Ex-Priest Calls for Married Clergy

By Paul Mulvey
Herald Sun
October 22, 2012

www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/ex-priest-calls-for-married-clergy/story-e6frf7kf-1226500888109

A FORMER priest has called for the Catholic Church to accept married clergy to help change a culture which has contributed to sexual abuse of children.

Des Cahill says the Victorian government should amend the Equal Opportunity Act to remove the exemption allowing religious organisations to bar people from serving in the church because of their marital status.

Professor Cahill told a Victorian parliamentary inquiry the reform would require "major changes" in the church and admitted it would be a long shot.

But allowing married clergy in the Catholic Church could be the "circuit breaker" needed to change the whole culture of what he called "celibate caste clericalism", he said.

"Celibacy should be maintained, but there should also be the scope for diversity to include married clergy," he told the inquiry into child abuse by religious and other organisations.

"To introduce this requires major change, not least of which is the financial implications."

While a small number of married Anglican ministers have crossed over and been ordained as Catholic priests in Australia in recent years, Prof Cahill is calling for further steps.

He believes the church should readmit married former priests like himself and allow married men to be ordained.

Prof Cahill, who served in two Melbourne parishes in the 1970s and is now professor of intercultural studies at RMIT University, said there was general support for change.

"Around the world, the majority of Catholic lay people support married clergy," he said.

He said celibacy in a closed community such as the priesthood could contribute to emotional immaturity and lead indirectly to a culture of offending.

"If a celibate does not receive the emotional support of a close community, such as a marriage, there's a greater likelihood of offending," he said.

Prof Cahill said figures showed one in 20 priests ordained in Melbourne between 1940 and 1972 were child abusers, but because many cases went unreported, that figure could be as high as one in 15.

He said 22 of the 452 priests who studied at Corpus Christi College in that time were known child sex offenders, a similar rate to a US analysis which found 4362 of 105,000 priests had abused children.

He said the figure may be even higher among Christian Brothers.

While reported cases have decreased in the past 20 years, he feared sexual abuse in the church may rebound in the coming decades because the "underlying problems have not been addressed".

The church was incapable of dealing adequately with sexual abuse, he said, as it maintained unrealistic ethical clericalism, lacked openness and transparency, and operated under canon law rather than civil law.

He said giving lay members of parishes representation on diocesan synods to have their say on policy matters would help the church.

"Where there's greater openness, there's more likelihood of bringing issues that fester to the surface," he said.

Prof Cahill also called for the Melbourne Response - the church's internal protocol for dealing with abuse accusations - to be dissolved and all allegations to be sent to police.

"It (Melbourne Response) is in house, designed to protect the image and reputation of the church and to contain financial liability," he said.

"All this saga would have been much more easily handled if it was handled in the proper arena - the police and criminal justice system."