An End to Celibacy in

16 Apr, 2002 by John Hawkins

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An End to Celibacy in the Priesthood Does Nothing for the Catholic Church: Because of the monstrous sex scandal in the Catholic church, there are apparently a lot of people pushing to end celibacy for Catholic priests. What is that supposed to accomplish?

The root of the problem is that we have priests who are inclined towards pedophilia preying on young boys and homosexual priests taking advantage of teenagers in the church. So let’s say celibacy goes out the window. Sex with children is still illegal right? So it’s not like this would help the pedophiles. As far as the homosexuals go, that’s not going to work either. The church isn’t going to change it’s doctrine to allow gays to have consensual sex outside of marriage. Even if they did, how many churches would take a massive attendance hit if it was known that they had an openly gay, sexually active priest? The only group an end to celibacy would really benefit would be the straight Catholic priests and I don’t see the point of that in the context of this current scandal. After all, it isn’t 15 year old girls who are being molested. I know, I know, some of you may think that somehow this ban on sex is driving straight men to change their sexual orientation. Personally, I don’t buy that. You can parade young boys in front of a straight man from now until Christmas and it’s not going to turn him into a pedophile.

The real problem here is that the Catholic church doesn’t have a sufficient level of disgust for sexual predators. If someone molests a kid, you don’t switch them to another church, you strip them of their priesthood and call the police. Yes, God may forgive them, but that doesn’t mean they have the moral authority to be a priest anymore. Until the Catholic church accepts that and acts on it, they’re going to continue to have these problems.