[Parallax]

...................I'm not Catholic and I have always questioned why they have that rule. As mentioned, it certainly isn't biblical. ...............

I'm not Catholic either, but this is the explanation I was given by a priest:
At the time the rule was enacted inheritance law was generally that on a man's death, his wealth went to the eldest son, or absent any sons, to the daughters or wife. If priests were not allowed to marry, there would be no heirs and their wealth would pass to the Church. It was, apparently, purely economics.

[Ratmagiclady]

I'm not sure if the issue of Priests not being able to marry and the issue of pedophiles in the Catholic Church are the same. There are cases of pedophiles all over and many are married and also parents. There is also a scandal going on in the Boy Scouts currently. I'm not Catholic and I have always questioned why they have that rule.

Well, the 'reasons' for that rule and what it does in practice (as well as where it can go wrong) are, for the most part, two different things.

Probably come from the same root: really old beliefs that sex (and therefore women and anyone else that might be seen as a sex object) are just 'worldly temptations' and corrupt and to be avoided, really.... That history's certainly there and the dynamic remains, but there are some more legitimate reasons: namely how much power and wealth the Church controlled: fathers will tend to favor their own offspring, and not only would that complicate communities, it also would make the clergy harder to control.

And a lot of this is about control.

Certainly a problem with the celibacy system is that in Catholicism (and much of the rest of Christianity,) stigmatized sexuality is one of the very sources of that control, ...and celibacy is the solution. If someone's all ripped up about sex, (cause that's what they teach people to be) it certainly does seem to arrest the development to varying degrees, and the only 'answer' that's historically-provided any hope of societal approval has in fact been to join the clergy, otherwise celibacy is actually scorned.

People who are all messed up about sexuality, (straight or gay) generally aren't openly in 'other lifestyles,' ...they try and do exactly what they're *told* to do, whether to try and 'cure' themselves (instead of growing up and being sexually-mature even if it costs) ...and in Catholicism this often does mean that people who can't accept sexuality end up going right to the source: 'enforced celibacy.'

Plenty of gay clergy, the majority of whom have never hurt anyone, actually, are there just for that reason, ...it's how to not end up living the enforced lies by doing the other option: fake it, have a straight marriage, kids, 'struggle with sin.' All that.

Of course, that's still just about control. But it does result in attracting a lot of dysfunction and of course, not dealing with it.

It's not always taken to extremes, but the element's there. It's probably why they're *so* fixated on controlling sexuality. Abuse is control-based. It's all about power over others, and generally about transferring the blame for it all onto the victims. If you see this crap in action, that gets pretty clear. It's the same thing as just *talking* about how awful queer people are or using politics, it just gets more personal.

Pedophiles, in particular, usually do *everything they can* to appear as what is said 'means you're normal,' be that having a straight family and kids (who also become victims, of course) ....and in Catholicism, the only place in society for people who don't want to breed or whatever, is the church.

It's not really about gay people, (especially since the majority of victims are female, despite disproportionate targeting of same-sex people, weird head-games, there, already described) ...it's really about the way the Church scorns and demonizes sex itself, from a young age, and presents itself as the only 'solution' to the 'sin' it posits it's all about.

It attracts and covers for abuse cause it sees people as 'sexual sins' and it's all about the 'observance of personal morality' of the priests and not what is actually going on or the people involved.

It's not like there's not legitimate reasons for celibacy as a spiritual practice: actually, for instance, before the demonization of LGBT folks, many different cultures actually *considered* many of such folks, (now classified as basically defined by the same 'sin,') ...as set aside for the Gods or spirits or the tribe as a whole, rather than being all for their own offspring and family and all. (Complicated topic, there, but another thing that plays into all this... in fact, Christianity started by trying to demonize all other religions, and one of the ways they did this was by associating all other religions as doing something 'evil' by not demonizing sexuality. )

It adds up, in the Church's case, to a culture of dysfunction: not just the perps, but the atmosphere in which they operate, and the access to a pool of pre-terrified and pre-shamed victims, and the authority to access them. There aren't actually by number more perps in the clergy compared to this society as a whole, but they can hurt a whole lot more victims.

What happens, too, is that the dysfunctional become clergy who teach that all sex not controlled by the Church *is* dysfunctional, so it's long since created quite a vicious cycle.

So, 'being celibate' doesn't 'make sex offenders,' rather, the celibacy becomes part of the teachings of the celibate that sexuality is dysfunctional and evil, unless people are taught so, by celibate people, ...the 'experts' who aren't *supposed* to have any experience about what they demonize....

It basically teaches immaturity in a profoundly inbred way: even the non-offenders participate in the *context* of it. Cause it's about 'control' to them, (and that's probably why the coverup.)

The last thing they can contemplate is that maybe the problem *is* control. And the answer isn't more paternalistic authority and denial of pumped-up and confused 'temptations' people bottle up and turn aggressive before they're even of age themselves... Not 'more denial and obedience. But rather awareness and responsibility.

Now, how the Catholics want to arrange their clergy is their own business at this point. I'd say though, that while celibacy doesn't *cause an individual to be a perp,* the total separation of the teachers from even knowing what they're teaching about for so long just can't help solve the problems.


A lot of the problems are in fact the undercurrent of theological misogyny and control. "No one can have sex unless big Daddy gives permission!" That's alpha-primate stuff, right there.

Just demonizing sex, and denying how alpha-primates use sexual aggression to enforce compliance and submission, then bottling the whole thing up and putting it in a bottle, well, that's an equation for what's been going on not just in the extent of living memory, but for centuries.

So, I think, if they want to, they might do better not to set the clergy and non-sex above the rest of the dirty old world and make 'Fathers' out of a group without a single father among them.

---------- Post added 04-20-2010 at 01:03 PM ----------

Interesting, by the way, on the matter of the question inherent in the thread's title: a little poke around the Web and the news seems to show that after twelve years or so of denial and blame-pushing and scapegoating and whining, the Pope's starting to talk about actually using their own ideas of, well, confession and actually doing actual 'penance,' as a church... and as perps and cover-uppers, and hopefully, as victim-blamers and defamers.

Maybe it's actually pretty important that people in the broader community, both lay Catholics and people outside that church, ...just didn't take all that stuff for an answer.

In the process, all those attempts to spin and deny the news of the coverup served to hurt a lot of people outside the Church: there's still that assumed connection between gay people and pedophilia and abuse, ...plenty of people in politics around the world picked that up and ran all over a lot of people's rights because the Vatican kept trying to blame anyone and anything but their own system for what was done.

I think if they want to do penance, they could start with working to undo the further damage to people the coverup did.