Opinion: George Pell and the priest who went to Mardi Gras

AUSTRALIA
news.com.au

March 10, 2018

By Joe Hildebrand

At the very end of a church service I attended with my son on Sunday, the priest said something that left me thinking, “Holy sh*t.”

Last Sunday, for the first time in a long time, I darkened the door of a house of God.

Years earlier, when I was doing my confirmation, I had promised the priest that I wouldn’t be one of those Catholics who just showed up for Christmas and christenings. And yet here I was at the christening of my second child and I couldn’t be entirely sure that I had been to church since the christening of the first.

Priests are of course a forgiving bunch — it is, after all, a fairly central part of their job description — but nonetheless I felt deeply guilty, which is a fairly central part of a Catholic’s job description.

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