O RLY?

[lederhosen]

Pope Benedict said he was "deeply ashamed" over the sexual abuse of children by priests and vowed to do everything possible to stop pedophiles entering the priesthood in future.

I am guessing 'everything possible' does not, in fact, include opening the priesthood to the ninetywhatever percent of potential priests who would like to be a priest but also don't feel they could give up the option of having a loving relationship with a consenting adult.

In unrelated news, this reminds me of a certain scene out of 'Life of Brian':

An audacious comment on big brother society, depicting a small boy painting the words: "One nation under CCTV" while being watched by a security guard, appeared on a building overlooking a post office yard near Oxford Circus. The artist put up three storeys of scaffolding behind a security fence, despite being watched by a CCTV (closed circuit television) camera, London's Evening Standard newspaper reported. He then created the work under cover of darkness and hidden behind a plastic sheet before the scaffolding was removed.

Comments

[mothwentbad.livejournal.com]

Isn't there some loophole where if you're already married you can become a priest, but not vice versa? It's stupid either way.

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

There are a couple of loopholes, yes. Eastern Rite Catholicism has different rules, and I understand they've been allowing married men to become priests for nearly a thousand years now, but they can't remarry or become bishops.

Under the Western Rite, the only loophole I know of is that married Anglican priests who convert to Catholicism can be reordained while remaining married.

IIRC, during the Communist regime in Poland, quite a few underground Catholic priests married because celibacy would have given them away, and there was some controversy about how to handle this when communism collapsed. I think they were eventually required to stay married but keep separate from their wives, or something equally painful.

[mothwentbad.livejournal.com]

This whole post is full of headdesk.

[panacea1.livejournal.com]

I'd have to ask moxie_man, 'cause he's the Catholic in the house, but I believe one of the priests serving the local combined parish (I think it's three priests over five churches) is a widower.

[nefaria.livejournal.com]

It'd make much more sense for priests to take a vow against committing adultery instead of a vow of celibacy. A married priest would make a better marriage counsellor, for instance. There's not a big enough pool of celibate Catholics to maintain the priesthood levels.

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

Indeed. Benedict's said that "It is more important to have good priests than to have many priests", but my understanding is that the recruitment rates are already critically low (at least in the First World); that puts an awful lot of pressure on them to accept anybody with a Y chromosome and no wedding ring.

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

The other thing with married clergy is that, if the Anglican church is anything to go by, the spouses do a vast amount of (usually unpaid) work supporting the church and indeed the priest. Hard on the spouse, but generally seen by the church as an asset rather than a distraction.

[scascot.livejournal.com]

From the linked article:
Pope Benedict said he was "deeply ashamed" over the sexual abuse of children by priests and vowed to do everything possible to stop pedophiles entering the priesthood in future.

What about the ones that are already priests?

Oh...wait...there's already a policy for them. Simply reassign them to a different parish and pay hush money to keep the allegations quiet.

Got it.