It’s hard to imagine a vocation with more negative baggage than the priesthood. In today’s world the priests of the Roman Catholic Church are stamped with the notoriety of generations of clergy moral failure. Two realities have made this behavior abhorrent. First, the pattern that has been revealed is almost entirely pedophilia. That means priests have led children into sexual sin. The dirty little secret is that it is almost always homosexual sex …man on boy pedophilia.
The second issue is even more problematic. This horrific sin has been covered up; the leadership of the church has been complicit in moving offending priests to new parishes and burying the records. This terrible lapse has been enormously expensive for the Catholic Church worldwide. In the last decade billions of dollars have been lost in law suits. The loss of reputation and moral authority is beyond calculation. It has been a historic disaster.
So, to call Jesus the ultimate priest, in fact the Great High Priest seems like a losing proposition. And, yet, He is, in fact, the Priest we all need. A true priest is a go-between: a person who represents God to the people and the people to God. In spite of the fact that some in the Roman Catholic priesthood have failed to accurately represent their Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the reality is, the priesthood of Jesus is still intact. We all still need a mediator. We all still need a representative before the Throne of God who can plead our case. No one has replaced the loving sacrificial priesthood of Jesus. No other religious leader has come close to giving the world the advocacy it so desperately needs. All other religious leaders who follow in His footsteps serving as representatives of God must prove to be like Him, yet often fall short. In spite of human failure, spiritual leadership is still needed. Integrity in the priestly role is more important than ever. So, don’t give up on God because a priest has failed you. The true Priest will never fail. Jesus is the one we all can trust.