I've been reading accounts of the report released today in Dublin concerning the Catholic Church's cover-up of sexual abuse of Irish children. For decades children (mostly boys) were raped and molested by Roman Catholic priests and the Church was more concerned with preserving its reputation and protecting its assets than in the welfare of the children.
Separately, the newly-elected head of the organization of Catholic laity in Germany – Alois Glück – called for an end of the celibacy requirement for priests.
“I would welcome allowing established married deacons to be ordained as
priests,” the president of the Central Committee of German Catholics
told daily newspaper Bild.
Alois Glück has come under massive criticism from the Church hierarchy in Germany. But the organization of dissident German Roman Catholics "Wir sind Kirche" ("We are the Church") issued a press release in support of Glück's statement:
Alois Glück hat als Präsident der katholischen Laienvertretung das Recht und
die Pflicht – … das Thema
Pflichtzölibat anzusprechen. Denn der immer dramatischer werdende
Priestermangel und der dadurch bedingte massive Abbau kirchlicher Strukturen
betrifft doch zuallererst die Gläubigen. (Alois Glueck as president of the Catholic laity association has the right and the duty to speak out about the celibacy requirement. The increasingly severe scarcity of priests and the corresponding dismantling of Church structure affects first and foremost the faithful. )
But the celibacy requirement also plays a role in high incidence of pedophilia among Roman Catholic priests. This was studied by the ex-priest Eugen Drewemann (forced out of the priesthood by Joseph Ratzinger) in his 1989 book Kleriker: Psychogramm eines Ideals. The celibacy requirement, Drewermann writes, attracts young men to the priesthood who are somehow ashamed of their sexualtiy; the Church represents a socially acceptable avenue for repressing their sexual feelings, which, in the end, find expression in destructive and harmful behavior.
"There is a strong motive to enter the priesthood: since marrying a woman is excluded as a possibility anyway but the fear of a breakthrough of homosexual acts and of relationships still persists, the sexually repressive attitude of the Roman Catholic Church promises something like a redemption from the wole dilemma."
The funny thing is, Pope Benedict XVI has actually written forcefully and eloquently about erotic love (in his first enclyclical Deus caritas est ). It is a pity that he would deny that human experience of love to his clergy.
