Friday 9 August 2013

DOES PRIESTLY CELIBACY CONTRIBUTE TO PAEDOPHILIA?

DOES PRIESTLY CELIBACY CONTRIBUTE TO PAEDOPHILIA



20 PRIESTS I'VE KNOWN / KNOW:

NAME:                                                ABIDING IMPRESSION                      DISPOSITION

1. FR JOHN HYDE SJ;                      SAINTLY / PENETENTIAL                   SERIOUS
FATHER JOHN HYDE


2. FR JOE COLLINS CC                               INTENSE                                    SERIOUS

3. CANON JOHN PIERCE PP                  GAY / CELIBATE                             PIOUS

4. ARCHBISHOP J C MC QUAID             GAY / CELIBATE?                         REPRESSED
 
5. MONSIGNOR JOHN SHINE              HUMAN/ COMPASSIONATE         LEGALISTIC

6. FR BERNARD DRISCOLL PP                ANGRY/REPRESSED                  ALCOHOLIC

7. CANON MICHAEL MULLINS                    CELIBATE ?                           SEMI ALCOHOLIC

8 CANON CREED                                             BULLY                                          BULLY

9. FR VINCENT MCKINLEY                       GREEDY/REPRESSED                   BULLY

10 FR JOE MC GURNAGHAN                    SELF-OBSESSED                         100% CYNIC

11. CANON WALTER LARKIN                   CHAIN SMOKER                         DEPRESSED
CANON WALTER LARKIN


12 BISHOP CAHAL DALY                          SMALL MAN SYNDROME            BULLY

13 BISHOP WILLIAM PHILBIN                    RECLUSE                                    ANTI-SOCIAL

14 FR DENIS NEWBERRY                                OBESE                                        IMMATURE

15. FR GEORGE MC LAVERTY                        UNSTABLE                                 UNHAPPY

16 FR DES WILSON                                          PEOPLE-CENTRED                        WISE

17 FR DANIEL CURRAN                                     PAEDOPHILE                            ALCOHOLIC
FATHER DANIEL CURRAN


18 FR JAMES DONAGHY                                    PAEDOPHILE                         SELF OBSESSED

19 BISHOP PADDY WALSH                           SOCIALLY INADEQUATE          MASSOCHIST

20 BISHOP NOEL TREANOR                         SOCIALLY DISABLED          NO PERSONALITY     
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MANY PEOPLE IN THIS LIFE CHOOSE TO BE SINGLE / UNMARRIED.

SOME OF THOSE PEOPLE ARE HAPPY, OUT GOING, PRODUCTIVE AND BEAUTIFUL

OTHERS ARE UNHAPPY, RECLUSIVE, INWARD LOOKING AND HARD TO LOVE.

OPTIONAL CELIBACY IS A GIFT AND A GOOD THING - ESPECIALLY IF YOU ARE NOT USING CELIBACY TO RUN AWAY FROM LIFE AND AS AN ESCAPE FROM INTIMACY.

ENFORCED CELIBACY, IN THE CASE OF CATHOLIC PRIESTS IS NOT A GOOD THING - IN FACT AS IT HAS TURNED OUT IT IS A VERY BAD THING.             

I DO NOT BELIEVE THAT CELIBACY IS THE CAUSE OF PRIESTLY PAEDOPHILIA.

BUT I DO BELIEVE THAT IF YOU ADD OBLIGATORY CELIBACY TO THE CATHOLIC CHURCH'S NEGATIVE AND MEDIEVAL APPROACH TO HUMAN SEXUALITY YOU DO HAVE ONE OF THE CONTRIBUTORY FACTORS TO ALL KINDS OF SEXUAL ABBERATION AND ABUSE AMONG PRIESTS.

IF YOU TAKE A YOUNG MAN AT THE AGE OF 18 - LOCK HIM UP IN AN ALL MALE ENVIORNMENT FOR 6 YEARS - TELL HIM THAT SEX IS BAD AND SINFUL - AND THAT WOMEN ARE SECOND CLASS CITIZENS - THEN YOU ARE CREATING AN EMOTIONAL AND SEXUAL MISFIT.

STRAIGHT PRIESTS ARE FORBIDDEN TO HAVE SEX WITH OR MARRY WOMEN.

GAY PRIESTS ARE FORBIDDEN TO HAVE SEX WITH OR PARTNER MEN.

THE SEXUAL URGE IS SO GREAT - ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU ARE YOUNG - THEN THAT URGE DENIED - WILL CREATE MONSTROUS SITUATIONS.

IT LEADS TO EMOTIONAL AND MENTAL ILLNESS.

IT LEADS TO ADDICTIONS LIKE GREED, GAMBLING, ALCOHOLISM, DRUG ABUSE OR THE ABUSE OF POWER.

AND IT ALSO CONTRIBUTES TO PRIESTS HAVING SECRET AFFAIRS WITH MEN AND WOMEN.

AND IT LEADS TO PRIEST SEEKING SEX FROM PEOPLE WITH NO POWER TO RESIST - CHILDREN AND VULNERABLE PEOPLE. 

IT IS A CONTRIBUTORY FACTOR TO PAEDOPHILIA.


THE ROMAN CATHOLIC INSTITUTION IS VERY SICK.

ITS SICKNESS SHOWS ITSELF IN THE ABUSE OF POWER, MONEY AND SEX.

THE HEALING OF THAT INSTITUTION WILL INVOLVE:

1. MAKING CELIBACY TRULY OPTIONAL.

2. ALLOWING MARRIED PRIESTS.

3. ALLOWING WOMEN PRIESTS.

4. HAVING A 21ST THEOLOGY OF THE BEAUTY OF SEX.

5. REMOVING ABSOLUTE POWER FROM POPES, BISHOPS AND PRIESTS.

6. PLACING CHURCH FINANCES IN THE HANDS OF COMPETENT LAY MEN AND WOMEN.

ALL OF THIS REQUIRES ROOT AND BRANCH CHANGE.

THOSE IN POWER DO NOT WANT TO RELINQUISH THEIR POWER.

IS THERE HOPE ?

I DO NOT KNOW.

A PRIEST - WHO WAS VERY MATURE AND WHO HAD BEEN IN A VERY MATURE RELATIONSHIP WITH A LADY ONCE SAID TO ME:

PAT - THEY WOULD NOT LET US GET RID OF OUR SEMEN

AND IT WENT TO OUR HEADS AND MADE US MAD

ITS WAY PAST TIME THE MADNESS STOPPED





  

14 comments:

  1. Pat,

    I agree with you about the madness of compulsory celibacy.

    Sadly - I feel trapped.

    You are luck to be a free man

    D & C PP

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you for your comment.

      Yes - I am fortunate to be free an open - THE TRUTH SHALL SET YOU FREE

      I am sorry you feel trapped.

      If I can ever help get in touch.

      Pat

      Delete
  2. I agree.

    I am a PP in Derry Diocese.

    I always had a vocation to Priesthood. I never had a vocation to celibacy.

    The result - many falls along the way; many people hurt; a child I have no contact with; too much alcohol and a lot of anxiety and depression.

    The future ?????????

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You make a very important distinction between the call to priesthood and the call to celibacy.

      The Church is continuing an evil thing in saying they must go together.

      Your lack of contact with you son/daughter is the saddest part.

      Maybe there is still time to let them know you are their Dad?

      Pat

      Delete
  3. When I was a young teenager my elder brother announced to mum that he had been thinking about priesthood. I always remember my mum saying to him that if he did want to go on that he should be sure that the vocation was his own and not hers. She went on to tell him that she knew many men who went into the priesthood because their mother wanted a priest in the family and after a while they became unhappy. They felt trapped as they didn't want to offend their mothers by saying enough was enough. A failed priest brought shame on families and was seldom forgotten in the community. Mum said she knew a number of unhappy priests who were involve with women and men. Such a shame. Anyway my brother went off eventually to Australia and a wise mum is sadly no longer with us.

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  4. As a priest in the Oratory Society I feel really privileged. We desire nothing more than to open the Church to a real approach to modern society, a healthy approach for all!

    However, as ever the response to the modern world as well as to us are outdated. There are a lot of questions to our church in these times, and the answers are really old-fashioned. We are open as priests who are challenging the hierarchy on allowing women priests, married priests, same-sex marriages and lay Catholics’ voice in the election of bishops.

    I particularly think that the current hierarchy is too conservative to usher in the change that’s needed. It is really tragic. Church leaders, when they’re not accountable to the people of God, can do what they what whenever they want, it is the plain simple truth. You and I count as nothing, and thank God for it, I love my freedom to be a loving person.

    I am 5% optimistic that Pope Francis’ who calls for a “poor church, for the poor” can tame the church’s sprawling bureaucracy and shift its priorities outward. I also takes heart that Francis seems to favor talking to his flock “on one level, eye to eye, face to face.”

    In reading recent blogs by priests etc, it seems that they have been forbidden from listening to or reading anything from our Society. To forbid the people from listening and communicating, I think, is the real scandal in the local Church! Crazy in fact.

    Let us pray and communicate together.

    Priest - Oratory Society.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Schism. It's time to divide this church. When over 90% disagree on Birth control, 54% on Marriage Equality, I don't know the number but it has to be huge for women priests and married priests. The RCC is out of touch with the church as a whole. They do not understand parishioners and they have forgotten that one must look at the bible in context and when that context proves faulty and unreliable, or simply wrong it is time to change one's thinking and teaching. The church has always had issues adapting and learning and growing with modern knowledge but it is starting to kill the spirit of the church and is driving millions of people from it's doors.

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  6. Christ didn't give any keys and if he did he wold clearly grasp them back from the RCC for committing fraud and crimes in his name.

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  7. Celibacy is not the cause of pedophilia. But celibacy as idealized, institutionalised and mandated by the church provides an ideal environment for those men whose sexuality (and personality) development has been arrested at an immature level leading to their inability to establish intimate relations with another adult. Surely we should ask whether the seminary system, especially the minor seminary, may not be a factor inhibiting the development of mature heterosexual personality. At a crucial stage of personal development the young seminarian is formed in a culture of denial. He must deny his natural feelings, he must downgrade the natural order which includes those feelings, he must deny the importance of his natural family, he must relegate marriage and the procreation of children to an inferior level of life, and so he must even see children in a diminished light. When the worth of children is diminished and sexuality is immature, the distance to pedophilia is short.

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  8. Celibacy also plays a role in the church's protection of the pedophile. Because celibacy is regarded as the highest and purest state of life it is easy to understand why the church must deny any connection between the "celibate" pedophile and the institution. Serving as an ideal cover for pedophiles, institutionalized celibacy also requires the cover-up of pedophilia. The church must protect and deny its pedophiles because otherwise it would stand revealed as a human institution. Then we should have to rethink hierarchy and papal monarchy. If celibacy is not of divine decree then what is the basis of priestly and hierarchical supremacy over the laity? The pure and uncontaminated celibate male stands in supreme difference over against every other person in his ambit. If there are priestly pedophiles, sodomites and fornicators (that word should also come to the fore in any discussion of contemporary clerical mores), and these were openly acknowledged, then perhaps we could begin to rethink the (blasphemous?) ascription to God of the superiority of the celibate way of life.

    ReplyDelete
  9. 5 Arguments Against Priestly Celibacy



    Allowing priests to marry would end pedophilia.

    It is completely untrue that celibate priests are more likely to be pedophiles than any other group of men, married or not. Pedophilia affects only 0.3 percent of the population of Catholic clergy, and sexual abusers in general account for less than 2 percent of Catholic priests. These figures are comparable to rates among married men, as non-Catholic scholar Philip Jenkins points out in his book Pedophiles and Priests. Other Protestant denominations have admitted to having similar problems among their own married clergy, so clearly the problem is not with celibacy.


    A married clergy would create a larger pool of healthy priestly candidates, solving the current priest shortage.

    There are actually plenty of vocations today in faithful dioceses: Denver, Northern Virginia, and Lincoln, Nebraska, have great numbers of men entering the priesthood. If other dioceses, such as Milwaukee, want to answer the question of why they have so few vocations, the answer is simple: Challenge young men to a religious life that is demanding, countercultural, sacrificial, and loyal to the Holy Father and Catholic teaching. This is the surest way to guarantee a greater number of vocations.


    Married priests relate better to issues concerning marriage and the family.

    To put it bluntly, one doesn't need to be an adulterer to counsel other adulterers. Priests understand the sacrificial nature and sanctity of marriage in a way that few others do. Who better to counsel a person in the ways of keeping the marital vow of fidelity than one who keeps the vow of celibacy?


    It's unnatural for men to be celibate.

    This idea reduces men to animals, creatures who can't live without their sexual urges being gratified. But humans are not animals. Humans make choices about the gratification of their appetites. We can control and channel our desires in a way that sets us apart from the rest of the animal world. And again, most sexual abusers are not celibate. It's sexual license that breeds sexual abuse, not celibacy!


    Celibacy in the Latin rite is unfair. Since the Eastern rite allows married priests and the Latin rite allows married priests who have converted from Episcopalianism and Lutheranism, why can't all priests be married?

    The discipline of celibacy among priests is one of the distinctive marks of the Roman Catholic tradition. Anyone who chooses to become a priest accepts the discipline. The Eastern rite, Lutheranism, and Episcopalianism, on the other hand, have a long tradition of married priests and the infrastructure and experience to handle it. However, Eastern rite priests and married priests who have converted from Lutheranism or Episcopalianism are NOT allowed to marry after their ordination or remarry after the death of their wife. In addition, the Eastern Church only chooses bishops from among their celibate, unmarried priests, clearly demonstrating that they see an inherent value in the nature of celibacy.


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    Replies
    1. At the school board I work for there is a Priest who is Ukrainian Catholic. He is married & has children. I cannot speak to his abilities as a priest. As a teacher, Elementary is not his Forte. I think he would be a much better high school or Junior High School teacher. This is MY opinion; it doesn't mean I'm right. I do not speak for the school board I work for.

      Delete
  10. Pope Francis suggested in an interview last year that the Catholic Church's rule that priests be celibate "can change" and admitted he was tempted by a woman as a young seminarian.

    He said that the married clergy of the Eastern churches are "very good priests" and those pushing for the same in Roman Catholicism do so "with a certain pragmatism."

    For now, though, "the discipline of celibacy stands firm," he said, adding that priests should quit if they can't abstain from sex or if they get a woman pregnant.

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