Does father know best?

I don't know you all very well, but I feel that it's time for me to come clean.\nI am, and have been all my life, a practicing Catholic.\nNowadays, it's hard for me to admit that to groups of people without witnessing their sudden transformation into stand-up comic geniuses as they spout off the last little-kid and priest joke they'd heard on Leno the night prior. I've heard them all.\nThe jokes aren't my problem. Of course, the tragedies that are arising every day have forced me to truly examine my relationship with the Church. But, the incidences themselves are not the source of this grievance with my religion today either. \nSo then what's my major malfunction? \nI guess my problem lies in the fact that I feel no matter how many apologies are given, condemnations lain down or even zero-tolerance rules that are implemented as a result of these scandals; the media and the Church itself are missing the root of the problem.\nHaving attended Catholic schools all my life and given the seminary deep thought, I feel the core of this issue is in the organization of the priesthood itself, not individual priests or Church officials. \nYou see, ever since interest in the Church began to decline, being the community priest was no longer a position much sought after. Priests were no longer household faces and neighborhood names -- Father O'Malley stopped speaking at the high school commencements, and the motivated individuals who may have once chosen to help their religious community to keep progressing opted to join the secular realm instead.\nThe de-evolution of the priesthood then began as the organization that didn't offer a position for dynamic leaders, but a safe house for bewildered wanderers. The priesthood offered an excuse for sexually confused individuals to keep their struggle silent, as it removed all of the social mandates of dating and networking. They could remain quiet and undisturbed, and at the same time, receive a heavenly reprieve as opposed to the constant social battles that waged daily as they grew up. \nThe solution in my mind then is for the Church to reinvent itself yet again, as it did with Vatican II. Whether it be to re-evaluate their stance on homosexuality, allow for priests to marry or integrate both sexes into the holy order, I'm not quite sure. But I feel those questions need to be addressed anew because the solution does not lie in prevention of abuse, but in eliminating its origin.\n"We did not do enough to make sure that every child and minor was safe from sexual abuse." These were the condemning words of Bishop Wilton Gregory speaking at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in Dallas, Texas last Thursday. \nNor are you still doing enough. \nUntil priests can feel comfortable being priests, until spiritual leaders can lead without running away from their personal skeletons, you will not have done enough. \nUntil that day, I'll keep saying my confessions behind the screen.