By Oswald Brown
The Freeport News
August 3, 2007
http://freeport.nassauguardian.net/editorial/305300148382416.php
Writes...
Bahamas — William Nairn, a prolific letter-writer, recently launched a scathing attack on the Roman Catholic Church in a letter published in The Freeport News. His vitriolic epistle apparently was prompted by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles recently agreeing to pay $600 million to settle a number of lawsuits related to sexual abuse scandals involving clergy affiliated with that diocese.
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A former Catholic himself, Nairn said he made the decision to leave the "Catholic faith" after reading a book in 1990 written by a former Catholic Priest about the "many acts of homosexuality and immoral acts" within the church.
"My problem was, and still is, how will the leaders of the Catholic Faith be able to justify the mentioned acts to God upon his return?" Nairn wrote. "What will the Catholic leaders say or do to account for their stewardship of so many Catholics on this earth?"
As a practicing Roman Catholic, the overall tenor of Nairn's letter was offensive to me, but his attempt to cast a broad net of disrespect over the collective leadership of my Church made my blood boil. There is not one member of the Catholic faith who would not acknowledge the fact that the Church is faced with a very real problem in trying to address the sexual abuse scandals that have taken place over the years and have resulted in the Church having to pay compensation of more than $2 billion since 1950.
But to suggest that the entire church leadership — currently headed by His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI, the successor of St. Peter, whom Jesus Christ himself instructed to "build my Church" — should be held responsible for the actions of persons who entered the seminary to become priests with flawed morals is absolutely detestable. It is these miscreants who will have to answer to God upon his return for using the Church as a cover for their vile behaviour.
What's more, homosexuality is not only a pervasive problem in the Roman Catholic faith, but in religions across the board. There is a school of thought, however, that it is so prevalent within the Catholic faith because the Church's celibacy law provides a perfect cover for people with homosexual tendencies.
This is why there are some very staunch Catholics, myself included, who openly advocate that this doctrine should be changed. This suggestion has garnered a great deal of support among Catholics over the past several decades or so, particularly in the United States and some South American countries, where it is rumoured that some priests do indeed marry. But the Holy See in Rome has steadfastly refused to entertain even a remote thought of endorsing such a radical change.
Catholics generally do not question the authority of the Holy See, but more and more they are questioning why the Church insists on keeping this policy in place when there is really no biblical edict that requires persons who want to commit their lives to serving God as priests to make such a sacrifice. In fact, scholars of Catholicism note that the "first ecumenical council to require celibacy of all clergy was the First Lateran Council in 1123."
"In the first centuries marriage was not considered an impediment to priesthood," Donald J. Goergen points out in a well-researched paper on the issue. "The Synod of Elvira (c. 306), a Spanish synod, provides the earliest legislation. Canon 33 did not forbid marriage, but decreed that bishops, presbyters, and deacons abstain sexually from their wives. The ecumenical Council of Nicaea in 325 did not impose celibacy on all priests, but forbade marriage after the diaconate. In the tenth century there were still married clergy..."
Surely, as long as the practice of celibacy remains so firmly entrenched, the Church's litany of pleas for more young men to make the priestly commitment will mostly fall on deaf ears. Many young men who have the potential to be good priests and indeed want to answer the call are not prepared to pay the price the Church is requiring them to pay to serve their God in this special way.
There is active in the Church today a cadre of committed deacons who would make equally as committed good priests. Deacons like Peter Rahming, Nixon Lindor, Jeffrey Lloyd, Jeffrey Hollingsworth, Andrew Burrows, Maxwell Johnson and Raymond Forbes, to name a few, are all priestly material, and were it not for the celibacy law more likely than not they would all be priests.
Probably the reason why some of them, especially the younger ones, did not make that ultimate commitment when they received their "calling" was because they had witnessed the tremendous strain that attempting to remain faithful to their priestly commitment had on several Bahamians who had entered the priesthood, but later left because of "affairs of the heart."
Unquestionably, Charles Coakley would have been the first Bahamian-born Roman Catholic Bishop had he not left the priesthood. His decision to do so in 1969 after 12 years of dedication to his calling was an extremely difficult one for black Bahamian Roman Catholics to accept, because he represented the embodiment of their hopes and dreams of seeing one of their own ascend to the top leadership position in the Roman Catholic Church in The Bahamas.
Father Coakley's ordination as the first black Bahamian priest on June 20, 1957, was more than just spiritually significant to black Catholics, but it also was socially and nationalistically important to black Bahamians in general. This was around the time when the most despicable manifestations of racism were very much in evidence in The Bahamas. For example, blacks were barred from seeing a movie at the Savoy Theatre on Bay Street, but instead had to wait until new releases had been shown for a designated period of time at the Savoy before being distributed to the "black" theatres Over-The-Hill: The Capitol of Farm Road, The Cinema on East street, and before it was destroyed by fire, Paul Meeres Theatre on the corner of Market and Fleming Streets.
So Charles Coakley, the priest, became a living symbol of black accomplishment and achievement; and icon, in every sense of the word, to young blacks who detested the limitations racism placed on their upward mobility.
But like King Edward VIII, who abdicated the British throne for the woman he loved, Father Coakley fell in love, which no doubt resulted in some very serious mental al battles being waged in his mind over the rightness or wrongness of a priest having such feelings for a woman. As a Roman Catholic priest, he was committed to a life of celibacy; however, his continued fidelity to that commitment was now being challenged by the hypnotic power of love.
In the end, love prevailed and he left the priesthood to marry Antoinette Roberts, a very charming and vivacious young lady to whom he remained married for 31 years up to the time of his death in March of 2001.
No doubt, were he alive at the time, Charles Coakley would have been brimming with pride when the Most Reverend Patrick Christopher Pinder was installed in May of 2004 as the first Bahamian Roman Catholic Bishop, a position Father Coakley almost certainly would have attained a couple decades earlier had he remained a priest.
Obviously, the opinions expressed in this column are unlikely to bring about a change in the church's policy on celibacy, but surely as long as the status quo remains so firmly entrenched, the shortage of priests in the Roman Catholic Church worldwide will continue to be a serious problem and will get progressively worse here in The Bahamas, where it is already at the critical stage.
Oswald T. Brown is editor and general manager of The Freeport News. Comments on this column can be sent to androsboy@hotmail.com.
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