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	With Your Permission Orangeville Citizen October 22, 2009 http://www.citizen.on.ca/news/2009/1022/columns/024.html Although the matter is no longer on the front pages of newspapers here in Ontario, there are many communities still reeling from the revelations of Bishop Raymond Lahey's (formerly bishop for the Diocese of Antigonish, N.B.) predilection for pornography. He was stopped at Ottawa airport by agents when, upon checking his laptop, they found graphic sexual images. Worst, the pictures discovered on his laptop were not those of naked women, nor videos of consenting, giggling adults - that sort of "normal" indulgence - Bishop Lahey's obsession involves little boys and young men. So intense is the reaction to the charges against of Bishop Lahey and his apparent betrayal of his position that he was forced to leave the town where he was staying in New Brunswick and request accommodation from a Roman Catholic Archdiocese. He was found a place to stay in a priests' house in Ottawa. In a collection of interviews on the CBC Radio One with his fellow clergy at the time of Bishop's Lahey's arrest, one of the priests, in commenting on the contents of the Bishop's laptop, remarked: "Well, there can be a problem with alcohol. That might be expected, given the unnatural life the Church imposes upon its priests..." We went to a baptism in a Catholic Church recently which was led by a deacon, a man in a ceremonial gown, who was authorised to preach and baptise a baby, and he was wearing a wedding band. Members of the congregation called this married man "Father Bob" - a married man within the precincts of the priesthood, but not a priest. Nowadays, women play stronger roles in the Catholic Church than they used to. They represent the church in Catholic high schools, but priests must come to celebrate masses held in the schools. Women are active within the church but do not hold positions of real authority and can never be priests or deacons. Jesus did not demand that his followers be celibate. Indeed, there are a considerable number of Christian leaders who have come to believe that Jesus himself was married. One argument I have heard to support this is that people called him "Rabbi" and all rabbis were married. Of course, the Catholic Church does not support this idea. Jesus, in any event, did not undermine women. He loved and respected them in a way that was several steps away from his culture of origin. It was Paul, the misogynist, whose letters fill the largest part of the New Testament, who called for a policy of abstinence - celibacy - of Christ's followers. And it is Paul who imposed on the fledgling Christian community the repression of women. He insisted that they cover their heads and be supplicant to their men; that men stood between women and God - Jesus did not dictate this. Paul has much to answer for - even to this day. According to dogma, Jesus was sent by God to be a human amongst humans. His Son was, in part, God's way of coming to understand what he had created, to feel our pain, know our dilemmas and understand our lusts. Like all beings here on earth, our physical life includes sexual activity and it would be hard to understand our humanity without sexual knowledge. To impose celibacy and deny the experience of a loving, monogamous, physical relationship, which is also a deeply spiritual one, is to deny living a human life. Water will find its way out of a leaky vessel and unfulfilled normal lust will find a target, eventually, regardless of training and good intentions. Let the priests go their way. No one is normally forced to be a priest. On the contrary, it is a lot of work to get there: long years of study, hard hours of training and counselling and prayer. We could let it go at that but the Church imposes Paul's credo of abstinence on people not in the church. Not long ago, Pope Benedict reiterated the Church's prohibition on the use of condoms. In Canada, maybe, this is not such a problem. People are educated and we have, generally, a culture of monogamy. In any event, we are not so bound by a Pope's dictum. As a country, we are not in the grips of the Pope's instructions: rather than incur an unwanted pregnancy or risk catching a lifethreatening disease, a person in Canada will use a condom, readily available as they are, whether the Pope says so or not. However, there are many millions of people in places less accommodating, more at risk, less well educated than here who do not or cannot obtain and use condoms. In Africa, for instance. Once, while talking to a young Catholic of my acquaintance, I asked him if the youth of the church were passing a petition around to ask the Pope to reconsider his edict on the non-use of condoms, especially in Africa. I was surprised at his shock that I should suggest such a thing and I let the matter drop. It worried me later though, that a person in his early twenties should be so unquestioning about a matter which needs to be rethought by the Vatican and, really, the people of the Catholic Church. A few days later he sent me a printout of an online interview (Zenit.org) with an HIV/AIDS technical advisor at Catholic Relief Services, who promotes "abstinence based programs that focus on changing behaviour rather than handing out condoms." It is not simply a matter of culture and or tradition. In Africa, traditionally from time immemorial, there has been a culture of the village - it takes a village to raise a child - one mother may have children by more than one father. Their rules are not ours, and vice-versa, and we do not have permission to approve or not. In addition, given the excessive brutality of the last decades in Africa, many thousands of women are not given options about whether they will submit to a man. Look at the way in which HIV/AIDS is changing whole societies by the death of huge numbers of the parents and the infection of the children. Look at how many children are born to die of disease and hunger within a very few years. Would their mothers willingly have begun a pregnancy? No. African culture is what it is; they are the original people, for goodness' sake. However, we are allowed to help to save them if we can and condoms are part of that rescue. To stop the spread of disease; to prevent births in misery, war and unbelievable deprivation. When Pope Benedict delivered his edict that condoms must not be used, that other ways: strict monogamy and, better (says Paul), abstinence, there was a hue and cry amongst human rights agencies and scientists. They decried his flying in the face of overwhelming evidence that condoms work at preventing the spread of disease and pregnancy. For many reasons, it is time for the Pope to open his eyes, haul the Roman Catholic Church into the 21st Century and admit to his fallibility. It is time for young Catholics to call for this.
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