Journal Community


Explore Group

Should the Vatican drop mandatory celibacy for Roman Catholic priests?






« »
Recommend a comment by clicking the recommendation icon

    I disagree with people who say that the Church's policies lead to sexual abuse. Why do people think that if a priest is allowed to marry, he will not be sexually abusive toward children? That is ridiculous. Many pedophiles are married and some abuse their own children. What we need to stop is the Church as a haven for pedophiles. How do we do that? I don't know -- maybe psychological testing of some sort.
    I do believe it's possible to take a vow of chastity and celibacy and live up to those vows. It's called resisting temptation. And if you're a man of the cloth, I would think that you would trust your faith in God enough to resist that temptation. If you cannot, then you need to leave the priesthood, period, bottom line.
    The priest is essentially married to his congregation. Having a wife and children takes his focus off the congregation as his No. 1 concern. No man can serve two masters.



      Melius est enim nubere, quàm uri... It's better to marry [or to have a hetero / homosexual relationship], than to burn [with sexual disires]... (1 Cor 7:9) Mandatory celibacy leads in many cases to 'secret' relationships. So it's better to accept voluntary celibacy. This is a matter of church policy...

      Spiritually there's no difference between a celibate priest and a married priest!

      1 Recommendation



        Their concerns were not with truth but with practical knowledge. They practiced rhetoric in order to persuade and not to discover truth. Their art was to persuade the crowd and not to convince people of the truth. They moved thought from cosmology and cosmogony and theogony, stories of the gods and the universe, to a concern for humanity. Their focus was human civilization and human customs. Their theatre was the ethical and political problems of immediate concern for humans. They put the individual human being at the centre of all thought and value. They did not hold for any universals; not universal truths nor universal values. They sought and took payment for their lessons at speaking (and writing), maybe your case Pieter? Good night my friend, sleep welll, and try to be more serious.



      @Luis (I don't see under your postings: Link Reply to Luis Wetzler JD. This is a reply to your comment starting with: 'Pieter the Sophists in Greece held no values other than winning and succeeding')

      I know this kind of 'labelling'. But do you use this because you don't like my comments? Because my comments are not conform your convinction or believe? Again, try to use arguments!

      Why - do you think - should the Vatican don't drop mandatory celibacy for Roman Catholic priests? What I think I've already explained:

      - biblically: 'it's better to marry or start a hetero or homosexual relationship, than to burn with sexual desires',
      - practically: many priests have problems with mandatory celibacy and
      - psychologically: mandatory celibacy can be a cause of sexual abuse conform a scientific report of a child psychiatrist.


    • So Carole, is the Catholic Church the only church that will "be saved" when Armageddon comes? The Protestant, Episcopal, Jewish and other theocracies will all go to Hell?

      Yours is a stupid post, put up by one with no understanding of human beings.

      Of course celibacy should be abolished! It isn't being observed now, and hasn't been for centuries. Priests simply use the rear-ends of little boys and an occasional little girl to take care of their sexual urges. And the Pope condones this sexual abuse in helping to cover up those who have been reported to him by others, so as not to need to enforce a ridiculous ruling that applies only to the Catholic Church. Given the facts as we now know them, perhaps the Pope hasn't kept his in his pants, either.



    Jesus said celibacy was a gift to God not a requirement.



      Our Lord Jesus Christ never expressed any opinion about celibacy, just reading the Holy Gospels. Nevertheless, it is a fact that even in the first centuries of His Church, most of the apostles and their successor’s bishops, and those who received the Sacred Order, they were not married men.

      Marriage wasn’t expressly forbidden, but especially the monks, for the first ones to Saint Bernard de Claraval, they had chosen chastity as a way of life and most were celibates. Some of them, married men, they had chosen the convents and their spouses the same path as well. Even in times of the first Carolingians dynasty in Europe, celibacy was a prerequisite to be a priest or a monk. Chastity is a duty and a choice of life, which is not equivalent to celibacy. A man can be a celibate but not chaste and less pure of heart and mind. Those who take this commitment are married to Our Church and to Our Lord, even the nouns. Was Saint Teresa of Avila who said, my only spouse is My Lord and His Church.




        This is one side of the picture. The historian Laura Betzig describes the other side of the picture in her article 'Love Letter to the Pope: Sex and the Single Priest, Bishop or Pope':

        "Toward the end of the 4th century, roughly a generation after the emperor Constantine the Great left Rome for his new capital, Constantinople, a Portuguese bishop, Pope Damasus, had a secretary from the Balkans, by the name of Jerome. And Jerome was unhappy in the land of the purple harlot, the town he called Babylon. So he wrote letters about Roman priests who curled their hair with tongs, covered themselves with perfume, and devoted their whole lives knowing the wherebouts and inclinations of married women. Early every morning, they'd show up at the houses of those women and force their way into their bedrooms -- where they loved a "savory breakfast," but found chastity "distasteful." Those problems didn't go away soon.

        Toward the close of the Middle Ages, there was more bad news. Peter Damian, the Cardinal Bishop of Ostia, sent a letter in 1049 to Pope Leo IX, about the sexual abuse of boys. The "erotic clerics" who practiced sodomy with their "spiritual sons" ought to be deprived of their status, he thought. Peter sent another letter, ten years later, to Pope Nicholas II, about clerical abuses of women. It was high time for men in orders to "bar the door of their loins," and to tie their "priestly genitals" up. Everybody knew where their prostitutes lived, the names of their mistresses, or who their fathers-in-law and mothers-in-law were, "and lastly, to remove all doubt, there were the obvious pregnancies and squalling babies."

        Occasionally, ordained men have been brought up before ecclesiastical councils. In the spring of 1274, at the Council of Lyons, Henry of Gelders, the Bishop of Liége, was deposed -- for "incontinence," as the father of 61 daughters and sons. And in November of 1414, at the Council of Constance, 29 cardinals, 183 bishops and 134 abbots heard 44 articles read out against Baldassarre Cossa, the antipope John XXIII -- a pirate and rapist, murderer and sodomist, who'd hired and maintained sacrilegious intercourse with 300 nuns, violated 3 sisters, "and imprisoned a whole family in order to abuse the mother, son and father."

        Other Roman bishops weren't always exempt. On a spring day in 1493, Pope Alexander VI, who was born Roderic de Borja in Spain, gave away the youngest of his bastard daughters, the 13-year-old Lucrezia, to a husband in the Vatican palace. She was escorted by "the pope's concubine," Giulia la bella Farnese, and by a bastard granddaughter of the pope's predecessor, Innocent VIII. 9 years later, when Lucrezia was given away to another husband, the cardinal Cesare Borgia, her bastard brother, asked 50 prostitutes to a prenuptial supper -- where they all crawled "naked on their hands and knees" after chestnuts."

        (Psychology Today, 23 May 2010)

        Mandatory celibacy is not good. With this you ignore to much the power of human sexuality. There's nothing wrong with a relationship. But with mandatory celibacy you create problems in the lives of people who are not able to live celibate. They starts with 'secret' relationships or visiting prostitutes. Stop the vow of celibacy that creates hypocrycy! Be wise like the author of the first epistle to the Corinthians: 'It's better to married or to start a hetero sexual or a homosexual relationship than to burn with sexual desires...'! The Vatican has to accept voluntary celibacy in stead of closing her eyes for the reality...


    • No, he didn't.



    Pieter I have much more important things in my life and even some family problems to face, than wasting my time with you. So this is it, somebody else will answer you, or here will be the end of this chapter. You may give your opinion about the fluctuation or not of the Yuan in China, so farewell my friend, best Luis



    Pieter Schultz,

    This thing has a longer history than that. Based on that real life experience the Vatican's eyes are well and truly open. In the current era it is unlikely that reverting to complete openness to married priests would result in sexual continence. This just isn't the time.

    Jesus spoke to his apostles about being a "eunuch for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven". This did not seem to be taken as celibacy but simply being sexually continent whether married or single. That was tried for about 1000 years with occasional attempts to regulate when married priests were found to be having sex with their wives. Eventually, given the particular difficulty in ensuring that priests are "eunuchs for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven" when they are living with their wife, a disciplinary rule of celibacy as the default position was introduced. The default celibacy position still applies.

    Given the underrepresentation of pedophiles in the Catholic priesthood and the proliferation of married pedophiles and the mass media's enthusiastic reporting of current cases of pedophilia, up to 50 years ago, it is only to be expected that allowing married priests would risk the proportion of pedophiles rising to the averages for the general married male population. Imagine the scandal then.

    The Catholic priesthood like any similar large group will never be able to eliminate pedophilia completely. The Church has had bad priests since the time of Jesus (Judas). Some of these are pedophiles.

    However the unprecedented work by the current Pope to "sweep the filth (pedophiles) from the Church" in his current and former capacity will reduce the numbers and there is no reason to do anything that could increase it.

    You indicate that some people can't handle celibacy. You should say that some people won't handle celibacy. Priesthood isn't something that can just happen overnight if you get too drunk - like a tattoo. It takes about 7 years to become a priest. That is plenty of time to discern whether you can be a "eunuch for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven". I know that being a "eunuch" doesn't preclude marriage but you are focussing on sex and so will I. Whether someone is married and sexually continent or celibate they are not having sex.


« »
To add a comment please
Create an Account

Your real name is required
for commenting.

  • Clear
  • Post
Your Profile Here…

Set up your profile to connect with members of Journal Community.


Your Groups Here…

