As a graduate of Judge Memorial, I have a very soft spot in my heart for the Catholic church. My experience at Judge was amazing. Priests and nuns who taught at Judge while I was there were, with one or two exceptions, extraordinary people of vision and grace who were able to inspire their students to more meaningful lives and to contributing to the community. Even when I was in high school – in the 1980s – Catholic clergy in the US was facing declining numbers and morale problems.

For that reason, the seemingly endless series of revelations about clergy sex abuse of minors has troubled me and has deepened the sense that Catholic clergy are not trustworthy.

In the final chapter of his book Mysteries of the Middle Ages, Thomas Cahill takes the Catholic to task for its wholly inadequate response to the clergy sex abuse scandals, pointing out that some in the hierarchy of the church have actually claimed that the problem is only found in the English speaking world and have attempted to suggest the problem is not one of the clergy but of the morals and standards of the English speaking world. At the same time, leaders in the Catholic church have attempted to blame the problem on gay men within the priesthood and have tried to run them out. Cahill’s dismisses that as intrinsically ludicrous.

The current pope strikes me as a far lesser man than his immediate predecessor, who was a man of deep humanity and spirit, compassionate and truly concerned with social justice but who nevertheless held deeply retrograde views of human sexuality. The Catholic church’s views on human sexuality are infected with a profoundly pre-modern sensibility. There’s an old joke about “I’ve learned that everything the church says about sex is wrong.” The Catholic church – like most traditionalist and conservative denominations – is strongly resistant to adopting truly modern views of sexuality and sexual orientation. In perhaps no area is the weakness of such a view more obvious than in the requirement of celibacy for Catholic priests.

Allow me, if you will, a meditation on some of the language around sexuality. Abstinence, the preferred term these days, strikes me as entirely unworkable. It implies sacrifice and pitting one’s will against one’s sexual urges. It frames the entire issue incorrectly as one of saying “No” to one’s sexuality. Celibacy, on the other hand, seems to imply a different set of choices, a more holistic view of sexuality – a saying “Yes” to period’s without sexual relationships in exchange for gaining different perspective. One can go through a period of celibacy by choice, you can see it as a time of using your sexual energies differently. At Hugo’s place, he’s talked about celibacy:

In late June of 1998, I had hit a kind of emotional, physical, and spiritual bottom. My family was frantically worried about me, my friends had largely pulled away from me, I had spent time in handcuffs — and extended time in hospitals. While in the last of these hospitals, someone asked me “Hugo, do you have any idea how to be alone? I don’t mean single — can you really be alone with yourself?” I admitted that no, I really didn’t know how to do that. [Snip]

One of my earliest spiritual directors told me that in addition to a variety of spiritual activities, I needed to be celibate. He defined celibacy as not only no sexual activity, but also no dating, flirting, or what he liked to call “intriguing” (I love that verb) with women. I asked how long this period was supposed to last, and he gave me the typical spiritual director answer: “You’ll know. For now, just do this a day at a time.” [snip]

Thinking about what my director was asking me to do, I realized that I had spent years and years chasing the next exciting relationship. As much as I liked “going out” with various women, what I really loved was the fantasy that that night’s date might be “the one”, the one who was going to make me content and happy. I was always just one woman away from contentment! Just the prospect of someone new filled me with tremendous anticipation. I lived for years and years oscillating between hope and disappointment, idealization and disillusionment, neediness and loneliness. It’s not a happy way to live, and I know plenty of men and women who’ve lived that way — and some who still do.

Before 1998, I had never consciously made a decision not to date or be in relationship. There had been times when I didn’t have anyone in my life, but it wasn’t for lack of trying! In that summer, I found out just how “addicted” I was to novelty, to the illusion of intimacy, to instant chemical connection, to promise. I also found that God’s grace was stronger than all of that. Much to my surprise (but not to my spiritual director’s), I found that I had the power to live differently. My behavior changed, and then my thinking followed. I discovered that in celibacy, I had an extraordinary amount of free time to do many new things! [snip]

Frankly, I think all of us need a celibate “time out” at some point in our lives. Yes, I know most folks associate celibacy with refraining from physical sex. But it’s more than that; you can be a virgin and addicted to flirting and intriguing, in love with love, hungry for validation. Whatever your level of sexual experience, making a conscious decision to close down that area of your life — if only for a few months — can provide extraordinary rewards. It did for me.

and, even more intriguing:

I found myself in a “slippery situation”, I asked myself the same question. During that summer and fall of ‘98, I took the first vow of voluntary celibacy of my adult life. A few weeks into that period, I ran into an old “friend with benefits” on the street. Every corpuscle in my system longed to “connect” with her in the familiar way. And I asked myself, almost frantically, what the “next right thing” to do was — and found, to my amazement, that I was able to excuse myself from our flirtatious conversation and complete my errands. The next right thing that day had been to go and buy garbage bags, and the thought “Now I must go buy garbage bags” was what enabled me to walk away from a very tempting situation. [snip]

The “next right thing” is thus not about self-denial. It’s about finding that sweet spot between my deepest desires and the needs of the other creatures with whom I interact. It does require a certain amount of self-awareness, as well as a willingness to ask others to point out “blind spots”. But I can’t help but feel that the world would be a good deal better off if we all applied the “next right thing” model to our lives.

I can honestly say I’ve never been at the low point Hugo experienced but I have found myself at times in a place of yearning – sensing that feeling of “I just need the touch of another hand” and realizing that what I wanted and what I needed were in fact quite separate. In those times, seeing celibacy as a choice, even a passing one, can be empowering, a way of discerning responding to one’s deepest needs; to expand on Hugo’s story with my own insight, the distinction between having time with a friend with benefits and the need to address the real loneliness you are feeling. Lifelong celibacy is a true calling, a vocation, in the deepest sense of the term. Few of us are wired for lifelong monogamy with our first partner and even fewer of us are wired for lifelong celibacy. Most of us are wired for something in between the two. The hierarchy’s demand that all priests remain celibate no doubt keeps many good men from the priesthood; it equally attracts sexual immature men who see in vows of celibacy a way to avoid dealing with their own issues around sexuality. I would go so far as to suggest that the roots of the sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic church can be found in the demand of priestly celibacy. Just as the abstinence movement is systematically dishonest about human sexuality, so the celibate Catholic priesthood is forced into dishonesty, acting as if priests are above such base drives.

In The Lucifer Effect, Philip Zimbardo discusses the dynamics that influence such circumstances, beginning with the “bad apple model.” No doubt, at first, bishops saw the priests who sexually abuse as bad apples. A few bad apples – they could be contained. But the system had to protect itself – so it kept secrets.

The church hierarchy responded in a way it deemed needful to save itself. It kept secrets, it tried to protect the church at the expense of children. Cahill writes:

The Catholic Church in the United States may be doomed in any case, unless the episcopate as a whole resigns, divesting itself of its gorgeous robes and walking off the world’s stage in sackcloth and ashes. The bishops who now hold office are surely imposters.

When someone as devout as Cahill (whose books evince a deep love for the Catholic church as a community of believers) writes off the hierarchy, it’s obvious there is trouble. Deeply, profoundly, the Catholic leadership made the wrong choice in protecting priestly pedophiles. The risks of publicly dealing with the problem were huge and the leadership had to have known it. Priests sexually abusing children strikes at the very core of everything the priesthood is supposed to stand for; it undermines their authority to speak on issues of morality. It destroys their ability to be the glue that holds a community together; it makes the church a dangerous place. The risks were huge and the leadership chose (as leaders seem often to do) secrecy and coverup over disclosure.

A secular corollary is Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica. Had Clinton come clean about the affair up front, the Republicans could never have gotten traction. Because Clinton lied to the nation, the whole sorry thing degraded into the spectacle of impeachment. Had he come clean, the short term embarrassment would have passed quickly, the public would have been far more understanding; paradoxically, admitting to a mistake makes people more willing to grant absolution.

Catholic leaders gambled that what they knew would stay secret; they gambled wrongly. The violation of trust was simply to great to be kept quiet. Revelations of not only the abuse but the official cover-up have so damaged the trust between laity and leadership that the church cannot speak with any meaningful authority on matters of sexuality.

At Kultur, Michael Bailey wrote:

Cahill makes these observations with obvious profound sadness and anger. He is like many other Catholics who continue to attend mass and observe Holy Days of obligation, honoring the Church as community and not hierarchy. But for a good many more Catholics (including this one cum Methodist), the Church’s credibility is so profoundly damaged that the circumstances cast doubt on 2000 years of doctrine and dogma.

Not to pick on Catholicism alone, evangelical Christians are equally misguided in their narrow portrayal of the Christ Who is supposed to belong to all of us. Evangelical Christians do not build bridges, they build pedestals, installing themselves atop them as the greatest tradition of the “My shit don’t stink Christians.” Forget the Church (universally), it is beyond help and will eventually evolve as nature takes its course.

The damage done by the priestly sex scandal – had it been dealt with openly and quickly – would have been transitory; the hierarchy would have established itself as trustworthy. Instead, it has shown itself as willing to sacrifice children in the name of self-preservation, the trust between leaders and led has been shattered and will not be easily restored. I have no doubt the Catholic church will survive. But this crisis – which seems endless (just this week, the Arch-Bishop of Dublin said a soon to be released report concerning sex abuse by priests will shock all of Ireland) – has badly damaged the church and forced it to take the oddly counter-productive step of attempting to enforce orthodoxy even more passionately than before. Not everyone, however, is clueless:

Ireland, a predominantly Catholic country, has been rapidly secularizing in recent years, spurred by the outrage at the hidden abuses within the clergy. Archbishop Martin, a Vatican diplomat assigned in 2003 to address the problem, appeared to address that disillusionment Thursday in his homily.

“There is a dramatic and growing rift between the church and our younger generations and the blame does not lie principally with young people,” he said.

But a few sane voices are not enough and the current pope does not seem like the right person to lead the Catholic church into an era of meaningful reform. He is boringly orthodox in his views – at a time when the church needs open discussion, he seems a leader determined to shut it down. At a time when the church needs to embrace modern views of sexuality, he seems to hold ironclad, premodern views (his recent statement on condoms and AIDS being a perfect example).

It is sad to me that the Catholic church is facing difficult times. As I said I have a fondness for the Catholic church and many of its members are devout and profoundly humane people. But those people seem to be sidelined from leadership – shut out by more the rigorously orthodox and obedient who seem unwilling to sacrifice the institution’s comfort in the name of saving its members.