Rev. Michael P. Orsi: USA Today Columnist Objects to Pope Recommending Kids Over Pets

A priest of the Diocese of Camden, New Jersey, Rev. Michael P. Orsi currently serves as parochial vicar at St. Agnes Parish in Naples, Florida. He is host ofCarli Pierson, an attorney and member of the USA TODAY editorial board, recently revealed in an op-ed that she’s “someone who occasionally goes to Mass.” Like many intermittent Catholics, she feels empowered to criticize the Church for being out of touch with the realities of life today.

Speaking with the boundless spiritual confidence of someone who went to Catholic school and had two daughters baptized in the Faith, Carli offered the usual litany about sex abuse, rejection of women priests, refusal to recognize so-called “marriage” between same-sex couples, and other alleged institutional failings.

But of all her reasons why “the Catholic Church runs the risk of becoming obsolete” she focused on its “continued insistence on contradictory and outdated views on families.”

Carli was particularly offended by Pope Francis’ recent comment about how many people these days are opting to have pets instead of children. The Pope called such “denial of fatherhood or motherhood” an expression of selfishness that “diminishes us” and “takes away our humanity.”

Carli confessed to being someone whose “lips still tremble as I quietly recite the Lord’s Prayer in unison with other parishioners.” Nevertheless, she was firm in her criticism of the Pope’s preference for human offspring over animals. …

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