The Church is the people.  There is nothing Biblical in the belief that approaching God requires the intercession of any other than Jesus and certainly not priests.  If the Catholic church is going to rise from its present decline, it will need to rethink it’s approach to the people sitting in the pews.

https://flic.kr/p/hpxN48

Here Am I
by Michael Romani

Many a priest seated in a monastery 
Has sat silent clinging to the mystery
The future comes forward invisibly
But it does so within complete certainty
There are those who separate themselves as "Holy"
Yet, are void in morals and usurpers of piety

Hierarchical power is not the church's authority
It is the people of God who are its body
Blaming the cracks in the now shredded veil
On anyone but those charges approaches the surreal
It is not a single generation's moral laxity
That is responsible for the Church's lack of dignity

Nor does that generation's unheavenly sway
Have but little to do with so many walking away
Clingers to power shore up in self-protection
Thinking their sins avoid God's all seeing detection
Or, that it might be restored by a world hating remnant
Not realizing that doing so makes them globally irrelevant

No predator priests will rip faith from me
But, instead like Luther, I rebel against the monopoly
The sacred heart of our faith is not in hierarchy 
It is in the living soul that is the laity
It has always come down to the corruption of power
And how it raises it's head again in this hour

There is a need for anticlericalism's determination
Internally reforming or to risk faith's extermination
The record is clear that when shepherds hurt the flock
It is to step back and allow restoration of the Rock
This then is a universal declaration of a necessary war
In which protection for everyone pushes for more

Sitting in the back pews in conscientious persistence
The truly faithful will prevail in their resistance
Sacramental in their intentional works of mercy
Who might dare to call them or three gathered as heresy
We arise to cleanse and purify the altars of the temple
Returning back to the Book to keep it true and simple

(c) May 20, 2019  Michael Romani
All Rights Reserved