A celibate priesthood...

(Tim) Every couple of months I waste some time reading the New York Times. Normally newpaperless, it's fun every now or then to catch up on the great big world.

Dateline Vatican City, October 13: An Italian monsignor was suspended from his Vatican post in which he serves "as a top official in the Vatican's Congregation for Clergy, which aims to ensure proper conduct by priests."

An italian television network broadcast interviews with a number of priests about their sodomite practices. The men were interviewed with their faces and voices obscured to avoid identification. The hapless monsignor made the mistake of being interviewed in his Vatican office. So, although his face and voice were hidden, the trappings of his office were not. During his interview the Monsignor "said he 'didn't feel he was sinning' by having sex with gay men."

Vatican spokesman, The Rev. Frederico Lombardi, assured reporters: "The case is being handled with utmost reserve."

The only man I know personally who is currently preparing for the Roman Catholic priesthood has spent his life struggling against temptations to same-sex intimacy.

Comments

[Fr. Bill]

The current and still-expanding crisis within the Roman Church in this area took some time to develop. In this regard, I offer the assessment of Fr. Paul Mankowski, S.J., a lector in Biblical Hebrew at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome (see link below).

As regards prevelance (!) of gay men in the Roman priesthood, Mankowski observes:

"I would estimate that between 50 and 60 percent of the men who entered religious life with me in the mid-70s were homosexuals who had no particular interest in the Church, but who were using the celibacy requirement of the priesthood as a way of camouflaging the real reason for the fact that they would never marry. It should be noted in this connection that the military has its own smaller but irreducible share of crypto-gays, as do roughnecks on offshore drilling rigs and merchant mariners ('I never got married because I move around so much it wouldn’t be fair on the girl...'). Perhaps a certain percentage of homosexuals in these professions can never be eliminated."

I've found Mankowski's overall analysis fascinating in its bluntness and in its conclusion:

"... the sexual abuse crisis represents no isolated phenomenon and no new failure, but rather illustrates a state of slowly worsening clerical and episcopal corruption with its roots well back into the 1940s. Its principal tributaries include a critical mass of morally depraved and psychologically defective clergymen who entered the service of Church seeking emoluments and advantages unrelated to her spiritual mission, in addition to leaders constitutionally unsuited to the exercise of the virtues of truthfulness and fortitude. The old-fashioned vices of lust, pride, and sloth have erected an administrative apparatus effective at transmitting the consolations of the Faith but powerless at correction and problem-solving. The result is a situation unamenable to reform, wherein the leaders continue to project an upbeat and positive message of ecclesial well-being to an overwhelmingly good-willed laity, a message which both speaker and hearer find more gratifying than convincing. I believe that the Crisis will deepen, though undramatically, in the foreseeable future; I believe that the policies suggested to remedy the situation will help only tangentially, and that the whole idea of an administrative programmatic approach — a “software solution,” if I may put it that way — is an example of the disease for which it purports to be the cure. I believe that reform will come, though in a future generation, and that the reformers whom God raises up will spill their blood in imitation of Christ. In short, to pilfer a line of Wilfrid Sheed, I find absolutely no grounds for optimism, and I have every reason for hope."

The whole thing is an amazing read:

http://www.catholicculture.org/library/view.cfm?recnum=5915

[Gary]

Dear Tim,

I have always thought this passage relevant concerning the Roman Catholic Church, in particular, the reference to marriage:

1 Timothy 4:1-3
"But the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons, by means of the hypocrisy of liars seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron,(men who forbid marriage) and advocate abstaining from foods which God has created to be gratefully shared in by those who believe and know the truth."

Rome's error concerning Justification causes them to go wrong almost everywhere. Shouldn't the fact that the standard method of operation promotes sin between clergy and also between clergy and laity prove the error?

The issue with celibacy and the priesthood is not a good thing gone bad, it is a bad thing that won't be acknowledged.

Jesus said that some men make themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom, He didn't say it was a requirement to be His servant.

1 Corinthians 4:6 "Now these things, brethren, I have figuratively applied to myself and Apollos for your sakes, so that in us you may learn not to exceed what is written,"

[Tim Bayly]

Dear Gary, I've often wondered about the application of 1Timothy 4 to Rome's celibate priesthood. Good comments, dear brother.

[Joel]

Any man who suppresses same-sex impulses to enter the priesthood has my awed respect (assuming he keeps his vows). Most candidates for the priesthood at least are removing themselves from temptation, but a homosexually-inclined man is having to serve the Lord while surrounded by his strongest temptation. I would hate to have to take vows of celibacy and maintain chastity as a lone man in an all-female environment, which would be analogous. (Especially with the number of practicing homosexuals already ordained, as Fr. Bill pointed out.)

Gary, I don't want to seem argumentative, but the application of the verse in Timothy to a celibate presbytery seems a stretch. It seems to me that Paul is referring to sects that forbid marriage to all their members, on the grounds that sexuality is intrinsically sinful. That wouuld fit in with the reference to food in the same passage, as food can also be a physical pleasure. Men staying single in order to serve God more fully in a vocation isn't the same thing, as Paul would be the first to attest. (I have no axe to grind in the matter; I think the eastern model, of married priests and celibate bishops, is a better way to go than the Roman system. But then, nobody asked me.)

[Ross]

To Gary and Tim: as a single man, I don't especially see the difference between how God calls me to live as a single celibate and what Rome asks of her clergy. Their calling is theoretically permanent ... and mine might be.

Anyway, if the root of the Roman church's problems is an unmarried clergy, why is it that we Protestants have such a messy record of sex scandals? Eg I grew up in the Pentecostal tradition and came to faith there, and we had a v messy record of things - despite being a movement grounded in the Holiness tradition of the nineteenth century.

[Fr. Bill]

I'd concur with Ross, here, that a requirement of celibacy is not at the root of the sexual misconduct within the Roman clergy. Far, far more credible is Mankowski's explanation, expounded in his address "What Went Wrong?" in the link above.

Of course, the requirement of celibacy provided a "cover" for gay Catholic men who wished never to be bothered by worried speculations about their failure to marry, but that is quite a different thing than what most have posited -- viz., that the requirement of celibacy created sexual tensions and pressures that "burst out" in homosexual activity.