I just came across this piece where a columnist makes a crack about how it's nice to hear, for a change, to hear about a heterosexual pervy priest.
Whether that floats your boat as humor, or not, doesn't really matter to me.
What I'm sick and tired of is the thinking so many people seem to have internalized that can be summed up with another line from the (very short) piece:What seems to me to be a major failure in thinking here is that it's not celibacy, or abstinence that causes someone to want to have sex with someone in a grossly inferior role. AFAIK people who are sexually attracted to children, or teens, as adults don't choose that because they're not getting enough sex, or not getting any sex. It's because that's their sexual attraction.Again, I say, it's time for a married priesthood.
All that I expect opening up the priesthood to allow for marriage would do is to increase the recruiting numbers for people seeking ordination, since so many people I'd known who were sympathetic to the idea of taking vows were put off by the requirement for celibacy. There will still be people choosing the priesthood for reasons other than those most people would like to assume: To give themselves a buffer to fight any homosexual tendencies; to be able to manufacture situations where they can gain access to susceptible children or teens; to exercise power.
It may be possible that removing the restriction against clerical marriage will push such "marginal" candidates out of the priesthood. Personally, I believe that to be wishful thinking on the order of wearing a banana in one's ear to the keep the Sasquatch at bay.
The freedom to marry has never prevented child sexual abuse. Often enough it just provides another dynamic, where the abuser can create his or her own victims. Similarly, how many of the teachers recently caught in spectacular sexual improprieties were married? Mary Kay Leternou was, as was Debra Lafave. The simple permission to allow marriage is not going to, by itself, prevent further abuses.
Anyone who views clerical celibacy as a primary cause of any sexual abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church is a bedamned idiot, and shouldn't be allowed out in the rain, for fear they'll drown. Further they're also likely living in a fool's paradise, and thinking that sexual abuse of minors couldn't possible be happening in their schools, their state's foster care system, or in Olympic level sports.
:Shake:
ETA: This is not suggest that I oppose clerical marriage. Just that I don't think it's got a damned thing to do with preventing further clerical sexual abuse.