Tag: Mandatory Celibacy

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Unfit for purpose and in denial: a church that has lost all authority

As a matter of urgency, the new pope must extend the gift of marriage to all priesthood candidates. Failure to do that will mean, in less than a generation, a priesthood comprised solely of social misfits and emotionally damaged refugees from reality.

By Kevin McKenna

Of all the theories advanced explaining why the Catholic priesthood attracts so many young gay men, this is the most valid: it is a direct consequence of the church’s official attitude to homosexuality and the way that this has insinuated itself into the fabric of what we might call a traditional Catholic family with its roots in Ireland.

In such an upbringing homosexuality is still treated as the sum of all sins. Catholic families long ago found a way of dealing with abortion, extramarital sex and divorce, the other three horsemen of the Catholic apocalypse, whenever they occurred close to home, but not homosexuality.

The others could all be processed and interpreted as very human failings stemming from the powerful instinct of physical desire and our need for affection and love. The Christian virtues of understanding, compassion and forgiveness are built to outlast initial shock and hurt in these “acceptable” moral failings. Not so homosexuality.

For how many Catholic parents have secretly prayed that their son “does not turn out gay” or obsess about their response if the eldest boy shows no interest in football and insists on taking a shower every day and buying all his own clothes? The church’s pastoral care and guidance for its own gay community is nonexistent. Catholic gays are non-people in my church; they are “los desaparecidos” and one day many of us will be called to account for how we have treated them.

The church has nothing to say to a child reared in these circumstances and who is beginning to encounter issues with his sexual identity. And so, by a perverse irony, the Catholic priesthood becomes a viable option for him. For what better way to submerge your “problem sexuality” than by committing yourself to a life of celibacy and a lifetime of reflection on the burden that God has deemed you must bear for your redemption and his glory?

Neither of these, though, explains why a church which has become a haven for homosexual men has become so obsessive about warning the rest of us about the dangers of gay sex.

Cardinal Keith O’Brien, Britain’s most senior Catholic cleric, has been accused of “inappropriate behaviour” towards four priests, stretching back 30-odd years. Thus far he has refused to “deny” the claims, merely to “contest” them. The press office for the Catholic church in Scotland, by way of explanation, lamely insists that the cardinal does not know the identity of his accusers, nor the details of which he is being accused.

Has such behaviour occurred so many times that the cardinal simply has trouble recalling specific instances? Or might he genuinely think that what the priests describe as “inappropriate behaviour” was merely a misunderstanding arising from an encounter with an over-affectionate and tactile boss?

The sullen “no comments” and “I can’t help you” are curious, too. This is an organisation that has become the church’s de facto witchfinder-generals, ever vigilant for examples of anti-Catholicism and never missing an opportunity to portray this country as bigoted and backward.

Like the entire hierarchy of the global Catholic church, they are in complete denial about a culture of sexual dysfunction that has been operating at its core for several decades. Hardly a year passes without an example of grotesque sexual behaviour, both homosexual and heterosexual, by a priest or bishop in the church.

The damage to the church is incalculable. In response to last week’s Observer story, the historian Tom Devine, a Catholic, described it as the church’s biggest crisis since the Reformation. It means that the Scottish Catholic church has lost all authority to speak on matters of human relationships until it at least recognises the root of the problem. Quite simply, the Catholic hierarchy in Scotland is no longer fit for purpose. It hasn’t been for a long time now: its default position is denial and concealment before accusing its critics of being motivated by bigotry.

The Vatican says it will investigate the complaints of the cardinal’s accusers. I have very little faith that an inquiry conducted in another country and of indeterminate legal structure and under the authority of another old man in Rome – identity, as yet, unknown – will deliver anything resembling a just outcome.

Nothing less than a full-scale investigation into the structure and leadership of the Scottish Catholic church will suffice to begin the task of recovering its lost authority. The commission to oversee this must be headed by an overseas cardinal of impeccable character and must comprise clergy and lay people in equal measure.

As a matter of urgency, the new pope must extend the gift of marriage to all priesthood candidates. Failure to do that will mean, in less than a generation, a priesthood comprised solely of social misfits and emotionally damaged refugees from reality. Ordinary Catholics have been incessantly grossly betrayed by the Catholic hierarchy. It is time we ignored the weekly collection plate until we receive some answers.

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New Polish film tackles homosexuality in Catholic Church

By Gareth Jones

Polish director Malgoska Szumowska tackles the controversial topic of homosexuality in the Roman Catholic priesthood in her film “In the Name of” that had its world premiere on Friday but she said her aim was not to deliver a political message.

“In the Name of”, the first of 19 competition entries to screen at this year’s Berlin film festival, focuses on a priest’s struggle with his sexuality while working with troubled youths in a deprived corner of rural Poland where drug and alcohol abuse are commonplace.

Director Malgoska Szumowska poses during a photocall to promote the movie “In the name” at the 63rd Berlinale International Film Festival in Berlin February 8, 2013. REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch

The film takes a swipe at the Catholic Church, which still wields huge influence in Poland, and Szumowska said she expects Polish conservatives to react negatively, but she said her main concern was to depict the loneliness of a priest’s life.

“They (the Catholic Church) don’t want to change anything. The church does not fit in with modern society,” Szumowska told a news conference after the screening.

“Out of this conflict only bad things happen. I think they are extremely closed and intolerant… But I am not a politician or an intellectual,” she added.

“We did not want to make a movie about an oppressive church… We wanted to make a movie about love.”

The priest Adam, played by Andrzej Chyra, has a good rapport with the dope-smoking, hard-talking young men in his care, playing soccer and swimming in a lake with them. He wards off his growing sexual frustration with long runs in the forest.

After rejecting the advances of a young woman parishioner Ewa, Adam strikes up a friendship with the taciturn son of a simple local family who returns his affection.

In one of the more memorable scenes in a film characterized by furtive glances, whispered confessions and a tense mood that swings swiftly from joy to despair, Adam dances with a portrait of the Pope to loud music after downing a bottle of vodka.

“It is hard to imagine a more lonely person than a priest… I spoke to many priests and they told me that it is very hard,” said Szumowska.

“I wanted to understand my character (Adam), not judge him,” she told the news conference where she was joined by Chyra and Mateusz Kosciukiewicz who played his young lover.

CHANGING TIMES

“We have very strong discussions now in Poland, about the church, about homosexuality. We now have priests leaving the church,” she said.

The film’s premiere comes just weeks after the Polish parliament rejected draft laws that would have given limited legal rights to homosexual couples in a move that disappointed many younger, urban Poles with liberal views about sex.

And yet Poland – whose parliament includes its first transsexual lawmaker – is changing.

“It was not hard getting money to make the film. The Polish Film Institute is not afraid of controversial issues. Poland is a democracy and you can say whatever you want,” she said.

Szumowska, 39, is a graduate of the famous Lodz film school where some of Poland’s greatest directors including Andrzej Wajda and Roman Polanski also studied.

Asked why she thought there were so many films from former communist central and eastern Europe screening at this year’s Berlin festival, Szumowska said it may be because of the rapid pace of change in a region that has had to embrace capitalism and democracy in a short period of time.

“Everything is still fresh… There are so many things going on, always we have strong discussions. We are always talking about who we are,” she said.

Though somber in tone – one of the boys hangs himself after a homosexual affair with another boy – “In the Name of” ends on a disconcertingly ambiguous note, showing the object of Adam’s love joining a seminary to train as a priest.

“The ending is ironic and kind of confusing but realistic,” said Szumowska.

Complete Article HERE!

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Marriage would have made me a better priest

One of Ireland’s best-known priests has revealed the anguish the Church’s requirement of mandatory clerical celibacy has caused him.

Fr Brian D’Arcy admitted: “I would have been a much better priest had I married.”

Marriage would have provided “a companion, a closeness, a friend, someone to call home” as well as requiring “making sacrifices for somebody else,” he told BBC NI. “At the end of my life, I don’t have a home. Ideally religious life is supposed to be a type of home. It isn’t, not now anyway.”

In a BBC documentary, he says he contemplated leaving the priesthood in the wake of his disciplining by the Vatican.

Last April, it emerged he had been told by the Vatican watchdog, the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, that he must submit his writings and broadcasts to an approved Church censor before publication.

“Is the price of being a priest that you stay quiet, that you don’t be a whistle blower, and that the price of dying a priest is that you don’t speak the truth?”

The documentary makers followed the Enniskillen-based priest for several months as he talked to people within the Church about whether he should stay or leave after 50 years in the Passionist order.

Among those he consu-lted were the dissident Austrian priest, Fr Helmut Schüller, who is actively lobbying for reform of some of the Church’s core teachings, as well as Cardinal Sean Brady, who affirms the priest’s media work.

He is frank about the pain of his experience of sexual abuse, which occurred when he was an 18-year-old seminarian. “I was preyed upon by a member of my own order. Of course, the threat was made that unless I co-operated with this, that I would not be ordained.”

One of his biggest regrets is returning home to Ireland from South Africa in 1994. “I was 25 years ordained in 1994 and I went to Africa to get away from it. The Smyth affair had been going on for a year before and I was so disillusioned with the priesthood that I couldn’t even celebrate my silver jubilee. One of my regrets in life is that I ever came home.”

Complete Article HERE!

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Tom Rastrelli: Priests who lie; the dilemma of sexual orientation and the priesthood

People don’t expect their priests and bishops to lie, but as Michelangelo Signorile’s recent post illustrated, clerics do lie. Some even make a virtue of it. I know this from experience, for I was ordained a Catholic priest on a lie.

In spring 2002 I walked with my spiritual director along the blacktop road encircling the seminary. He’d been my confessor and guide for two years, helping me discern God’s presence in all aspects of my life, intimate and mundane. Over our heads, a canopy of newborn leaves rustled in a sunny breeze, a welcome relief from the bitter fog that had engulfed the church and my vocational surety.

For the previous two months an unprecedented number of bishops and priests, starting with Cardinal Law of Boston, had fallen from grace for participation in the sexual abuse of children and the ensuing cover-up. Their duplicity was palpable in my knotted back and abdomen. In a few months I’d be ordained a priest. I didn’t want to do so on a lie.

“I’m coming out of the closet,” I said.

My spiritual director loosened his clerical collar and lit a cigarette. “Where’s this coming from?” he asked. A couple of chattering wrens whooshed past.

I backtracked through six years of seminary formation. At events I had hobnobbed with supposedly holy men, some of whom had been harboring pedophiles. A few had done the deed themselves. By shaking their hands, mine were dirty. I knew the ecclesiology, how the bishops’ authority stemmed from a direct line to Jesus, but they were still criminals. Who were they to declare homosexuals “intrinsically depraved”?

When I’d applied for seminary, the director of seminarians — the priest who’d recruited me — explained that orientation didn’t matter, only celibacy. But on my intake interviews he’d told me to answer “yes” when the archdiocesan psychologist asked if I was attracted to women, and “no” when he asked if I was attracted to men. It was for the greater good, he said. Frightened of being cast out and ashamed of my true nature, I had lied as instructed.

In light of the sexual abuse scandal, lying about my orientation was no longer acceptable. I thought of what a gay friend who’d left seminary had said. His words became my own: “I don’t know if I can separate my private and public selves. Isn’t integration the goal of spiritual direction?”

“Of course it is,” my spiritual director said, more gravelly than usual. He stopped and turned to me. A tree cast a web of shadows over his face. His strawberry nose grew flushed, as he gestured with his hands. “Here’s the thing, Rastrelli. You have to ask yourself: Am I going to be a gay priest, or a priest” — he rolled his fingers and cigarette through the air like a barrel — “who happens to be gay?”

“What’s the difference?” I turned my head to inhale, trying to avoid his secondhand smoke. “Either way I’m gay. It’s a part of me.”

“But are you gay first, and then a priest? Or a priest first, and then gay?” He smiled, satisfied with the distinction.

“Both/and.” I’d hit him with what he’d taught me in class. “Both/and” was the paradoxical answer for every ultimate question in Catholic theology: Scripture or tradition? Faith or works? Is Jesus divine or human? Are we sinful or good? is faith a solo or communal experience?

“Touché,” he said. We walked. He sucked his cigarette. “You’re a smart guy, Rastrelli. Give it some thought.”

I kicked a pebble onto the grass. “I have. I don’t want to lie about my sexuality.”

“It’s not lying if those asking don’t have a right to the information.”

He hadn’t even flinched. I wanted to shake the nicotine from his bones, to scream, “It was that kind of thinking that landed the bishops in the papers!” Still, part of me wanted him to be right. Silence was simpler, easier, and maybe my need to come out was just pride at work. My promise of obedience demanded that I surrender my ego. My vocation was about God, not my orientation. But couldn’t we priests be honest with one another? I had to try.

“Gay Catholics don’t have positive role models,” I said. “I don’t know of a single gay priest that’s healthy. Do you?” I stopped. He kept walking. This was as close as I’d ever come to asking him if he was gay. I suspected he was. He’d lived with another priest for decades. They vacationed and picked out carpeting together. They spoke about their cat as if she were their child. Even if he and his housemate weren’t having sex, they were a couple. I stepped in stride with him. “How am I supposed to be an integrated gay priest when I have no one to look up to? How does celibacy actually work?” I stopped again. “I’m asking you.”

He turned to me. His face became whiter than a funeral pall. “I’m sorry, Rastrelli, but that’s not a conversation I’m comfortable having with a student.”

He resumed his pace. I followed silently.

The breeze picked up. The undulating trees sounded like the ocean breaking on the shore. I choked back the urge to ask, “Are you gay?” I felt like a sinking ship in a fleet that had wandered into a minefield. After laying the mines himself, the fleet commander had ordered radio silence.

I didn’t want to drown alone. I didn’t want to hear him lie. I wanted the truth, but the truth was dangerous. Were I to come out amid sexual-abuse headlines, homophobic Catholics wrongly blaming gay priests for the scandal would demand my dismissal.

My spiritual director was right. Who were they to judge, to put my orientation before my vocation? They had no right to that knowledge. It was safer to be a priest who happened to be gay. Perhaps it was God’s will. The fear accompanying us back to the seminary told me so.

That day, I learned the unspoken rule passed down through generations of priests: the doctrine of justification for lying by clergy. I went on to be ordained a priest. I preached that “the truth will set you free” while living in silence and shame. After a long journey and much pain, I came out. I left the priesthood, finally refusing to live the lies that I’d been taught to venerate.

Complete Article HERE!

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Slovenian archbishop fathered two children, reports say

The Slovenian mystery has been solved. Archbishop Uran has been punished by the Vatican not for his involvement in a financial flop but for his infraction of the celibacy rule

The Slovenian mystery has been solved. Archbishop Uran has been punished by the Vatican not for his involvement in a financial flop but for his infraction of the celibacy rule.

Now the prelate-father will move to the northern Italian city of Trieste. The Vatican has ordered Mgr. Alojz Uran, Archbishop of Ljubljana, from 2004 to 2009 to leave Slovenia because of all the rumours going round about him breaking his celibacy vows and fathering two children, now adults, neither of whom he recognises as his. “This is a temporary measure to calm public opinion until the question is resolved,” stated Andrej Saje, spokesman for Slovenia’s bishops, on Ljubljana’s public television.

“The problem is his alleged paternity, which the former archbishop has always denied, but I think there have been some misunderstandings between him and the Holy See. Once these are cleared up, Uran will be able to return to his country,” Saje added, denying the theory that the sanctions decided by the Congregation for Bishops are linked to the financial scandal which brought the Diocese of Maribor to the brink of bankruptcy two years ago. Uran retired unexpectedly in 2009 (he is not 67) for health reasons after a heart operation, but soon rumours began to spread about him allegedly fathering two children, a fact he apparently kept secret from his Vatican superiors.

Maribor daily newspaper Vecer wrote that “despite the former archbishop categorically denying these accusations, Rome continues to suspect he did not tell the truth, also because he was said to have refused a DNA test.” Saje confirmed that three years ago the Nuncio to Ljubljana launched a procedure to “ascertain whether the rumours were true.” Now Uran is being asked to withdraw from Slovenian public life and “move to Trieste.” Saje added that Uran accepted the decision and once the issue is cleared up “he will probably be able to return home.”

“This is a preventive measure and it is not true that he was forbidden to celebrate solemn masses,” the spokesman added. No one escapes Holy See justice it appears. While the former Archbishop of Ljubljana Alojz Uran and the Archbishop of Maribor Franc Kramberger got red cards when the Vatican issued its second warning, Mgr. Uran has received an exile decree as well. He will have to leave Slovenia. And the reason? His alleged fatherhood. He will only be able to return to the country when the scandal surrounding his person has calmed down.

The former archbishop will be welcomed in one of Trieste’s ecclesiastical institutions. The Slovenian press reported that the Vatican has ordered the prelate to leave his country as soon as possible, at the latest by the end of the year, but it is unclear which part of the Canon Code exactly he has broken. Newspapers are speculating that he is involved in a financial scandal but they do not exclude a child kept secret or an internal clash between Slovenian prelates as the reason. The news has sparked the interest of the media partly because the Holy See rarely decides to take such drastic punitive measures against its bishops, but especially because the underlying reasons for the decision remain unclear. The retired prelate was apparently informed of the decision by the Congregation for Bishops.

The news was revealed by the parish priest of Šentjakob ob Savi, Vlado Bizant, a relative of Uran’s who headed the Archdiocese of Ljubljana from 2004 to 2009. Bizant said that last May the Vatican apparently forbid the former archbishop from celebrating solemn masses, ordering him to leave Slovenia. He added that Uran sees the decision as “unfair” but intends to respect it. The Apostolic Nunciature in Ljubljana and Archbishop Anton Stres neither confirmed nor denied the news, saying they had not seen the content of the correspondence between Uran and the Vatican.According to the newspapers, the prelate’s punishment is imminent and he will be moving to Trieste or to Pula in Istria in the next few months.

However, the reasons behind the Holy See’s decision to punish the archbishop are unknown. Two newspapers, Delo and Dnevnik say it is highly likely that Uran is held co-responsible for Diocese of Maribor’s financial flop. Two years ago, the Italian press revealed that the Diocese of Maribor had made a series of high risk investments in some funds, even going as far as to mortgage a number of churches and using money collected from faithful. After the collapse of the stock exchanges resulting from the economic crisis and the bankruptcy of funds linked to the Catholic Church in Maribor, hundreds of millions of Euros apparently went up in smoke, along with “part of the Slovenian Church’s reputation.”

Others claim that the Vatican did not like the fact that Uran kept quiet about having a child, though this has never actually been proven. Delo newspaper has speculated that the reason for this drastic punishment is the “tense personal relations among the Slovenian clergy.” The newspaper wrote it is unlikely that Uran’s destiny was decided without the current archbishop, Anton Stres and Uran’s predecessor, Cardinal Franc Rode – an illustrious member of the Vatican Curia and a member of the Congregation for Bishops – knowing about it.

Complete Article HERE!

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Argentine Bishop Bargallo quits over ‘amorous ties’ row

The Pope has accepted the resignation of an Argentine bishop after the publication of pictures showing him embracing a woman on a Mexican beach.

Bishop Fernando Bargallo, 57, was photographed in the sea, hugging a woman in a bikini.

He initially said she was a childhood friend, but later admitted to having had “amorous ties” with her.

Bishop Bargallo was in charge of the diocese of Merlo-Moreno, in the province of Buenos Aires.

The scandal broke last week, when an Argentine television station broadcast pictures of Monsignor Bargallo on holiday at a beach resort in Mexico in the company of a woman.

‘Childhood friend’

In one of the pictures, he is seen half-submerged in the water, embracing a woman in a bikini.

Shortly after the pictures were published, Monsignor Bargallo gave a public statement saying that the woman was a childhood friend, whom he had known all of his life.

He said the situation in which he had been photographed was “imprudent, as it could lead people to jump to the wrong conclusion”.

He asked his flock to forgive him for “the ambiguity of the pictures” and urged them to view the photos “in the context of a long friendship”.

But later that same week, Monsignor Bargallo convened the priests of his diocese and told them he had had “amorous ties” with the woman and would resign.

The Vatican said he would be replaced by Monsignor Alcides Jorge Pedro Casaretto.

Complete Article HERE!

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Catholic bishop faces Vatican’s wrath after he’s busted cavorting with a scantily-clad beauty on the beach

Argentine Bishop Fernando María Bargallo red-faced after footage emerges

Initially denied he was in video, but later admitted he played starring role
Now under investigation by the Vatican and could be de-frocked

A Catholic bishop busted cavorting on a beach with a scantily-clad beauty has claimed she is just ‘an old friend’ and insisted he is still ‘devoted to God’.
Argentine Fernando María Bargallo, 59, was left red-faced after footage emerged of him swimming and cuddling with the blonde at a secluded luxury Mexican hideaway.
He initially denied it was him in the video, but later admitted he does play a starring role, and is now under investigation by the Vatican.

He could now face being sacked from his post as Bishop for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Merlo-Moreno, a suffragan of the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires.
Bargallo said he recognised the ‘recklessness’ of his behaviour and the ‘ambiguity’ of the film, which he claimed was taken in 2011.

But he has insisted that the woman was a ‘very old friend’ who he has known ‘since I could reason’.
He said: ‘The photographs are, in effect, from an encounter in Mexico where I coincided for various reasons, two years ago, with a friend from my childhood.’

He said there were other people there, who did not appear in the images, and he had a strong relationship with the woman’s family, La Nacion reported.
But he has not responded to questions as to who funded the lavish trip to the Puerto Vallarta resort on Mexico’s Pacific coast.
Bargallo is also head of the Cáritas Latinoamérica organisation which helps the development of impoverished people across the continent.

Complete Article HERE!

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Vatican Denounces Nun Over Book on Sexuality

The Vatican’s doctrinal office on Monday denounced an American nun who taught Christian ethics at Yale Divinity School for a book that attempted to present a theological rationale for same-sex relationships, masturbation and remarriage after divorce.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said that the book, “Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics,” by Sister Margaret A. Farley, was “not consistent with authentic Catholic theology,” and should not be used by Roman Catholics.

Sister Farley, a past president of the Catholic Theological Society of America and an award-winning scholar, responded in a statement: “I can only clarify that the book was not intended to be an expression of current official Catholic teaching, nor was it aimed specifically against this teaching. It is of a different genre altogether.”

The book, she said, offers “contemporary interpretations” of justice and fairness in human sexual relations, moving away from a “taboo morality” and drawing on “present-day scientific, philosophical, theological, and biblical resources.”

The formal censure comes only weeks after the same Vatican office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, issued a stinging reprimand of the main coordinating organization of American nuns, prompting many Catholics across the country to turn out in defense of the nuns with protests, petitions and vigils.

The nuns’ organization, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, said on Friday that its board had declared that the Vatican’s accusations were “unsubstantiated,” and that it was sending its leaders to Rome to make its case. Three bishops have been appointed by the Vatican to supervise a total overhaul of the nuns’ organization.

The censure of Sister Farley, who belongs to the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, is the second time recently that a book by an American nun has been denounced by the church’s hierarchy. In 2011, the doctrine committee of U.S. bishops condemned “Quest for the Living God: Mapping Frontiers in the Theology of God,” by Sister Elizabeth A. Johnson, a professor of theology at Fordham University in New York.

The Vatican’s doctrinal office, led by an American, Cardinal William J. Levada, has spent more than two years reviewing Sister Farley’s book, which was published in 2006. The office first notified Sister Farley’s superior of its concerns in March 2010, and said it had opened a further investigation because a response she had sent to the Vatican in October 2010 hadn’t been “satisfactory.” It said her book had “been a cause of confusion among the faithful.”

The dean of Yale Divinity School, Harold W. Attridge, a Catholic layman, and the president of the Sisters of Mercy, Sister Patricia McDermott, issued statements in support of Sister Farley. So did 15 fellow scholars who, in a document released by the divinity school, testified to Sister Farley’s Catholic credentials and the influence she has had in the field of moral theology.

Cardinal Levada’s statement about the book, dated March 30 but released on Monday, said, “Among the many errors and ambiguities of this book are its positions on masturbation, homosexual acts, homosexual unions, the indissolubility of marriage and the problem of divorce and remarriage.”

He said that the book “cannot be used as a valid expression of Catholic teaching, either in counseling and formation, or in ecumenical and interreligious dialogue.” The statement said Pope Benedict XVI had approved its contents and ordered its publication. It comes as the Vatican struggles to contain a controversy over leaked documents that have shown infighting and mismanagement in the papacy of Benedict XVI, who on Sunday concluded a three-day meeting in Milan to promote family values.

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said the Vatican had not called for any sanctions against Sister Farley and was not expected to do so because she has retired from teaching. He added that it was “quite normal” that documents signed by Vatican offices are published much later than when they were signed, according to “internal bureaucratic and organizational needs.”

Sister Farley’s book finds moral and theological justifications for same-sex marriage, which aside from abortion, has become the major galvanizing political and moral issue for American bishops. The statement took Sister Farley to task for writing that same-sex marriage “can also be important in transforming the hatred, rejection, and stigmatization of gays and lesbians.” She wrote that “same-sex relationships and activities can be justified according to the same sexual ethic as heterosexual relationships and activities.”

“This opinion is not acceptable,” the Vatican statement said. It said that the Catechism of the Catholic Church says that homosexual acts are “acts of grave depravity” that are “intrinsically disordered” and “contrary to the natural law.” It said that Sister Farley’s assertion that sometimes divorce is a reasonable option for couples who have grown apart contradicted church teaching on the “indissolubility of marriage.”

The statement quoted liberally from some of the racier passages in “Just Love,” including ones in which Sister Farley writes that female masturbation “usually does not raise any moral questions at all.” She adds that “many women” have found “great good in self-pleasuring – perhaps especially in the discovery of their own possibilities for pleasure – something many had not experienced or even known about in their ordinary sexual relations with husbands or lovers.”

The Vatican said that this assessment contradicts church teaching that “the deliberate use of the sexual faculty, for whatever reason, outside of marriage is essentially contrary to its purpose.

Complete Article HERE!

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Catholic Clergy Sexual Abuse In The U.S. Context And Causes

COMMENTARY

CATHOLIC CLERGY SEXUAL ABUSE IN THE U.S.
CONTEXT AND CAUSES
A.W.RICHARD SIPE
Santa Clara University
11 May 2012

The context of sexual abuse by Roman Catholic bishops and priests is the culture of the priesthood. Roman Catholic bishops and priests constitute a privileged cast. This persists as a centuries-long reality perpetuated by the monarchical structure essential to the operation of the Roman Catholic Church. The world of RC clergy forms the setting, circumstances, and opportunities that surround the sexual activity of bishops and priests with minors and others. Clergy rule supreme in their spheres of operation—ministry of the sacraments (especially hearing confessions and celebrating mass) religious instructions/teaching, and the administration of their institutions. Parishes (and seminaries) are the most common sites of sexual contacts between priests, minors and others. The climate and culture and power of Catholic bishops and priests put the vulnerable and minors at risk for abuse within areas of clerical control.

The causes of sexual abuse by clergy are solidly rooted in human nature as it is fostered, lived, and expressed in clerical culture. Ordination into major orders (and preparation for them) marks the entrance into the clerical culture. Catholic clerical culture is characterized by homogeneity: it is an exclusively male province—males over twenty-five years of age alone are ordained priests—and they form a homosocial society where women are deprived of any authority. Candidates must promise “perfect and perpetual chastity, therefore celibacy” as a prior condition for ordination [Canon 277 #2]. That requirement confers social power on a priest. [“It was from sexual purity that the priesthood was believed to derive its power.”]

Cardinals and bishops vow absolute obedience to the Pope as the supreme authority. They, the pope’s legitimate surrogates, demand this obedience of their subordinates. [Father Yves Congar once said, “In the Catholic Church it has often seemed that a sin of the flesh was the only sin, and obedience the only virtue.”]

If a priest is apparently compliant with the demands of the culture he receives automatic status regardless of any individual merit. The culture provides an assurance of employment and continued material compensation for the duration of his life. The identification with the power system and subordination to it relives individuals of responsibility for the consequences of their individual actions. Truth telling is curtailed and subjected to the welfare of the organization (the good of the church). The prevailing rationale is that clerics’ first duty is to the higher law of God. Secrecy and loyalty are essential binding elements operative to the function of clerical cultural. Men within the clerical culture are labeled “special” since ordination confers an “ontological” superiority. Clerics thus incorporated into the culture often demonstrate qualities of dependency, entitlement, superiority/arrogance, variable degrees of psychosexual immaturity, but in many cases “they posses enormous powers of empathetic discernment—albeit for purposes of self-aggrandizement.”

These are the fundamental elements operative in the CONTEXT and CAUSES of the sexual abuse of minors and the vulnerable in whatever broader secular culture that clerical sexual abusive behavior occurs.

At the First National Conference for Victims & Survivors of Roman Catholic Clergy Abuse held in Chicago, October 1992 I said: The crisis of sexual abuse by Catholic bishops and priests “now visible is the tip of the iceberg. When the whole story of sexual abuse by presumed celibate clergy is told, it will lead to the highest corridors of Vatican City.”1 Those words that might have seemed shocking or prophetic 20 years ago simply reflect known and documented facts today.

Sexual abuse of minors by Roman Catholic clergy is a long-standing problem. It is historical, but not “history”—the crisis is not over as some bishops and others declared in 2004 and since. Detailed historical accounts of priests abusing minor girls and boys and being sexual with each other are reliable and indelible [Basil 4th Century, Peter Damian 11th Century].[i] The U.S. bishops named the situation a “crisis” in 2002 when they set up a National Review Board. That group made a public presentation of A Report on the Crisis in the Catholic Church in the United States on February 27, 2004. That is the same release date of a report on the investigation on the Nature and Scope of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests and Deacons in the United States 1950—2002 conducted by staff members of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice under the direction of Dr. Karen Terry. She served as the principal investigator of a second study on the Context and Causes of clerical abuse released in 2011. Both of these studies were sponsored by the USCCB who established the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People in 2002. The cumulative force of media exposure [Boston Globe series on priest abuse beginning January 6, 2002] civil and criminal law suites, pressure from victim advocates, and outrage of the general public precipitated and propelled American bishops (and the Vatican) into measured reactive responses. The documentation provided for the John-Jay studies comes from diocesan files. The criminal trial in Philadelphia (2012) provides one testimony to the inadequacy of Church reporting and file production. I am not alone in reviewing thousands of documented cases of clergy abuse from 1908, 1917 and a continuous supply of reports from1923 up to the present day most not listed by bishops

The ongoing phenomenon of the sexual abuse of minors is a worldwide problem among Roman Catholic clergy. Clergy abuse is not an American problem as proposed by Pope John Pau II, although it is remarkable here. Over all between six and nine percent (6-9%) of U.S. Catholic priests get sexually involved with minors: ten percent (10 %) have been documented in Boston. Eleven and one-half percent (11.5 %) of all the priests active from the Los Angeles Archdiocese in 1983 were subsequently identified as abusers.3 In 1988 the “Sensitive Claims Committee” of the Tucson, AZ diocese held the names of twenty-three percent (23%) of its priests. Ireland, England and European countries were ten to fifteen years behind the United States in bringing the problem to public attention. That is no longer the case. [On May 3, 2012 an Italian priest, Father Riccardo Seppia, of Genoa was sentenced to nine and a half years in prison for child sex abuse and attempting to recruit minors into prostitution.]

Sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy is a symptom of a culture in distress. It constitutes part of a larger pattern of sexual involvement by priests and bishops with others—some with minors, but more commonly with adult women and men. Although the latter is not illegal, such behavior by a bishop or priest is still marked in most cases by moral negligence, abuse, professional violation and hypocrisy. More importantly, ecclesiastical authority tolerates this behavior in its own ranks as long as it does not cause scandal. This indulgence characterizes the pattern and practice of clerical culture. As one bishop said on his return from a visit to Rome, “The organization to which I belong is rotten to the core and it comes from the top”. [Two conclusions are reasonable: one must assume that in any group of priests a certain number of sexual abusers are active. Second, the clerical system is not capable of monitoring itself. Grand Jury Reports form the most reliable source of the pattern and practice of clergy sex abuse and supervision/cover up by superiors. Also: Cf. Stockton ruling, Judge, May 2012]

Seminary training still does not prepare clergy for celibate/sexual reality. Seminary training produces many psychosexually impaired and retarded priests whose level of adjustment is adolescent at best.4. This tends to create a psychic and moral field and situations in which immature liaisons with young children not only become more possible but are psychosexually over-determined because children are actually on a developmental par with these men.

The celibate/sexual system that surrounds clerical culture fosters and often rewards psychosexual immaturity. Conformists and even sociopaths have a greater chance of ecclesiastical advancement than more mature and healthy clerics.5. [This is one consequence of clerical culture.]

The homosocial system of the Catholic clergy excludes women categorically from decision-making power. At the same time this male-only system glorifies the roles of virgin and mother; this juxtaposition creates a psychosocial structure that reinforces male psychosexual immaturity and malformation.

A significantly larger proportion of Catholic clergy has a homosexual orientation than does the general population.6. This has always been the case, with many saints among them; this is due in part to natural sexual biodiversity [homosexual orientation is a natural variant], a high genetic correlation between homosexual orientation and altruistic drive, and a culture dependent on control and external conformity [Absolute obedience is a cultural factor that can serve both the strong and the weak character.]

By refusing to deal honestly with the reality of homosexuality in the clerical state (and in general), Catholic teaching fosters self-alienation, and psychosexual immaturity of its clergy and encourages and enables identity confusion, sexual acting out, and moral duplicity. Clerical culture is redolent with clergy living “double lives”.

Catholic moral teaching on sexuality is based on a patently false anthropology that renders magisterial pronouncement non-credible. “Every sexual thought, word, desire, and action outside marriage is mortally sinful. Every sexual act within marriage not open to procreation is mortally sinful. In sexual matters there is no paucity of matter.” [This is irrational and unacceptable as are the rationale and pronouncements on contraception.]

Clergy deprived of a moral doctrine in which they can believe founder for moral guidance and leadership in their own lives and behavior. Sexually, priests and the hierarchy resort to denial, rationalization, and splitting in dealing with their own sexual behavior and that of their colleagues. With the laity they often apply the full wrath of the “law” [including the threat of hell].

The hierarchy cannot claim ignorance and deny the sexual practices of their own—themselves and their fellow-priests—and at the same time assert that they are credible and authoritative sources of leadership in sexual morality for the laity. They cannot responsibly [and legally] sidestep their personal and corporate roles as enablers.

Chief justice Anne Burke (IL) who served as the interim Chair of the National Review Board established by the U.S. Bishops in 2002 said after extensive personal contact with the hierarchy, “they do not want to change. They want Business as usual”. [Governor Frank Keating who served as Justice Burke’s predecessor as Board Chair said that the bishops operate like “cosa nostra”.]

In the past ten years the U.S. bishops have instituted some productive and useful educational ventures that alert certain populations to the dangers of abuse. Certainly these will protect some children from sexual predators. [They fail to notify parishioners that priests can be dangerous. Bishops were not included in the Dallas Charter Zero Tolerance policy. There still is no system for holding bishops accountable. The person charged with oversight of alleged bishop abusers is Bishop Robert Brom, a credibly alleged abuser himself.]

The context of child abuse by Roman Catholic clergy—the tip of an iceberg so painfully visible to us now—does not stand on its own. Sexual abuse by clergy is the product of a well-established clerical culture. The fundamental causes of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy are within the clerical culture. Only an honest examination and Reformation of that culture will address adequately the problem of clerical malfeasance about which sex is central.7.

I repeat what I said in 1992: “Difficult as it is to accept, we are certain that the hierarchical and power structures beneath the surface of dioceses and religious societies form the essence of a secret world that selects, cultivates, supports, and will continue to produce and protect child abusers within the ranks of the Catholic clergy. These hidden forces are elements far more dangerous to the sexual health and welfare of Christ’s Church than those already identified”

Complete Article HERE!

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Are Catholic priests leading secret double lives?

For those hoping the debate about priestly celibacy would die down, think again–An Australian priest is pouring gasoline on the fire by claiming that many priests around the world have already cast off their vows to remain celibate.

Father Kevin Lee, a priest in Sydney, Australia, came forward this week to admit that he’s been secretly married for a full year, and that he hasn’t done much to hide this fact from church leaders, who turned a blind eye to his actions. That is, of course, until he publicly admitted his secret marriage, which immediately led to his removal from ministry. So why come forward?

Lee, who is now writing a tell-all book about priestly celibacy, says he wanted to call attention to just how many priests aren’t following that vow in hopes that the church will make a change to the requirement.

“That’s one of the reasons that’s motivated me to make public my admission that I’m one of those people who’s been a pretender: To draw to the attention of the public that there are more like me, in fact most of them,” he told an Australian TV news station.

Of course such a sensational story is going to gain traction in the media, but Lee’s claim that “most” priests are not following their vow of celibacy seems highly suspect. We know some priests broke that vow by sexually abusing minors. We’ve seen high profile cases, like that of former Los Angeles Auxiliary Bishop Gabino Zavala, where a priest has has a secret relationship and, in Zavala’s case, fathered children. And it would be naive to think that some priests have not at one point or another at least been tempted to break the vow of celibacy.

There are others who have left the priesthood to marry, and surely many more who have felt a call to marriage but have sacrificed that life because of a stronger calling to serve as a priest. But even if they have struggled with the vow of celibacy, that doesn’t mean “most” are secretly hiding wives, girlfriends, or other relationships.

Still, with priests like Lee making such claims and the growing presence of married Roman Catholic priests who are former Anglicans, the debate is likely to continue. We can dismiss the question of whether priests already are getting married in secret, but expect the bigger question–should priests be allowed to marry if they so choose?–to stick around for a while.

Complete Article HERE!