Adele Horin
July 12, 2008
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As crowds of fervent young Catholics descend on Sydney, up rises Anthony Jones to remind us of the running sore of clerical sexual abuse and the cover-ups by the church elite.

For all the joy the World Youth Day event will bring to thousands of pilgrims, it cannot disguise the critical situation of the Catholic Church in Australia. The average priest is in his 60s, church attendance has plummeted, ordinary Catholics flout the ban on contraceptives and the legacy of sexual abuse by priests is still raw.

The issue of priestly celibacy cannot be ignored. Celibacy was once the source of a priest’s high standing and special aura. Now it is the rot undermining the church. Celibacy is the common denominator in the twin crises of sex abuse scandals and declining priest numbers.

When the Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, wrote a deceptive letter to Jones, dismissing his allegations of sexual assault against a known serial abuser, Father Terence Goodall, it was on the grounds no one else had complained - and the sex had been consensual. (Jones had a different version, accepted by the church investigator, which the cardinal ignored.)

You might jump to the conclusion from this response that Pell thinks it is all right for priests to have sex as long as it is consensual. He makes no reference in his letter to the priest’s vow of celibacy, the gravity of breaking it and the special trust people place in priests because of it - at least in 1982 when the events occurred.

But of course you would be wrong. The church hierarchy has not moved an inch on celibacy. I am no theologian - I’m a rank outsider - but I read the accounts from all over the world of priests and lay people begging the church to change its ban on married priests, and to slowly open its doors to women.

People want to examine whether the unique celibacy of the all-male priesthood is a factor in its record of sexual misconduct, and whether making celibacy optional would attract more men to the priesthood. The church had maintained pedophilia has nothing to do with celibacy. Celibacy does not make a pedophile, it is true, and marriage does not cure one. One infamous Boston pedophile priest continued to abuse children after he left the priesthood and married.

But the issue of celibacy is still highly relevant to the troubles afflicting the church. Celibacy so narrowed the pool of people willing to be priests it appears to have led to disproportionate numbers of sexually immature and confused people, and self-denying homosexuals and pedophiles, entering the seminaries.

As well, until recently the aura celibacy conferred on priests allowed them easy access to children and young people, even more so than teachers, scout leaders and coaches. Priests were presumed to be especially disciplined by their code of sexual abstinence. Their word was so credible parents might distrust their children’s accounts of abuse.

The aura of celibacy also facilitated the cover-ups. A church had even more to lose than other institutions caught up in sex abuse scandals. As Garry Wills, the author of Why I Am A Catholic, wrote: "Many parents have kept silent after church authorities begged them ’not to damage the church’ … The aura of celibacy was definitely an advantage to the predator from the outset of his crimes. It then became a further advantage when church authorities provided him protection."

The church’s recent efforts to scapegoat homosexuals, and to introduce measures to screen them out of seminaries, will not solve problems that stem from a policy of mandatory sexual repression. Homosexual pedophilia is not the church’s only problem. Priests also have sex with consenting adults, in an atmosphere of secrecy conducive to psychological damage, blackmail and cynicism. A 1995 book, The Sex Life Of The Clergy, by the Spanish psychologist Pepe Rodriguez, says 60 per cent of Spanish priests were sexually active, more than half with women, 20 per cent with men, 14 per cent with minor males and 12 per cent with minor females. The citadel of celibacy is crumbling, whether the sex is consensual or not, with homosexuals or children.

The National Council of Priests in Australia, representing almost 1700 priests, petitioned the Vatican in 2005 asking it to allow priests to marry. More than 17,000 Mass-going Catholics signed a similar petition to Australian bishops. The pleas were made on the basis that drastic action was needed to restore the number of priests, which has fallen dramatically over 30 years while the Anglican and Protestant churches have not suffered any significant shortage of trainees.

The unworkable policy of celibacy began in the 12th century as a way to stop married priests from passing on property to their children instead of to the church. It has done great damage.

A clerical elite that is anti-sex, anti-birth control, misogynist and homophobic, and will not let priests have partners, is in a crisis of its own making. When the party is over, the rot will still be there. To many inside the church, making celibacy optional has become a matter of urgency.

This story was found at: http://www.smh.com