I’m betting that The Philadelphia Inquirer slipped up!

In 2018, the Inquirer reported on Monsignor Joseph McLoone and his resignation following revelations of “inappropriate” relationships with adults:

Downingtown pastor resigns after ‘inappropriate’ expenses, relationships

Monsignor Joseph McLoone, the pastor of St. Joseph Parish in Downingtown, allegedly spent $1,500 from a secret parish bank account on “inappropriate” relationships with adults.

by David Gambacorta and John Smith | April 15, 2018

Seven years ago, Msgr. Joseph McLoone was dispatched to Downingtown with a tall task: to try to stabilize St. Joseph Parish, a Catholic community left shell-shocked after its pastor was charged with protecting priests who preyed on children across the region.

In time, McLoone, a Philadelphia native, proved to be a popular figure at the church, which, with about 4,700 families, is among the largest in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.

But this weekend, St. Joseph parishioners learned that his tenure had come to a shocking end. The archdiocese announced that McLoone, 55, had resigned – less than two months after he went on an indefinite leave of absence – amid an investigation into financial improprieties and inappropriate “relationships with adults” that violated archdiocesan standards. . . . .

McLoone told archdiocesan officials that he spent approximately $1,500 on “personal expenses of an inappropriate nature,” according to Gavin. “Those expenses were related to relationships with adults that represent a violation of the Standards of Ministerial Behavior and Boundaries established by the archdiocese.”

There’s more at the original, but it never specified what “inappropriate relationships with adults” was carefully worded to not let readers know with which adults the Monsignor had his inappropriate relationships.

A former Chester County pastor was spared prison time after admitting to stealing from a Catholic church

Msgr. Joseph McLoone was sentenced to five years of probation for the theft.

by Vinny Vella | October 1, 2021

A former Downingtown pastor pleaded guilty this week to stealing $30,000 from his parish to pad his salary, fund vacations to the Jersey Shore and finance his secret romances.

Msgr. Joseph McLoone, 58, entered the plea to misdemeanor theft charges during a hearing Thursday before Chester County Court Judge Jacqueline C. Cody. He was sentenced to five years of probation, the first nine months of which he will complete under house arrest.

McLoone, who has been on administrative leave since his resignation from St. Joseph Parish in 2018, must also perform community service and write letters of apology to both the parishioners of St. Joseph and administrators at the Philadelphia archdiocese. . . . .

He withdrew $4,000 in cash in Ocean City, N.J., authorities said, and spent about $3,000 on men with whom he had sexual relationships. None of them were parishioners, the archdiocese said.

There’s more at the original, but I have included a screen capture from the article, which I accessed at 1:25 PM EDT today, because I do not trust the Inquirer not to edit out the fact that Msgr McLoone’s ‘inappropriate relationships’ were homosexual encounters. You can click on the image to enlarge it. With the #woke leadership of the newspaper, I have to wonder if Vinny Vella, the reporter, won’t get the back of his hand slapped for not only pointing out that the Monsignor was homosexual, but that his article associated Monsignor’s pursuit of homosexual relationships with crime.

Ken Gavin, a spokesperson for the archdiocese, said in a statement Friday that its leaders “are grateful for the resolution in this matter along with the closure and healing it brings.”

“Consistent with Archdiocesan policy, the required canonical investigation regarding Monsignor McLoone’s behavior was stayed until law enforcement had completed its work,” Gavin said. “Now that civil authorities have reached a conclusion in this matter, that work will begin.”

I have long said that the problem of rampant homosexuality among Catholic priests means that the Church needs to move to a heterosexual, married priesthood.

The Roman Catholic Church has required perpetual celibacy, and prohibited marriage, for its priests since the Second Lateran Council in 1139; this was reaffirmed at the Council of Trent in 1563.

While that part is common knowledge, less well known is that there are married Catholic priests. In 1980, Pope John Paul II opened a path by which married Episcopal/Anglican priests who converted to Catholicism could serve in the Catholic priesthood. Estimates are that there are about 120 such priests in the United States.

And there are more: the Eastern-Rite Catholic Churches have allowed married priests for several centuries, and in 2014, Pope Francis ended the restriction that married Eastern Catholic could serve only in their home countries.

There were, of course, many married priests in the Roman Catholic Church prior to the Second Lateran Council, including many popes. St Peter, regarded as the first Pope, at least had been married at one point: Matthew 8:14-15 refers to his mother-in-law.

How can there be married Catholic priests, either in the Eastern Rite churches, or in the Latin Rite, converts from Anglicanism and its off-shoot churches? It’s simple: priestly celibacy is a discipline, not a dogma, and disciplines can be changed. The advantages of a celibate priesthood are clear:

• Celibate priests can give more of their time an attention to their parishes and parishioners, while married men have to devote more of their time and attention to their wives and children.
• Celibate priests can be more easily transferred to different parishes. Priests are reassigned every five to seven years, on average. Wives frequently have jobs, even careers, while children have friends and school, and transferring a married priest could be much more difficult and disruptive to his family.
• Celibate priests are easier to house and support. Priests normally live in the rectory, a house for priests normally on church grounds. These buildings are not normally set up to house wives and children. Accommodating married priests would mean a larger home for his family. Considering that Catholic dogma opposes artificial contraception, a married priest could have a very large family to support and house.
• A celibate priest will normally live on parish grounds, while a married priest might have to live in a house away from the church. This means that the married priest might not be a security guard for his parish.

But, if there are clear advantages to having a celibate priesthood, there is one huge disadvantage: with humans being naturally inclined to mate, the Church is expecting the priest to live an unnatural lifestyle. Human beings need to mate, they need to be married, and the celibacy discipline denies to Catholic priests that most basic normalcy in human life. Even St Paul, who stated that he was celibate, noted that marriage was the natural condition of life. And St Paul also set down the conditions that a man must meet to be a deacon, priest or bishop:

The saying is sure: whoever aspires to the office of bishop desires a noble task. Now a bishop must be above reproach, married only once, temperate, sensible, respectable, hospitable, an apt teacher, not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, and not a lover of money. He must manage his own household well, keeping his children submissive and respectful in every way— for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how can he take care of God’s church?

The conditions for priests and deacon are similar. But clearly, St Paul expected those in Holy Orders to mostly be married.

Not every Catholic priest who has broken the law or seriously offended is homosexual, but it sure seems like a lot of them have been. I’m certain that heterosexual priests struggle with celibacy, too. But opening the priesthood to married heterosexual men (mostly) solves the problems: not only will priests not have to struggle with celibacy, but it will open a huge new potential pool of Catholic men as candidates for the priesthood who would not consider it under celibacy rules.