NO MORE LIES
Religious leaders are killing religion with a stranglehold, a sharp ax and discombobulating speech.
The stranglehold occurs when religious leaders successfully cut off critical speech that could tell the truth about the future and help make effective plans for the years ahead. The sharp ax is how religion chops up people who try to tell the truth. And discombobulating speech is anything a religious bureaucrat says that sounds slightly defensive.
Ripe examples abound. The pedophile situation in the Catholic Church, for instance, is so rank with denial and stink-filled platitudes about caring for the young and seeking justice that one has a difficult time believing anything the Catholic Church says these days.
Catholic believers ought to be asking serious questions about their priests. Are we safe? Will you tell us when we are not safe? Will you help protect our children? Will the Church ever tell the truth again? Whom can we count on to tell the truth?
Those questions and many others, such as, "What other things are you lying about?" ought to be on the lips of every Catholic who attends worship.
The Church has been lying about celibacy for a long time. In the early days of child abuse charges, 20 years ago, bishops were quick to point out that pedophilia had nothing to do with celibacy. This is the part called discombobulating speech
Now we know that's baloney. In fact, it has everything to do with celibacy. In some cases, men join the priesthood to escape the shame of pedophilia. Or they become priests to give them more contacts with young children. Some reach out to children to ease the loneliness celibacy often brings, and then mistake a child's attention as a desire for sexual action. This is a system that has been delivering men to the priesthood before they've had a chance to confront their sexuality and develop into mature human beings. Remember, this has been happening in Catholicism for hundreds of years.
For at least the past two decades, priests have been fighting against the system that forces them to remain unmarried throughout life. Very few modern priests believe that celibacy is a rule against sex. Many priests have sexual encounters; some straight and some gay.
Technically the celibacy rule is against marriage and was imposed originally because the Church was afraid wives would complicate the dispersment of property when a priest died.
So the bishops threw out wives - some in the literal sense. The imposition of the celibacy rule, was a bitter and brutal struggle in the history of the Catholic Church.
Now priests are fighting back and calling for a gentler rule that would give each priest an option to marry or remain single. And some priests are not waiting for permission from the hierarchy. They are marrying their lovers in private and living as best they can without disturbing the Church.
One priest in Spain married his lover last January and now has asked his parishioners to raise 1,500 euro to fly his blushing bride to Spain so they may live together in his church's parsonage.
When the bishops in that part of the world heard about this violation of Church rule, they got tough. Knowing they can't afford to lose one priest, they told the offending cleric that he could stay on and serve the parish but he would not be allowed to hear private confessions.
What's the next step? I think, for courageous priests to step forward and confront their bishops. Who has nerve enough?
Clark D. Morphew
Posted for 3-13-02