I want to respond to an anonymous comment on my post about the upstate New York priest in the Diocese of Syracuse who was recent arrested for molesting children. The individual posting the comment obviosuly can be critical of my views but sadly lacks the guts and/or balls to reveal his/her name. As such, I will not approve the comment for posting on this blog. As I have often said, if you do not have the courage to attach your name to your comment, do NOT expect to automatically have the comment posted for this blog's general readership. Nonetheless, I do want to clarify a few things about my comments on why I believe ending the celibacy requirement for priests would be a good thing for the Roamn Catholic Church.
First, I do recognize that there are plenty of married pedophiles out there - in fact, most pedophiles are married HETEROSEXUALS not withstanding the Vatican's and the Christian Rights efforts to blame the problem on gays. My point was not to support something that would merely drive mentally disturbed priests - and I do view pedophilia as a form of mental illness - to marry and then harm their own children and their innocent spouses. I strongly oppose anyone who is not straight and sexually mature from marrying a woman. This is one of the reasons I look forward to the day that when are fully accepted and no longer feel compelled to marry. I do not want to see women hurt by any means, particularly as the father to two bright, intelligent and wonderful daughters.
Rather, my point was that for too long, the Church's celibacy requirement has allowed men with serious psycho-sexual issues (and by this I do NOT mean gays) to hide their illness from view by hiding in the priesthood. The Church's obsession with sex being unnatural and dirty, women being sexual temptresses, as well as the past practice of taking boys into high school seminaries so that they were never allowed to mature sexually before moving on to full blown seminary training only served to compound the problem, which I believe continues to exist.
Given these realities, with married priests, the Chuch could be much more selective in who was approved for seminary and ultimately the priesthood. Instead, the Church faces a situation now where it is scraping the bottom of the barrel - if not digging throught it - simply trying to find warm bodies to fill the ever dwindling ranks of priests. I personally am aware of some men who were admitted to the seminary and later who were ordained that I believe would NEVER had been accepted but for the severe shortage of priets. The witch hunt against gays in seminaries will only make this situation even worse.
I also stand by my comment that married priests would be much better equipped to counsel married couples. I recall speaking to one priest myself while married who was utterly clueless about the realities of being married, having children and budget worries. He lived in a parish owned condo on the water, had a daily housekeeper, and more disposable money to spend on himself than most married men after all their bills and family expenses were paid. Worse yet, he grew up in a male chauvanist family of all boys, with women being practically an alien species to him. Suffice it to say that his marital advice was a bit lacking.
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