President Fernando Lugo of Paraguay, a former Roman Catholic bishop, was hit with another paternity claim on Monday, just a week after he acknowledged fathering a child while the Vatican still considered him to be ordained.Mr. Lugo, 57, on Monday did not confirm or deny fathering the second child, now a 6-year-old boy, but read a brief statement promising to "act always in line with the truth and subject myself to all the requirements presented by the justice system."
A few years ago, a Catholic priest in a position to know such things told me that while the big problem the Vatican has finding American priests suitable to be bishops in this country is identifying clergy uncompromised by homosexual activity, in Latin America the problem is finding candidates for the episcopate uncompromised by heterosexual activity, especially of the sort that has successfully produced children.
Similarly, a Vatican official told me back in 2000, I guess it was, that Rome's well-intentioned decision decades ago to start appointing native-born African bishops to lead the Catholic flocks there was being quietly reversed, as so many bishops were violating their celibacy vows. The reason, said this cleric (who was on the task force to deal with the problem), was one of inculturation: in Africa, celibacy goes strongly against the local traditions. He said that it would take many more years of Christianity being practiced there for that sort of thing to work itself out.
I thought about this the other day when speaking to a Protestant friend who's done missionary work in Africa, and who said the Evangelical and charismatic clergy there had a big problem with sexual integrity, according to Christian standards.
I trust little more needs to be said about the situation among American clergy. The bottom line is, if your church's clergy isn't touched by this corruption, it either hasn't been exposed yet, or give it time, it will be. Lest you think I'm being triumphalist, the Orthodox clergy are not immune either. Here's some eye-opening stuff from 2005:
Greece's Orthodox church, buffeted by sex and corruption scandals, met in emergency session yesterday amid lurid claims that have included one newspaper publishing photographs of a 91-year-old bishop naked in bed with a nubile young woman. Scrambling to resolve the worst crisis in the church's modern history, the embattled spiritual leader, Archbishop Christodoulos, convened the rare meeting as allegations of skulduggery, sexual improprieties, trial rigging, drug and antiquities smuggling engulfed the institution."I humbly ask for forgiveness from the people and the clerics who, for the most, honour... the cassock they wear," he said addressing the 102-member Holy Synod, the church's ruling council.
"There is a lot that must be done to put our house in order," he conceded before proposing a series of reforms.
Greeks have watched dumbfounded as allegations of their priesthood's dissolute lifestyle have unfolded on their television screens.
Snatched tape-recordings, aired nightly, have revealed rampant homosexuality among senior clerics who, unlike ordinary priests, are under oaths of chastity.
I could do a tour of the various Christian churches and their recent debaucheries, but you get the point. What do we make of this?
While we really shouldn't be shocked that this kind of thing happens, I don't think we should adopt a world-weary, jaded stance either. It's important that we hold our clergy to the high standards of purity. Of course they are only human, and of course some will fall, and of course we live in a sexually corrupt age. But sin is sin, and we don't honor the truth, or the holy priesthood, by acting like it's no big deal when the clergy behaves with impurity.
Second, there are many members of the clergy -- I would say most, by far -- who do live out their vows. It's not news when a priest, pastor or rabbi stays celibate, or remains faithful to his spouse. All the upright clergy suffer from an unfair suspicion when sexual corruption occurs, and is tolerated, in clerical ranks.
Third, as with adulterous Newt Gingrich presuming to attack Democrats for undermining traditional marriage, when the chief exponents of an ethic that has a very specific and well-known standard of sexual integrity violate it so flagrantly and are not held accountable for it by the churches, then fairly or not, it makes it easy for the public, including Christians, to scoff at Christian standards, and to flout them.
Finally, I would refer you to this sobering response given by Father Arseny in the Soviet prison camp where he was held as an enemy of the state -- this, simply for being a Christian clergyman. The Orthodox priest was pulled into an argument among prisoners about the government, and who was to blame for the catastrophe of communist rule. Here's how he responded when his fellow prisoners put him on the spot:
"You say that the Communists have arrested the believers, closed churches, trampled on faith. Yes, it does look that way, on the surface, but let us look into this more deeply, let us glance at the past. Among us Russian people many have lost the faith, lost respect for our past, we lost much of what was precious and good. Who is at fault? The authorities? No, we are at fault ourselves, we are only reaping what we ourselves have sown."Let us remember the bad examples set by the intelligentsia, the nobility, the merchants, and the civil servants. We in the priesthood were the worst of them all.
"Children of priests became atheists, and revolutionaries, simply because they had seen in their families lies and a lack of true faith. Long before the revolution priests had already lost the real right to be the shepherds of their people, of their conscience. Priesthood became a profession. Many priests were atheists and alcoholics.
"From among all the monasteries of our land, only five or six were real beacons of Christianity. ... Others became communities with almost no faith in them. What could the people learn from such monasteries? What kind of example was set?
"We did not raise our people right, we did not give them the basis of strong faith. Remember all this! Remember! This is why the people were so quick to forget all of us, their own priests; they mainly forgot their faith and participated in the destruction of churches, sometimes even leading the way in their destruction.
"Understanding all of this, I cannot point a finger at our authorities, because the seeds of faithlessness fell on the soil which we ourselves had prepared. And from there comes the rest: our camp, our sufferings, the wrongful deaths of innocent people. ..."
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Hector - What Mr. Lugo did was wrong- I wouldn't call it among the worst sins, or that it makes him a bad person, but he did break his promise.
Absolutely true. I also wonder if he abused his position as a priest/bishop to get these women into bed.
I feel that you seek other-worldly, nonhuman clergy. If that's your tradition or principle, fine. My principle is that clergy are called to be fully human, as Jesus was, so that the divine can be realized in our humanity.
John M., you've reached the heart of this issue, which is theology. It's precisely because we believe that Jesus was fully human -- a man like us in all things but sin -- that we believe that the purity and celibacy which He modelled and recommended are both humanly possible and natural.
Outside the Dan Brown funny farm, it is certain, and has always been recognized by all branches of Christianity, that Jesus Christ was neither married or sexually active. Yet His celibacy wasn't simply of function of His being divine, for He was in every non-sinful way a man like us, and He "did all things well." Unless we consider marriage sinful (which Christians cannot), then Christ's celibacy is an aspect of His being fully human.
Moreover, despite the frequent assertions that the apostles mostly married and had children, the evidence suggests to the contrary that they tended to follow Christ's example of celibacy. The Gospels refer to St. Peter's mother-in-law, and St. Clement of Alexandria in the early 3rd century reported that Peter had been married and had children. Aside from that, however, we have no references in the New Testament or early Christian literature to wives or children of the apostles (aside from a common mistranslation at Cor. 9:5). And in Matt. 19 and Luke 18, Christ specifically endorses giving up wife and chidren for the sake of the Kingdom, while St. Peter's questioning of Him on this point suggests that the apostles themselves had done precisely that.
Tellingly, we have no record anywhere in early Church history of any children or descendants of the apostles. Had the apostles had children, it is vanishingly unlikely that not a single one of their descendants would have risen to prominence in the early Church. Yet none did.
Setting aside the contested question of whether the Eastern or Western clergy discipline is older, it is absolutely clear that Christianity from the beginning has regarded sexual purity as possible and normative and placed a high value on celibacy -- which, like fasting, is the free oblation of something that is in itself good.
Clerical celibacy is not doctrinal or absolutely unchangeable. At the same time, however, the Catholic Church has always insisted that it isn't merely a discipline, like Lenten fasting rules. The Church values celibacy because of Jesus Christ and the model He Himself gave us.
Simon: I don't disagree with you overall, but I might point out that one doesn't necessarily have to argue that priestly celibacy is of Apostolic origin to defend the practice now. In this article, Anthony Dragani, former Question and Answer consultant to EWTN on Eastern-Rite Catholicism, rebuts this idea, specifically as presented in the book The Case for Clerical Celibacy, by Cardinal Alfons Maria Stickler.
Dr. Dragani is far from being a liberal, and has no desire for there to be a change in the discipline of the Latin Church. He also has great respect for celibacy. However, as he points out, arguments that priestly celibacy are Apostolic cannot be historically maintained, and they also tend to demean the ancient tradition of married clergy in the Orthodox and Eastern Catholic churches. They respect celibacy as much as we do, but for them it is manifested in monks and bishops, not in parish priests.
Once again, I'm not in disagreement with you overall, nor do I wish to see celibacy ended for the Latin priesthood, certainly at the current time, in which it would cause more problem that it would solve. I'm just saying we have to be careful not to over-state the case or to inadvertently cast aspersions on our Eastern brothers and sisters.
Setting aside the contested question of whether the Eastern or Western clergy discipline is older, it is absolutely clear that Christianity from the beginning has regarded sexual purity as possible and normative and placed a high value on celibacy -- which, like fasting, is the free oblation of something that is in itself good.
Celibacy would be wonderful if those vowed to it observed it. By and large, however, they do not, so far as I can tell. Some RC priests and religious actually are celibate some of the time, and a very few of them are celibate all of the time, but that could probably be said of any randomly chosen group of people.
So the Church is left not with the proposition "is celibacy a good thing?" but the proposition "is alleged celibacy (sometimes, but not usually, backed up with practice) a good thing?" which is a very different question.
Response to this post is as good of a place as any to introduce the
concept of what His (Jesus') celibacy might have and probably did
mean. When he said,"Some are born that way". Consider this: Since
the 1950's when computers began to be use to collect medical data
from around the world, there have been hundreds of people who reportedly sweat blood under high duress. The other two things they
had in common are (1)they were all male and (2)they were all erectile
disfunctional.
All He apperently meant by,"Some are born that way, some are made that way by other men and some will give it up for the sake of the
kingdom.", is the size and function of the male member is not the
measure of a man.
This may also be one of those things He refered to when He said, "There are things too hard for you now. But when I go The Holy
Spirit will come and lead you into all truth." And another when He
said,"There are things yet to be revealed from the foundation of the
world.".
The name of the syndrome is ,"Hematidrosis".
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