BishopAccountability.org
	Staying Celibate By Antonio C. Abaya Manila Standard Today July 17, 2007 http://www.manilastandardtoday.com/?page=antonioAbaya_july17_2007 If everything goes according to plan, some 108 individuals will get an average of $1.3 million each from the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, the largest archdiocese in the US, as settlement of a $660-million law suit over allegations of sexual abuse by priests serving in LA. According to The Associated Press, this settlement pushes the total amount paid out by the US Church since 1950 to more than $2 billion. The LA archdiocese has so far paid more than $114 million to settle 86 claims so far. This is the biggest settlement ever since the clergy sexual abuse scandal in Boston erupted in 2002. The largest payout so far has been by the Archdiocese of Orange, California in 2004, for $100 million. Several religious orders in California have also reached multi-million-dollar settlements in recent months, including the Carmelites, the Franciscans and the Jesuits. Facing a flood of claims, five dioceses—Tucson (Arizona), Spokane (Washington), Portland (Oregon), Davenport (Iowa), and San Diego (California)—have sought bankruptcy protection. These million-dollar settlements promise to become a new cottage industry in litigious America. If one were to do some digging, one can come up with the names of the errant priests during which years in which diocese, and then manufacture stories about how one was abused by Fr. So-and-So in the confessional box, or in the sacristy after serving mass at five in the morning. The more lurid the details, the more hastily will the diocese rush to settle, just to avoid public embarrassment. I think many of these 'cases' belong to that category of Holy Extortion. It beats working in a 9-to-5 job, or picking fruit in the Valley for minimum wages. On the other hand, this flood of clerical sexual abuse scandals—which will wax before it wanes—should compel Church reformers to rethink the concept of clerical celibacy. It is appropriate that this has come to a head in Los Angeles, by most accounts (such as mine) the Sodom and Gomorrah of the US. Los Angeles is the seat of the film and TV entertainment industry, which, if it celebrates anything, celebrates sexual hedonism, materialism, self-gratification, pornography, the drug culture, celebrity worship and everything else that offends Middle America 's personal and family values. Drowning in such a sea of moral putrescence, it is hard to see how any normal person can resist the omnipresent temptations of the flesh and live up to his vows of chastity and celibacy. Perhaps those vows of chastity and celibacy have become obsolete and have become relevant only to monks who choose to spend their lives in a secluded monastery high up in the mountains. In the Roman Catholic Church, priestly celibacy is only a discipline. It is not a doctrine. According to Wikipedia, celibacy is only a Church regulation, not an integral part of Church teaching, and is not covered by the doctrine of Papal infallibility. It is based on imitating the life of Jesus of Nazareth and his supposedly celibate way of life. But a contrarian reading of that life suggests the possibility that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and had a child or children with her. A possibility explored and exploited in The Da Vinci Code, but other, serious Church historians looked into this even before Dan Brown stumbled into it. At any rate, the first pope, Peter I, as well as many subsequent popes, bishops and priests during the Church's first 270 years were in fact married men and often fathered children. It was the Council of Elvira (300 to 306 AD) that decreed: "It is decided that marriage be altogether prohibited to bishops, priests and deacons, or to all clerics placed in the ministry, and that they keep away from their wives and not beget children; whoever does this shall be deprived of the honor of the clerical office." It was not recorded what Elvira had to say about this. During the Reformation, priestly celibacy was rejected by the Protestant Reformers who argued that it was contrary to Biblical teachings. Zwingli married in 1522, Luther in 1525, Calvin in 1539, the married Thomas Crammer was made Archbishop of Canterbury in 1533. It would be interesting to compare the incidence of priestly sexual abuse among the unmarried clerics of the Roman Catholic Church and the married clerics of the Protestant denominations. This could help determine the continued relevance of priestly celibacy in the 21st century. In the Ateneo of the 1950s, our Filipino Jesuit professor in, of all subjects, Moral Theology, ran away with and married a colegiala to whom he was confidante and confessor. While everyone agreed that it must have been true love, one can only imagine the moral anguish that they suffered as a result of their forbidden relationship. When we were running Erehwon Bookshop in the '70s and '80s, one of our regular customers for Playboy Magazine was an American Jesuit who eventually married an American nun from nearby Maryknoll (now Miriam) College. Again, I bring this up not to mock the two, but to sympathize with them for the anguish they endured, as they tried, unsuccessfully, to stay celibate. Contact: acabaya@zpdee.net.
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