Vatican City (AFP) - Pope Francis promised "solutions" to the issue of priestly celibacy in an interview on Sunday that raised the possibility the Catholic Church could eventually lift the interdiction on married priests.
Speaking to Italy's La Repubblica daily, Francis also condemned child sex abuse as a "leprosy" in the Church and cited his aides as saying that "the level of paedophilia in the Church is at two percent".
"That two percent includes priests and even bishops and cardinals," he said.
Asked whether priests might one day be allowed to marry, Francis pointed out that celibacy was instituted "900 years after Our Lord's death" and that clerics can marry in some Eastern Churches under Vatican tutelage.
"There definitely is a problem but it is not a major one. This needs time but there are solutions and I will find them," Francis said, without giving further details.
The interview was the third in a series with the 90-year-old founder of the La Repubblica daily, Eugenio Scalfari, a famous journalist and known atheist.
This is one of the most awkward news pieces I've ever seen from any major news source. From a strictly journalistic standpoint, it changes subjects too often. It sets the context of the Holy Father discussing priestly celibacy, switches gears to talk about the pedophile issues, returns to celibacy and then mentions with whom the interview was conducted.
I've studied journalism enough to understand the inverted pyramid. You introduce your main subject in the first paragraph, you then begin resolving it and work your way down to more granular issues as you go and you conclude the piece with utterly irrelevant matters such as, in this case, the name of whoever conducted the original interview.
Therefore I'm not sure what to think of this piece interjecting the pedophile scandal where it doesn't belong. One way to look at it is that this sloppy, unprofessional writing. And certainly that's not to be underestimated.
A different, nastier way of looking at it (and people have certainly picked up on this) is that Francis is linking pedophilia with unmarried priests when he might not be. I've long believed the new media's love affair with Francis not only can't last forever but is likely to end. It'll end badly and it'll end SOON. So maybe this is the opening salvo?
Another way of looking at it is that the writer is determined to associate pedophilia with unwed priests. I have no way of knowing if that's what he's trying to do. I also have no way of knowing if there even IS a link there. My gut instinct is to doubt it because married people molest children too.
But apart from all those things, I remain skeptical that permitting priests to marry will solve anything. Pope Francis has been expected (by leftwing media) to fundamentally transform the Catholic Church. He was (supposedly) going to "change" the Church's teachings about abortion, gay marriage and other Democrat Party sacraments.
Obviously he's done none of that so far. But permitting priests to marry would probably be the biggest shake-up the Church has experienced in decades, possibly centuries. And I'm not convinced it'd be a positive development.
Sure, the media would finally believe themselves vindicated for viewing Francis as The Great Reformer. But would allowing priests to marry really improve anything? I just don't think so.
For one thing, by definition it couldn't be retroactive. Anybody expecting to see their priest hanging out at the singles' bar is probably in for some major disappointment because that priest MADE A VOW to not take a wife. The Church changing their policy on the matter wouldn't absolve him of his promise.
The other thing though is that right now, Catholic priests can make a decent living because the Church provides for so many of their needs. But I just don't think the Church has the resources to financially support globe-trotting priests and their families.
As an example...
Catholic Priests & Their Wives
These five Fathers are husbands and fathers. Huh?
Father Jim McGhee won't hear his wife's confession. That would just be... awkward. Other than that, Ann McGhee is a parishioner like any other at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic Church in Keller, Texas, where her husband says three or four masses a week. Who sanctioned this scenario? Pope John Paul II. Back in the late seventies, an Episcopal priest from South Carolina named James Parker decided he'd had it with the leftward drift of his church, which ordained its first female priest in 1977. So Parker sought full communion with the Catholic Church, and the Church embraced him. In 1980, the pope issued a special dispensation allowing Episcopal priests who were theologically simpatico with Rome to "come home" -- i.e., convert to Catholicism -- and bring their families with them. Today there are seventy-nine such priests in America and at least a score more who've converted from other Christian denominations (Lutheran, Methodist, et cetera). Here are five of these men with their wives, children, and grandchildren.
Jim and Ann McGhee, Keller, Texas
Father McGhee, 66, and Ann, 68, were both raised Methodist: he in Kennett, Missouri, and she in Jumpertown, Mississippi. They met in 1956, just before Jim joined the Air Force, and married the next year. Their son, Robert, and daughters, Mary (center) and Renée, are pictured here with all seven of Ann and Jim's grandchildren. From left: Courtney, Jameson (upside down), Jeremiah, Ashley's feet, Bryant, Matthew, and Emily.
Twelve years ago, when Ann McGhee would tell people that her husband was planning to enter the Catholic priesthood, people would say," 'Well, what's he gonna do with you?'" she recalls. "And I would say, 'Well, he's going to keep me!'" The McGhees' conversion to Catholicism was the latest turn in a meandering spiritual journey that goes back almost 50 years. Father Jim became a licensed Methodist preacher in 1962, an Episcopal priest in 1972, and a Catholic priest in 1995. "I had become convinced in my own head and my own heart that Jesus had established a church, not churches," he says. "And when I looked at the evidence of history, it was so clear to me that it was Canterbury that had left Rome. Rome did not leave Canterbury."
Steve and Cindy Anderson, Grand Blanc, Michigan
High school sweethearts from the town of White Lake, Michigan, the Andersons met when he was 16, she was 15, and they were both Presbyterian. Thirty-two years and two Christian denominations later, Father Steve, 47, and Cindy, 46, have three sons. From left: Steven, 11; Austin, 20; and Christian, 7.
"A lot of people become Catholic because they don't like what's going on in their denomination," says Father Steve Anderson, the associate pastor of Church of the Holy Family in Grand Blanc, Michigan. "That wasn't my story." In 1999, Anderson was the pastor of a Charismatic Episcopal parish that mixed High Episcopalian elements like incense and vestments with a Pentecostal flavor. "At our church, you might get a prayer book, and you might get a tambourine." He loved that experience, but the more he read the "early church fathers," the stronger he felt the tug of Rome. So on April 3, 1999 -- Holy Saturday -- he and Cindy converted. "People were delighted," says Cindy of their reception at Holy Family. "The best part is, they can connect with me. They're so excited to have a priest and his wife, and I come with loving arms back to them. God's just planted me here, and I fit."
Bob and Ginger McElwee, Frontenac, Kansas
Two important things happened to Bob McElwee when he was a high school kid in Wichita, Kansas: 1) He met Ginger, and 2) he rode his first motorcycle. More than four decades later, the McElwees, both 58, have six children. They were photographed at the 65th annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota.
Father McElwee doesn't think Catholic priests should be married. He didn't think so before he became one; he doesn't think so now. The Lord, however, had other ideas. Two days after resigning as an Episcopal priest in 1980, McElwee was in his car, "talking out loud to Jesus, asking what I'm supposed to do next," when he heard a report announcing the pope's provision for married Episcopal converts. "And I still didn't want to do it," he said. "It was my wife who said, 'Well, God opened this door. Give it a try.'" That was 22 years ago, 19 of which have been spent in southeast Kansas. Recalls Ginger, "The bishop told us, 'You'll only have to explain yourselves once. The gossip will take six months to move around the area, and then you'll be done with it forever.' And that's exactly what happened."
John and Burgess Ellis, St. Cloud, Florida
John Ellis was a 24-year-old sales manager working for the J.C. Penney Company in DeLand, Florida, when he met Burgess, an undergraduate at Stetson University, in 1961. They married the following September and had a son, Thomas, in December '63. Father Ellis, 68, and Burgess, 65, are pictured here with their daughter, Ruth, and her five-year-old twins, Jordan (left) and Zachary (right).
"The official doctrine is that celibacy is not going to be changed," Father Ellis says. "But I think most of the clergy are looking at us as pioneers, the big experiment." The Ellis's experiment began in 1989 when John, after 20 years in the Episcopal priesthood, was ready to leave his church and join the Catholic laity. Then he heard about the Vatican's loophole for married converts. "There have been married clergy in the Catholic Church longer than there have been celibate clergy," he points out. "Celibacy wasn't mandated until the Middle Ages. Even our first pope was married." So should celibacy be optional today? "Well, there are places for celibacy. Religious orders, for instance. But there is no reason why a diocesan priest shouldn't be married. Being married or being single has nothing to do with being a priest."
Allan and José Hawkins, Arlington, Texas
Allan and José (pronounced Josay) Hawkins met in 1963 at St. George Anglican Church in Stevenage, England, where Allan was a priest, and married in 1964. They moved to Texas in 1980. Father Hawkins, 71, and José, 63, are pictured here with their two children, Sarah and Giles.
Father Allan Hawkins didn't bring just his family into the Catholic Church when he was ordained in 1994; he brought his entire flock. "The decision to seek unity with Rome was pretty well unanimous here," he says -- "here" being St. Mary the Virgin Catholic Church in Arlington, Texas, which used to be St. Mary the Virgin Episcopal Church. "It was the same building, the same people, transferred in toto, so all that you might say changed was the sign on the street." This made the transition a nonissue for José; unlike the other wives on these pages, the other parishioners already knew her as the priest's wife. "As long as Anglicanism was moving toward -- however slowly -- some kind of rapprochement with Rome, we could just wait it out," Father Hawkins says. "But once that became impossible, we had to act for ourselves."
I realize this is a cutesy story filled with cutesy anecdotes but the fact is that they ALL hint at the difficulties of having married priests in the modern era. The Catholic Church is an inventive institution gifted with wise, talented men who can invent ways of coping with the problems married clergy would bring. But isn't the simpler, cheaper and lower risk way to continue not permitting them to get married? Once the decision is made to allow them to marry, it's not easily unmade. And it was first made for a reason.
Far be it from me to criticize the Holy Father on this, especially when I have absolutely no skin in the game, but I just don't think this is a wise idea.
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