Does Priesthood Attract Men with Psychosexual Problems?
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There is no way to know what percentage of Roman Catholic priests, having taken vows of celibacy, live up to them. But one thing is for sure. We are now living in an age defined by the Internet revolution. It is no longer possible for adult priests, however high their station, to hide illicit sex affairs.
Maybe as Catholic theologians assert, celibacy worked for centuries. Or maybe it didn't. In any era, the most highly-paid historians tend to be those who take their jobs of sanitizing the human record of scandal, with the utmost seriousness. Why else did it take two hundred years for so-called legitimate scholars to confirm what was common knowledge during the life of Thomas Jefferson, namely that he and his slave mistress, Sally Hemings, had several children together. Nowadays, the Internet has made such subterfuge virtually impossible.
The historical record shows that priestly celibacy was plastered onto Roman Catholicism rather late in its history. According to George T. Dennis SJ of Catholic University of America: "There is simply no clear evidence of a general tradition or practice, much less of an obligation, of priestly celibacy-continence before the beginning of the fourth century" [Dennis, George T. SJ on Cochini, The Apostolic Origins of Priestly Celibacy (book review), Theological Studies, 52:4 (1991:Dec.) p.738].
In modern times, there is growing evidence that young men with unresolved sexual identity issues are sometimes drawn to the priesthood. Frank Bruni noted in a New York Times op-ed column:
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| "Celibacy" by Nathan Huang |
Maybe as Catholic theologians assert, celibacy worked for centuries. Or maybe it didn't. In any era, the most highly-paid historians tend to be those who take their jobs of sanitizing the human record of scandal, with the utmost seriousness. Why else did it take two hundred years for so-called legitimate scholars to confirm what was common knowledge during the life of Thomas Jefferson, namely that he and his slave mistress, Sally Hemings, had several children together. Nowadays, the Internet has made such subterfuge virtually impossible.
The historical record shows that priestly celibacy was plastered onto Roman Catholicism rather late in its history. According to George T. Dennis SJ of Catholic University of America: "There is simply no clear evidence of a general tradition or practice, much less of an obligation, of priestly celibacy-continence before the beginning of the fourth century" [Dennis, George T. SJ on Cochini, The Apostolic Origins of Priestly Celibacy (book review), Theological Studies, 52:4 (1991:Dec.) p.738].
In modern times, there is growing evidence that young men with unresolved sexual identity issues are sometimes drawn to the priesthood. Frank Bruni noted in a New York Times op-ed column:
Unless the Catholic Church radically changes its celibacy rules, it will be bankrupted by scandal in the industrialized world. In reaching out to other continents in order to fill the breach, celibacy laws may be even harder to enforce. The deeply-rooted western tradition of equating sexuality with evil, which allowed for Catholic celibacy laws to take hold, is fortunately absent in many other parts of the world.It’s a trap, falsely promising some men a refuge from sexual desires that worry them. That’s one explanation for what many church experts believe is a disproportionate percentage of gay men in the priesthood. In a world that has often convinced these men that they’ll be outcasts, the all-male priesthood can seem like a safe haven, and the vow of celibacy an opportunity to tuck one’s sexuality away on a shelf.The promise of celibacy most likely factored into the church’s child sexual abuse crisis. Many years ago, when I wrote a book about it, more than a few mental health professionals told me that men trying to vanquish a sexual attraction to kids might well drift toward the priesthood in the hope that extra prayer and an intention of chastity would make everything right. One Catholic archbishop, Daniel Sheehan, who has since died, told me: “It could well be that a person with this kind of a hidden psychosexual problem could escape to the seminary and the like, thinking in some way that this would be a way of sublimating this problem.”
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