Priestly Celibacy Does Not Cause Sexual Abuse

Oh goodness here we go again. See Blame it on celibacy. A Catholic Priest has good thoughts on this here at Dissent is the problem, not celibacy. I will return to his comments later at the end of this piece.

I really wonder if people are thinking of this logically. I would suspect that perhaps seeing the number of married Protestant clergy, scout leaders, teachers, and family members that are convicted of sexual abuse that it would provide a clue this is wrong headed.

If people believe in this line of logic then we should encourage the following

All teenagers need not to wait for sex till marriage because they will be so warped they will abuse children. Therefore it is paramount you encourage your college age boy at University to engage in sex outside marriage often in order to protect society

We should also make sure before we have the kids around widowed Grandma or Grandpa that the nursing home has made sure they had their "escort service" visit so they don't start groping little Jane.

Now we all know this is nonsense. Or at least I hope we all do.

Let me now bring in the words of Justice Kennedy in a Free Speech case where he talked about something that is apparent to me but we all pretend does not exist. From Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition

Both themes—teenage sexual activity and the sexual
abuse of children—have inspired countless literary works.
William Shakespeare created the most famous pair of teenage
lovers, one of whom is just 13 years of age. See Romeo
and Juliet, act I, sc. 2, l. 9 (“She hath not seen the change of
fourteen years”). In the drama, Shakespeare portrays the
relationship as something splendid and innocent, but not
juvenile. The work has inspired no less than 40 motion
pictures, some of which suggest that the teenagers consummated
their relationship. E. g., Romeo and Juliet (B. Luhrmann
director, 1996). Shakespeare may not have written
sexually explicit scenes for the Elizabethan audience, but
were modern directors to adopt a less conventional approach,
that fact alone would not compel the conclusion that the work
was obscene.

Contemporary movies pursue similar themes. Last year’s
Academy Awards featured the movie, Traffic, which was
nominated for Best Picture. See Predictable and Less So,
the Academy Award Contenders, N. Y. Times, Feb. 14, 2001,
p. E11. The film portrays a teenager, identified as a 16-
year-old, who becomes addicted to drugs. The viewer sees
the degradation of her addiction, which in the end leads her

to a filthy room to trade sex for drugs. The year before,
American Beauty won the Academy Award for Best Picture.
See “American Beauty” Tops the Oscars, N. Y. Times, Mar.
27, 2000, p. E1. In the course of the movie, a teenage girl
engages in sexual relations with her teenage boyfriend, and
another yields herself to the gratification of a middle-aged
man. The film also contains a scene where, although the
movie audience understands the act is not taking place, one
character believes he is watching a teenage boy performing
a sexual act on an older man.

Our society, like other cultures, has empathy and enduring
fascination with the lives and destinies of the young. Art
and literature express the vital interest we all have in the
formative years we ourselves once knew, when wounds can
be so grievous, disappointment so profound, and mistaken
choices so tragic, but when moral acts and self-fulfillment
are still in reach. Whether or not the films we mention
violate the CPPA, they explore themes within the wide
sweep of the statute’s prohibitions.

Now what is Justice Kennedy trying to get out here. I think he tells it like it is . We are all attracted to youth and even the sexual element of it. Many average healthy red blooded American males like looking at College cheerleaders. This attraction did not come magically in being when the cheerleader turned the age of 18.

Now let me be clear I think the way that teens are made sexual objects today is bad. I am not advocating that having affairs with 16 year old people is good. However we seem to be contradictory on this.

We promote the sexual component of youth in a million ways each day but yet our laws have gone in the opposite direction. If you look at the age of consent in our grandfathers days of their youth many of them would have been arrested by the Sheriff not getting married.

My many Great Grandfather who was in his Sixties was a Revolutionary War hero and who helped found the Baptist Church in Mississippi was courting a girl (who became my several Greats Grandmother) at 15 and married her on her 16th birthday. He would be called a pedophile today.

In other words it seems we have tensions between laws and biology. I am not advocating taking the age of consent to 15 but these are just facts. We make children more and more sex objects yet we by our laws postpone adulthood. See as example age of consent laws for sex and marriage, drinking age laws, the buying of lottery tickets, and a million other laws.

In the Catholic Church the Pope is quite correct when stating the problem is not so much pedophilia but clergy having sex with teenagers. A problem for sure that I am not trying to diminish. This is one reason why the issue of seminarians that have deep seated same sex attraction comes to play. They will be naturally attracted to male youth and thus a perfect storm arises. We have a issue here of abuse of authority and some cases a lot of horny teenage guys. Some is consensual some is not because of the abuse of authority issue.

I am not downplaying the serious pedophilia problem but I do think we need to keep the categories separate to see the scope of the problem and how to deal with it.

I think we see similar dynamics played out in Protestant clergy and the secular world. None of this has to do with celibacy.

Returning to the Priest I linked he states:
Can celibacy cause sexual repression? Yes, it can. So can sexual promiscuity and monogamy. If a priest (or anyone else) finds himself sexually repressed by celibacy, this is a sure sign that celibacy is not a discipline he should be practicing. . ."better to marry than burn." If you can't practice celibacy, don't seek ordination as a Catholic priest. If you are already a Catholic priest and can't be celibate, then seek to be laicized.

If a man is sexually integrated and emotionally stable before he enters seminary, there's almost no chance that the discipline of celibacy will cause sexual repression, much less cause him to molest children or teens. Keep in mind: the number of sexual abuse cases in the public school system is significantly higher than in the Church. I doubt many public school teachers are celibate.

A good point. Again looking at the various sex crimes we see in protestant clergy, youth Ministers and in the general sexual public one might as well say MARRIAGE is the problem. Well of course that is nonsense too.

So lets say as to the case of pedophilia do people really think if these Priests that did these crimes were married they would not be doing these acts? It appears looking at the general population marriage is not the magic aspirin that one can take and cure this tendency. If it were we would not have so many sexual predators in prison.