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	Priests with Hidden Loves Speak against Celibacy Rule Arizona Daily Star March 18, 2010 http://www.azstarnet.com/news/world/article_400c1915-eeed-58ed-a4e0-ce22490d0b34.html EUROPE, PARIS -- Leon Laclau shared his life, and often, his bed, with Marga over 20 years - all while serving as a Catholic priest in a town in the French Pyrenees. His clerical leadership eventually expelled him, prompting protests from his flock and inspiring other priests and their partners around France to speak out about long-hidden love lives, and to press the church to abandon its insistence on celibacy. They say the chastity rule has fed the persistent, profound decline in the numbers of European and American priests. More influential voices are joining them as scandals involving sexual abuse and pedophilia spread across parishes around Europe. The Vatican rejects any link between celibacy and sex abuse, and it shows no sign that it intends to loosen its rules. Instead, church leaders are likely to continue a don't ask, don't tell policy of ignoring priestly relationships, as long as they cause no harm. "Love, my love for Marga, never held me back from having faith. On the contrary - it encouraged me," Laclau told The Associated Press by telephone from his home in Asson, in the mountains near the pilgrimage site at Lourdes. "I lived my love life with Marga, and I kept my passion for the church." Now, one of the pope's closest advisers, Austrian Cardinal Christophy Schoenborn, has called for an honest examination of issues such as celibacy and education for priests to root out the origins of sex abuse. His office quickly stressed that Schoenborn wasn't calling celibacy into question, just as Pope Benedict XVI was reaffirming its importance as an "expression of the gift of oneself to God and others." But Schoenborn and others have been receptive to arguments that a celibate priesthood is increasingly problematic for the church, primarily because it limits potential candidates for ordination. Another problem: People who are pedophiles to begin with are drawn to the church because it is an easy way to find victims and be in a position of authority where few question their actions, priest and family counselor Stephane Joulain noted in an essay in Sunday's Le Monde. He also said priests who have never had sexual experiences are often drawn to adolescents because their own sexual growth halted at adolescence. While the worldwide number of priests is slowly rising to 408,000 - with major growth in Africa and Asia - the number in Europe is continuing to decline, according to Vatican statistics. The decline is particularly jarring in the United States, where they have dropped from 58,909 in 1975 to 40,666 in 2009, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, at Georgetown University. "The church is losing a lot of ground; it's turning in on itself," Laclau said. Ending celibacy, while not the only solution, could help make the church "more humane," he said. Leon and Marga Laclau, after he left the church and after more than 20 years together, finally married. He continues to attend Mass, "not regularly, but I go. It is always a joy to participate. "I still have faith," he said. "But you must maintain it. It's a bit like love."
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