Posted on 03/27/2002 12:36:14 PM PST by Taliesan
Edited on 04/13/2004 2:07:36 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
The revelations about Boston's pedophile priests had many dismaying aspects beyond their worst aspect, the victimization of the young. One disturbing thing was the way these revelations were greeted by some - as news that was new. There were, of course, new details; but everything disclosed in news reports, including the scale of the offenses, has been discovered before, elsewhere in America or Canada, Ireland or Australia. But after each dismaying explosion of information, people are lulled back into forgetfulness. They are assured that these things, however awful, are mostly in the past, some of them unverified, some exaggerated, and that church officials have already adopted measures to prevent the recurrence of such scandals.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
Celibacy arose as just one component in a thoroughgoing theology of asceticism. The desert father who pioneered the practice of celibacy adopted it as just one part of a larger pattern of isolation and meditation, of fasting and other forms of mortification. When priests adopted celibacy, they brought with it some of this structure and most of its rationale. They were not set apart from other men by just one thing. In the monasteries, for instance, silence, isolated cells, long communal chanting of the office, and self-scourging were common. Cloistered men and women were cut off from worldly life in general, not just from sexual activity.
But, progressively, the celibacy of priests became not the expression of a whole ascetical form of life but a substitute for it.
Some of the less meticulously thought out arguments state that if there was no vow of celibacy, there would be a larger pool of candidates for priesthood and thusly The Church could be more selective.
Of course, using that logic, you could drastically expand the pool of candidates by dropping being Catholic as a requirement.
Celibacy has NOTHING to do with this horrible perversion. The Church moving to the left and the infusion of those who have issues with judging the morality of others has everything to do with this issue.
Owl_Eagle
”Guns Before Butter.”
The problem is not pedophilia, it is homosexuality. And the practice of not engaging in sexual acts can not possibly be the cause of sexual acts.
(1) Assuming that the homosexual priests are celibate, isn't this an indictment of homosexual celibacy, at most.
(2) Why does the author assume that the homosexual priests who molest children are celibate? Seems to me that they are emphatically not celibate as to children. Why do we think they are celibate as to adults?
Seems to me what we have here is a problem of homosexuals (celibate or otherwise) in positions of authority with respect to boys.
The boy scouts do not have this problem. I suppose it could be because boy scout troop leaders are not required to be celibate. But I suspect strongly that it is because boy scout leaders may not be homosexual and, therefore, do not want to have sex with little boys.
Just out of curiosity, did you actually read the article?
And, it seems as if it has been that way for a long time. As long as I can remember.
Bingo!
Garry Wills is why I no longer give money to Northwestern University, my alma mater. The man has a heavy-duty anti-Catholic agenda.
That is the specific historical and theological comment here and the genuinely new thing I saw in the article.
It will be of little use to pour the same old knee-jerk arguments for and against celibacy into the thread.
The subject of the discussion is the context of celibacy.
What do you think of his specific historical critique, that celibacy was originally a monastic charism, and became extracted from its supporting context?
The point that this really is much more of a homosexuality problem than a pedophilia problem also tends to be minimized in the press. As others have pointed out, 90% of those molested were male, most of those being older teens.
None of this excuses any sort of cover-up by the church, in my opinion those involved in a cover-up should be dealt with as severely as those who molested. The media, however, seems to be grabbing the opportunity to Catholic-bash (I am not Catholic by the way) once more, using the molestation problem to advance their already-held ideas.
I am not a Catholic, but respect the RC church as much as any protestant could, I think. That may not mean much to you, but I hope it means something.
It's astonishing how many experts there are on celibacy, pedophilia and all things Romish. </sarcasm>
Excellent point.
Catholicism is truly a global religion, and the church must consider the effects of policy change on a global basis.The global West has only to look to the global East to see the effects of a non-celibate diocesan clergy.
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