I’m a very long-time Roman Catholic. As I wrote last night, I’m staggered by the recent Pennsylvania Grand Jury report that reports they have identified 300+ Catholic priests who committed child sexual abuse in the state over the last 70 years, with thousands of victims. If you extrapolate that to all of the states, and all of the countries in the world, and go back centuries, you’re talking about MILLIONS of victims.
Not only that, but many of the reports reflect unimaginable, Satanic evil, including priests forcing little girls to wash their mouths with holy water and then to give oral sex. I may never recover from hearing of that evil horror, which I read in a NYT article by Rev. James Martin, S.J., the editor of the Jesuit magazine America.
For the last 10 or 15 years, I’ve backpedalled on this story, thinking it must be a few bad eggs. This recent report has knocked me to the ground. I skipped church tonight. I may stop making contributions (my wife and I give thousands every year to the church and the archdiocese). I’m not emotionally ready to quit my church entirely, but I’m sure moving in that direction. My pain over this is very great.
Some of the priests I’ve met over the years must have been mega-creeps! I can only think of one that clearly meets that description (which forced me and my wife to travel an extra one-hour round trip every Sunday to avoid him). But there probably were others. Ick!
Once again, I think this should be an inflection point that would force the church to abandon the foolish doctrine of priestly celibacy. That rule was never proclaimed by Jesus and isn’t declared in the Bible. It was put in place at a congregation of bishops in the 1100s. It could be overturned by the Pope with one signature.
Yes, I know that celibacy is not directly related to pedophilia, as several people pointed out in my last diary. However, if there was no celibacy requirement, the church would have many more candidates for the priesthood, which means they could be much more selective about screening for creeps and pedophiles! That’s my main point.
Incidentally, I’ve met a few Roman Catholic priests who were married with children. How is that possible? They were protestant pastors before they converted, and they’re invited into the church with wife and children. That should be the norm.
And the Roman Catholic Church should step up its efforts (such as they are) to aggressively report child molester priests to the police.