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."
What you say, of course, is true. But calling someone a "Cafeteria Catholic" because he doesn't subscribe to it is silly.
I thought I made that clear. There is a group of married priests who refuse to give up, though, and can be contacted for a price to administer the sacraments. They will marry divorced indivduals underneath a waterfall if asked. Though they are priests forever because the vows are eternal, the sacraments they administer are not valid.
You are living in a dream world, Orual.
Not exactly a dream world now, it has become a nightmare of enormous proportions and I'm sure this present horror will be noted on the list of the greatest crises that the Church has suffered in its history - along with Vatican II which probably is close to the top of the list.
Wrong. The sacraments are valid, though not licit.
If you agree that the call to priesthood is from God is true and if one rejects that truth, then one chooses not to accept a basic teaching of the Catholic Church while accepting others. That's what I believe a "Cafeteria Catholic" to be. Who decides the hierarchy of truths? There is one truth i.e. Jesus Christ. It is for all of us to live in the FULLNESS of that truth.
Membership in the Catholic Church has never been higher. Some nightmare.
I see no crisis, only problems to which there are solutions if the Church is willing to embrace them.
Read some of Cardinal Avery Dulles' works. He has described the "hierarchy of truths" quite well, and this view has never been challenged by the Vatican.
Sigh. You know what I meant. Call Rent-A-Priest for priests in denial.
As hard as it is for me to accept what orual has to say, I believe him to be correct when he used the example of a priest performing a marriage under a waterfall. All marriages must be performed in a sacred place e.gr. church or chapel. Not to abide by this requirement effects the validity of the sacrament.
And why not, it's soooooo easy now.
And if it's a question of attracting the wrong element, the answer is tighter screening. Bring Catholic men from poor countries here as missionary-priests. That's the future.
Ha. Being in the SSPX which baptizes babies in an assembly line, you're not familiar with the year-long RCIA process for adults or the classes which parents MUST attend (at least in our diocese) prior to the baptism of their child.
It's not "easy" to become a Catholic.
That's a "who are you trying to fool" title. It should say "Paper suggests allow priests to get married" or at least "Paper Suggests End to Priests Celibacy With Women". Anyone who thinks that most priests in the RC church are truly celibate, are only fooling themselves.
Bollocks. Prove it or retract it.
Yes, I believe that is how it is supposed to be. At first I had a tolerance level for scandals and miscreants but it has gotten too bad and I've had to rethink everything.
Within the last two months we had a priest here locally who got busted for manufacturing the drug Ecstasy (sp?). I didn't post the particulars here because if I have something bad to say I usually like to counterbalance it with something positive.
But here I was exhausting myself trying to fight temptations and praying too much for a layperson (and newbie) and went into a deep depression from which I have never fully recovered.
In short, the church sets up impossible rules and when sensitive, sincere people try to follow them they get into serious trouble. There are too many rules and it gets too complicated for a weak person such as myself.
Why should lay people be expected to follow rules that priests themselves aren't following?
Now I don't know which ones they are, but I am sure that there must be some nice, sincere priests who may be truly called by God and they may silently agonize like I have done.
I didn't lose my basic faith. I lost my faith in the church, administratively and as moral exemplars.
I was trying with all my being to be the most faithful catholic on the planet and I failed because I simply lost my way and went through some hellish experiences with no trustworthy spiritual direction. So your charges of my being a "cafeteria catholic" after all I went through really made me angry. That's why I must, for now, stay away from the church for the sake of my mental health.
If I ever return, I may become a cafeteria catholic. For example, I won't go to any more charismatic healing masses. I won't say any rosaries inspired by Medjugorje. I won't go to any schismatic masses (never did). I won't attend mass where they do things right like having it in the back of the church for no good reason. I won't say any prayers that are not approved for "public worship" in any service, such as litanies, etc. Having difficulty with those things made it impossible to go on and it wasn't bothering those, some of whom are still my friends. They just went along with whatever it was because they are used to following. Basically they are very nice, prayerful people.
My deacon told me I was too rigid. He was right.
Just the thought of trying to go back to all that makes me almost ill.
I was never impressed with Cardinal Law, but I respected his position. IMO, he threw that away with
1.) the lame press conference after the Geoghan(sp?) conviction about a month ago, and
2.) when I heard that he had a priest that was concerned about the Bishop's response to the molestation going on
in the Archdiocese of Boston transferred out (to Indiana?).
Out of site, out of mind, I guess. Sure wasn't good for the children of the Archbishop's flock, to use the
Church's analogy. (no other implications intended).
My after thoughts about Cardinal Law's holding on tooth & nail is that he is either power mad of the Clintonista
variety, or, if he resigns, he won't be able to vote for the next Pope. The former is conjecture, the latter is
pure speculation on my part, because I don't know the fine details of being a Cardinal.
As for Dubya, my only intent was for him to hurry along what should be the inevitable. I whole heartedly agree that the
government should stay out. It will be corrupted by people seeking (higher) office, causing more damage
than already exists.
God bless,
defide
LOL sympathetically and sadly.
--Wrong. The sacraments are valid, though not licit.
Some sacraments are also rendered invalid when they are illicit, specifically: Confession, Confirmation, Matrimony.
In danger of death, even a "defrocked" or laicized priest can hear the dying person's confession - and is in fact bound to render this service.
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