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	Church Could Start Healing by Allowing Priests to Marry By Ken Bode Indianapolis Star April 9, 2010 http://www.indystar.com/article/20100409/OPINION12/4090321/1002/OPINION/Church-could-start-healing-by-allowing-priests-to-marry In Mark 10:14, Jesus says, "Suffer the little children to come unto me." For some of those who now practice the religion created in his name, a more appropriate phrasing would be, "Come unto me children, and you will suffer, both now and later." Consider the 200 deaf boys fondled and abused in a Wisconsin school by Father Lawrence Murphy, a priest who told them that God wanted him to teach them about sex. The boys were warned that they must never tell what happened because it was covered by the sacrament of the confessional. They were betrayed by their church. And they could find no one to pay attention. They took their complaints to the bishop and were rebuffed, their stories dismissed and ignored. They went to the civil authorities, the police and prosecutors in Milwaukee, and were dismissed and ignored. They made "Wanted Posters" that included a photo of Murphy and distributed them outside the church. Nothing happened. Just as the Vatican allowed Cardinal Bernard Law to cover up known pederast priests in the Archdiocese of Boston, civil and clerical authorities in Milwaukee tolerated and facilitated Murphy's sinful behavior. What should have happened? Murphy should have been charged with criminal sexual abuse and put in jail. When he served his time he should have gone straight onto a public sexual offenders registry. Then, let the church do with him what it may, but surely it could no longer turn him loose on the deaf boys of Wisconsin. The Catholic Church has recognized the problem of abuse by priests but has done little about it. Bill Donohue of the Catholic League recently took out a full-page ad in The New York Times in which he argued that the pedophilia crisis is really a homosexual crisis. Survey the literature, and you will find an ongoing debate about what proportion of the modern priesthood is homosexual and how that relates to the abuse of children. Books written by Catholic clergy or former priests estimate that the percentage of gays in the priesthood is significant. A Vatican order from 1961 bars persons with homosexual orientation in Catholic orders, and considers homosexuality a sin that deserves automatic excommunication. In its proclamations and secular policies, the Catholic Church -- and in particular its North American bishops -- is just about the most intolerant of homosexuality of any institution in society. Yet, within its own orders, the church will not recognize its internal contradictions nor enforce its rules. Two-thirds of sitting American bishops have been accused of moving pedophile priests to new assignments. Yet in most of the larger U.S. dioceses, there is an underground gay subculture. The Catholic League's Donohue writes, "Eighty percent of the victims of priest sexual abuse are male and most of them are post-pubescent. While homosexuality does not cause predatory behavior and most gay priests are not molesters, most of the molesters have been gay."Over the Easter season, evidence of denial reached the highest orders of the church. The pope used his Palm Sunday sermon to denounce the "petty gossip" surrounding the child abuse scandals. Father Gabriele Amorth, the Vatican's exorcist, blamed the devil for using child-abusing puppets to smear the church. And, perhaps most bizarre, a senior Vatican priest used the Good Friday service to compare the uproar over sexual abuse to the persecution of the Jews. The Vatican must get over its delusions that the sexual abuse scandal is an attack on the pope. And, perhaps, Benedict could heed the calls for reform. Lift the ban on celibacy, for example, and allow priests to marry and married men to enter the priesthood. But recognize the reality of the contemporary population of priests, as well, and lift the ban on homosexuality. Allow all priests -- straight or gay -- to marry. Not under this pope, you say?
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