Two of the clergymen on the panel brazenly and openly justified premarital sex relations between young men and young women. Most public figures are afraid to confess that homosexuality and lesbianism have infiltrated church leadership, youth camps, YMCAs and YWCAs. This in itself is serious enough, but among the leaders who are not so afflicted, there is a sort of 'broadminded' toleration of these Sodom and Gomorrah codes. The Evangelist is an obscure breed. In fact, I doubt if Martin Luther, John Wesley, St. Francis, D. L. Moody, or even Billy Sunday could be invited to fill one of these gold-plated pulpits which symbolize the materialistic ecclesiastical bureaucracies of this generation.
Prayer meetings are taboo.
Church dinners, gluttony, wisecracks, efficiency surveys and budget raisings have replaced the humble prayer circle where men and women of God meet to testify and pray and rededicate. As a Protestant, my familiarities with the above summarized symptoms is more or less confined to the orbit of Protestantism, but I know Priests and I know important Catholic laymen who are as concerned about the materialistic vanities of their church as I am concerned about the dead men's bones which beset the whited sepulchres of my fellowships. This statement is not intended to be more than a challenge to meditation and prayer and consecrated consideration. He was not talking about buildings, bureaucracies or budgets. I could imagine a day when unbalanced budgets, economic chaos and complete revulsion among the people could render impotent every visible symptom of organized sectarianism at the very moment when the spiritual substance growing out of Christ's eternal Gospel would become more powerful than at any time in history.