The Long And The Short

In the late 1970s and early 1980s religious order and diocesan priest leaders began to move in on alcoholic priests.  The Superior Generals of the religious orders and the leaders of diocesan clergy heard professional speakers talk about the problem of alcohol in clergy.  Priests who drank alcoholically were confronted and sent away to treatment centers.  When they finished the treatment they were expected to go into daily recovery programs such as AA.  They were not simply put back into parishes.  They were not cured.  They are never cured.  That is the purpose of addiction recovery programs.  No recovery program and you go back to the booze.  The church also heard about pedophiles in the priesthood and some moved in on them and sent them to treatment programs.  Those programs said the person was "better" and could be returned to ministry.  But there was no ongoing meetings for this addiction.  Sex anonymous with a pedophile wing might have been a good thing, but it did not happen.  And there goes all the difference.  Ask any alcoholic priest in recovery when he got sober and he will tell you most likely, somewhere between 1978 and 1985.  By then the seminaries were on the watch for alcoholism and not ordaining them as in the past when there was ignorance or denial.