2014-04-19  In one of his "Joshua" books, Joseph Girzone uses the phrase:

                          "The evil of compulsory celibacy"

The articles below spell out this evil.
Please notify of other articles which can be added to this file: jdwomi@gmail.com 


April 19, 2014: Vatican and bishops' conferences urged to consider married priests following signal from Pope Francis

August 28, 2013: Trouble with celibacy in the church in Africa
(and not just Africa - see comments)

July 26, 2013: Has God already answered prayers for vocations?
Will we continue to dig for vocations to the priesthood with broken spades?
Will we keep praying for vocations when perhaps God has answered our prayers?
Do we continue to refuse what God is offering and what the Spirit is saying to the Churches now?”

May 24, 2013: Forced celibacy and its consequences 

March 31, 2013: UK MPs letter to Pope: end compulsory celibacy

March 22, 2013: Pope Francis: open to change in celibacy rule?

March 11, 2013:  Conclave and celibacy  (ABC)

March 9, 2013:  Celibacy's Cross (Tablet)

March 5, 2013:  The wages of celibacy

Feb 24, 2013:  Scotland's Cardinal O'Brien: new pope should review marriage ban on priests

Feb 19, 2013: Radical Benedict Michael Mullins (Eureka Street)
If a pope can resign, compulsory celibacy can be consigned

Dec 23, 2012:  Celibacy and the Catholic Church (ABC Radio)

Dec 1, 2012: Three letters re celibacy (Tablet)

Nov 22: Look East for reason why celibacy vow should be axed
While we should be careful not to confuse correlation with causation, one compelling question cannot be avoided - why do Eastern Catholics and other churches with married clergy rarely encounter claims of child sex abuse?

Nov 21, 2012: Vilification of abusers won't contribute to solution
John C. Seitz, review of CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH: GENDER, POWER, AND ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE by Marie Keenan

This latter section of the book develops several themes relevant to the rise of abuse in Roman Catholic settings. Her focus is on seminary culture and education (in the period before the 1990s) and the kind of living it enabled and disabled. In these spaces priests learned to fear sexuality, disavow their bodies and emotions, bury non-priestly components of themselves, and adapt to emotionally isolated and lonely lives.
....These conditions, along with sexual immaturity fostered by lifelong silence surrounding sexuality, helped produce priests who had an “emotional congruence” with children. Keenan sees perpetrators of abuse tragically seeking to navigate their emotional tempests in the presence and with the bodies of young people, whom abusers saw as equal, if easily silenced, partners.

Nov 15, 2012:  Bishop Geoffrey Robinson: Confronting the culture of abuse in the Catholic Church 
See No. 5: A culture of celibacy

Oct 22, 2012:  Victorian abuse inquiry: One in 20 priests an abuser
(The Age)
Professor Cahill: called for married priests, as are being allowed now in the Anglican ordinariate within the Catholic Church,
as a "circuit-breaker" that would reduce child sex abuse

Oct, 2012:  Petition to ordain married men (Tony Hoey, UK)

Sep 6, 2012: Catholic Seminaries, the inside story (AW Richard Sipe)

My conclusion from the inside: Not more than one in 20 seminarians ordained today is equipped to hear Confessions or counsel penitents or parishioners. Not one in 10 seminarians ordained today is qualified to preach. 
Priests coming out of Roman Catholic seminaries are dangerous to others and themselves. Most men, regardless of age, are immature when they enter the seminary and most emerge psychosexually immature or even twisted. Sexuality is only part of the problem. The institutions favor egocentric men. One active priest fears that seminaries are producing “a generation of seminarians and young priests who are cognitively rigid and risk adverse; who want to circle the wagons around their imagined secure and superior group; who seem preoccupied with clothing, titles, perks, and externals of religion; and frankly have little use for the world beyond their own control or explanation." 

August 13, 2012:  My calling to the clerical culture Don Fausel (per Catholica)
"Describe and analyzes my experiences as a seminarian, when I was being indoctrinated into the clerical culture and as a priest when I became part of that culture. The anecdotes I related were not intended to represent all clerics, but to provide readers with one man's perspective, with the hope that they would be able to see how it was possible for a sincere, but naïve and psychosexually immature individual to actually become part of the clerical culture"

July 15, 2012: A married deacon can be a father but not "Fr."
Brian Eyre
, a Catholic married priest in Recife, Brazil, argues that bishops should ordain mature married men to the priesthood. He believes the existence of married deacons will lead many to ask why the married cannot be priests  (ACP)

July 7, 2012: Nothing sacred about celibacy Adele Horin (SMH)
"It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the unique factor of a celibate, all-male priesthood
has contributed to the church's woes, and to the woes inflicted on its victims"

June 14, 2012: British historian: Church has not learned from abuse in past centuries Jonathan Luxmoore (NCR)
(historical link between compulsory celibacy and sexual abuse by clergy)

June 1, 2012: A lament for those who left the priesthood  Tom McMahon (Catholica)

May 17, 2012:  History of celibacy in the Catholic Church  Thomas O'Loughlin 

May 12, 2012:  Final paragraph's of this article by Wilfred Harrington O.P.

May 7, 2012:  Brian Coyne's comment re case of Fr Oliver O'Grady, USA  (final paragraph) (Catholica)

May 1, 2012: Celibacy for priests has to die Fr Michael Kelly SJ (Hoopla)

March 9, 2012:  Brian Coyne's comment re case of Fr Neil Byrne, Brisbane (Catholica)

July 8, 2011: Compulsory celibacy as a condition of ministry is evil & leads to malevolent consequences
Michael Parer (Catholica)

Previous file on optional celibacy - has many articles

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