed to stealing $80,000 from a church where has helped out for 25 years.
The newspaper reports: “Neighbors described Johnston as an ‘unfriendly loner’ who ‘never said hello’ and ‘wouldn’t even hold the door open for you.’” Is this the image of a priest joyfully living his vocation as an alter Christus?
The priest was a teacher at prep school in New Jersey for 23 years who retired last year and who apparently had an unhealthy fascination with Nazis.
At the Newark Archdiocese, spokesman Jim Goodness called the charges against Johnston “unbelievable.”
“Nothing along these lines was exhibited while he was here. He was just a teacher on the faculty who went home on weekends.”
Maybe they would have known more about this priest if they had treated him as priest and not some kind of contract worker. And the same goes for the Rockville Centre diocese which was shocked to find out about the embezzlement at one of its parishes. Priests are not supposed to be employees who just go home on the weekends. But perhaps we’ve lost a sense of that in this country.
