Posted on 03/15/2002 11:59:33 AM PST by anniegetyourgun
BOSTON- In an extraordinary editorial on the city's child-molestation scandal, the official newspaper of the Boston Archdiocese says the Roman Catholic Church must face the question of whether to drop its requirement that priests be celibate.
The editorial, published Thursday in a special issue of The Pilot, asks whether there would be fewer scandals if celibacy were optional for priests and whether the priesthood attracts an unusually high number of homosexual men.
It offers no answers, but says: "These scandals have raised serious questions in the minds of the laity that simply will not disappear."
The editorial was written by Monsignor Peter V. Conley, the paper's executive editor, who is said to be a close confidant of Cardinal Bernard Law, Boston's archbishop. Law is listed as the paper's publisher.
Archdiocese spokeswoman Donna Morrissey had no immediate comment.
Philip Lawler, who was editor of The Pilot from 1986 to 1988 and is now editor of Catholic World Report, called the editorial "very unusual" for raising questions about church doctrine instead of administrative issues.
In Rome, a Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Ciro Benedettini, said: "The pope has spoken to this. He has said celibacy remains, it is a great gift to the church. He has spoken clearly in favor of celibacy."
The archdiocese is the nation's fourth-largest, with more than 2 million Catholics, and is the center of the biggest child-molestation scandal to rock the U.S. church.
It has been under fire recently after it was disclosed that officials knew about child sex-abuse allegations against the Rev. John Geoghan and did little more than move him from parish to parish. The now-defrocked priest has been accused of molesting more than 130 children over 30 years. He is serving a nine-to-10 year prison sentence for groping a boy, and the archdiocese has agreed to pay up to $45 million to scores of his alleged victims.
As part of a new "zero tolerance" policy of sex abuse, the archdiocese has turned over to prosecutors the names of more than 80 current and former priests suspected of child molestation over the past 50 years.
The archdiocese said it printed the special issue of The Pilot to try to improve communication with parishioners about the latest developments. More than 100,000 copies of the 28-page supplement to the weekly paper were printed and will be distributed after Mass in parishes Sunday.
"Would abandoning celibacy be the proper answer to new data from the contemporary sciences or would it be surrendering to popular American culture?" it says.
The editorial says that the New Testament "clearly prizes" priestly celibacy, but that most Americans don't understand it. It also says that letting priests marry would not be a "panacea," noting the divorce rate.
The editorial poses such questions as: "Should celibacy continue to be a normative condition for the diocesan priesthood in the Western (Latin) Church? If celibacy were optional, would there be fewer scandals of this nature in the priesthood? Does priesthood, in fact, attract a disproportionate number of men with a homosexual orientation?"
It also encourages greater attention to homosexual orientation and the priesthood, and asks if there are valid ways to screen priests for sexual orientation. The editorial also says that "evidence now seems to indicate that (homosexuality) is a genetically inherited condition."
Conley did not immediately return a call for comment Friday.
The Rev. Stephen Rossetti, a psychologist and consultant on sex abuse to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, cautioned against linking celibacy and homosexuality among priests to child molestation.
"Any clinician can tell you the diagnosis of pedophilia has nothing to do with homosexuality," said Rossetti, who has written extensively on the issue. "I think people are jumping on simplistic solutions."
The newspaper also includes a defense of Law by Raymond Flynn, a former Boston mayor and one-time U.S. ambassador to the Vatican.
"I think it's a very enlightened editorial in terms of the door being opened, and the church is inviting people to come back," Flynn said Friday. "In a sad way, this is a very exciting and wonderful new era, a dawn for the Catholic Church. I really believe that."
It's not "easy" to become a Catholic.
Actually it is the modern diocese and parish which run the RCIA "assembly lines". It's easy to get your ticket punched after you've stood in line for a year.
You're being too hard on yourself. I suspect you're also a bit scrupulous, meaning you see sin where there is none.
I also suspect it's not just in your spiritual life that you're excessively rigid.
Some counseling might be in order.
You don't know what you're talking about.
Andrew Sullivan’s Gay Problem-- And mine.
March 13, 2002 12:25 p.m.
Andrew Sullivan is a brilliant journalist whose work I treasure, but he is wrong on the gay-priests issue. He attacks me today for having a "gay problem" when it comes to homosexuality and the Church. He's right; I do. So does he. And it's on this dispute that the future of the Catholic Church in America rests.
Sullivan is angry that in my comments in The Corner, I've often connected the homosexuality of priests accused of pederasty with their alleged crimes. He resents my comments about the "lavender mafia" running much of the institutional Church (the phrase is Fr. Andrew Greeley's, and he's hardly a Catholic conservative). He disdains my remarks about how some gay priests in control of seminaries and chanceries use their power to persecute orthodox, heterosexual priests and seminarians, and he resents my remarks about some seminaries being not much better than "gay brothels."
I draw those dire conclusions not on "hearsay," as Sullivan says, but on reporting and years of conversations with priests, who have told me more than I wish I knew about what it was really like in their seminaries. It will be interesting to see how Sullivan will react to author Michael S. Rose's forthcoming Goodbye! Good Men, which is the first book I'm aware of to systematically compile these stories from the seminaries, and to name names.
I've just finished an early copy, and what it documents is absolutely astonishing, and cannot be ignored except by those who do not want to see. This bombshell book reveals a seminary underworld in which homosexual promiscuity and sexual harassment is rampant, in which straight men are marginalized and demoralized, and seminarians who support the Church's teaching on sexuality and the priesthood are persecuted, even to the point of being sent off, Soviet-style for psychological evaluations. Many of these guys are rejected from entering the seminaries, expelled, or driven by depression to leave.
The book was substantially written before the Boston scandal broke, and it contains damning information about the homosexual domination of St. John's Seminary in Boston during the time that many of the priests accused in the current scandal there were ordained. How can you blame people for wondering if there's a connection between the outlaw homosexual culture of that seminary, and the outlaw homosexual culture that some 80 priests in Boston participated in?
Even seminary rector the Rev. Donald Cozzens, in his much-praised book The Changing Face of the Priesthood, writes that the increasing presence of homosexuals in the priesthood causes particular problems for straight seminarians, and not for the usual bugbears of "homophobia." The Catholic laity have a right to know if their Church's priesthood is becoming heavily gay, and what that means. Fr. Greeley writes, "The laity, I suspect, would say it is one thing to accept a homosexual priest and quite another to accept a substantially homosexual clergy, many of who are blatantly part of the gay subculture." What's more, I have been told by a number of sources, including psychiatrist Richard Sipe — no Church conservative he — that there does in fact exist a network of gay priests who support each other, sometimes through sinister ways (e.g., blackmailing bishops and others who threaten their activities).
I have connected the homosexuality of those priests who have been publicly exposed as pederasts to their alleged actions for one main reason: The media will strain to avoid making the connection, for fear of being accused of homophobia. But this scandal cannot be understood and honestly dealt with in its absence. We hear over and over again that "pedophiles are mostly straight men." That may be true, but what we're seeing with priests is not pedophilia, which is a deep-seated psychological illness. What we're seeing is gay men who cannot or will not keep their pants up around teenage boys. Not teenage girls. Teenage boys.
You cannot blame people for asking if there's something about the culture of homosexuality in the Catholic priesthood that fosters this phenomenon, if it's something more than a few bad apples, but a systemic problem. Maybe it's not. But it is not homophobic to ask, and the questions do not go away because Andrew Sullivan doesn't want to face them, for fear of what the answers might be.
One reason this matters goes beyond the safety of teenage males, to the theological integrity of the Church. It doesn't take a sociologist or an investigative journalist to determine that people will go to great lengths to believe things that will justify their sex lives. It's very human; most of us have done it at one point in our lives. We've seen gay priests and theologians, aligned with feminist nuns and other dissenters (including heterosexuals, to be sure), working to change the substance of the Catholic faith, particularly on issues of sexual morality. And they're succeeding. In my experience, the only time most Catholics ever hear anything orthodox said about sexual morality from the clergy is when the Vatican says something. You can just as effectively change the belief of the people by not teaching the truth as you can by teaching falsehood.
No serious Catholic could object to a homosexually oriented priest who is both chaste and openly supportive of the Church's teaching. We're not talking about these brave and faithful men. Does Andrew Sullivan believe gay priests should have a special dispensation giving them the right to be sexually active (as he apparently believes about himself as a Catholic)? Does he believe they don't have an obligation to live by authoritative Church teaching? Does he believe that good works and heroism in other aspects of their priesthood exempts them from fidelity and integrity in others (e.g., does Fr. Judge's bravery at Ground Zero earn him a pass on the fact that he was unfaithful to the Church on sexuality?)
Or is it more important to Andrew Sullivan to be sexually active gay man than a faithful Catholic? You cannot have it both ways. Hence Andrew Sullivan's gay problem. Hence my own. Hence this painful discussion, which will soon occupy center stage in the public square as the scandal unfolds, and American Catholics are forced to deal with the homosexualization of the Catholic priesthood in America.
But you are right about the rest. Sadly. I can't seem to get past it. Part of the problem is that trying to correct for the over liberalization in my local diocese I have been influenced by far right catholics. That really helped with the charismatic problem but made the other things worse, actually.
I didn't used to be that way. Sometimes I wish I could go back to my Methodist church but I can't do that either . . none of any of this bothered me in the least when I was a Methodist. Then the abortion stuff came up close to home and I knew I had to leave there . . . my daughter got pregnant and my best friend and sister (both brought up Methodist) told me if it was their daughter they would get an abortion . . . I'm so glad I didn't listen to them . . . but it started me on a long spiritual journey . . .
As for the Church's hierarchy, well, they're people and they screw up. I doubt if any prince of the Church has ever taken lightly a case in which a priest has been accused of being a pedophile or a pederast. Whether they got it right or not, I'm sure they always proceeded with one eye on the damage and scandalization (such as you evince now) that openly defrocking a priest would entail.
The Church has operated secluded retreat facilities for impaired priests for ages. If they didn't get the job done, that's a sign of the intractability of homosexuality in some people, which not being psychiatrists themeselves, the Church may not have been equipped -- ever -- to handle.
Homosexuality and pederasty is a social problem that we haven't even begun to get our arms around yet, partly because of the political activity and interference of the "gay-rights" crowd.
If the collection plate of the American Catholic Church begins to be affected by the perception that large numbers of priests are homosexual (and there is some evidence of that), then the Vatican will act. Otherwise, don't expect much of a change in our lifetimes. Straight men won't go near the priesthood, parents will discourage their sons from even considering the ministry, and some straight priests may get discouraged enough to leave. The number of priests will continue to decline, and the average age will get older.
I never thought I'd see something like this.
That's not exactly true. Therapists aren't very sympathetic with the church's moral teachings (that was obvious). They are very sympathetic to gays and lesbians and their desire to have it both ways in the church (so it seemed to me). I am sympathetic to gays and lesbians but as a single, I am supposed to be chaste so why aren't they? Everything nowadays is a can of worms. If I was unfair by what I said, I'm sorry.
Get close to Christ. Let Him speak to your heart through His Words in Scripture.
You need an anchor so you can judge what is genuine and what is not.
No greater anchor than Jesus Himself.
I have heard that by swearing celabacy, and abstaining from other mortal pleasures, the priest can minister the word better...and that he is not corrupted by the trivial pursuits of mortal men...
I think its a stupid policy...but I am not religious, and think sex is great...go figure
Thanks for that meaningless ad hominem attack, followed by a vacuum of meaningful discussion.
Bye.
What steps do you propose to remedy the situation?
I can only think of closing down all existing seminaries, and setting up new ones under the direct supervision of the most conservative cardinals in Rome.
Too bad we can't resurrect LeFebvre!
I'm RCC, and I think this type of "CYA" diversion is not in keeping with a great church; Nor is it "Christ-like."
Only an open and genuine "confession" and a dedicated resolve to address and remidy the problem is needed. I don't think the "bishops" understand that there are a great number of us who are ready, willing, and able to rally around the church...if the "bishops" would only show some principled leadership!
For some reason I'm reminded of the story of "Daniel in the lions den" ...He displayed courage and guts and faith...and was well rewarded by God! If "Daniel" were a bishop today (IMHO), he'd have a PR guy telling us why he just couldn't make the event as scheduled!
I sincerely doubt he was celibate. He was a brutal man before he turned to Christ.
They shouldn't. They're married to the church. That's the vow that they took and should uphold it.
your response to me "and why should Priests get married?" . . . "They shouldn't. They're married to the church. That's the vow that they took and should uphold it."
. . .think we agree. . .
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