Cardinal raps priests' 'bourgeois values'

VATICAN CITY, Feb. 15 (UPI) -- The Vatican cardinal in charge of monks, nuns and non-parochial priests blamed "a drift towards bourgeois values" for a worldly and disobedient priesthood.

Cardinal Franc Rode told the Italian news agency ANSA that priests and members of religious orders tend to seek personal freedom, abandoning community living, prayer and even the cassock. But he said that young people tend to be attracted to the "radical life choice" of cloistered orders.

Rode cited a number of ways in which the values and "moral relativism" of the religious has become visible, ''Freedom without constraints, a weak sense of the family, a worldly spirit, low visibility of religious clothing, a devaluation of prayer, insufficient community life and a weak sense of obedience."