What Can the Catholic Church Do About its non Celibate Priests



Do you, like me, get the impression a war inside the Catholic Church is growing? My take on it all is that the Catholic Church is a square bottle and for centuries it has been trying to put a round lid on its top. The square bottle is human beings, their strengths, weaknesses and different kinds of sex drives, and the lid is some very unrealistic idea the men who run it can be holier than the general population.

Setting aside those priests who married before entering the priesthood, the vow of celibacy is to take the almost universal desire of humans to have close relationships with others and call it a sin. Make men and women miserable, the celibacy policy seems to say, and they will be better priests and nuns. It is like an idea flown in from Mars where there are not humans.

Every organization in crisis seeks to "cut its losses." There are differing ideas within the Church on how to do this.

The prevailing approach is to apologize and promise to prevent more gays from becoming priests and to exercise church discipline on those heterosexual priests who have relationships with women. Potential pedophiles would be identified and prevented from entering the priesthood. Cutting losses in the this approach would mean the volume of scandals would drop so low it would be barely noticeable.

This approach leaves in place the policy of miserable men and women serving the church. If this approach does not succeed the church is stuck with more decades of news about criminal and sinful priests and nuns.

Another way to cut losses would be to end celibacy. If celibacy as a requirement were to end it could no longer be blamed for pedophile priests--even though there would be some just by its random distribution throughout society.

Now is the opportune time for Catholics to demand priests and nuns be allowed to live the lives humans most want to live. Leave religious dogma in the library where it does not make clergy miserable.

Comments

  1. Matt NoahOctober 7, 2018 at 7:00 PM

    You are entertaining in a goofy sort of way. First, I know you don't have the best interests of the Catholic Church in your heart or your mind. Second, you have probably stepped in a Catholic Church no more than a dozen times in your life and never prayed on any of those occasions. Third, do you think anyone is taking your seriously?

    ReplyDelete

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