Quote:
Originally posted by tickledpink
Here's an article that I agree with. The scandles that we are hearing about are crimes against male children. I don't think lifting the ban on celebacy will change the behavior.
Shortly after reports of the scandal hit the national press, a consensus formed among the prestige media as to its cause: celibacy. Maureen Dowd of the New York Times summed up the consensus: "The vow of celibacy serves as a magnet for men running away from sexual feelings they are ashamed of." She added that "the allegedly celibate society these men enter ... retards their sexual development, funneling their impulses in inappropriate directions."
In essence, Dowd, and the people who agree with her, are saying that not acting on your sexual impulses will warp your personality. This is misleading nonsense.
Celibacy is not the problem. The problem in the Catholic Church is a homosexual problem. In a recent article in the National Review, Rod Dreher writes that the pedophilia scandal "cannot be understood and honestly dealt with" without taking the homosexuality of the accused priests into account.
As Dreher writes, "What we're seeing is gay men who cannot or will not keep their pants up around teenage boys. Not teenage girls. Teenage boys." Even the pro-homosexual book, The Gay Report, noted that 73 percent of gay men have had sex with teenage boys.
This is why changing the rules on celibacy would have no effect. As Bill Bennett has pointed out, such a change will do nothing about a man's sexual interest in other men...
What's needed, as Bennett and Dreher point out, is a systematic examination of the way the Catholic Church selects and trains priests. Dreher writes about a "lavender mafia" within the church that perpetuates a gay subculture, and that's what must be rooted out.
Of course, this will prompt cries of "bigotry" from the very same people who are distorting the issues today. We need to help people understand that it isn't discrimination to hold people to their vows and to uphold the virtue of chastity. We need to remind all Christians that we're all called to present our bodies as a living sacrifice to God. To say Christians can't be taught to live that way is the worst bigotry of all.
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TICKLEDPINK:
To follow up on that article, if you can get the transcript of Meet The Press from 2 weeks ago, this point was made clear by two Bishops to the moderator Tim Russert. One bishop admitted that at least 30 to 50 percent of Catholic priests are homosexual. When Tim Russert asked him if this was the problem, he said tha he "did not see a problem with having gay priests, they just need to honor their celibacy vows". I was astonished. This was a bishop who was at the meeting in Rome. WTFH? The reason the Pope took no action was because he would have to eliminate a great deal of hi s proesthood to fix the problem. Why not just do the right thing and let married priests lead your congregations.