4.  CELIBACY Mandatory celibacy has become a hindrance to preaching the gospel. The church values virginity over marriage. The institutional church argues that celibacy helps priests to “consecrate all their love completely and generously to Christ in the service of the church and of souls (Note 4.1).” But celibacy isn’t working. As James E. Sullivan (Note 4.2) writes, in a highly recommended article on the priesthood in America:
		Mandatory celibacy has been a problem not only for [current priests], it is also the reason why so many generous young men fail to choose the priesthood as their vocation today. They want to serve, but they also want a life of their own.
	Sullivan goes on to say what many of us know from experience and from the sobering statistics on the shortage of priests:
		Instead of enhancing the preaching of the gospel—for which it was originally intended, when made a priestly requirement at the Second Lateran Council in 1139—celibacy has now become a hindrance to that divinely appointed mission. And so, like all laws that have outlived their usefulness, the bishops realize that it should be changed. But, sadly, most of them do not express that conviction openly. They are afraid.
	Fear, Root Cause Number 7, will be discussed later. Short History of Celibacy.  We know the apostles were married, and for the first 1100 years of church history, Roman Catholic priests were allowed to marry. According to Rome Has Spoken (Note 4.3), there were three reasons for the official proclamation of clerical celibacy: 1) the passage of church lands from father to son (and thus out of the hands of the institutional church); 2) a negative view of sex and women; and 3) the rise of the celibate ideal in monastic orders. The optimistic authors say “in the last decades of the twentieth century, the church is showing signs of being ready to revert to its earlier tradition.” I assume they’re talking about the idealized church of Vatican II. When I look at the existing institutional church, I don't see such signs of reform. The pope says priests can’t even discuss married priests or women priests. Of course, the prohibition on free speech, a God- given right we Americans believe in when we take off our Catholic hat and put on our American hat, fuels even more discussion about married clergy among the laity, and—as recent events in Milwaukee and other places indicate—among the clergy as well. The reason for the increased discussion is, of course, the shortage of priests. The Shortage of Priests.  In a talk at Boston College this past March, published in the spring issue of Boston College Magazine ("The Priesthood to Come"), Father Donald Cozzens cited some exceedingly sobering statistics. Cozzens is a priest of the diocese of Cleveland who served for six years as Vicar for Religious and Clergy there and then for another six years as rector of its major seminary. Here’s some of what he said:
		•        In 1968 there were almost 5,000 diocesan seminarians studying theology in preparation for ordination and a life of pastoral ministry. In 2002 that number hovered around 2,800 --- a drop of nearly one-half. During this time frame the Catholic population has almost doubled. •        A quarter of the diocesan seminarians studying in the United States today are from other countries. Of this quarter, 83 percent intend to remain here after ordination, which means that U.S. Catholics will be ministered to by an increasing number of priests who do not fully understand their culture [or, in some cases, language] (brackets added), including the culture's growing, if belated, recognition of the full equality of women in society and church alike. •        If all of the seminarians now studying for the priesthood in the United States proceed to ordination, they will replace fewer than 50 percent of the priests who will be leaving the active ministry through retirement, death or resignation.
	Homosexuality in the Priesthood.  The priesthood in North America is disproportionately homosexual.  No one knows the exact percentage because homosexual priests are closeted.  But some estimates say that as many as 50% of priests and seminarians are gay.  Cozzens (Note 4.4) quotes Robert J. Egan writing in Commonweal as saying:
		If this estimate is close to the truth [50% of priests and seminarians have a homosexual orientation], then half of our priests and seminarians are being recruited from roughly 5 to 8 percent of the general population of American Catholic men. This is a very sobering statistic.
	In Papal Sin: Structures of Deceit (Note 4.5), Gary Wills writes:
		The Jesuit sociologist Joseph Ficher credited an account of over 30% of German priests having affairs with women. Andrew Greeley says that 25% of priests under 35 are gay, half of them sexually active. Jason Berry reports seminarians telling him Greeley's numbers should be doubled [up to 50 percent].
	These figures highlight a growing trend as more homosexuals join the ranks of the Catholic priesthood. Wills goes on:
		In some cases, there have been reports of predominantly gay seminaries and homosexual climates within them that became so pronounced that heterosexual seminarians felt uncomfortable and ultimately left. Gays themselves register the change. In a survey of 101 gay priests, those ordained before 1960 remember their seminary as having been 51% gay. Those ordained after 1981 say their seminaries were 70% gay….In fact, the admission of married men and women to the priesthood— which is bound to come anyway—may well come for the wrong reason, not because women and the community deserve this, but because of panic at the perception that the priesthood is becoming predominantly gay….Almost all the priests who left in the massive hemorrhage of the 1970s and 1980s left to marry. The homosexual priests stayed, which meant that their proportion of the whole went up even when their absolute numbers stayed the same. And now even that absolute number is rising. Many observers suspect that John Paul's real legacy to his church is a gay priesthood.
	Father Richard McBrien, a theologian at the University of Notre Dame, confirms the situation in some seminaries, saying some seminary students
		...who feel they have a genuine vocation for priesthood go into a seminary and feel very alienated by the gay culture. I don't say this in any homophobic sense. It's just the reality (Note 4.6).
	Apparently, it’s better to have homosexual men, supposedly celibate but in practice often sexually active, to minister to boys and girls than to have their mothers, fathers, or aunts minister to them. No matter that excluding women and married men from priesthood eliminates feminine gifts and experience in raising children. No matter that perpetuating the club reduces the pool for the priesthood.   One of the acknowledged experts in the area of Catholic clergy sex abuse of minors, psychiatrist and ex-priest Dr. A.W. Richard Sipe, argues strongly that there is no correlation between homosexuality and sex abuse of minors. I recommend that the reader take a look at Dr. Sipe's discussion of homosexuality in general, and situational homosexuality in particular, before he or she makes the intuitive conclusion that, because over 90% of the minors abused by priests are males, the vast majority of perpetrators must be homosexuals.  (Note 4.7).   Connection Between Celibacy and Priest Pedophilia.  What is not debatable is the link between celibacy and priest pedophilia. The following expert opinion(s) tend to buttress the common sense intuition that there’s a link between the culture and environment of celibacy and pedophile priests (if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and waddles like a duck, it’s probably a duck). A. W. Richard Sipe relates: "Doctor Lewis Hill, former medical director of Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital in Towson, Maryland, used to tell his resident psychiatrists, 'Man is a loving animal, and he is going to love whatever he is near.' The sexual histories of farm boys frequently recorded passing involvements with animals." As for males who are isolated for long periods, with restricted social outlets and limited positive sexual development, Sipe adds that "Kinsey and colleagues noted the frequency of homosexual contact 'among ranchmen, cattlemen, prospectors, lumbermen, and farming groups in general.'" It is fair to say that many have found similar phenomena in prisons. And specifically in regard to such "situational homosexuality" among Catholic priests, Sipe asserts: "At times the situation rather than the core sexual orientation of the priest dictates his sexual choice. Many reports in this category are similar. A long-time friendship and isolation in a learning or living circumstance lead to a sexual exchange between friends. Subsequent history and development can reveal an essentially heterosexual orientation and choice."   Dr. Jay Feierman, a psychiatrist who has met with hundreds of pedophilic priests at a treatment center for abusive priests in New Mexico, says celibacy is not "a natural state for humans to be in." Pointing to the celibacy requirement as part of the cause of clergy abuse of children, he explains: "If you tell a man that he's not allowed to have particular friends, he's not allowed to be affectionate, he's not allowed to be in love, he's not allowed to be a sexual being, you shouldn't be surprised at anything that happens." Gary Wills, in Chapter 12 of Papal Sin (the best I’ve read on clergy sex abuse of minors), contends that celibacy is connected to pedophilia in two ways. First, the priest is especially trusted because he is someone who has undertaken a heroic act of self-control. Parents of the molested entrusted their children to a priest almost as if to God (See Root Cause Number 1, idolatry). Second, the reverence accorded to heroic abstention has made civil officials wary of investigating, reporting, or prosecuting priests’ offenses.     Conclusion. Celibacy isn’t working. It’s linked to the shortage of priests, a disproportionately homosexual priesthood, and, most important, sex abuse of minors by priests.
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