Paper Suggests End to Priest Celibacy

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.

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."

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."

There is no doubt that marriage was the norm for most notable Old Testament figures. King Solomon, for example, took 1,000 women for his sexual pleasure and was never castigated for it.

LOL, nice example. What did those 1000 women lead Solomon to do? Oh yeah, allow pagan worship, etc.

patent +AMDG

If they started with the seminaries they would likely enjoy great success.

FWIW, it is well known that the seminary out there had a very strong gay culture at one time. To my knowledge this was after the most notorious pedophiles like Goeghan had gone through, but the seminary did produce quite a few of the pederasts that we hear of these days. Of course, Cardinal Law can't blame things on that, its pretty taboo for the Bishops to speak about how badly screwed up their seminaries were/are.

For some reason I think the seminary out there is better now, but I can't recall for sure. Its likely that this is also part of the reason they have a vocations shortage out there.

patent

Sorry, I don't know how to explain it. If God chooses priests (which I no longer believe), wouldn't He give them the gift of celibacy since it is a requirement of the church.

God creates all of us and calls all of us to a particular state in life. A vocation. Mine is as a husband and father, the married state. That God has called me to this does not mean He makes me the perfect father or husband. If I am faithful to Him and open to His grace, He will perfect me. But all of us are closed at some times, some more then others. In every group, whether to those with Holy Orders, those married, or those single, there are those that may hear the call well enough to embark on the journey their vocation requires, but stop listening and fall into such a sinful stupor that they no longer hear God’s call, and no longer care to receive His grace. It is not that God does not offer these priests the grace to successfully live a celibate life, it is that they aren’t willing receptacles.

That is free will.

patent +AMDG

If the seminaries weren't so hungry for candidates, they would be able to weed out the incompetent and homosexual seminarians before they receive their Holy Orders and send them packing.

You forget that the worst of these pedophiles were ordained long before the seminaries were hungry. Geoghan et all were pre-V2 priests, and he and his predecessors were sheltered by pre-V2 Bishops. I know it is easy to think of all this as a post V2 mess, but prior to V2 the media never hyped it up. The predators were still there then, and the Bishops still made the same mistakes back then.

patent +AMDG

I gave some thought to that. Idealist that I was, I believed that when God called anyone to be a priest, He gave them the necessary graces to be celibate. Obviously it isn't happening.

For a long time I didn't want married priests. Now I don't know. We aren't supposed to talk about it ;-). But I suppose we must.

Someone made a good point. If the priesthood were opened to married clergy, it would attract better candidates.

It wouldn't have to be an all or none deal. God could still call single men to the priesthood. Why must we make His work so hard by tying His hands so?

Does anyone know why Rome is so against relaxing the "discipline" of celibate priests? Stupid question and I suppose I'll get a stupid answer.

It seems to me that other countries have had their share of scandals of one sort or another, so it isn't just America.

The predators were still there then, and the Bishops still made the same mistakes back then.

Yes, that's true, but I don't think they can be labeled the "worst" of these pedophiles - there is no comparative bad, worse, worst when we're speaking of child abusers and until the present house-cleaning is accomplished, we probably will hear similar stories about younger priests. It is a terrible crisis and very difficult to deal with especially for Catholic parents with young children and teen-agers. The Church will survive this, of course, it has survived great crises in the past, but it will be with us for a very long time.

If nothing else, the simple notion of statistics. Jewish men of that era were expected to raise children within marriage. They were all men and to expect that 11 out of 12 would be unmarried is just not reasonable.

Also if Peter's wife is referred to as "Martyred" than that death must have occurred after the founding of christianity. At that point Peter had already been "ordained" and hence, served as a married priest

True, it does depend on who you consider the worst. While I'd consider any who abuse one child the worst, there are gradiations. Someone who is a pederast is not as bad as a pedophile. A pedophile who abuses one child is not as bad as one who abuses a 100. Etc. Kos from Dallas was pretty bad, and he was post V2, I believe. Porter and Goeghan from Boston were also horrible, and they were pre-V2.

patent

>>>He gave them the necessary graces to be celibate.

Well, He does, but we often reject it. Grace is a free gift, but we still need to accept it.

>>>>Does anyone know why Rome is so against relaxing the "discipline" of celibate priests? Stupid question and I suppose I'll get a stupid answer.

I absolutely can't speak for Rome, but I can offer my impressions. First, the celibate priest is dedicated to his parish, not to his family. His attention isn't divided, etc. For the vast majority of faithful priests, celibacy is a holy and a helpful thing. Second, married priests bring in a whole new host of issues that need to be addressed. Divorce and things like that, family maintenance in rectories and the like would in some instances prove interesting, what happens if the priest dies with young children, where does his wife go, all that. There are clearly pluses and minuses to each approach, and neither will solve the age old problem we see here.

Please cite any scriptural passage that shows any Apostle was married when Jesus chose them. The fact that Peter HAD a mother-in-law means nothing,absent any mention of his wife's presence at any time.My mother-in-law outlived my husband by 20 years.

The passage in Corithians is often used;however,the word used and translated as wife is the same word used by Jesus when He addressed His mother at the wedding at Cana.

The fact that the bible states "a bishop should have but one wife" may have resulted from an emergency measure to assure the faith was carried on when the Apostles realized they were going to die and Christ had not yet returned.

The content of the New Testament clearly show that an unencumbered man is the state preferred for those who would follow Jesus.

For those persons familiar with the operations of "change agents",this is a typical move. Create a crisis and then come up with a resolution that suits the objective. In the present crisis which was designed many years ago,the action offered by the powers that be,relax the celibacy requirement,suits their purposes very nicely. It is in the best interests of those wishing to preserve western civilization to demand a cleaning out of the Church.Only after that is accomplished should any other measures be considered. To start acting now will ensure a far,far longer recovery period and just might be the death knell of Christianity in the West.

You are entitled to your own opinion and in a volume like the bible I'm sure you can find chapter and verse to support it. Celebacy is a human invention, however, and the evidence that it is somehow divinely required for a priesthood is unproven to say the least.

Well proven, however, and in fact demonstrated every day is that celebacy does not attract significant numbers of well-qualified people to the priesthood. It does attract significant numbers of maladjusted people who seem unreasonable afraid of women as equals.

In the event that you are interested in the facts. Our seminaries were infiltrated by marxists,homosexuals and progressives beginning prior to WWII.It took until the late 60,s early 70,s to have them rise to positions of authority in the seminaries where they could select candicates. Those selected were "flexible" and of the same ilk as the original infiltrators or because of the "flexibility" were easily swayed by teachers who were also either originals or trained by them.

At this point most of the Chancery interviewers for vocations are women(and if anything is more dangerous than a power hungry male,its a power hungry female)and they got with the program and looked for anyone but orthodox men,who wanted to follow Christ. That is our problem. There is a book coming out this month called "Good-Bye,Good Men" by Michael Rose which is replete with the kind of information I just conveyed.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.