A Three-Point Plan

Diarmaid MacCulloch at The Times has written a good article in which he lays out the case for this being a structural problem with the clergy:

Let me suggest a three-point plan to his Holiness:

First: stop implying that this is only a matter of a few bad apples in the basket. Don’t try to blame society for permissiveness and giving clergy a wrong model. This problem goes back centuries, and it resides in the structures of the Church.

Second: end the Catholic Church’s fatal confusion between two honourable vocations — celibacy and the priesthood. Some people are called to celibacy so that by renouncing one particular human relationship, they can open themselves in chastity to many more. Others are called to priesthood, a representative and often a leadership role in the Church. But it has been a nine-century-long folly to say that all priests should be celibate.

Third: put an end to the equally fatal notion that ordination effects a great change in the relationship of a priest to the rest of the human race. The problem is that special people may feel that they are entitled to play by special rules. That’s how a great many well-meaning people, anguished by their inappropriate and externally-imposed call to celibacy, have distorted their religious vocation, and worked out their frustrations by playing sexual power-games with the innocent and vulnerable. And it's also why the Church, assuming special rules applied to special people, covered up for them afterwards.

I think this third point must also address the structure of seminary formation, whereby seminarians are distanced from the rest of society, institutionalized in their own little compound, socialized into the narrow world of the clergy, and treated in a manner that is coddling and patronizing all while it is heavily implied (or directly said) that the ontological nature of their priesthood in the abstract somehow makes them concretely and practically different from other people even outside their ministerial functions.

We've discussed this before, and I've talked to a bunch of guys now who, though we feel personally called to celibacy and even the priesthood, just find cringe-worthy the idea of spending all day in the same building doing the same activities with a bunch of adult male virgins. Not to denigrate adult male virginity for the right motives, but it does raise some questions (and some eyebrows) in a society that doesn't value that. Especially when there is a whole crowd of them in an authoritarian environment wearing the same clothes, thinking the same thoughts, following a rigid schedule of common activities. Sure, they can say that it's a "sacrifice" because of their moral views, but there will always be that lingering doubt (subconsciously or explicitly) in many of our minds about whether these men adopted their religion and their vocation simply as a convenient justification for their own inhibitions or hang-ups or deviancy or pathetic lack of real manhood.

In other words, they can say their abnormality (relative to society) is due to their moral beliefs, but at the end of the day I suspect that even if Catholicism didn't exist...many of them would still be adult male virgins, if you see what I mean. I guess no one's motives are totally pure in finding religion, but when the basis of your religion is your own psychosexual make-up then that's not going to be a healthy situation. And when and if sexual awakening finally does happen, you're going to wind up with a lot of confusion and serious problems with celibacy.

I'm less willing that Mr. MacCulloch to say that celibacy caused any otherwise healthy men to become perverts. But as I've discussed several times before, the sort of institutional environment where Sex is linked irrevocably with Power...is bound to attract a lot of people who are already freaks.

What's more, though, it cuts priests off from lay society, puts them on a pedestal in their own little world, makes their strongest bonds within the institution, and only reinforces an us-them mentality regarding everyone else.

But molesters remain a tiny percent. The real problem is those who did nothing, covered it up, or (in its current manifestation) defend the institution like a good-little bureaucrat rather than fighting for reform. It is clear that many seminarians and priests are not "normal guys" but rather awkward nerdy types. And the connection of that with mandatory celibacy is clear: if you ban sex and family life, you're going to wind up attracting a lot of frustrated beta-males, petty and weak and defiantly out-of-touch with mainstream society, as the behavior of the Pope and bishops is showing this week. They just don't know how to take decisive action.

We need some alphas in there to clean house and stop all this old-womanly dithering and hand-wringing, real guys willing to kick ass and take names. I'm not saying there isn't a place for other personalities (and optional celibacy) too, but they need to be led by the strong men; putting betas in charge is always a disaster (case in point: the current one). But you just aren't going to get many of those alphas (at least not in this day and age) if you expect them not to have sex or a family. Instead, you'll just keep getting Milhouses and Milquetoasts.