BishopAccountability.org
	Austrian Priests Suggest Celibacy May Be a Problem By Robert Mackey The New York Times March 12, 2010 http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/12/priests-suggest-celibacy-may-be-a-problem/ On Thursday two senior Catholics in Austria, where reports of the sexual abuse of children by priests and nuns have been in the news, suggested that the role of priestly celibacy may need to be discussed as Catholics seek to understand and end scandals that have erupted across Europe and in the United States in recent years. The Archbishop of Vienna, Christoph Schonborn, wrote in an article for a Catholic magazine that it was time for the Church to undertake an “unflinching examination” of what might be at the root of the problem of celibate clerics sexually abusing children. As The Guardian’s religious affairs correspondent, Riazat Butt, explained on Thursday, Archbishop Schonborn wrote that the discussion should “include the issue of priest training, as well as the question of what happened in the so-called sexual revolution,” as well as “the issue of priest celibacy and the issue of personality development. It requires a great deal of honesty, both on the part of the church and of society as a whole.” On Thursday night, Archbishop Alois Kothgasser of Salzburg told Austrian television, “In the Church’s current situation, the question must be asked whether celibacy is an appropriate way of life for priests and an appropriate way of life for believers.” As Reuters reports, “There have been daily reports of child sexual abuse in Austrian Catholic institutions since the arch-abbot of Salzburg’s St. Peter’s monastery quit Monday after admitting to sexually abusing a boy 40 years ago.” On Friday, The Telegraph added, “Salzburg church officials revealed that a man said he was abused by a nun while a child – the first such accusation amid widening allegations of sexual misdeeds leveled against Austria’s Roman Catholic church.” Neither of the Austrian archbishops directly suggested ending celibacy. In fact Archbishop Schonborn said on Friday that he was not saying that celibacy caused pedophilia. “If celibacy were the reason for sexual abuse,” he said, “there wouldn’t be any abuse in the rest of society.” As this video report from France 24 explains, sex scandals have also affected the Catholic Church in Germany recently: Pope Benedict XVI met with Germany’s highest-ranking Roman Catholic leader Friday at the Vatican to discuss allegations that priests in the pope’s native country sexually abused children for decades, as my colleagues Nicholas Kulish and Rachel Donadio report. As Reuters reported, another leading German Catholic, Bishop Hans-Jochen Jaschk of Hamburg, told German Radio on Friday: “The celibate lifestyle can attract people who have an abnormal sexuality and cannot integrate sexuality into their lives. That’s when a dangerous situation can arise.” Bishop Jaschk added, “Just because one doesn’t live out one’s sexuality doesn’t mean it’s been turned off.” Despite all these calls for a discussion of the issue, Pope Benedict defended “the value of sacred celibacy” in remarks on Friday and said that the ancient rule would not be changed because of “passing cultural fashions.”
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.