PASTORPOCALYPSE - At least 400 church leaders to RESIGN Sunday after Ashley Madison accounts revealed

Ashley Madison, leak, pastors, Christianity, resignation, society, immorality, hypocrisy

This Sunday could be a distressing day for millions of churchgoers across the country. As many as 400 pastors, some of them leading megachurch congregations, may resign following the Ashley Madison leak.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Hypocrisy can be found in every walk of life. This is especially notable in church life where our sins and human failings stand in stark contrast to the perfection of Christ. Priests, deacons, pastors, and all those who feature prominently in churches are especially vulnerable. Despite being people of the cloth, and commonly preaching about morality, these people are still human and they can be given over to grave sins. Such a reality is naturally distressing to a church community.

Ashley Madison is a website that pairs people seeking to have extramarital affairs, in exchange for a subscription fee. The user can be as up front or discreet as they choose. Then, like any other dating site, the user browses profiles and can message those potential partners that interest them.

Of course, Ashley Madison was targeted by hacktivists who thought the site should be brought down and its users exposed. They were successful and they posted millions of emails and other identifying information online. That information can now be searched.

Some of the people who engaged this site weren't very discreet as they used their everyday, personal email addresses and other accurate identifying information. They put their real names and birthdays on the site. The end of all this is, millions of people have been exposed as cheaters. Included in that number are hundreds of church leaders.

According to Christianity Today's Ed Stetzer, some 400 church leaders have already been identified by their congregants. Many of those people are probably facing extreme emotional distress from the humiliation and the prospect of losing their job. The only way for them to deal with the anxiety will be to resign and walk away, even if just for a period of repentance.

How individual churches deal with this crisis will be determined by how each operates. Some that are mainly personality cults might not see many changes. The pastor may even continue his ministry, perhaps losing a few congregants or some revenue, but not much more. Other church leaders will feel compelled to leave the ministry altogether and their lives will change, dramatically.

They aren't the real problem however.

The real problem is the culture of permissiveness, sexual immorality, and the breakdown of the family. We live in a society that has redefined marriage, that views premarital sex as normal, and that has an astounding divorce rate. We live in a culture that has boutique websites to cater to adulterers in the first place.

It's claimed that this is what comes when you have a free society, but we had a free society before Ashley Madison and nobody complained. We have to make a distinction between a free society and a libertine society. It's one thing to be free, for freedom comes with reasonable limits and expectations of responsibility. We are free to bear arms, but we have reasonable limits on their use. When it comes to matters of sexual morality however, we are not merely free, we are libertine. We are wholly irresponsible.

So when these 400 or more pastors step down from the pulpit, crying in their shame, and return to their breaking families, let us remember that we too share some of this burden. We have enabled a culture of permissiveness that is unrivaled in history. Not even the declining Roman Empire allowed this kind of behavior outside the court of Caligula. Today, even our churches seem to have become imperial palaces and even our pastors have become little Caligulas.

As a nation, we all need to repent and change our ways before we collectively share Caligula's fate.

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