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."
Just because you no longer believe it doesn't make it any less true, Cafeteria Catholic!
The quid pro quo was secrecy, deniability, and (more or less) repentence and chastity. This model served everyone well-it made a laudable and on occasion saintly opportunity for service out of a mistake of nature or nurture. A hand job once in a while in a cloister was easy to overlook or to confess and repent.
Two things destabilized this long-lasting pragmatic arrangement. Heterosexual religious were freed by the "spirit of Vatican 2" to act out, and boy, did they ever! One consequence of this was that they married each other in large numbers. In so doing, they "outed" each other in a public way, and left the clergy, in each case reducing by two the number of heterosexual religious.
The other thing, of course, was gay liberation and the impetus to "outness". This seemed impossible at first for RC clergy, leading to the "inclination is not a sin, only action" formulation. But this eliminated the repressive call to repentence which, I postulate, had been operating since forever for gay religious.
Also, there were many fewer heterosexual religious to do the repressing. This is the actual role of the ban on marriage in this fiasco-it doesn't create homosexual predators, but it eliminates the competition, so to speak.
When the need to repent of one's orientation was gone, and the heterosexual colleagues were greatly diminished in numbers, and the angry gay liberation dynamic became the order of the day, the result was what we have now-except that residual reticence, veneration of the clergy by the most devout, and what is probably a conspiracy of silence by implicated and blackmailed superiors has prevented up until now widespread true knowledge among lay Catholics of the actual state of affairs.
I want a man, who when he falls, gets up, tells God he is sorry, goes to Confession and goes about his tasks and his battles with the devil. I want a man who, even though weak, is willing to sacrifice himself for the Church by being an instrument of God's grace, forgiving sins, offering sacrifice to God for our sins, anointing the sick, baptizing our children and though weak and sinful himself boldly proclaims God's word to His people. I believe God loves the priest who knows he is a sinner and asks forgiveness and continues to do His work. In my opinion there are too many people on Free Republic who hate priests, who hate the priesthood and hate the Catholic Church. This makes me all the more determined to thank God for giving us priests---yes, even sinful ones. I need them to keep me united to Jesus. Only the priest can do this for me. e.gr. without the Eucharist I would die and I want to live and only the priest can do this for me. I need a priest who can forgive me my sins.
It has nothing to do with protestantism or catholicism but I believe in all my heart that Paul was unmarried. I don't know about the other apostles. I suspect John the Beloved never married either.
I'm entitled to my opinion and you are entitled to yours. It is not "de fide" to believe that ALL priests are called by God. Hell, hundreds of priests in the middle ages were in it for the percs and piles of gold.
That was a cheap shot. But I'll take it. I say what I think.
It was the norm in those times to be married. It was Christ who introduced the concept of holiness and the single state . . ."those who are counted worthy of that life neither marry nor are given in marriage but are as the angels in heaven." I'm a little rusty but he may have been referring strictly to the afterlife. Still, His example as a single man (how the movie producers and writers have sought to tarnish that!) set a new model for one type of holiness.
See Matthew 19:12 and 1 Corinthians 7:32-33.
Were Melchesidech, Elias, John the Baptist, Paul and Jesus unnatural?
Clement of Alexandria wrote that Peter's wife was martyred. There's no evidence that Peter remarried. On what do you base your contention that the Apostles weren't celibate upon?
Think of where those consecrated hands have been and how the homosexual or pedophile has used them. He should never be allowed to consecrate the Host again with those defiled hands and is no longer worthy to call himself alter Christus. He should be defrocked and find another job where these behaviors are acceptable. That is exactly what it is happening now to all those priests that the various Dioceses are weeding out. It is because I have such regard for the holiness of the priesthood and the immense powers they receive with their Holy Orders that I believe they are held to a much Higher Standard, capitals intended.
Forgiveness is fine and perhaps if he spent the rest of his life in a monastery praying day and night, completely isolated from children he may again molest or teen-agers and adults with whom he may engage in sexual relations again, I think this would be an acceptable alternative.
Well, I believe that there are certain biological realities that we need to face when it comes to dealing with sex. Ancient Hebrew custom allowed men to take multiples wives, I believe, because it was understood that most men needed sexual variety. Not that all hebrew men availed themselves of this freedom, but many did. It was not considered evil or unholy, just simply a reality. This system did not negatively affect the integrity of the family, from all we can tell.
Likewise, I cannot see any moral problem with the concept of open marriage, since this is just a step further from Old Testament polygamy. If both spouses behave responsibly (and that is the key) then this arrangement could serve to strengthen the integrity of the family, since people would not have the issue of sexual restriction to compel them to delay marriage or to divorce.
Now, there are issues of jealousy that have to be controlled, but it was done successfully in the past. In any event, sexual repression usually leads to alot of pain and trouble because the sexual instinct is extremely powerful and will usually win, as I mentioned earlier. It seems to me that it would make much more sense to simply accomodate these realities responsibly than to allow society to self-destruct due to unachievable monogamy ideals. Please note that I am speaking here only of the normal sexual desires that humans have, not those that are directed at children, for example.
The Coptic, Maronite, Syrian, Malabar, Chaldean, Armenian, and other rites of the Catholic Church under the Pope in Rome, have always had married priests.
The Roman Catholic Church accepts married converted priests from the Anglican Church into its ranks... they are now Roman Catholic priests who are married.
Celibacy is tradition, not doctrine.
Think of all those people who were consecrated at baptism and those hands that have held the Body of Christ and the mouths that have received the Blood of Christ and have done the same as some priests and have violated their vows of marriage by committing adultery.
I believe the answer to all of this is repentance and forgiveness. Punishment is a form of madness.
Only priests are allowed to touch the Consecrated Host. I believe Mother Theresa was the one who said that Communion in the Hand was an abomination, I share her views. Again, you are speaking of ordinary humans who sin and can be forgiven if they possess true contrition and are willing to do penance beyond that which the priest gives them. Priests are different.
Punishment is a form of madness.
Is Hell a form of madness?
Don't you think these priests should be treated at least as severely as those who break their vows to marry?
Obviously you are in error. Acting as if current practice of communion in the hand and lay people giving the Eucharist to the sick is some kind of abomination is a minority view of the SSPX.
Again, you are speaking of ordinary humans who sin and can be forgiven if they possess true contrition and are willing to do penance beyond that which the priest gives them. Priests are different.
What kind of warped thinking is this?
This view of priests as superhuman is what has led to perverts taking advantage of the gullible and young people.
You are living in a dream world, Orual. A world that no longer exists, if it ever did.
This is what is left of the Age of the Enlightenment that tried to establish a philosophy that depended on rationalism and did not need God. It is to deny the existence of absolute truth. This is at the heart of what is destroying our society. Suggest you read two encyclicals by Pope John Paul II (1)Splendor Veritatis and (2) Fides et Ratio. This might help you if you are open enough to receive them.
Secondly, concerning what the Church teaches concerning a call to the sacred priesthood, I will simply point out two references: (1)From the Book of Hebrews Chapter 5 vs.1 thru 6: "Every high priest is taken from among men and made their representatives before God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. He is able to deal patiently with erring sinners, for he himself is beset by weakness and so must make sin offerings for himself as well as for the people. One does not take this honor on his own initiative, but only when called by God as Aaron was. Even Christ did not glorify himself with the office of high priest; he received it from the One who said to him, 'You are my son; today I have begotten you;'just as he says in another place, 'You are a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizadek.'------(2)The Catechism of the Catholic Church states in paragraph #1578: "No one has a rightto receive the sacrament of Holy Orders. Indeed no one claims this office for himself; he is called to it by God."
Cafeteria Catholics pick and choose what truths they want to accept or reject. I don't consider my calling you that a "cheap shot" because your words show that you are.
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