THE recent admission by Catholic Bishop Eamonn Casey of Ireland that he fathered a child with an American woman, for which he paid the princely sum of one hundred thousand pounds (about $930 000) as “maintenance” has raised questions as to the sanctity of the priests’ vow of celibacy and chastity.
Debate is now raging in the United Kingdom and a documentary entitled “Daughters of Eve” has already been screened by Yorkshire Television. The documentary is about the women who had affairs with priests. All of them claim they were pursued by the priests and did not initiate the affair.
This must have put a heavy dent on the Catholic Church where there have been cries to allow priests to marry because, after all, they are human. Most other churches allow their pastors and priests to marry.
If, as The Observer recently reported, as many as 80 000 priests may be involved in sexual relationships, then the church ought to look into the matter urgently. It will probably not cost the church its followers but might actually help the servants of The Lord to understand family problems especially things like family planning.
One wonders whether this dogmatic refusal to accept reality is not just as bad as the stance of members of the Apostolic Churches who refuse to send their children for medical treatment saying they will be saved by The Lord.
Priests are supposed to set an example to their congregations but if they are living a lie what does that serve? Only a few years ago, there was an outcry in the United States when some priests came out in the open that the only reason they had joined priesthood was because they were gay and found easy partners within the monastery. A number of nuns also confessed to being lesbians and two even wrote a book on how the church was infiltrated by lesbians.
Their problem is not only in the United Kingdom and the United States as there are wide, but hard to confirm, reports that some priests in this country have fathered children.
With traditions being what it is and fewer and fewer blacks, for example, taking up priesthood, not because they have failed to respond to the “calling” but because their families expect them to have children, there is need to change this attitude. Granted it is not everyone who wants to marry, as even in society there are avowed bachelors, so why not let those who wish to marry do so and those who do not stick that way?
What the church leaders should take note of, before blindly sticking to these vows, is to recognise that while in most cases a scandal by one individual directly affects that individual, when Catholic priests are discovered to have committed this “immoral” act it is the church rather than the individual which is blamed.
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