First Lutheran Youth to have fundraiser

First Lutheran Church’s Youth will be involved in a Community Impact Fundraising Event from 5-8 p.m. Monday at the Marshall Pizza Ranch. First Lutheran Youth will be on hand to greet customers, answer any questions about their summer high adventures trip and bus tables at the Pizza Ranch that evening. They will be going on a High Adventures Trip to Flathead Lutheran Bible Camp in Montana this coming summer.

Vatican tries to reboot priesthood amid crisis over abuses

ROME (AP) — The Vatican opened a three-day conference Thursday on rebooting the Catholic priesthood amid a drop in vocations and a credibility crisis over the “depraved” clergy sex abuse and cover-up scandal.

The conference’s organizer, Cardinal Marc Ouellet, said the symposium’s aim is to break down a “clericalized” concept of the priesthood that is at the root of the scandal. He denounced that priests had assumed a perverted place of power over their flock, when the church is really the “People of God.”

Such a distortion has created a crisis in which “sex abuses are just the visible and perverse tip of the iceberg,” Ouellet said. He cited abuses of power, conscience and spiritual abuse, as other “depraved” behaviors by priests.

Pope Francis opened the conference repeating his call for priests to be close to God, their bishops, other priests and the People of God.

Francis didn’t mention the abuse scandals, but he, too, blamed “clericalism” for distorting the true meaning of the priesthood, which he said is a vocation of service, not power.

“Clericalism is a distortion because it is based not on closeness (to others) but distance,” he said.

Officially, the conference isn’t about the sex abuse scandal. But Ouellet’s opening speech made clear the issue was an unavoidable backdrop to the discussions.