The church has the answers

Two words that often arise in the sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church are celibacy and clericalism. To many concerned Catholics and those who study the church, these are the engine that have driven the sexual abuse and the abuse of power by those in the hierarchy who covered up the crimes. And just last week, the Vatican confusingly delayed addressing the sex abuse scandal at a meeting of U.S. Catholic bishops in Baltimore.

A truth we find in each of the two stories of creation in Genesis is that we are meant to be partnered. A diocesan priest does not take a vow of celibacy, as priests in religious orders do, but he does take a vow of obedience to his bishop. He is expected to be unmarried and chaste: circumspect, moderate, and modest.

From psychology and related disciplines, we have learned that celibacy is a natural state for the adult at some times of life. The human norm is sexual relations at some, or most, adult times of life.

It is unfair to command lifetime celibacy for all priests and call it a charism, a gift of the Holy Spirit, when priests themselves have questioned the necessity of celibacy for the life of the church, while preaching the goodness of a companioned life.

Clericalism is the idolization of the priesthood. It is an outmoded concept of the priest as one set apart from the people. It is the antithesis of the Second Vatican Council’s model of priest as servant-leader — the model Pope Francis embodies and has requested his brother bishops to embrace. Clericalism promotes careerism. It creates a society of men focused on the institution, their status within it, and the need to protect that status.

What is the root of clericalism? Seminarians are told that as ordination is conferred upon the ordinand, he undergoes an “ontological change,” that is, a change in being.

The man, now priest, has undergone a seismic shift in his person. A more accurate understanding of ordination is that it sets the priest on a life-altering course that requires living out that vocation throughout his life.

Because of the understanding that the priest undergoes an immediate change in the nature of his being, a priest may think himself superior to or holier than lay people.

Clericalism also cannot be discussed apart from the potent evil of sexism. The exclusion of half the world’s population from the priesthood and governance of the church promotes categorical thinking that men are better, more-suited, than women to the priesthood. Pope John Paul II taught that the church cannot even discuss ordaining women. The church insists on the infallibility of his 1994 apostolic letter, “On Reserving Priestly Ordination to Men Alone,” though it falls short of an important test of papal teaching, the sensus fidelium, sense of the faithful. Large segments of the faithful reject arguments that exclude women and ignore the realities of the present world.

Another word that arises in discussion of the abuse crisis is homosexuality, but it needs a forceful clarification: Homosexuality is not pedophilia or ephebophilia (attraction to adolescents). To imply otherwise, to claim homosexuality is the causal agent of this crisis, is not only wrong but also evil. It reveals a lack of love for the church and the people of God. It is a brutish and transparent distraction.

To survive this crisis, the church must change. A review of its history shows it was never an immutable monolith. Change must come to the formal priesthood in the Roman Catholic Church. It’s a matter of survival.

Cristina R. O’Keefe is an adjunct professor in the Department of Religious Studies at St. Joseph’s College. The views expressed here are her own.