The married Greek Catholic clergy prove that celibacy is not essential to the priesthood. The rule could be changed without the need to change any Catholic doctrine. As a layman remarked to me, “I don’t care who a priest sleeps with after 10 o’clock at night, so long as he’s a priest until then.”
Nonetheless, it is intellectually dishonest Catholic-bashing blame celibacy for the problems of the church or the priesthood. The lower clergy (parish priests) are as likely to reject the Vatican’s rigid approach to marital sex as laity. Priests do not have the emotional maturity of 13-year-olds, as ex-priest A. W. Richard Sipe has argued. Studies of representative samples of priests (which his samples are not) show that they are as mature and as capable of interpersonal intimacy as are married men of similar age and education. Nor are priests desperately unhappy or unfulfilled. Psychologist Thomas Nestor of Boston, in a study of Chicago priests, found that they were more likely to be satisfied with their work and their careers and their lives than a comparable sample of laymen. Priests may be the happiest men in America (or perhaps only the least unhappy). The shortage of priestly vocations is the result not of celibacy but of the lack of recruiting by the two principal recruitment officers-priests and mothers. The notion that celibacy is any more difficult in America today than it was 40 years ago, when my generation went into the priesthood, is hilarious. It’s always been difficult and never impossible, not if a man is happy in his work. Most priests still try to honor their pledge.
Finally, as someone who has been warning the church about the sexual-abuse problem since 1986, 1 insist that it is intolerable antiCatholic bigotry to blame the present crisis of sexual abuse of young people by priests on celibacy. A certain proportion of priests (3.27 percent in the Archdiocese of Chicago) abuse children not because they are sexually starved but because their “love maps”–their objects of sexual desire-have been vandalized childhood experiences of their own. Pedophilia, whatever form, would be the result of celibacy if, and only if it we not also a problem among others working in the professions that access to children. Most pedophiles are married men. If the priest pedophiles were married they would continue to prey on children perhaps their own children. Nor can the pedophile problem blamed on “unhealthy” attitudes toward sex among Roman Catholics that have been created by celibacy. In fact, as research done by the National Opinion Research Center and by The Gallup Organization demonstrates, Catholics have sex more often, are more playful their sex lives and enjoy sex more than Protestants. They also more tolerant of homosexuals.
In the present context, I do not intend to argue either for or against celibacy. I object rather to its becoming a scapegoat every problem in the priesthood and in the church. I charge church leaders–all the way up to the top–with failure to make the case for it by any other argument than, “This is the law. Period.” My research shows, example, that a confidant relationship between a celibate priest and a married woman produces a payoff in marital happiness and sexual fulfillment for both her and her husband. On the basis of my personal experience of 40 years in the priesthood, I strongly support celibacy. I also support the ordination of women, tomorrow if possible. Finally I argue for a “priest” corp like the Peace Corps, in which men (and I hope women) making commitments to the priesthood for limited terms. It would be obvious adaptation to changing life expectancy: a man will be a priest now for 50 years instead of 12, as was the case only a century ago.
If someone bums out after a couple of terms or can no longer stand teenage noise or wants to start a family of his own, let him g forth in dignity and gratitude. Why assume that the priesthood in this age of long life expectancy must be a lifetime vocation? Anyone who can put up with teenage noise after 40 either is weird or ha special gifts of nature and grace. It is not fair to demand this of priests. That I still enjoy working with noisy teenagers, young me and women (the latter more) may say something about me. Or about a certain kind of celibacy.
