Ecclesiastical follies

I do believe the Catholic Church should allow married priests, but not strictly to prevent pedophilia.

Besides, as a New Jerseyan, I agree the Episcopal Church's acceptance of Jim McGreevey into the seminary rather undercuts their and the Anglican Communion's credibility on questions of sexual continence.

There is a conservative case for allowing married and women priests, and it has nothing to do with sexual sin/ child abuse.

Anyway, celibacy has nothing to do with priests who abuse children. Now if one wanted to talk about priests who have had girlfriends on the side... that is a different story. Child abuse is child abuse, period, no matter who does it.

And if the systematic cover up by a church body throws the belief of the congregation into disarray, then perhaps too much trust was placed in the hierarchy to begin with.

Shoot, why let a lack of evidence get in the way of a cheap shot at Christians? Regarding the current scandals in the OCA, remember St. John Chrysostom on the paving materials used by the road contractors in hell. (The skulls of bishops, for the benefit of the Byzantine-impaired.)

And if the systematic cover up by a church body throws the belief of the congregation into disarray, then perhaps too much trust was placed in the hierarchy to begin with.

OK, fair enough. However, a few observations. I don't know much about the Anglicans or the Orthodox, but the Roman Catholic Church makes very much of priests, who in my lifetime at least have been revered as something beyond the normal human being. Alter Christus and all that. Priests, being human, fostered and encouraged this, when they didn't out and out demand it. So, yes, lay people had too much trust in the hierarchy. (Pedophiles used this to their advantage. Few children dared criticize a priest, and if they did, no one would believe them.) But the laity didn't make this culture of exaggerated reverence up. The hierarchs themselves did that, probably for the most obvious of reasons.

Second, and I don't quite know how to say this....but if these men who have allegedly (and very publicly) dedicated themselves to Christ behave this way, at some level doesn't it make sense to say, "Is the message, is the gospel itself, so great as all that? It doesn't seem to be having much effect here." After all, even Jesus instructed us to judge the tree by the fruits. It's like, well, a household cleanser which holds itself out as the greatest thing since soap, except that....after you use it the sink still isn't clean. When do you stop making excuses and just throw the stuff out?

Personally I'd apply this critique to the Church as an institution rather than to Christ, but I can understand and sympathize with people who do not for whatever reason draw that line, or who cannot. And to the extent that the "belief system" requires, as Roman Catholicism does, that over and above devotion to the person of Christ, you must think the hierarchs are sort of the direct mouthpiece of the Divine, yes, such behavior does indeed throw such a belief system for a loop. Maybe it should.

And I might add as further evidence of the totalitarian nature of Roman Catholicism, do you notice how Rome has to issue some official statement on every possible aspect of human life, including driving on the road? (look up the Vatican's 10 commandments of driving, no joke). That is why, in my opinion, Rome is also obsessed about birth control. If you can control the population and their minds, then you can control society. Rather than letting each couple work out what is best for them with the direction of their spiritual father, Rome believes that she has the divine right to make absolute rules about everything that goes on in people's bedrooms.

But, don't worry, the Roman Catholic Church has no moral credibility today. So even when she is right about things (as they often is), no one listens to her. It will be centuries before anyone outside of Roman Catholicism takes seriously what she has to say. And if there is no reform, it will be longer than that.

Joe, you make me want to look into Orthodoxy.

There are several other good reasons for a married clergy than the ones you mention. RC priests are lonely. Usually. I count many priests as close personal friends, and I know what I'm talking about. Maybe with some few exceptions it really ISN'T good for man to be alone. Sometimes, often, RC priests seem to think they can [are entitled to] make up for the normal emotional satisfactions of marriage - I'm not talking about sex, that's a whole different ball of wax - by sort of feeding on the adulation of the women (or, if so inclined, the men) of the parish. According to this line of thought, they deserve to be fawned over, to receive exaggerated respect and reverence.

This a bad deal on both sides - such "reverence" is in the end pretty cold comfort, and receiving it encourages emotional development with is anything but healthy spiritually. And of course it encourages a distorted spirituality in the laity. Wives tend not to buy into something like this; the realism of that relationship has at least the potential to keep a man grounded. (To say nothing of the shenanigans children pull!)

I'm thinking of this today because I had a long telephone conversation this afternoon with my closest priest-friend. He's lonely. In fact he's not the kind of man who would have been likely to have made a good marriage - too self-involved. But...was he like that in his 20's? (He's my age, 60ish.) Is his extreme self-centeredness the cause of his isolation, or an artifact of it? Only God can know that.

Not every man should marry, inside the priesthood or out of it, and no one proposes to force them to marry if they don't want to. But prohibiting it does not seem to me to be a good idea.

Of course this is all mostly off-topic.

But, don't worry, the Roman Catholic Church has no moral credibility today. So even when she is right about things (as they often is), no one listens to her. It will be centuries before anyone outside of Roman Catholicism takes seriously what she has to say. And if there is no reform, it will be longer than that.

Yeah, sure Joe. Keep whistling through the graveyard that is Orthodoxy. Who knows? In a thousand years you might double your congregation to what? 5 percent of Christianity? Meanwhile the Roman Catholic Church will still be here and still be strong as ever, preserving the apostolic faith.

Susan,

We do have celibate priests in Orthodoxy. They are monks and they voluntarily take on celibacy first and then, if called and needed, the priesthood. Typically, a celibate should be in a monastery (though some monks do serve as parish priests). Your typical parish priest who is in the world is married. Also, in Orthodoxy a man cannot be ordained to the deaconate or priesthood without the permission of his wife. She must write a letter of recommendation for him and interview with the Bishop.

fbc, this is not a numbers game. And besides, did not Our Lord say that the path to destruction was wide and many took it? Yet the path to eternal life was narrow and few find it. So numbers alone isn't proof of anything.

Having said that, I point out that we have a clergy shortage in the Orthodox Church, but Churches are not being shut down. In the Antiochian Church (my church), the shortage is because we are expanding. There aren't enough seminarians to cover the missions that the Bishops and the faithful want to establish. Orthodoxy is certainly not dying. It is waiting to be discovered.

Now having said all of that. We should take care of ourselves lest we fall into pride and then into the same sins and corruptions that overtake other Churches. We are all sinners and as Rod makes clear by posting the news on the OCA, we have our scandals. But it is easier to recover from corruption when the corruption cannot be so thoroughly entrenched. Because there is more flexibility in Orthodoxy and more control in the local Church, clerics cannot go on hiding corruption and shielding criminals the way the Roman Catholic Church can because of the priest/laity cast system that she has said up. The default position in Catholicism is that the clergy are untouchable and that is why even a great man like Pope John Paul II failed to clean up the Church and enabled the hiding and the corruption (think Cardinal Law promoted to major Church in Italy). It is a fact that the RC has made it policy to protect the clergy at all costs and if they aren't doing this in all cases anymore, it is because they can't. The windows have been opened.

In Orthodoxy, it is much harder to hide this corruption and no Bishop wants to face a mob of angry babushka's with rolling pins ;).

Joe

Larry, ds0490, Kin M, Insane Kitten and Susan, "pedophilia" is not now and never has been a significant problem in the Church. There is more pedophilia in society at large than in the Church.

Most mental health professionals confine the definition of pedophilia to sexual activity with PREPUBESCENT children, while the predators in the Church generally sought to sodomize teenage boys, i.e., homosexuality.

It is not possible to be at the same time a practicing homosexual and a man who dedicates himself to Christ in the manner required of a Catholic priest. Marriage obviously would not have been a solution to the problem of morally corrupt bishops and seminary directors who built up the homosexual network after Vatican II.

Those who have escaped detection and who remain in the priesthood, not surprisingly, are lonely and troubled men. They are to be pitied and prayed for.

However, failing to even identify the problem--homosexual priests-- does not serve the welfare of children, which, as I said to begin this thread, is not the most important liberal agenda. Bashing the Church is.

Rod, fair enough. You are right.

Pauli;

Perhaps you are right. But I wonder WHY the press is not ready to confront/report the truely awesome and present-time problem of child/youth sexual molestation in the public schools.

no one has any solid or even semi-solid idea of how much pedophilia there is "in society at large" or in any subgroup, for that matter. We probably know more about its prevalence in the Church than we do about it in any other arena.

And what we know is that there's very little "pedophilia" among the Catholic clergy. There has been a very serious problem of homosexual predation of adolescent boys, with a concommitant habit of hierarchs reflexively covering up such behavior to avoid scandal.

The search for truth begins by calling things by their proper names.

Cleveland et al.--I don't grant your assertion that sex abuse of children in the Catholic Church was merely a result of the presence of homosexual priests, and that removing them will solve it. I think that's absurdly over-simplifying the problem. However, we've all been around and around that mulberry bush before, so my objection is hereby issued and will be duly ignored by you.

However, it is certainly not true that in other areas of society, sexual abuse of minors can be charged to a prevalence of homosexuals. It occurs in other churches too, among Baptists and Episcopalians, and among Mormons, who I suspect have a rate of abuse that would give the Catholics a run for their money. Everywhere that children are supposedly protected, they are in fact treated as a target population by those who get their sexual gratification from forcing it on the powerless. This happens in churches, in schools, in scout groups, and in the bosom of the family. The great majority of the abusers are adult heterosexual males, often married with families of their own. You really can't blame the endemic abuse on gay priests.

So, if you're right and this is happening everywhere, not just in the Catholic Church, what would your concern for children move you to do about that? Are you going to be happy if you can kick all the gay priests out of the Catholic Church, and then be content to turn a blind eye to a continuing epidemic of abuse by heterosexual men?

Let us keep in mind, as well, that according to the John Jay report, 22.6 percent of the priests' victims were under 11, and 19 percent were girls. Those are not statistically insignificant numbers. And many 11 and 12 year olds are more childlike than pubescent, even today. Quite a few offenders, like the infamous Oliver O'Grady, abused both boys and girls. For some, boys were the target of choice simply because they were more readily available. While parents may allow a boy to travel unsupervised with a priest, fewer would allow such access to a girl.

Surely child abuse is all about power, not sexual orientation.

"Perhaps it is time to quit asking why Catholicism attracts so many pedophiles and start asking why Christianity attracts so many"

Perhaps it's time to ask why it's finally coming to light how many public school teachers are molesting children. Perhaps it's time to ask why so many married men molest their own children.

Joe,

You'd better go back and read some of this cultural, linguistic and historical reasons for the split between the East and West. You are woefully short.

Susan,

Orthodox bishops are always celibate.

Surely child abuse is all about power, not sexual orientation.

Surely sexual abuse of children, of whatever nature, is about the abuser's sexual attraction to children -- a disorder. Likewise, seduction of adolescent boys is all about the seducer's sexual attraction to adolescent boys -- another disorder.

What evidence do you have that the seducer/abuser is really just motivated by "power"?

Is attraction to adolescent girls also a disorder? Or is this perfectly OK?

If it's one of my daughters, it may be predudicial to the offending adult's continued viability.

But honestly, girls are a more complicated case: In nearly all pre-modern societies, girls went straight from childhood to adulthood. In our society, 15 year old girls are not adults psychologically, with virtually no exceptions. Therefore, while an adult man ordinarily will notice an attractive bikini-clad 15 year old girl, it is ALWAYS wrong for that adult to act upon that interest in any way (including, IMHO, through the use of pornography).

Simon writes about pedophilia in the public schools

" The story will have short legs, though, because sovereign immunity creates a much higher barrier to lawsuits against public schools than against churches or other institutions. The trial bar generates m of the information and publicity in the church cases, and for them public schools by large are not a profitable field."

IF this is true than all non-public groups, and I mean ALL non-public groups are NOT ON A LEVEL PLAYING FIELD with government sponsered groups like the public school system regarding these things! And ironically the trial bar is a de facto extention of government.

Another irony is people do not have to go to church, but they have to send children to school and most have to sent to public schools. All this means is that something of a veiled persecution is possible here, regardless of whether the abuse cases are valid or not.

Cleveland:

Why are you acting like ephebophilia is somehow more moral and holy than pedophilia -- especially since young teens were just as welcoming of the sexual violation as kids might be?

Ugh.

Susan, when you use your God-given ability to reason and debate honestly, you are an enjoyable challange. However, when you give in to your seeming neuroses and do things like support and falsely expand upon Larry's despicable and grotesk charge that I am "acting like ephebophilia is somehow more moral and holy than pedophilia", your accusations are not worthy of a response. Your Oct 23, 3:12 PM comment is an example.

In your Oct 23, 12:34 comment, you support Jim's accusation of me where he said "To throw Vatican II into this issue and make it the scapegoat is dishonest and only suggests continued obfuscation and unwillingness to look clearly at what our Church and culture has wrought."

Susan, by supporting Jim, your neuroses and Church bashing agenda appear to be showing again. I did not scapegoat Vatican II and never would--it was an event guided by the Holy Spirit. You are exhibiting your ignorance of the Crurch. Whether you like it or not, the Church herself is guided by the Holy Spirit, so she can not have "wrought" homosexual predation. Your homosexual priest-friends did.
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Jim, before your nasty quote, you asked me to "Please explain why you believe this "homozexual network'in the priesthood was formed after Vatican II, when it is clearly documented that many of the abusers were in seminaries and even much of the abuse took place prior to Vatican II."

Vatican II, did not go the way homosexuals wanted it to. They hoped for a pastoral a statement that

Susan, when you use your God-given ability to reason and debate honestly, you are an enjoyable challenge. However, when you give in to your seeming neuroses and do things like support and falsely expand upon Larry's despicable and grotesque charge that I am "acting like ephebophilia is somehow more moral and holy than pedophilia", your accusations are not worthy of a response. Your Oct 23, 3:12 PM comment is an example.

In your Oct 23, 12:34 comment, you support Jim's accusation of me where he said "To throw Vatican II into this issue and make it the scapegoat is dishonest and only suggests continued obfuscation and unwillingness to look clearly at what our Church and culture has wrought."

Susan, by supporting Jim, your neuroses and Church bashing agenda appear to be showing again. I did not scapegoat Vatican II and never would--it was an event guided by the Holy Spirit. You are exhibiting your ignorance of the Church. Whether you like it or not, the Church herself is guided by the Holy Spirit, so she can not have "wrought" homosexual predation. Your homosexual priest-friends did.
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Jim, before your nasty quote, you asked me to "Please explain why you believe this "homosexual network 'in the priesthood was formed after Vatican II, when it is clearly documented that many of the abusers were in seminaries and even much of the abuse took place prior to Vatican II." Here goes, in brief:

Vatican II, did not go the way homosexuals, socialists and assorted progressives wanted it to. They hoped for a statement that Western culture had failed to end war, poverty, intolerance, etc., and that a better way was needed. They failed to get it so they and their media allies said that behind the antiquated words in the council documents was a "spirit" of cultural revolution; the true spirit of Vatican II. Within 20 years the battle cry (with which you are familiar, Jim) became "everyone must let his conscience dictate how he lives." The result was an affirmation of materialism and almost total skepticism/relativism, drugs and sex.

Now, Jim, this was a made-to-order climate for theologically corrupt homosexuals already in the Church. A relatively small number of homosexual bishops, seminary directors and their homosexual shrinks, wallowing in the false spirit of V II, had a field day. They were overseen by an even smaller number of the type of pompous-ass archbishops and Cardinals that sicken Susan (and me) and who turned a blind eye. Worse, they lied to Pope John Paul II when news of the pink palaces trickled out, and promised to clean house. They of course did not.

You are correct that homosexualism in seminaries did not begin after V II, but it was more or less under cover until the false spirit of V II, including political correctness, swept over schools, liturgy, music, architecture, pulpits, seminaries and orders of nuns. It wasn't long after V II that seminarians who didn't go along with the depravity could be sent to homosexual shrinks, found "too rigid", and kicked out.

"American Catholics have been left reeling by recent clergy sex scandals, and have wondered how things could have gotten so bad. Goodbye Good Men [by Michael S. Rose] has the shocking answers...."

Rod Dreher, National Review

So, Jim, I never blamed the problem on V II. I do blame it on the false "Spirit" of V II. Read the above mentioned book.

Susan,

Strictly speaking "celibacy" means the unmarried state. It does not mean that a cleric who has taken up a celibate life will necessarily not fall off the wagon any more than a married person will remain true to his/her vows to forsake all others, sexually speaking.