“We were naïve,” Mrs. Finnegan said. “We quickly discovered that many of these priests were playboys. They weren’t looking for any discernment, they were simply staying and playing. It was the women who needed the support. Unfortunately, many women accept the kind of abuse from a priest that they would never accept if they were dating another man.”
via A Mother, a Sick Son and His Father, the Priest – NYTimes.com.
This is a pretty clear instance of where institutional self-righteousness leads.
The self-righteousness is that priestly celibacy must be a good thing even though everyone knows that not all priests are celibate. The self-righteousness is believing you are doing God holy service while pretending not to know if a child is your son so that you can throw up obstacles, even though you have already acknowledged him as your son.
For those who are really celibate, I can see great advantage to singleness in pastoral ministry. But the problem is not all priests have that gift and the Roman Catholic Church, having made an issue of priestly celibacy, would rather leave a trail of wreckage than admit it made a mistake.
Their relationship, she said, made her feel happier than she ever had in her life. She would watch him work, and feel proud that he was a comfort to so many people. As a Catholic, she said she knew their relationship was wrong, but she was also swept up in the feeling that there was something spiritual and even exalted about it.
“Here I am this small-town girl, and at the time I didn’t feel that I was very attractive,” she said, “and yet he’s putting his vows on the side and he wants to be with me, in the most intimate, loving way. It was quite an honor.”
“It’s such a powerful thing because you think — and this is the illness of it, too — you are led to believe and you let yourself believe, that you are a chosen one. That you are so special,” she said, adding of the priest, “It’s not that they’re putting God aside, it’s that they’re bringing you up to their level.”
I’m not quite sure I agree. I agree that the Catholic Church did horrible things with the cover up, but in order to pin it on celibacy, we have to be able to show at least a correlation between the celibate priesthood and the abuses. (Though lack of correlation does not disprove causation, without correlation we cannot conclude causation.) And celibate Catholic clergy commit such sins about as often as married Protestant clergy, less frequently than married Public School teachers. In other words, there is no correlation between celibacy and sexual abuse.
Here’s the problem: for hundreds of years, the celibacy requirement (and the vocational system) has worked to screen out men with strong, normal, heterosexual desires. Until fairly recently, that’s the ONLY kind of desire they were targeted at screening out. (I’m not saying they didn’t try at all to avoid disordered priests, but the one thing they were most SPECIFICALLY avoiding was men who might want to get married some day, AND WERE HONEST ABOUT IT.)
What does that leave? People with limited sexual interest, people with sexual interest other than with adult women, and people who are not honest about their sexual interests.
As for the comparison with public school teachers, it’s weak because there’s no intent to find particularly holy people who show no interest in an active sexual life as public school teachers. There is nothing about sexual morality or character (apart from screening for prior convictions) on state licensing exams or teaching job applications. Comparing it to Protestant clergy is also weakened by the fact that there is far less of a prescreening system and far less accountability within “Protestantism,” which is a set of characteristics, not an institution or even a method of doing things. IOW, there’s reason to expect that Protestant ministers should be sexually holier than other people — but compared with Catholicism there’s less reason to expect that the ones who fail to be, will be prevented from getting into the ministry or dealt with when it happens.
IOW, by their own standard and given their structure, the Catholic priesthood should do better than Protestant clergy and certainly than public school teachers. Not perfect, but significantly better. But they don’t, and while correlation isn’t causation, correlations rightly give rise to considering plausible causes.
And what I failed to make clear: the extent and intensity of the cover-ups show an organization that itself believes in causation and wants to find plausible deniability.
“What does that leave? People with limited sexual interest, people with sexual interest other than with adult women, and people who are not honest about their sexual interests.”
I meant to make the point that since “people with limited sexual interest” is a very, very small part of the population, particularly among males at the ages at which priests consider vocations and are ordained, that leaves a lot of slots to be filled up by the less desirable other two kinds.
pentamom,
For all I’ve said here, the sexual abuse scandal could prove that the Catholic Church is not the Church. That’s not at issue. What is at issue is linking the abuse with celibacy. And there is *no* evidence in favor of linking the two. We can say we would like there to be evidence, and we can explain away the fact that there is no evidence, essentially manufacturing evidence when there is none. But the fact remains, there is absolutely no evidence to link sexual abuse with celibacy.
Pr. Horne,
No it doesn’t. That is one of a myriad of explanations for the cover-up. But it surely isn’t the only one, or even the most probable.
There may be no “evidence” in favor of linking the two, but if you restrict your pool of potential priests in such a way that you heavily favor people who are either disordered or dishonest (due to the demographic reality that there aren’t enough honest, healthy men with the gift of celibacy in the world to keep the ranks filled), maybe it’s worth asking whether that’s a healthy approach, even without “evidence” that it leads to a particular problem.
Especially when you’re making the claim that it’s not even a necessary position, only a discipline with certain purported advantages. A disadvantage like that staring you in the face should make you think twice.
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