Sanchez: Church needs to admit that priests often have active sex lives

By Mary Sanchez
Lakeland Ledger
February 26, 2019

https://www.theledger.com/opinion/20190226/sanchez-church-needs-to-admit-that-priests-often-have-active-sex-lives

In the early 1980s, Americans were absorbed by the forbidden love of a dashingly handsome Roman Catholic cardinal and the equally beguiling woman with whom he’d fathered a child.

Would the cleric, Ralph de Bricassart, renounce his holy orders and forego the riches and power of his position at the Vatican for the love of a woman? Would he join his beloved Meggie Cleary and her son, the young man he adored, who was in fact his son too?

Alas, “The Thorn Birds” was a television miniseries, after “Roots” the most watched of its time.

The romance was so alluring because the love was forbidden. Yet even to my then young Catholic mind it seemed quite plausible. Of course priests sometimes violate the discipline of celibate chastity, fall in love and desire a family.

Last week, the Vatican made a telling admission that the church has guidelines for what to do with “children of the ordained” -- and, as the New York Times reported, those guidelines are secret.

Wouldn’t it seem, at this point, that there should be no more big revelations about sex that the church needs to admit?

No, we’re not there yet.

The Times published the revelation just days before the Vatican opened a three-day summit of the presidents of the world’s bishops’ conferences in Rome. The reason for the gathering? To address the global sexual abuse scandal involving priests.

How many children, acknowledged or not, have priests fathered? It’s impossible to say, but most reporters who have delved deeply into the church’s sex scandals know of such children. I do.

There have always been ethical dilemmas in reporting about such unions. Revealing much about a mother would risk exposing the child’s identity. Proving paternity without the cooperation of the father would be extremely difficult. And it should not be surprising that many priest-fathers emphatically do not want to admit paternity and accept the responsibilities that come with it.

A child whose father is a priest has a right to know that father and have his love and support. Indeed, as the Times reported, the church guidelines stressed that the “fundamental principle” was the “protection of the child.” But in too many cases, recognition of paternity -- much less love and protection -- has not been given.

The Times quoted a canon lawyer in Rome who said that there is “zero” obligation in canon law for a man to leave the priesthood because he has fathered a child. “As it is not a canonical crime, there are no grounds for dismissal,” said Laura Sgro.

Here is yet another example of the Catholic Church’s unwillingness to deal honestly and openly with this most basic aspect of being human, sexuality.

Rapes of nuns by priests have been covered up and denied no doubt out of fear of scandal. Pedophilia has been widely covered up for the same reason, but also out of a shocking and reprehensible failure on the part of church authorities to understand these acts as crimes. In the course of cases being exposed and investigated, it is clear that many Catholic bishops don’t grasp that there is a difference between homosexuality and sexually assaulting children.

The failure to admit the active sex lives of its clergy -- the church’s seemingly instinctive reflex to shroud them in shame and secrecy -- is at the root of so many of the horrific abuses of power by the hierarchy. The same impulse that drives the church to cover up sex crimes -- assaults on altar boys, schoolchildren, nuns and so many other victims -- urges them to cover up more benign sex acts most of us recognize as peccadillos, or just facts of life.

Many Catholics chafe at what they consider absurd or outmoded sexual precepts in their church: clerical celibacy; the stigmatization of homosexuality as “disordered” and of remarriage after divorce as sinful; the proscription of any type of birth control. The church simply has not kept up with the changing attitudes of Catholics about sexuality.

Children born out of wedlock, homosexuality -- these no longer shame people the way they used to, Catholics included. But they shame the church when its clergy partake.

What the church misses is that we the faithful are no longer willing to tolerate the acts of cruelty the clergy commit and the hierarchy connives at in the interest of maintaining the false image of clerical chastity.

Not much was expected from the meeting in Rome. These ecclesiastical gatherings often feel disconnected from and irrelevant to the day-to-day lives of most Catholics.

The hierarchy’s challenge is to close that space openly and honestly. They can start by admitting that they are all too human.

Mary Sanchez’ column is distributed by the Tribune Content Agency.