Cache of child porn found at seminary - in Vienna, Austria

I hear the bishops are preparing a strict new policy:

"Anything that has to do with the practice of photography has no place at a seminary for priests."

What would Jesus say to the RCC?

Matthew
23-25 "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you cleanse the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of extortion and rapacity.
23-26 You blind Pharisee! first cleanse the inside of the cup and of the plate, that the outside also may be clean.
23-27 "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within they are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness.
23-28 So you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but within you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.

And what would Jesus do?

Mark
9-42 "Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung round his neck and he were thrown into the sea.

See also the recent series by the Dallas Morning Herald exposing the world wide cover up of pedophile priests by the RCC. It does for the church as a whole what the Boston Globe did for the Archdiocese of Boston and the American Catholic church.

As a cradle Catholic, I am in despair over the rot, perversion and corruption infecting the Church across the globe and reaching the highest levels. Even though only 5% of priests were directly involved, the other 95% were covering for them and are equally culpable.

Disgust doesn't begin to described how I feel. If the next pope doesn''t allow sexually healthy, emotionally mature, MARRIED priests (i.e., normal men as opposed to the abnormal ones dominating the priesthood); I'm going to walk away.

Dan

Dan, it's slanderous for you to say that 95% of the priests covered up for the 5% (actually 1-2%) with crotch issues.

Speaking as a married person who associates with other married people, I can tell you that psychological health and the marital state do not always coincide. It would be nice to think that we could just abolish celebacy and everything would be fine, but considering sexual abuse is higher among the general population than among the Catholic clergy, that would not seem to be the answer.

The solution isn't to walk away. It's to pray and do penance on behalf of other sinners, and to work to purify the part of the Church you live in.

Ponder the words of Peter: "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life." If you know what the Church is, and you leave her, you place your soul in mortal danger. Please consider that before you do anything rash.

As for celibacy, let me quote Jesus again:

Matthew
7-17 So, every sound tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears evil fruit.
7-18 A sound tree cannot bear evil fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit.

Celibacy has always been a source of scandal for the church. Even in the so called good old days, the typical parish priest had a "housekeeper" who did more than dusting and vacuuming. It was also common for senior churchmen to keep mistresses, either discretely or openly.

As for your claim that sexual abuse is higher in the general population - you do realize that the priesthood is today a primarily Gay profession? Estimates of gays in the priesthood run as high as 2/3 (see "Goodbye Good Men" and "Goodbye Father") The bishops report gave a figure of 6%, which would be much higher if priests that had died before the scandal erupted were included. The vast majority of the abuse is not technically pedophilia, actual abuse of children is rare. What the scandals are mostly about is ephibophilia (teen age boys as opposed to children).

It is not slanderous to accuse the rest of the priesthood of covering up, when everyone up to the level of archbishop and cardinal was complicit in hiding and protecting these monsters. The most generous one can be to the other priests is to discribe them as hopelessly naive and clueless while all this was happening under their noses.

As for endangering my soul, are you claiming that there "is no salvation outside the church", and only Catholics go to Heaven?

If you leave Holy Mother Church, with full knowledge of what she is, your salvation is in grave danger. That is the eternal teaching of the Church, which Jesus created to be the instrument of man's salvation.

Does that limit God to saving baptized Catholics? No. He can save whomever he pleases. But to those who know the truth, the truth is binding; to reject the Church is to reject the mystical Body of Christ.

As for your point about celebacy "always" being a problem for the Church, I would say it's more accurate to say that human frailty has been a problem for the Church. Where discipline is lax, priests (and their flocks) tend to go their own way, and not just in sexual matters. You're right that at certain times and places, priests kept concubines, but that does not argue against celebacy any more than the existence of reckless drivers disproves the need for speed limits on highways.

Dan -

You're going to have to back up your claims with some facts if you want to appear to be credible. The paragraph that begins "Celibacy has always been a source of scandal for the church" would be a good place to start.

Celibacy is a true calling to intimacy with Christ that allows one to give their all, body and soul, to the Lord for His glory. St. Paul recommends it, in fact see 1 Corinthians 7:7-38.

You would also do well to not say "the priesthood" covered up abuse of children. It was individual priests and Bishops who covered up the abuse of children. You imply that it was all priests, everywhere who covered up the abuse of children. This is not so and it can't be plausibly even suggested. Not all the Bishops and Cardinals are guilty of the covered-up. You make a fallacy of composition, inferring that the whole of the Catholic clergy are guilty merely because some are guilty.

In fact you write like you've been listening to anti-Catholics talk about Catholicism. Actually, you write like you've been saying anti-Catholic things a long time. Dan, if you're not Catholic just own up to it. Let's have an honest discussion about these issues instead of lobbing hand grenades in our comments.

Study: One in 10 students encounters sex abuse

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5332880/

Tell us, Dan- do you think celibacy is responsible for this?

You've misread the 1 Corinthians passage, which recommends marriage. Peter himself was married.

Only the Western Church, after about A.D. 1000 , had the requirement for priestly celebacy. It is a novelty.

All of the rest of the Church, for the past 20 centuries, has allowed priestly marriage.

Not that the celebacy issue has any great significance to the pederasty situation. The only impact -that- would have is that sodomites might think the (western) priesthood to be good hunting grounds. Priests who haven't given themselves over, over and over again, to depravity and hardening of heart (Romans 1) aren't going to be attracted to males, but to females. Which is why God, through Paul, recommends to the Corinthians who imagine that celebacy is spiritually superior (nascent gnosticism, probably from Philo Alexandrinus or Simon Magus), to marry, since there is so much immorality.

Puzzled -

Please elaborate! I don't think I am misreading 1 Cor 7 - look at verses 7-9:

Indeed, I wish everyone to be as I am, but each has a particular gift from God, one of one kind and one of another.

Now to the unmarried and to widows, I say: it is a good thing for them to remain as they are, as I do, but if they cannot exercise self-control they should marry, for it is better to marry than to be on fire.

Eric - Does this mean Martin Luther is burning in Hell? If a Catholic rejects a Borgia Pope or Pius XII, is he rejecting the Mystical Body of Christ? If fraility is the problem then the church is asking too much of mere humans and is committing the same sin as the Pharisees that Jesus condemned:

Matthew
23-4 They bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with their finger.

As for keeping "concubines" (you make it sound like a medieval practice), the straight ones still do. As a pre-Vatican II kid attending parochial school my priest had a "housekeeper".

Let me repeat: A sexually normal, emotionally healthy man will not willingly chose a lifetime without sex. He will be either sexually and emotionally abnormal, or be a hypocrite. Either way its a source of scandal and this particularily poisonous tree needs to be uprooted.

Sal - Paul said it is "better to marry than to burn". In Genesis, God Himself stated that it was "not good for man to be alone". And you must have missed my follow up post, so let me repeat. Those priests that did not directly cover up the scandal or turn a blind eye to it are guilty of criminal naivity and cluelessness. They cover for each other and protect each other with an "omerta" (code of silence) that Tony Soprano and Don Corleone would envy.

As for criticising the RCC for its failings, I am doing my duty as a Catholic. So don't shoot the messenger with accusations of anti-Catholicism. If I wasn't a Catholic who loved his Church, do you think I'd care one way or the other? I don't know about you, but I prefer to worship and adore God - not clerics.

A sexually normal, emotionally healthy man will not willingly chose a lifetime without sex. He will be either sexually and emotionally abnormal, or be a hypocrite. Either way its a source of scandal and this particularily poisonous tree needs to be uprooted.

So all the celibate saints, from St. Paul on down, have been either freaks, perverts, hypocrits or weirdos. If you believe the whole history of the Catholic Church is one big hypocritical lie, and if you believe that your salvation will not be negatively effected in any way by leaving, why are you still in the Church?

It's also interesting to see that Dan put Pius XII right up there with Borgia. Obviously he's read one or more of the Pius-was-a-crypto-Nazi books and accepted their assertions uncritically.

Puzzled, the Church (east and west) never allowed priests to marry, and still does not.

Married men, however, have been (and still can be) ordained, except in the Latin Church (where notable exceptions have, however, been made).

"A sexually normal, emotionally healthy man will not willingly chose a lifetime without sex. He will be either sexually and emotionally abnormal, or be a hypocrite."

Um ... Jesus of Nazareth?

Puzzled ... the claim "only the Western Church, after about A.D. 1000, had the requirement for priestly celibacy. It is a novelty" is not technically false, but so grossly misleading as to erase the distinction.

First of all, something around 1,000 years old in your account (actually closer to 850, but that's immaterial) can hardly be called "a novelty." Second, celibacy was always both an ideal and the general norm, if not universally mandatory, among priests. Third, celibacy has always been mandatory for bishops (and still is today in the East) and was the state of Jesus life.

This last datum, by the way and as noted above, pretty makes takes off the table any possible claim that celibacy is somehow an unhealthy state.

Third, celibacy has always been mandatory for bishops

That's not true. In Biblical times, there were married Bishops (see 1st Timothy). It is true, however, that the requirement of celibacy for Bishops did develop very early on for both East and West.

"A sexually normal, emotionally healthy man will not willingly chose a lifetime without sex. He will be either sexually and emotionally abnormal, or be a hypocrite. Either way its a source of scandal and this particularily poisonous tree needs to be uprooted."

Gee thanks - I assume that you'd apply that to women also.

Centuries and centuries of humans have lived chastely or celibatly without causing harm to anyone.

Most people tend to think I'm a normal, healthy person with values. I'm single and follow the Church's teachings. Not only for the sake of my soul, but also my health.

Should I marry, I will enjoy a wonderful sex life without contracepting. Should I stay single, I will enjoy a wonderful life without sex.

Pius XII (1939-1958) was the last truly effective Pope.

Well I never....I guess I'll join the sexually imbalanced crowd...single, celibate and stark raving looney.........his crisis has nothing to do with celibacy but everything to do with the feminist-lavender-lefty take over of the seminaries years ago....the fruit has only ripened.AS an Eastern Catholic I know several married clergy and they look might exhausted to me....

Try to answer you all with one post

The Poster - By saints I mean those like St. Peter (the first pope was married) and St Augustine (who used to pray, "Give me chastity oh Lord - but not yet!"). As for Paul, the case could be made that he was a repressed Gay (see AN Wilson's biography). Those who chose celibacy are by definition "abnormal" as they lay outside the "norms" of human sexual behavior.

As for why I am still in the Church, I can only quote GK Chesterton, "The severed hand cannot heal". The Church is in desparate need of healing and that healing won't be provided by the likes of rad trads who can't see the problem because their heads are stuck ostrich-like in the dead past. Being in denial is not helping, these problems have to be faced and addressed with courage. A malignancy has grown and spread throughout the Mystical Body of Christ. If the patient is to be saved, radical surgery will be needed.

Victor - I hate to point this out to you but Jesus was the Son of God which makes it wrong to compare Him in any way to us poor, sinful humans.

Cathy - I'm happy for you and I'm sure you are a very good and decent person. But men are different. We're made different and wired different when it comes to sex.

Peter - This crisis has everything to with celibacy. Celibacy is also the reason why we are running out of priests and the priesthood we have is a primarily Gay profession. To say that "celibacy does not cause the crisis" is like saying "the swamp doesn't cause mosquitos". Both statements are technically true, but besides the point.

To sum it up, if we are to "judge a tree by the fruit it yields", celibacy can only be condemned as a source of evil and hypocrisy. It is a burden too heavy for all but the most exceptional of men and will therefore always be a well spring of scandal. Would a celibate priesthood that kept its vows be the optimum situation? Perhaps, but the Church doesn't seem to understand that the "best is the enemy of the good enough". So unless you think that married rabbis, ministers and orthodox priests are inherently inferior, than a married priesthood is good enough.

As for Paul, the case could be made that he was a repressed Gay (see AN Wilson's biography).

First we're supposed to believe Hitler's Pope and now we're supposed to believe one of the hack-jobs that A.N. Wilson likes to write about Christians past and present (ever seen the one he did on C.S. Lewis?). Methinks there's a reason why you have a warped view of Church history.

dand (" 'Hitler's Pope' and AN Wilson are reliable sources") wrote:

"Victor - I hate to point this out to you but Jesus was the Son of God which makes it wrong to compare Him in any way to us poor, sinful humans."

dand - I hate to point this out to you but Jesus was also fully man, which makes it more wrong to refuse to compare Him in any way (my emphases) to us poor, sinful humans.

dand, I came from the Lutheran tradition, where just about every pastor is married. I do think it's an inferior state to the celebate life (as did St. Paul, and as the Church has taught from the beginning).

Of the several reasons why this is true, I will select one: you have less time. As a husband and father of three little kids, I feel the pressures of time quite keenly. I can only imagine what it would be like to say Mass many times a week, minister to the sick in the middle of the night, run a church (which is, when you think about it, as much work as running a small business), bury the dead, prepare couples for marriage in the evenings, etc.

If we asked priests to do that, we'd have to multiply the number of parishes to make them the size of most Protestant congregations (typically 100-200 active families). That would cost a lot of money, and you'd need more priests to serve them. Also, you'd have to pay the priests far more, because they'd be supporting a family, and probably a big family at that. You think a newly-downsized parish would want to pay to send seven kids to college?

If you can show that celebacy has been a problem for the Church *throughout time and space*, then you'll have a point. But merely saying that there are sexual problems in the clergy, and the clergy are celebate, is too simplistic to explain the phenomenon of clerical child abuse.

I suspect you've already made up your mind, and you are not willing to back up your statement that celebacy has been a problem, always and everywhere. But I'm willing to be surprised.