Asking too much from Catholic priests
The Wages of Celibacy
By FRANK BRUNI, NYT
The resignation of Britain’s most senior Roman Catholic clergyman, accused of unwanted advances toward younger priests, will ratchet up the usual talk about lies, double lives and hypocrisy in the church, and rightly so. The church’s leaders preach a purity that its own clerics can’t maintain. They cast stones, and are so very far from blameless.
But before we range across that sadly familiar terrain, let’s give a moment’s thought to loneliness. And longing. And this: the pledge of celibacy that the church requires of its servants is an often cruel and corrosive thing. It runs counter to human nature. It asks too much.
Just so we’re clear: I’m not excusing priests who’ve sexually abused minors, or even talking principally about them. The British clergyman, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, isn’t charged with any such crime. He’s charged with failing to obey the moral absolutes he pronounces. And if true, the allegations represent more than yet another peek behind a false curtain of fraudulent righteousness. They’re a suggestion of celibacy’s foolishness, even its recklessness: of the way it warps the culture of the priesthood; of the unreasonable standard it sets.
Last week, just before the allegations came to light, Cardinal O’Brien raised questions about the wisdom of the church’s tradition, for the last 900 years, of consigning clerics to a single, unmarried, ostensibly sexless life. He told the BBC that the next pope should consider dropping the celibacy rule, on account of how isolated clergymen can be.
(More here.)
The resignation of Britain’s most senior Roman Catholic clergyman, accused of unwanted advances toward younger priests, will ratchet up the usual talk about lies, double lives and hypocrisy in the church, and rightly so. The church’s leaders preach a purity that its own clerics can’t maintain. They cast stones, and are so very far from blameless.
But before we range across that sadly familiar terrain, let’s give a moment’s thought to loneliness. And longing. And this: the pledge of celibacy that the church requires of its servants is an often cruel and corrosive thing. It runs counter to human nature. It asks too much.
Just so we’re clear: I’m not excusing priests who’ve sexually abused minors, or even talking principally about them. The British clergyman, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, isn’t charged with any such crime. He’s charged with failing to obey the moral absolutes he pronounces. And if true, the allegations represent more than yet another peek behind a false curtain of fraudulent righteousness. They’re a suggestion of celibacy’s foolishness, even its recklessness: of the way it warps the culture of the priesthood; of the unreasonable standard it sets.
Last week, just before the allegations came to light, Cardinal O’Brien raised questions about the wisdom of the church’s tradition, for the last 900 years, of consigning clerics to a single, unmarried, ostensibly sexless life. He told the BBC that the next pope should consider dropping the celibacy rule, on account of how isolated clergymen can be.
(More here.)
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