Posted on 01/09/2003 7:54:21 AM PST by arj
Recent revelations that at least 40 percent of Catholic nuns in the United States are victims of sexual abuse are just part of a growing sex scandal in the Church that goes far beyond the abuse of young boys by priests.
Capitol Hill Blue has learned that internal investigations by the Church have uncovered massive evidence of frequent sexual activity by both nuns and priests (often with each other), use of Church money to pay for abortions for pregnant nuns and a “casual and tolerant attitude towards sexual activity among Church leaders.”
Details of the investigations are a closely guarded secret of the Church hierarchy, but sources tell CHB that the results are being closely studied by Vatican officials who express “shock and outrage” at the high levels of sex involving priests and nuns.
“For God’s sake, this is the Church. It is not a bordello,” exclaimed one priest involved in the investigation. “This is a crime against God.”
In interviews with current nuns and priests, as well as with a number of clergy who have left the church, a disturbing portrait of immoral activity within Church walls emerges, including:
--Priests who regularly have sex with female parishioners. According to two sources, as many as 5,000 priests in the U.S. have been discovered to have had affairs with parishioners.
--At least 34,000 nuns who admit sexual abuse or activity.
--Frequent sexual contact between priests and nuns. The investigations are said to have found “dozens” of cases where nuns who became pregnant from these affairs had abortions paid for out of Church funds (even though the Church opposes abortions).
--Hundreds of confirmed reports of lesbian sexual encounters among nuns as well as homosexual contact between priests.
--Hundreds of cases where priests and nuns leave the Church and marry shortly afterwards, many having children conceived while they were still Church clergy.
“You are dealing with human beings with human failings,” admits Jonathan, an ex-priest who left the Church years ago and married a former nun. Their oldest child was conceived during an affair when both were still in the Church. Jonathan agreed to be interviewed only on condition that neither his last name nor his wife’s name be used for this article.
“Yes, we both took vows of chastity but we broke those vows,” he says. “We weren’t the only ones. I knew several priests in my diocese who broke their vows as well. My wife knew many nuns who violated their vows.”
Jonathan says stories about rampant sexual activity among priests and nuns circulated in the Church for years but that Catholic leaders looked the other way.
“There were two hypocrisies at work,” he says. “One because some of the Church leaders were, themselves, unfaithful to their vows and the other because everyone knew the damage to the church if this ever became public.”
Only when confronted with the revelations last year of widespread abuse of children and the subsequent cover up has the church taken a closer look at the sexual activity.
"The bishops appear to be only looking at the issue of child sexual abuse, but the problem is bigger than that," says St. Louis University researcher Ann Wolf, one of those who authored the study on widespread sexual abuse of nuns. "Catholic sisters are being violated, in their ministries, at work, in pastoral counseling."
St. Louis University conducted a national survey of nuns in 1996 but the Church-affiliated school never publicly released the results. The study, paid for by several of the nun orders, was turned over to the Church. Wolf and the other researchers found 34,000 nuns who had been either sexually abused or engaged in sexual activity.
“What they found were those who admitted it,” says Jonathan. “There were, and are, many others.”
Jonathan admits his wife was not his first sexual partner while he wore the robes of priesthood. He had affairs with female parishioners and other nuns.
“It was all done with a wink and a nod,” he says. “Just about everybody knew what was happening but nobody wanted to do anything about it.”
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops claims to know nothing of the studies and refuses to comment on the specifics of this article. Phone calls to various Catholic officials and Vatican offices were not returned.
Nobody has been "threatened with excommunication" for such things to my knowledge, but, if they have, the person doing the threatening was shooting blanks. Those things are governed by actual written laws and formal procedures; we don't just make them up as we go.
The demands of marriage create many problems, too.
Celibacy is great for those who are called to it. Not everyone is, as Jesus and Paul both said. Far fewer are called to celibacy than are trying to live it in the priesthood.
I knew men who literally drifted into the priesthood because they didn't have the guts to disappoint their parents.
No vow is going to keep a man in the priesthood who is truly miserable there, nor should it.
Protestant ministers who are married get divorced, have affairs, have kids who get in trouble with drugs, just like all other married people.
So, nothing is perfect.
I'm for ordaining married men because celibacy is not a requirement for Holy Orders. The married Protestant ministers who have converted and been ordained have worked out very well in our diocese. In fact, the largest parish, with 10,000 members, is pastored by a married ex-Anglican with three daughters. '
You fawn over the Orthodox (maybe you are one, I don't know) who also "expect and demand it" of their clergy and religious -- bishops, monks, and also nuns, all except for parish priests.
How is that any different, except in numbers, from that for which you criticize us?
You'll excuse us if your self-evident hypocrisy on the topic makes us wonder if you're not just an anti-Catholic bigot.
The only cure is in getting the church to abolish the discipline.
At one time, my own personal preference was that priests be celibate. Because it causes so many to stumble, it would be better to change it. Ideally, I would still prefer priests to be celibate, but I now think that is unrealistic, at least in our time.
In the early church, I think it probably worked generally because people were more charged up then, more focussed, the world had little to offer anyway other than misery, and people didn't live very long.
Sexual abstinence for women comes a bit more naturally, not because they don't have similar desires and urges, but because the societal penalty for misbehavior was severe. It isn't quite that way today, but how many women do you know who have four different kids by four different fathers ending up in a good marriage? I don't know any offhand.
The other apostles, much younger than Peter, had not yet married when called.
I feel confident it worked for some, even many noncatholics. As a forced discipline, we won't know until Judgement Day, if then.
It probably depends on the cultural mindset of any particular country. People from some third-world countries seem to be more disciplined in a lot of ways than we in the decadent west.
Where on earth did you get this foolishness? Peter sold his "business"? Who bought it? And where does it say that Peter "divorced"?
The other apostles, much younger than Peter, had not yet married when called.
And where did this come from?
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