Many factors underlie the sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church. Here is an extremely brief summary. Improper screening of candidates for seminaries led to some psychologically sick men being ordained as priests. When some bishops received reports of sexual abuse, the reports were tragically downplayed, dismissed, or ignored. The crimes of abuse often went unreported to civil authorities, out of a misguided concern for "avoiding scandal," the fear of litigation, or an unwillingness to confront the priest. Grossly misunderstanding the severity of the effects of abuse, overly relying on advice from psychologists regarding rehabilitation, and privileging the concerns of priests over the pastoral care for victims, some bishops moved abusive priests from one parish to another where they repeatedly offended.
That is an enormous simplification that leaves out many important causes. In general, though, that is a fair summary of some underlying reasons for these crimes. (Note that I say "reasons" and not "excuses." There are no excuses.)
In an abbreviated form, this was also the conclusion of an extensive study by the National Review Board, an independent group of Catholic laypersons who reported to the U.S. Catholic bishops in the wake of the abuse crisis that engulfed the American Church beginning in 2002. The Board's analysis led to the "zero-tolerance" policy adopted by the American hierarchy.
One thing you don't see on the list of factors is celibacy. Because celibacy does not cause pedophilia. But that hasn't stopped otherwise thoughtful pundits and commentators, and among them even some Catholics, from opining on celibacy as a cause of the crisis.
Around the same time as the National Review Board released their findings, the John Jay College of Criminal Justice concluded a nationwide study, reporting that around four percent of American priests between 1950 and 2002 had been accused of abuse. Even one case of sexual abuse is too much, but that figure is half that of the overall percentage for American males, which, according to Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, is one in ten. (In a recent Newsweek article, Margaret Leland Smith, a researcher at John Jay, estimated that the figure is closer to one in five.) "We don't see the Catholic Church as a hotbed of this or a place that has a bigger problem than anyone else," Mr. Allen told Newsweek.
And, as Mary Gail Frawley-O'Dea, a psychologist and expert on child sexual abuse, and Virginia Goldner, also a psychologist, noted in a hard-hitting book entitled Predatory Priests, Silenced Victims, the sexual abuse of children has also occurred among Protestant ministers, Jewish rabbis, Islamic clerics, Buddhist monks, and Hare Krishna officials.
None of this has stopped commentators from excoriating priestly celibacy as a primary cause of sexual abuse.
But doing so makes little sense. For one thing, if four percent of American priests were accused of abuse, it means that 96 percent of priests have not been accused of anything and are leading healthy, productive lives in the community. (Bluntly put: if celibacy causes abuse, why aren't the other 96 percent of priests pedophiles?) For another, 30 percent of abuse takes place within families, yet few sane people point to marriage as a cause of child abuse. When schoolteachers abuse children, few sane people say that teaching leads to pedophilia. Many widows and widowers, not to mention some single men and women, are celibate. No one suspects them of pedophilia.
So why is the celibacy of Catholic priests singled out?
The critique of priestly celibacy has to do mainly with its unfamiliarity. Voluntarily refraining from sex is unnatural, so the thinking goes; it shuts down a natural part of life and thus leads to unhealthy behaviors. It is unhealthy, critics say; therefore, priesthood attracts only unhealthy people. It is impossible, others aver, so any priest who says he is celibate must be lying. Most people don't know priests, sisters, or brothers, and we sometimes demonize those whom we don't know. It's easy to stereotype out of frustration and fear.
So let me speak about celibacy as a celibate male. (Technically, diocesan priests make a promise of celibacy -- a promise not to marry. Members of religious orders vow chastity. But in essence, the two commitments work the same way, and the terms can be used interchangeably.)
One of the many goals of celibacy is to love people as freely as possible and as profoundly as possible. That may seem strange to those used to defining religious chastity negatively -- that is, as not having sex. But this has long been the tradition of the Church. Besides its other roots, religious chastity was meant as another way to love others and serve the community. As such, it may have something to teach everyone, not just priests, brothers, and sisters.
For Jesuits -- to take the religious order to which I belong -- chastity frees us to serve people more readily. We're not attached to one person exclusively, so it's easier for us to move to another assignment. As the Jesuit Constitutions say, chastity is "essentially apostolic." It is supposed to help us be better "apostles," to be freer to respond to the needs of those around us. So chastity is supposed to be about both love and freedom.
Obviously, celibacy is not for everyone. (If it were, the world would be a much smaller place.) The overwhelming majority of people are called to romantic love, marriage, sexual intimacy, children, and family life. Their primary way of loving is through their spouses and children. It is a more focused, more exclusive, loving. That is not to say that married couples and parents do not love others outside their families. Rather, the main focus of their love is their family.
For the Catholic priest or person in a religious order, the situation is the opposite. You make a promise of celibacy or pronounce a vow of chastity to offer yourself to God as fully as possible and to make yourself available to love as many others as possible. Once again, this is not to say that married and single men and women cannot do the same. Or that clergy in other religions cannot do so. Rather, this is the way that seems to work for us. It is simply another way.
This may even offer an insight for a culture that sees sex as the best way, or the only way, to express love. Chastity and celibacy say that there are other ways. Some of the most loving people I know are chaste men and women, who show me their love through nonsexual ways: spending time with me when I'm down, sharing their joys and sorrows with me, even listening to me complain. Healthy chastity is a reminder that it is possible to love without being in an exclusive relationship and without being sexually active. There are many ways of loving, besides sex, through actions just as meaningful.
Who is more loving: the head-over-heels couple with an active sex life; the committed middle-aged couple who have sex less frequently due to the demands of family life; or the tender elderly couple who, because of illness, are not sexually active at all? Who is more loving: the married man who loves his wife, or the single woman who loves her close friends? Who is more loving: the healthy celibate priest who works long hours for his parishioners, or the sexually active wife who adores her husband?
The answer is that they are all loving. In different ways.
This is not to deny that some priests were clearly tempted to "hide" their sick sexual predilections and designs to prey on children by retreating to a celibate lifestyle as a kind of protective ecclesial cocoon. But that doesn't mean celibacy causes pedophilia, any more than marriage does, or parenting does, or teaching does. Nor does it mean that celibacy is the best way of organizing the priesthood, or that it will always be the rule for diocesan priests; the Catholic Church has already begun to accept married male clergy from the Anglican Communion as priests. Nor does it mean that an all-male clergy hasn't over the centuries fostered a secretive culture that privileged concerns for priests over those of lay people. But that has more to do with power than celibacy per se. Nor does it mean that having women, and married men and women, in Church leadership roles would not have forced a more vigorous prosecution of sexual abuse cases. But once again, none of that means that celibacy per se leads to an individual becoming an abuser.
Stereotypes about celibacy are more confounding when one reflects -- even for a moment -- on the lives of some of history's most beloved celibate religious figures: St. Francis of Assisi, St. Teresa of Avila, Pope John XXIII, Archbishop Oscar Romero, Mother Teresa, and, for much of his life, Mahatma Gandhi. More to the point: by most accounts, Jesus himself was celibate. (One indication: the Gospels talk freely about his mother, his brothers, and his sisters. If he had a wife, not mentioning her would be odd.) Jesus may have done so to express his personal commitment to his mission; perhaps out of knowledge that his peripatetic life would have been difficult on a spouse; or even to spare his wife from the eventual suffering he may have foreseen.
Jesus was celibate. That doesn't mean he was a pedophile. Neither am I. And neither are the vast majority of priests.
Stereotypes about celibate priests are as wrongheaded as those about any other religious practice that people don't fully understand, or stereotypes about any other unfamiliar group of people. You probably don't practice celibacy, you may not agree with it as a way of life for the clergy, and you may not understand it completely, but that doesn't mean you should condemn it -- much less blame it for a problem with far more complex roots.
The Rev. James Martin is a Catholic priest and author of The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything.
Many non-celibate people can be very bizarre...and that may sometimes support other industries that do contibute to crimes
Was it a Christian belief, or something added from outside of Christianity? (Some pagan sects required priests and priestesses to be virgin or celibate.)
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Was_Simon_Peter_married
"We are not told explicitly that Peter [Simon Peter, first pope] was married in the Gospel stories, but we are told that Jesus healed his mother-in-law (Matt 8.14, Mark 1:30, Luke 4: 38).
"Therefore we have to assume either that he was widowed but still had a mother-in-law, or that he was married. In Jewish law, if Peter had been divorced then his ex-mother-in-law would not have the same standing as suggested in these passages. As Peter was still relatively young (he had been an active fisherman before meeting Jesus) we must assume that his wife was also young, and therefore it is unlikely that he would have been widowed. Therefore, the most likely scenario is that he was married.
"Another reference:
"Not only do the gospels relate the healing of Peter's mother-in-law, Paul writes this in 1 Corinthians 9:5 - Do we have no right to take along a believing wife, as do also the other apostles, the brothers of the Lord, and Cephas?"
An oath of celibacy or chastity is not going to change the sexual preference of someone intending to ignore that oath.
And priests who have a heterosexual or homosexual preference and who ignore their oath of celibacy have little trouble finding willing adult partners. (Which to us in the secular world is legal and no problem.)
The only concern I would have is the oath of celibacy might cause many sexually mature men to rule out joining the priesthood. And pedophiles often realize their sexuality late. But I think that is a matter for the Catholic Church to study and decide internally.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clerical_celibacy
I'm just not understanding.
It seems to have been decreed in the fourth century AD citing traditions that did not exist in the early Christian Church, and then not enforced on until the mid-middle ages.
Pope Siricius "misinterprets" the Book of Leviticus (even if not misinterpreted, even Jews regard today as mostly obsolete). Prior to that there is a reference to the Cult of Mithras stealing the idea from Christians, which would mean Christians stealing it from the Cult of Mithras which was older.
And then it seems that the oath of celibacy wasn't followed until the mid-middle ages. This was the time when the Church was amassing great wealth (roughly 1/3 of most European country's wealth ended up held by the Church). Some people have posted that keeping the wealth in the Church and away from children was the inspiration of the oath of celibacy. But up to now I have thought that was just a tale.
It seems to me like the obsolete "fish on Friday" thing.
Have popes been embarrassed at the idea of going before 70 and 80 year-old bishops and priests and saying, "We've had second thoughts. You can get married now." ?
But if the Roman Catholic Church want to continue to observe their recent celibacy tradition, as an outsider I can have no objection (so long as it does not lead to illegal acts).
Rapists and pedophiles need to be punished wherever they may reside.
The Magdalene Sisters (2002) was: The triumphant story of three women who found the courage to defy a century of injustice. No, priests are not the only abusers of children in the Church. Nuns have shown
the ability to systematically inflict terrible suffering on young people, too. Maybe Jesus did a much better job of screening his disciples than the Church does at screening candidates for its seminaries. Maybe there's something to be said for smaller numbers, fewer people spreading the Word. I don't know where in the New Testament Jesus arranges for popes, bishops and cardinals or the palace called The Vatican.
Something has gone very wrong when an entire facility like the one in The Magdalene Sisters can continue to run as a virtual torture chamber for girls--with women at the helm. Could it be that there's something wrong with the spirit running through the Church's leadership, with the world vision found in the Vatican? Let's not focus so completely on priests and celibacy that we forget about the role that nuns have played.
Your numbers, and I believe they are from legitimate sources, do not take into consideration all the priests that got away with their crimes. I know this seems a bit farfetched, but just add the recent accusations into the numbers and you'll see they will rise significantly now that the box of horrors has been opened.
It was a political decision by the Church in the XIII century to rapidly increase the patrimony of the Church, and thus its power, by not allowing priests to leave any inheritance to offspring. That was one of the major sources of the Church's wealth and power in the Middle Ages.
The same could be said for physicians or nurses or anyone in the Caregiving professions. Yet these professions don't require chastity.
I don't understand why the CC can't allow people to do what they think necessary... like grown adults... and if they want to get married, then do so. If they think chastity will help them, so be it. Sorta like everyone in the real world operates.
I think enforced chastity is abnormal and leads to abnormal behavior; maybe not in all, but in far too many!
Obviously for most catholic priests, celibacy is no problemo.