"Sadly, the over-focus on sexual pleasure, the reducing and labeling of persons to their attractions (LGBTQ, etc.) and the viewing of persons as objects for pleasure have led to unprecedented numbers of infidelity, divorce, loneliness and abuse in the greater culture."
He said the crisis was worsened by inadequate responses from the Church, citing silence and "harsh moralizing." This only strangled the message of God's love and distorted a full understanding of the human person, he said.
However, the bishop said there were also appropriate responses, including St. John Paul II's Theology of the Body. He said this answer promoted a greater comprehension of true love alongside responsibility.
"Related to the general confusion about human love caused by the sexual revolution, we also suffered from an insufficient understanding of priestly celibacy," Bishop Olmsted noted, adding that Pope Francis has affirmed the value of celibacy for the priesthood.
"Indeed, in a world that believes that sexual pleasures must have free reign, even at the cost of innocent unborn children, there is need for those men and women who proclaim by their lives that ultimate love and fulfillment come from God and that self-mastery is certainly possible with God's grace. Chaste celibacy, received as a gift of God and formed through spiritual and human direction, is a needed response to a false idea of 'free love.'"
Amid the confusion caused by the sexual revolution "Church leaders faild to adequately screen applicants" to seminary, he said. "It was often assumed that the human and the spiritual qualities of the man were present and sufficient. This was a poor assumption, and it led to too little consideration of a man's human virtues and of his relationship with Jesus Christ. As a result, some candidates unfit for ministry were accepted."