Priests Who Prey

If you mean sexual predators, we've had that problem in Canada too. There was a system of residential schools that many of our first nation's people were sent to that were notoriously bad. There were a number of other incidents also, including one in a Newfoundland orphanage that was made into a movie. The Boys of St. Vincent, I think it was called.

 

Big problem in Latin America with Priests essentially using nuns as sex slaves.

 

Didn't early Roman Catholics keep "church prostitutes?" There were basically women who attended the church and the needs of the priests.

I don't know about Catholics, but maybe it is time they made celibacy optional among priests.

 

IMO, it's made to be a bigger issue than it really is, but I haven't done enough research on the subject to say anything conclusive.

However, I am part of the group that is opposed to married Priests. In this country, it's a pretty big topic, but in other countries, it's not really even an issue.

 

People seem to be coming out and filing sexual abuse charges against priests who abused them as teenagers while they were in school. Especially in Australia, where the Governer General Dr Peter Holingshworth (who used to be the Anglican Archbishop) knew about other ministers sexually abusing students back in the 60's and 70's. Now they are coming out and filing all the charges, and its bad news for the GG because he's known about it for 3o years and did not do anything. But that's a whole other story which I'll tell if anyone asks.

But I think you've gotta be one fu**ed up person to want children, especially if you are a priest.

 

I think every single religion is experiencing problems along these lines.

I don't want this to sound crude or belittling, but the simple reality is that it's not biologically normal to suppress a persons sex drive to the extent that these people are expected to.

Catholics aren't even meant to masturbate...

A 40 year old man who has never had sex and never had the release of ejaculation... it's just not natural and must play incredible havoc with their minds.

Your body's natural feelings and natural physical responses (ejaculation / testosterone) just aren't meant to be suppressed to that kind of degree. Thus...the creation of predators...one's have become mentally sick through frustration...and it'a topic that no one seems willing to approach with common sense.

Western religions 'hang up's' with sex really defy belief...it's 2002 people!

The sooner people accept evolution and that sex is all part of nature, the better for everyone IMO.

 

This is true. I believe it was about 12-18 months ago that a former Lutheran minister became a Priest in Minnesota. He was married. He converted to Catholicism and was admitted to the priesthood and became a Priest. He was the first in North America, but it is more prevalent in other countries. There aren't a tremendous number of these men. It seems it is less than 100.

Our parish Priest always speaks very eloquently about the need for celibacy. Priests are effectively "married" to God and to take that away would lessen their effectiveness. It will take a loooong time for this to change. There are many Priests, Bishops, etc. who believe very strongly in the celibacy issue.

 

It's not just a Christian issue. There have been recent scandals in the Hindu community where gurus have been using their god-like status to lure young women into sleeping with them.

I think as long as only certain people are perceived as having direct a direct link to their god (or gods, in the Hindu instance) this problem will continue.

 

Yep, I actually met one a Catholic preist who was an ex Episcopalian priest visiting his daughter at a apartment complex I was thinking or renting in.

When I asked him why the Catholic Church wouldn't change the celibacy thing, he got a twinkle in his eye and said: "They might have to admit they aren't infallible."

The current policy is crazy. It has long been realized that there is no theological reason for it. It was put in around the year 1000 to keep priests from trying to pass on church property to their heirs. Sort of like televangelists and some churchs pass on the business to their kids.

At this point it is only a question of obedience to the present pope, who has tried to stack the deck to insure this and other conservative policies continue by rigging the next election for pope after he resigns or dies. (He had doubled the size of the college of cardinals, hand picking people who he thinks will continue the present policies, including the ridiculous mandatory celibacy.

I was raised as a Catholic. Most of the priests I have liked have dropped out to get married. Increasingly you see that the US has to import foreign priests as most potential American candidates have rejected the celibacy doctrine.

For an excellent balanced discussion see:
Priests and Celibacy

 

I have been a Catholic for over 40 years. In that time I have been associated with a number of Priests. I have never known one to quit the Priesthood to get married.

I find it surprising that you say "Most of the priests I have liked have dropped out to get married...". How many are you talking about?

 

It is hard to call these isolated incidents when dozens (some reports say hundreds) of children and adults are now coming forward saying they were abused by their priests. It would be one thing if this was 10 kids and one priest, but this constitutes at the very least dozens of kids and nearly as many priests. Of course, these are just the one's that have been reported AND gone public. The vast majority of childhood male-to-male molestation cases go unreported. The numbers are something like 1 in 8 actually gets reported to the authorities.

 

Bobrek. about 10. I went to Catholic schools from grade school. through university and even one year of graduate school. I remember going to at least one of the guys weddings.

This included high school teachers, college teachers and parish priests.

 

You're right, a lot of these religious rules have a pragmatic basis dressed in spiritual rhetoric. Although I did take a seminar on late antique asceticism when I was briefly flirting with becoming a mediaevalist (bad, bad idea!) and as I recall the whole celibacy thing has a lot to do with the theory of mind/body duality - things of the mind are inherently more spiritual, while desires of the body are 'worldly' and should be suppressed or ignored. It explains why many 'holy men' of the period didn't touch anyone (some stylites, for example, lived on 10-foot-high tiny platforms for years at a time), ate an extremely small amount of bread, literally survival rations, and didn't wash or groom themselves in any way. You can see how some of these theories fell by the wayside later on, but the fasting and abstinence stuff remained, to be combined with and adapted to the rules of Catholicism and other Christian sects. Interesting.

Related Beatle anecdote: didn't the Maharishi try to get it on with Mia Farrow's sister Prudence?

 

I also am a Catholic of 20+ years, and I attended a Church in Houston when I lived there. In my 10-11 years of attending there, 2 of the 3 Priests left because they became entangled with a female and one ended up getting married. I am not sure of the other. It does happen......

 

I think though, that people don't necessarily look at the logistics behind it when they want married Priests. The simple fact is that when someone is married, there is a huge amout of work that goes into that family, etc. However, priests are expected to be "on call" at all hours of the day or night. Some travel a lot. The amount of work that goes into being a priest is more than goes into any other profession -- priests are CONSTANTLY attending functions, saying mass, doing ceremonies, counseling, etc. The only priests who have much "free time" are the ones who teach, like the ones I work with, and even then they don't really have any time free. If a priest has a family on top of that, the family would suffer tremendously.

It's difficult to have a family and be a minister in any religion. I know someone who is married to a Baptist minister, and she has talked at length about how she rarely sees him because he's always working. I think that the volume of work is often more for a Catholic priest because of the lack of priests in the system here in the U.S.

I had a friend back at St. Mary's University named Brother Marion. He was the leader of our CLC (Christian Life Community) and was 79 or somewhere abouts. When he was studying to be a priest, he met a woman and they fell in love. She had been considering becoming a nun when she met him, and they both contemplated giving up the religious life and getting married. After much soul searching, Br. Marion realized that his life was meant to be in service to God through the brotherhood. The woman went ahead with her plans to join the sisterhood, but they kept in close contact throughout their initiations. When she became a nun, she took the name "Sister Marion" (I don't know her pre-nun name). The two of them had similar situations -- both had recovered from polio in their early 20s. I don't know exatly how it came to pass, but the two of them worked together, and lvied in the same community for the better part of their lives. They worked with the sick and elderly for 50 years or so together . . . almost like being married, just none of the "extracurricular" activities. They had many newspaper articles written about them, and their work -- I've never heard of anything like this anywhere else in the church. I met Br. Marion in 1998. He was living in the Marianist residence at St. Mary's, and Sr. Marion was living at a Marianist residence in St. Louis. They would call eachother every day and talk. I never met Sr. Marion, but I felt like I knew her after that time. She died in February or March of 2000. Br. Marion died that June.

Anyhow, that's my story about married priests. I have known one priest who left the priesthood, but he didn't do it to get married. It's too bad, because he was a cool guy.

 

That orphanage used to be right down the street from my house, but they ended up bulldozing it to the ground because of the scandal. All of the abused boys got large cash settlements from the government, intended to help relieve their mental anguish. There was a piece on the local news about how one of them ended up blowing all that money in two years and how he still gets nightmares about his childhood. It totally messed up his life.

I guess I'd be pretty screwed up too if I had priests sliding into bed with and molesting me every other night.

 

I don't agree with the Catholic position on this issue from my reading of scripture...however, I'm not about to tell them that they're blatantly wrong!!! Not an issue to divide over, in my view.

Paul said that it's best for someone not to be married in order to be fully devoted to God....and then he goes on to say that there are some who are extremely tempted by the flesh..so it's better for those people to enter into a marriage union with a partner so as not to live outside of God's law. I think the Catholics think that if it's better for devoted people of God to live without marriage, then that's the route they want their church leaders to take. I disagree with that position because I think it carries it farther than Paul intended...but it's certainly arguable.

but as someone else pointed out...pedophiles are more likely to be middle-aged married men than they are to be single.