Celibacy

Married Priests?

in Anglicans, Catholic Church, Celibacy No Comments

In the Latin Rite, in general, only celibates are ordained priests. This practice has been blamed by many for a seeming shortage of priests, and led to headlines such as

Will ordaining married priests save the Catholic Church from decline?

But this chart about the Anglican Church in Canada suggests that other forces are at work:

Since 1961 there has been about a 90% decline in baptisms, and about a 50% increase in the number of clergy. And the Anglicans ordain women and married men.

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Andrew Sullivan and Gays in the Priesthood

in Catholic Church, Celibacy, clergy sex abuse scandal No Comments Tags: ,

Andrew Sullivan has a long article in New York, “The Gay Church.” For Sullivan, it is a temperate and reasonable article.

He points out the contradiction between a church which supposedly excludes gays from the priesthood but has a clergy, including bishops and cardinals, taht is substantially gay — estimates range from 15% to 60%, with the best estimates about 30-40% in diocesan clergy and mush higher in religious orders.

Sullivan defends gay priests from attack, but he admits there are problems,.

“to decouple the sexual-abuse crisis entirely from the question of gay priests is a willful avoidance of an ugly truth. Pedophilia is a separate category outside the question of sexual orientation. But some abuse of male teens and young adults, as well as abuse of other priests, is clearly related to homosexuality gone horribly astray — and around a quarter of the reported cases involve 15- to 17-year-old victims.”

Sullivan knows that gay priests, like straight priests, sometimes fail and violate celibacy in non-abusive relationships. That is a sin that can be repented of and forgiven, but it creates a further problem:

“a poisonous kind of omertà took hold, the priesthood acting as a forum of mutually assured destruction. Since many fellow priests know about each other’s sexuality and/or lapses, they all have the ability to blackmail one another. Mundane failings — like a brief affair — can become easily blurred with profound evils like child abuse. If you expose a child molester to his superior, for example, he might expose your own homosexuality and destroy your career.

This dynamic has made the clerical closet — not the fact of gay priests but the way that fact has been hidden — a core mechanism for tolerating and enabling abuse. On top of all this, the vow of obedience to superiors gives gay bishops and cardinals huge sway over their priestly flock. Some, of course, realized this power could be leveraged for sex and abused it.

Sullivan’s solution is that gay priests should be honest and publicly admit their gayness and either leave the priesthood or reaffirm their intention to be chaste and celibate.

“A third option would simply encourage an end to the clerical closet, which is to say, ask all priests to obey one of the Ten Commandments: not to lie about themselves. It would require gay priests to identify as such to their superiors and parishioners and, in clearing the air, make a renewed public vow of celibacy. (Whether celibacy is healthy for the church is its own question, one oddly distinct from the current crisis; a relaxation of the rules wouldn’t in itself resolve the church’s position on homosexuality, and an embrace of homosexuality is compatible with a celibate priesthood.) Encouraging an end to the closet would underline the distinction the church formally makes between homosexual identity and homosexual acts. It would deter disturbed closet cases from entering the priesthood and provide priestly role models for gay Catholics who find themselves called to celibacy. Those gay priests who refused to be fully transparent could leave. Cardinals and bishops and directors of seminaries could insist on frank discourse on the matter. Double lives would become far less common. If a priest is committed to celibacy and doing a good job, why is his public gayness a problem?”

A good question. What would be the effect if it were publicly acknowledged that a third of Catholic priests were gay, but they were leading chaste lives? One problem is the identification of gayness with lack of masculinity. This is not true; but the type of gays who tend to become priests are not the biker or rugby types. Straight men who are not very masculine are also a problem. The Western churches have long repelled men who desire to be masculine, and a further identification of the clergy as non-masculine would not help.

I respect gay priests who are sincere in their intention to be celibate. But the corruption in the Church creates an environment which is dangerous to such priests. Seminarians are subjected to an environment like that of classical pederasty, in which older priests become mentors and predators of young men. Once compromised, a seminarian or a priest is vulnerable to pressure to have sex and is reluctant to reveal abuse for fear his own failures will become public.

How to deal with this? the key figures are seminary authorities and bishops. If they are compromised, they must be removed, and uncompromised men of integrity put into authority. They will have the wisdom to deal with the problems that both straight and gay priests encounter. However, Francis’ reluctance to examine and deal with the corrupt atmosphere that tolerated, enabled, and promoted McCarrick shows that he is unwilling or unable to deal with the problem. And Francis won’t resign.

Al we can hope for is that the next pope will either deal with the problem, or at least let bishops’ conferences and laity deal with the problem, and not block them, as Francis has done.

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A Voice from the Past

in Catholic Church, Celibacy, homosexuality 1 Comment Tags: ,

Baum

Several years ago, I attended a conference on fatherhood at McGill University in Montreal. A professor of sociology, a woman, gave a depressing presentation on the rising number of suicides of young men in Canada and elsewhere.

In the middle of her presentation an older man arose and interrupted her. “Stop!” he said. “Why are you discussing this? The real crisis is the glass ceiling that women assistant professors of theology face when they try to become full professors! Don’t waste your time on trivial issues! Concentrate on the real problems!”

I asked who the jerk was and was informed it was Gregory Baum. Ah yes, Gregory Baum, super-liberal theologian and peritus at the Second Vatican Council.

He has gone public with his extremely varied sex life: active homosexuality, marrying an ex-nun and also having sex with men, etc.

In his new book, Baum writes, “I was 40 years old when I had my first sexual encounter with a man. I met him in a restaurant in London. This was exciting and at the same time disappointing, for I knew what love was and what I really wanted was to share my life with a partner.”

He says he considered resigning from the priesthood but didn’t go through with the formality, rather choosing to announce it in the national newspaper. He later married a divorced ex-nun who he says “did not mind that, when we moved to Montreal in 1986, I met Normand, a former priest, with whom I fell in love.” Normand, he explains, “is gay and welcomed my sexual embrace.”

Such a man has guided the theological development of modern times. No wonder the church has problems, from the top down.

When I was in college there was a priest who was on an important Vatican commission. Once I saw him sitting with a close friend of mine in the cafeteria. They were not talking. I walked over and cheerily greeted them and put my tray down. The priest rose in a rage and shouted “Never sit down at a priest’s table without his permission!”

Later I learned that this super-clericalist also had a love nest off campus, furnished with oriental rugs and antiques, in which he and a clique of homosexual students cavorted.

It would be nice to have saints in the Vatican, but why can’t we at least have men of decent character? The medieval lamentations about the corruption of the church are all too relevant today.

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The Bishop and The Heiress

in Celibacy, clergy sex abuse scandal, Genealogy 10 Comments Tags: , , , , , , ,

As a harmless amusement, to distract my thoughts from the perennially depressing revelations about sexual abuse and corruption in the Church, I took up working out the genealogy of my family. Some pleasant surprises on my side: a staunch Confederate, and a soldier who was on the muster rolls at Valley Forge. Also indirect relationship, but real and traceable, to Lady Beatrice Weasel, King Alfred, and best of all, Lady Godiva.

My wife’s family had some very successful industrialists, such as the great-grandfather who invented the open hearth process for making steel and built blast furnaces all over the world, naming many of them (to the puzzlement of historians) after his daughter Lucy, a woman of forceful personality. Others were classic American stories: from ticket agent to president of the New York Central Railroad, from cabin boy to owner of a steamship line. Another ancestor was James Caldwell, an English actor who came to the United States in the early nineteenth century. He played Romeo in the theater in Fredericksburg, Virginia; during the death scene the widow Wormeley sighed and fainted. One thing led to another, and over the opposition of all her relatives, she married him, producing a son, William Shakespeare Caldwell. Having dipped his toe into the gene pool of the First Families of Virginia, James Caldwell returned to the theater in New Orleans where awaited his mistress, a Jewish actress by the name of Margaret Abrams. My wife (to the consternation of her mother) is descended from that activity on the wrong side of the sheets. So far, so good. Hot stuff. Caldwell made a fortune lighting first his theater and then the cities of New Orleans, Mobile, Memphis, and Cincinnati with gas.

Shake Caldwell (as William Shakespeare was known), went to the University of Virginia, and married another FFV maiden, producing two daughters, Mary Gwendolin and Mary Eliza (these are my wife’s first cousins, three times removed). The Caldwells, I gather, may have been from a Catholic (if somewhat sexually irregular) background, because he and his wife prayed to Mary for children, which is why they were both named Mary. The mother died; the father, although he had already established the Little Sisters of the Poor in Richmond, postponed becoming a Catholic until just before his death, when he was baptized. He left the daughters in the care of Irish Catholics he had met in New York. They turned over the care of the daughters to the thirty-two-year-old Father John Spalding, nephew of Archbishop Martin Spalding of Baltimore. Mary Gwendolin was eleven and Mary Eliza nine. John Spalding was chaplain at the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Manhattanville, and took over their education, travelling with Mary Gwendolin to such an extent that it caused gossip. He became trustee of their estate.

John Lancaster Spalding  (1840-1916)

Mary Gwendolin Caldwell, Marquise des Monstiers-Mérinville

At the age of twenty-one, Mary Gwendolin, under the guidance of now-Bishop Spalding of Peoria, purchased the land in Washington D. C. for the Catholic University of America and gave money for the erection of Caldwell Hall. She was honored by Pope Leo XIII for her generosity and received the Laetare Medal from Notre Dame in 1899. Mary Gwendolin’s wealth attracted the attention of Joachim Napoleon Murat, the heavily-indebted grandson of the King of Naples; he wanted half her wealth as her dowry, so he could pay off his gambling debts. She said no dice. Instead she married a French marquis, Bishop Spalding presiding. It did not work out; they separated, and she pensioned the Marquise off so he wouldn’t divorce her, which would cause her to lose her title, Marchioness des Monstiers-Mérinville.

Caldwell Hall, Catholic University

Her sister Mary Eliza gave the money for Caldwell chapel. In it, with Bishop Spalding presiding, she married a German baron who was killed when Kaiser William’s yacht ran into his yacht during a regatta, leaving her the Baroness von Zedtwitz, with a four-month-old boy who became the bridge champion of the world. Spalding became the boy’s guardian.

Mary Gwendolin then became ill, and in 1901 revealed a dark secret to her sister: that she had been sexually involved with Spalding for twenty years, that is, it started she was nineteen. There were scenes. He was up to be made Archbishop of Chicago, but the Vatican investigated and instead made him retire at age sixty-eight. In 1904 both sisters publicly renounced Catholicism, although not directly accusing Spalding. Privately Mary Elizabeth called Spalding “a whited sepulcher,” “a liar,” a “sensual hypocrite,” of “a private life of iniquity and license” and “a very atheist and infidel.” She offered to come to Rome with witnesses to testify against Spalding, whom she had known “intimately” (her emphasis). Both sisters were denounced by Catholics as sick, crazy, spoiled rich girls who threw tantrums and made wild accusations when life didn’t turn out the way they wanted.

In her own defense, Mary Elizabeth, under her title of Baroness von Zedtwitz, wrote a short book, The Double Doctrine of the Church of Rome. She condemned the Jesuits, the doctrine of probabilism, equivocation, and the sexual failings of a supposedly celibate clergy.

In the 1950s, while he was writing a dissertation under the guidance of the John Tracy Ellis, the Franciscan priest David Sweeney discovered these allegations about John Spalding. Ellis did not believe the allegations, so they were simply suppressed, and the dissertation became the standard biography, The Life of John Lancaster Spalding. Andrew Greeley later claimed Sweeney and Ellis suppressed incriminating evidence.  C. Walker Gollar, the great great nephew of Bishop John Spalding, in 1995 published an article in the Catholic Historical Review, “The Double Doctrine of the Caldwell Sisters,” defending Spalding, implying that illness and disappointment had driven the sisters mad. Poor Spaulding had his career ruined, absolutely ruined by these crazy, hysterical women – mere women. Gollar in a later article examined Ellis’s decision to suppress what Gollar thinks are false charges against Spalding.

But:

· Neither the interviews the sisters gave nor the book (available online) sound irrational.

· It is hard to explain their bitterness unless something terrible had happened to them or they had discovered something terrible. The sisters were not naïve; they were women of the world, and would not have been scandalized by rumors that a priest in a Roman suburb might have a mistress. Mary Gwendolin could not have publicly accused Spalding, without also ruining herself.

· When Mary Elizabeth threatened to make the abuse public if Spalding were appointed archbishop of Chicago, Archbishop Riordan of San Francisco wrote to Denis O’Connell, the Rector of the Catholic University: “You must advise the B[aroness] for the sake of her family and especially for the sake of her child to say no more about it to anyone. He [Spalding] has no chance for the promotion.”

· Archbishop Riordan looked into the charges and wrote to Rome “I had hoped he was innocent but I am now satisfied he is guilty.” Riordan later changed his mind for unspecified reasons.

· Bishop Frederick C. Rooker of the Philippines in 1904 wrote a letter in which he called Spalding “a brazen villain.”

· Enough officials in the Vatican believed the charges to block Spalding’s promotion. This at least shows that Spalding’s behavior was not considered either common or acceptable. But the hierarchy’s sole concern was to prevent scandal, which they interpreted to mean damage to the reputation of the clergy. They showed no concern for the tragedies and possible betrayal the Caldwell sisters had experienced.

· The tendency of historians and journalists and church officials to protect powerful men at the expense of the women they have injured also fits a general pattern.

· Spalding’s defenders (mostly the Spalding family) claim that Mary Gwendolin was mad at him because she wanted an annulment and he wouldn’t arrange it; but she had pensioned off the Marquis so he wouldn’t divorce her.

· Spalding lied about never being a trustee but documents show he was appointed by the court.

· Even if the sexual relationship began when Mary Gwendolin was an adult, it was abusive, adulterous, and quasi-incestuous, as Spalding functioned as her guardian and father. It was not an “affair,” as some historians have called it. Moreover, abuse victims usually cannot admit the worst, so the abuse may well have started when she was a child.

· The relationship of Mary Gwendolin and Spalding fits the classic pattern of Stockholm syndrome. The perpetrator keeps the victim psychologically off-balance by sudden changes from kindness to abuse. The victim feels that the only hope for safety is pleasing the perpetrator. If the victim is fortunate, she or he may suddenly snap out of the trance and realize that she or he has been induced to live in fantasy-nightmare world that the perpetrator has created.

If the allegations of the sisters are true, and the great preponderance of the evidence points in that direction, the Catholic University of America was founded by Spalding, who was, according to the sisters, a sexual abuser and an atheist, with the money of the woman he had abused.

Mary Gwendolin died at forty-five and Mary Elizabeth at forty-four. The Caldwell sisters were buried in a secular cemetery, not in their father’s grave in the Catholic cemetery in Louisville. On their monument stands the inscription: You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.

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plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose

in Celibacy 4 Comments Tags: ,

While reading Gerald of Wales Gemma  Ecclesiastica (written about 1200), I came across this :

There is no dispensation [from the vow of celibacy], and there can be absolutely no recall of the vow except through a general council of the pope and cardinals with the consent of the whole Church. Such a council could permit single priests to marry, as is the practice among the Greeks. It is said that Alexander III had definitely proposed and firmly decreed to permit the marriage of priests because he was aware of the great dangers in the Western Church which stemmed from the vow of celibacy. [To this end] he had acquired the consent of the entire Roman Church, except for that of his abbot chancellor –  a man of singular austerity who became Pope Gregory IV [sic – actually Gregory VIII], the third pope after Alexander III. There is nothing in either the Old or New Testament, in the Gospels, or in the writings of the Apostles, to prohibit marriage. The clergy of the Western Church have only been urged to celibacy by the holy fathers and apostolic men of the early Church for the sake of greater purity and integrity. The Eastern Church, however, adhered rather to the kind disposition of St. Paul (even though he himself had taken a vow of celibacy).

The reforming popes of  the Middle Ages tried to get the secular clergy to live up to monastic standards of chastity and poverty, without much success. German bishops at the Council of Trent complained that almost all their priests were living in concubinage, and had purchased from the Roman Curia dispensations from episcopal attempts to enforce celibacy.

Trent and later reforms had more success, and set the parish priest apart from ordinary masculine life of sex, drinking, fighting, etc. This gave Catholic anti-clericalism a boost. Andalusia in Spain has an extreme version of this. Men do not go to church; women do. The men suspect the priests are seducing the women. If a priest is obviously chaste and circumspect in his dealings with women, men think he is a pederast. Priests can’t win.

Celibacy is not the only problem – Protestant ministers also are suspected of having designs upon the females under their care. But celibacy seems to exacerbate suspicions.

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German Catholicism and Celibacy – A Short History

in anticlericalism, Celibacy, clergy sex abuse scandal, Germany, homosexuality, Masculinity, Moral Theology, Pope Benedict, Vatican 9 Comments Tags: , ,

 Supi, celibacy is going to disappear,and you can marry me – or?

 

German Catholics have long manifested a discontent with clerical celibacy. One of Luther’s first acts was to abolish clerical celibacy; Germans currently criticize Zwangszölibat, compulsory celibacy, forced celibacy. As Cardinal Brandmüller points out, the term Zwangszölibat misrepresents the discipline; no one is forced to be celibate.

 

Now a third of German theologians have come out asking for an end to clerical celibacy (and also demanding women priests and the acceptance of gay couples and divorced and remarried couples while we’re at it).

The appeal, published in newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung’s Friday edition, called on the church’s leadership to stop excluding gay couples and remarried Christians.

“The Church also needs married priests and women holding positions in the clergy,” the appeal said—in clear defiance of the Vatican’s dogmas.

In Germany theologians need the Vatican’s approval to hold chairs of Catholic theology, so this situatSupim cleibacy is going to disappear,a nd oyu can marry me, or…ion is ripe for conflict.

 

Josef Ratzinger himself at one time had asked for a discussion of the possibility of married priests.

 

The background of this conflict is the tension between German (and other national) Catholicisms and ultramontane Catholicism espoused by the Vatican, and behind that at least in part are conflicting images of masculinity: the one that sees sexual expression as an almost universal, necessary, and good aspect of masculinity and the other that sees celibacy as an expression of masculine self-discipline.

 

During the Kulturkampf in German (c. 1875) the Catholic Church was attacked as feminized and perverse. This accusation stung Catholic men, and a reform group in Munich, the Krausgesellschaft,  arose which tried to show that masculinity and Catholicism were compatible. 

 

 One of the aims of this group was the end of clerical celibacy, because it kept young men with healthy drives out of the priesthood and let in perverse types such as were exposed in a series of scandals around 1900 – scandals which turned out to be baseless. Furthermore, celibacy kept these healthy young German men from reproducing, and degenerate types, many of these Catholic reformers went on to say, were reproducing, and they should be sterilized. And German priests should produce German children because the Aryan race was the purest and most important race and the Jews were polluting it and… I think you can see where this ended up.

 

Historians have been puzzled why Nazism arose in Munich; later of course the conflict between Nazism and the Catholic Church was bitter, but at the beginning Catholic reformers – and remember, these were reformers –  were espousing naturalist and racial theories in Munich. The young Heinrich Himmler was a pious Catholic university student in Munich.

 

This is not to say that the current crop of German reformers are racialists or Nazis, but the Vatican has a long memory, and suspects with justice that demands for a change in the discipline of clerical celibacy often lead to demands for radical changes in Christian doctrine. The theologians who coupled  a demand for the end to clerical celibacy with a demand for the acceptance of homosexual couples have simply strengthened the Vatican’s determination not to make any major changes in the discipline of celibacy at this time. 

(The information about the Krausgesellschaft comes from Derek Hastings’ article  “Fears of a Feminized Church: Catholicism, Clerical Celibacy, and the Crisis of Masculinity in Wilhelmine Germany.”)

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Celibacy and the Mission of the Church

in anticlericalism, Celibacy 7 Comments Tags: , ,

In Männer Glauben Anders, Markus Hofer sketches the situation in the early church: the married men heading local churches and the wandering celibate missionary.

 

In Death Comes to the Archbishop, it is clear that the missionary priests must be celibate, because they have to be ready to go anywhere, into dangerous situations, on a moment’s notice. Celibacy can be lonely, especially for a missionary far from his native land and extended family, but it is necessary to spread the kingdom. The model of the celibate missionary won out in the Western Church, although it was not observed with great care. The constant legislation against clerical marriage and clerical concubinage indicates that priests were not following the discipline. For a priest who lived in a village his whole life it was hard to see the missionary purpose of celibacy.

 

After Ignatius of Loyola’s conversion, he established for his followers an intensely masculine environment in which they had to be ready to go anywhere at anytime to do the work of God. It was an adventurous masculine life, and obviously incommpatible with marriage. Ignatius would upset the local clergy in Spain when he arrived and tried to get the local bishop to enforce the discipline of celibacy.

 

The missionaries of the Church have an obvious connection with celibacy. While I respect married Protestant missionaries, I wonder how they can bring their wives and especially their children into dangerous environments. These do not have to be in the recesses of Africa or New Guinea. Many urban areas are dangerous, both in the United States and Europe. A priest in Naples who tried to keep young men out of organized crime was murdered by the Mafia.

 

Perhaps (and I emphasize perhaps) the missionary vitality of the Western Church as compared with the Eastern Churches is at least in part explained by the celibacy of it clergy.

 

As to celibacy being a sign in a sex-obsessed age – I don’t know. We do not know how often violations, even criminal violations, occur; but they get a lot of publicity and they discredit celibacy, and give evidence for the belief that celibates are hypocrites. However, I have been researching the anticlericalism of the Spanish Civil War, and the anticlericals had a special and intense hatred for truly celibate priests. Some priests were told their lives would be spared if they had sex; the priests refused to violate their vows and were shot – shot if they were lucky. Sexual torture was a favorite weapon of the Republican anticlericals.  So perhaps celibacy is a sign of contradiction, and a necessary one.

 

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What is a Vocation?

in Celibacy 14 Comments Tags: , ,

Several of the commentators have raised a question which has never been clearly addressed by the Church, at least to my satisfaction. Catholics believe each person has a vocation, a calling by God to a state of life, single, celibate, married, priesthood, religious, hermit, missionary, etc.

 

The Churches responsibility is to discern a vocation to the priesthood: does the person who says he hears a call from God to be a priest in fact have such a call? Certain objective signs may indicate the person is mistaken: he may not have the health or intellectual or physical abilities to be a priest: e.g.. at an extreme,  a deaf-mute. Or for other reasons he may not be suitable.

 

I know that pious and orthodox Catholic women sometimes feel a call to be a priest. The Church says that they do not have such a call. I have explained to them that they may indeed have a special call to the priesthood that is more important than the sacramental priesthood and which the sacramental priesthood was instituted to serve: the priesthood of the baptized, by which we offer ourselves as a living sacrifice to God.

 

The call to celibacy and the call to marriage are distinct. The Eastern Churches, both the Orthodox and those in union with Rome, ordain married men.

 

But how has the Church decided that God will call only celibates to the priesthood in the Western Church, while he calls married men to the priesthood in the Eastern Churches (and recently he calls married Protestant and Anglican ministers to the priesthood in the Western Church)? When God calls men does he conform himself to the changing dictates of canon law?

 

I think the concept of vocation has to be examined more closely. Mostly, except in rare instances, in is expressed through the needs of the community. Does the Western Church (unlike the Eastern Churches) need only celibate priests? Perhaps, but if the need is that clear, why can’t it be explained clearly? And the explanation has to refer to the needs of the Western Church, not the universal value of celibacy.

 

Eastern Churches in union with Rome have been long forbidden to ordain married men in the United States – the Irish bishops thought it would confuse the faithful, but then the Irish don’t regard the Eastern Churches is really Catholic. Recently, some of the Eastern Churches have decided that they are self-governing and do not need to heed this prohibition, and are ordaining married men in the United States. Their experience will show whether married priests can function well in Western society.

 

For my part, I would rather have a married priest celebrate the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom than a celibate priest do a dreary or narcissistic version of the Mass.

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More Reflections on Celibacy and Priesthood

in Celibacy 21 Comments Tags: ,

The Eastern churches and the Western church agree that there is an affinity between celibacy and the priesthood. The episcopal office is the fullness of the priesthood, and in all Eastern churches only celibates can be consecrated bishops.

 

The question is whether only celibates should be ordained to the priesthood. The Western church makes an exception and ordains some married men (former Anglican priests and Protestant ministers).

 

The call to celibacy is distinct from the call to orders. Newman, even when he was an Anglican, felt called to celibacy. The theory is that men are called to celibacy and the church chooses some of them to be priests. The reality is different: men feel called to the priesthood, and accept celibacy more or less willingly as part of the bargain.

 

A celibate priesthood creates problems; so does a married priesthood. The trials of ministers’ families are well known in the United States. Can you imagine what it would be like to be a priest and have several rebellious teenagers to supervise? Paul said that a bishop should be a man who can govern his own household well; Paul was celibate.

 

There is also the difficulty in combining a married and celibate priesthood in the same church. My understanding is that in the Orthodox churches celibates who are not monks are not assigned to parish duties. They live in the bishop’s household so that they have a community to support them.

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Ratzinger Asked for Discussion of Clerical Celibacy

in Celibacy, Pope Benedict 30 Comments Tags: ,

According to the Suddeutsche Zeitung, in 1970 several theologians wrote to the German Bishops asking that the requirement that all priests in the Latin Church to be celibate be discussed. Among the theologians were Karl Rahner, Walter Kasper, Karl Lehman – and Joseph Ratzinger, currently Pope Benedict XVI. This letter was quietly and discretely filed away and was recently leaked to a reform group in Regensburg.

 

They wrote that they did not desire to prejudice the decision of the Church, but that they thought that the  long-standing tradition of clerical celibacy should be reconsidered in the light of modern historical and social conditions “neuen geschichtlichen und gesellschaftlichen Situationen,” such as the ever-increasing lack of priests, “dieses akuter werdenden Priestermangels.” They also pointed to the Eastern Catholic churches, which ordain married men.

 

In particular, they wondered whether such a requirement of celibacy was prudent in the overheated sexual atmosphere of the modern world. They questioned the formation of priests. If a candidate said he had no problem with celibacy, did he really know his own desires? They also thought it important to consider  “the psychological instability of many young men in today’s sexually overwrought society,” “die psychische Labilität vieler junger Menschen in der heutigen sexuell überreizten Gesellschaft.”

 

The signers indicated that celibacy was closely connected to the priesthood, but that refusing to discuss the current discipline seemed to show more faith in the power of formal authority “an die Macht einer formalen Autorität” than in the power of the recommendation of celibacy in the Gospel “die Kraft der evangelischen Empfehlung des ehelosen Lebens  um des Himmelreiches willen.”

 

Ratzinger has changed his mind  over certain issues over the course of his lifetime – this is neither surprising nor dishonest. However, he should explain how he went from point A to point B, especially to those who are at point A.

 

Celibacy, like fidelity in marriage, is difficult for men. Male sexuality is unruly, and always ha been. However, the situation in the modern world may make celibacy almost impossible for men who are otherwise good candidates for the priesthood. The omnipresence of Internet pornography and the availability of contraception have perhaps permanent changed the sexual milieu which young men develop.

 

In his epistles Paul goes back and forth between recommending celibacy for the unmarried and widowed and thinking that, since the world is not going to end immediately, it would be better for people to marry and for the married to abstain from relations at most for a time, lest they be tempted.

 

The Eastern Churches have married clergy, and despite all Vatican protestations to the contrary the Eastern Churches are second-class members of the universal Catholic church. They are not allowed to ordain married men in countries where the Latin rite predominates. Their patriarchs rank behind cardinals and do not vote in papal elections. And there are many other such slights which indicate that the Eastern Churches are tolerated rather than treasured.

 

The pope should not change the disciple of celibacy on his own – he should consult with the bishops of the world. Even if Benedict thinks it might be a wise idea to sometimes ordain married men, he may hesitate for two reasons:

 

First, once the disciple of celibacy was abandoned, it would be almost impossible to reinstate it if it turned out that, for all its problems, celibacy indeed provided a spiritual dynamism to the clergy of the Latin Church.

 

Second, if the discipline of celibacy were abandoned, it would raise expectations of changes in other matters which are far more serious, such as the ordination of women.

 

So I suspect Benedict will do nothing and let the next pope handle the problem. The next pope will also do nothing, and so on. Perhaps the Third Vatican Council will take it up in 2300.

 

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Celibacy and Sexual Abuse

in Celibacy, clergy sex abuse scandal, Uncategorized 4 Comments Tags: ,

 Richard Cross at Catholic Culture has dose some thoughtful guessimating about the rates of sexual abuse among the clergy in the Catholic Church and the clergy in the Anglican Church. 

It has to be guess work because the Anglican churches are not very forthcoming with statistics. However, I have collected material on the Anglican Church in Australia and I know that that church has a major problem with clerics, including married clerics, abusing minors. 

How does it compare with the Catholic situation. Read the details of Cross’s estimates, but I think his conclusion is reasonable. Much depends on the ordination rate of Anglican clergy, data which is simply not available for Australia. Using two estimates of the ordination rate Cross concludes: 

Hence it would be useful to create a range of ordination estimates; cutting the rate in half, yields an abuser rate estimate of 4.4%, whereas doubling the ordination rate yields an abuser rate estimate of 3.0%. The range in values contains the Roman Catholic rate of 4.0%, and in either extreme is not far distant from it. 

But no one has gathered statistics for churches, so any claim that the rate of abuse by Catholic clergy is more, or less, or about the same as other churches, is almost entirely guess work. 

I suspect that sexual abuse is higher in churches in which the clergy have a lot of prestige and therefore a lot of control over the members of the church: Catholic, Anglican, and also Pentecostal and charismatic churches in which the minister is seen as “the Lord’s anointed.” 

However, no one has done any studies, which is odd in this environment. It would be nice to have some facts rather than emotional tirades against celibacy. 

BTW, Cross’s estimate of 4% of Catholic priests is too low. Even with the numbers the bishops have released, it is more like 5%, and in the dioceses in the attorney generals or lawyers have forced full revelation, the percentage is or like 9-10%.

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The Inscrutable East

in Celibacy, clericalism, Greek Catholic Churches 2 Comments

Kiev

The New York Times has discovered the existence of an Eastern Catholic Church with a married clergy. Today’s issue contains a good article on Father Yuriy Volevetskiy and his six children.

The Times is also correct in that the attitude of the Vatican is more of toleration of the Eastern (or Greek Catholic) churches rather than an acknowledgment of their equal status.

At the insistence of the Irish-American bishops, the Vatican would not allow Eastern Catholic Churches in the United States to have married clergy, a prohibition which may still be in effect, although the Eastern Churches have started to ignore it.

I have heard stories that in the 1950s Eastern Catholic children were not allowed to receive communion in Latin churches, and just a few years ago the Baltimore Archdiocese claimed that a school stared by a Eastern Catholic parish was not a Catholic school because it was not under the jurisdiction of the Latin archdiocese of Baltimore.

The Eastern Catholics, as the Times stated, are only about 2% of the entire Catholic church, and the general Latin attitude to them does not bode well for good relations with Orthodoxy.

The Greek Catholic priests wisely shied away from any discussion of celibacy, especially in relation to the sexual abuse scandals in the Church.

All in all, I do not think that celibacy is the source of the abuse. Male sexuality and pathological narcissism are the sources of the abuse, and human irresponsibility, male and female, is the source of the toleration of abuse. Anglican and Episcopal churches have seen sexual abuse committed by married priests, and have tolerated it just as Catholic bishops have.

Celibacy brings problems, but so does a married clergy, as any married Protestant pastor can explain. The wife must be a good example, and the teenagers must not be rebellious (hah!). And then what do you with divorced priests or priests who have done something wrong but their families must also suffer any penalties the bishop imposes?

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Benedict and the Anglican Use

in Anglicans, Celibacy, Vatican 3 Comments Tags: ,

The Pope’s decision to allow the setting up of an ordinariate for Anglicans who wish to become Catholic is a generous experiment. It would not be a separate “church” like the Eastern Churches, which are self-governing churches of apostolic origin in communion with Rome. As far as I kow, no pope has ever claimed the ability to establish a “church” is this sense. 

The structure that the pope is contemplating is more like that of the military ordinariate. The bishop is appointed by the pope, and has spiritual authority over military personnel and their families. The ordinariate has its own priests and seminarians and manages its own affairs. 

The difference with the Anglicans’ is that they would have their own liturgical books, approved by Rome, and many of the clergy will initially be married. It is unclear (and perhaps Rome has not decided) whether married men will continue to be ordained for this ordinariate. 

There are already formerly-Anglican priests who converted and now function as Catholic priests. And of course Eastern Catholic churches have a married clergy, and have begun ordaining married men not just in their home territories but also in North America. If a married Catholic in the Western Church feels he has a vocation to the priesthood, all he has to do is transfer to an Eastern Church, enculturate in  that church, and ask that Church to test his call for a vocation. I have not noticed any mass movement in that direction. 

I doubt that the new Anglican ordinariate will have any significant effect in North America. I devoutly wish that there were such an Anglican-use church in the places I live. The standard of music in Catholic churches ranges from the mediocre to the truly abominable, and the translations grate on the ear of anyone who has studied English literature.

The long-term significance of the move is that it may provide a model for reintegrating Protestant Churches within the Catholic Church. It may also be a test as to whether it is worthwhile modifying the discipline of clerical celibacy in the West. From my limited contacts in higher ecclesiastical circles (my name is poison to most bishops) I sense that there is a willingness even among the most orthodox to reconsider the discipline of clerical celibacy. 

But a married clergy is hardly a panacea to the problems of sexual abuse and shortage of clergy, and brings with it a whole raft of problems. I have spoken to wives of ministers, and I have seen the toll that their husband’s ministry takes on them and their children.  

However, whatever happens, Benedict’s gesture is generous, and I hope it bears much fruit.

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Misery Loves Company

in Celibacy, clergy sex abuse scandal, Episcopal Church No Comments Tags: , ,

A priest molested a boarding school boy – but this case didn’t happen in Ireland. It was an Episcopal priest, James Lydell Tucker, a father of five, who molested boys at an upper-class Episcopal school in Austin, Texas. And the Episcopal diocese conspired to cover it up.

What are the lessons? Men don’t have to be celibate to have a messed-up sexuality, and organizations protect themselves, not the children entrusted to them.

But at least the Episcopal Church doesn’t claim that if you leave it you risk going to hell.

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Celibacy in Brazil

in Celibacy No Comments

According to Ship of Fools (who has done the most intelligible translation of the Portuguese news article): 

The final document of the 12th National Meeting for Presbyters, which ended yesterday in the Monastery of Itaici, in the city of Indaiatuba (SP), asks the Vatican for alternatives to priestly celibacy – which would mean the ordination of married men and the readmission of priests who left the ministry to get married. Approved by 430 delegates, representing all 18.685 priests from the 269 Brazilian dioceses, comprised of 9.222 parishes, the request will be sent to the Holy Congregation for the Clergy, at Rome, currently presided by Dom Claudio Cardinal Hummes, former Archbishop of São Paulo.  

Of course, the meeting is only a few hundred priests out of the thousands in Brazil, and activists who get elected to councils tend not to be representative of public opinion, but the Brazilian priests are asking that the de facto situation of married priests in Brazil become recognized de jure. It is an open secret that many priests in Brazil and African are married.  

The Catholic Church does not want to jettison the discipline of celibacy for the diocesan clergy, but it is an unhealthy situation when so many priests are in fact married (if only in what we call a common-law marriage) and the Church looks the other way. This cultivation of duplicity probably does more harm than changing the disciple of celibacy would do. Richard Sipe, with much evidence, thinks that the almost-universal failure to observe celibacy among the clergy was the main reason sexual abuse of children was tolerated. Everyone had secrets, and no one wanted the closet doors opened.

  

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