The Catholic bishops, many of whom are probably secret abusers themselves, are gathering in Rome to discuss the deeply complex issue of what they should do about the legions of sexually abusive priests. They have, according to this article, concluded that, shockingly, the problem is not restricted to the U.S., but is worldwide. Imagine that, people are the same everywhere. The linked article was in yesterday’s paper. Today we learn that Pope Francis has hit on the only solution he can think of: calling priestly abusers even worse names than he ever did before. That ought to solve the problem!
You have to wonder about the fact that they never appear to discuss the fact that the job requirements for being a priest may have something to do with the prevalence of sexual deviants within their ranks. After all, while sexual abuse is not unknown among the clergy of other sects, it is comparatively rare. According to the Church of the One True Faith (that overstates the number by one, by the way), god created man, installed within him a sex drive, ordered him to be fruitful and multiply, and decreed that the act of sex was the sole manner through which new life could be created. But, oddly enough, god also decreed that sex was evil, and that one could not truly prove his (it’s always a him) love for god unless he ditched all that “be fruitful and multiply” stuff. So, only abstainers are admitted to the priesthood, and the bishops are still surprised that it turns out that people willing to claim compliance with that requirement include a lot of deviants.
The obvious solution to the Church’s problem is to abolish the medieval requirement of priestly celibacy, but that’s never discussed. You have to wonder why. There are probably a lot of decent, though deluded, men who would be glad to be priests if they could live normal lives. Given a few generations, they’d crowd out the deviants. Jesus never ordered the apostles to live celibate lives, and for hundreds of years priests could marry. The only ones that didn’t were, as Randy Newman sang in a slightly different context, “some fools in the desert, with nothing else to do, so scared of the dark they didn’t know if they were coming or going”. Celibacy was the alleged answer to nepotism. It didn’t work and it’s still not working.
But I blather. End of post. One more thing. Randy Newman’s Faust album from which the above quote is taken, is a great and, as is usual with his stuff, underrated album. (Do they still call them albums?)
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