Did you know that only two percent of Catholic Priests keep their vow of celibacy?
"Survey and statistics that show only two percent of priests have been absolutely faithful to their vows of celibacy. Adjustment problems abound as demonstrated by repeated reports of priests abandoning their callings, fathering children, being charged with child molestation."
This is from a thesis written almost twenty years ago, back in 1992, entitled Celibacy Is the Issue by Thomas G. Lederer, which explains and predicts the current crisis of pedophilia in the Catholic Church.
Here are a couple interesting quotes.
"In late 1990, A.W. Richard Sipe's book, A Secret World – Sexuality and the Search for Celibacy, caused a veritable flood of controversy. The author, psychotherapist stated that that at least half the U.S. Priests at any given time are involved in some pattern of sexual activity."
The Vatican's second-highest authority says the sex scandals haunting the Roman Catholic Church are linked to homosexuality and not celibacy among priests. –Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican's secretary of state
This is from the number two man at the Vatican!
I hope it goes without saying with my readers, but I'll say it anyway, that first and foremost, he is wrong. There is and has never been any credible scientific evidence supporting this claim. It's pure BS, noise designed to distract us from the real root of the Roman Catholic pedophilia horror: celibacy.
The other day, I asked the question, "Why can't just one pedophile priest admit, 'I'm guilty, I'm sorry'"? The Roman Catholic Church could help so many people and start putting this scandal behind them if they'd just admit their faults, without any hesitation or backpedaling.
The Vatican is starting to feel more heat for Ratzinger (aka Pope Benedict XVI). In just a couple days, it's gone from a NY Times story to a worldwide scandal that is engulfing the Pope himself. Here are the headlines:
I'm sometimes incredulous at people's superstitions, but who would have thought that an exorcist would have an official position at the Vatican? It's really quite stunning, that in this day and age, when the Vatican officially supports the Theory of Evolution, hosts important scientific conferences, and has apologized to Galileo, that there is still a Catholic official who chases ghosts out of people's bodies and has a personal relationship with Satan.
This guy not only believes in Satan, he believes in a personal Satan, a guy sort of like Father Gabriel himself, just really, really bad. And this Satan fellow is so bad that all evil is his work. Pedophile priests and bishops? Satan. War, poverty and terrorism? Satan. That dude is so bad he has even "infiltrated the Vatican corridors" and is the reason for all of the trouble the Roman Catholic Church is having!
But Satan can't corrupt Father Gabriel! Oh no, he has one over on Satan! Satan is actually afraid of Father Gabriel, because Father Gabriel is on God's side.
Ireland, once called the "most fruitful of mothers" as a breeding ground for Catholic priests, is now so short on priests that it's turning into a crisis. The Diocese of Dublin, the center of the country that Pope John XXIII once considered a bastion of Catholicism, now has 46% of its priests over 80 years old, and just two who are under 36 years old.
The reasons for this are obvious to anyone with a brain. The Church itself is focusing on the celibacy requirement; it doesn't take a genius to figure out that asking a young, intelligent man to be celibate isn't exactly a win. The Church leaders are actually contemplating a change in this requirement, which is amazing.
But I think the biggest problem facing the Catholic Church is all of the sexual abuse scandals over the last decade. It seems that every time we turn around, there's another horrifying story of a priest who molested 10, 50, 100 or even more children, and lately the stories have turned to how the Catholic Church itself was complicit in shielding these child abusers, and worse, placing them in positions where they could repeat their crimes.
It used to be that being a Catholic priest was an honor. Mothers would beam with pride when introducing their priest sons. Now, imagine Mom telling your friends that you decided to enter a seminary to become a priest – your Mom would be embarrassed. It's rather sad.
There's a third reason for the decline, too. Christianity, and religion in general, is in a massive decline throughout Europe, and Catholicism is just part of that general trend. But I don't think that fully explains the shortage of priests in Ireland. This one is the Catholics own fault.
Today's beautiful lesson in evolution is the question, "Why do Churches inevitably want more members?" It's a lovely illustration: The Roman Catholic Church is stealing people from the Anglican Church over the issues of gay and women's rights. They're even (*gasp*) letting married Anglican priests become Catholic priests!
Today's lesson starts with a thought experiment: Suppose you were head of a church and decided that proselytizing (getting new members) was unimportant, that you'd found the very essence of God's wisdom, and too bad for everyone else. You and your followers worship correctly, follow all of God's laws, and get the golden ticket to Heaven. Pretty cool!
But a hundred years down the road, your church will be completely gone! Some other church, one that happens to believe in "spreading the word," will still be going strong whereas your followers will all be dead and buried.
So, churches inevitably believe in expanding their memberships. It's a lot like sex for humans: We like it because every one of our ancestors did too, and the people who didn't like sex had no children. Proselytism, plain and simple, is a church's version of sex, and all successful churches inevitably have a strong proselytism meme.
So back to the Anglicans and Catholics...
The Anglicans are having a big fight because some of them want to actually give equal rights to women and gays. The Roman Catholic Church is whispering, "Hey, come over here, we're not like those wimps, we still put women and gays in their place!" And not surprisingly, these Anglicans who are still trying to cling to the evil past, the days when oppression and discrimination were tolerated, are jumping from the Anglican ship an into the open arms of the Roman Catholic Church.
This is a perfect example of the proselytism meme hard at work. The Roman Catholic Church can't help itself, any more than humans can't help liking sex. Because if they didn't continue to try, all down through history, to gain new converts and steal follows from other churches, they'd be extinct, and I'd be writing about some other church that fostered a strong proselytism meme.
It is said that 99% of all plant and animal species that ever existed are extinct, that the 1% remaining are the best of the best, the fittest that survived. The same is true of churches, what you see today are the survivors, the memeplexes (the collection of ideas) that had more appeal, better defenses, stronger proselytizing, and kept up with other changes in our culture and environment.
So when you see churches fighting over members, you don't have to ask, "Which is right? Which one is interpreting the Bible correctly?" Those questions aren't relevant from a memetic point of view. All that matters is, "Which one will survive to the next generation?" And the answer to that question has more to do with what people want to believe than what's true.
Giving a person equal rights, whether its a man or woman, gay or straight, is only relevant to a church to the extent that the church gains or loses membership. Worrying about what's right and wrong, what God or Jesus might actually say about it, is fairly irrelevant.
Just for fun, let's go out with Professor Tom Lerher's song, National Brotherhood Week...
Oh the Catholics hate the Protestants and the Protestants hate the Catholics and the Hindus hate the Muslims and everybody hates the Jews!
Here is a twist: separation of church and state cuts both ways, it seems. A Catholic Priest, angry because he was accused of molesting two boys, sued them for defamation. But the U.S. Constitution, which the Church has used as a shield, cut the other way this time. His case was thrown out because the only way the court case could go forward was to examine how the Church investigates its own clergy. Such an examination, said the court, would violate the separation clause of the Constitution.
So the priest is out of luck. The Roman Catholic Church removed him from his pulpit because there was "reasonable" evidence to conclude he'd molested the boys. He apparently wasn't convicted in criminal court, so legally he's innocent. If his employer was anything except a church, he could have his day in court. But if he wasn't a priest, he'd probably be in jail.
There's no happy ending to this story, but at least for once the Constitution's separation clause protected someone from a clergyman's vengeance.
Of all the tenets of Christianity, the prohibition against their priests having sex is the most perverse and unnatural. Requiring healthy men to ignore nature's strongest instinct is simply a recipe for disaster. Our sexual desires are almost impossible to suppress, and when we try, it's like trying to hold the steam in a boiling pot: Sooner or later it will burst, and do all sorts of damage.
If today's story was just another about a Catholic priest molesting young boys and/or girls, it would barely even be newsworthy – there have been so many. But in this case, one of the most charismatic and influential Catholic leaders in modern times, the founder of the Legionaries of Christ, is not only accused of molesting a number of boys, but he also had a "regular" affair with an adult woman, and fathered a child.
Ironically, it was his child that brought his reputation down, not molesting young boys. Go figure.
Unfortunately for the Legionaries, they are taught to revere the founder, to identify with him spiritually and emotionally, to read all of his works and study his life for guidance. With the revelation that their leader was, in fact, a sexual predator, and had fathered a child, the group has quite a problem on its hands.
While researching for my book, The Religion Virus, I read dozens of books, studied Christianity's history in depth, and I came to understand many things. Using cultural evolutions and a memetic approach, most of the tenets of religion and churches, which superficially are baffling to those not raised in a religious environment, are actually quite predictable. Concepts like heaven and hell, monotheism, an asexual god, and so forth, are all memes (evolving ideas) that are plainly "fit for survival" in the Darwinistic sense.
But I've never been able to understand why Christians vilify sex so much, why that meme survives. Why do they hold abstinence and chastity in such high regard? How are those memes more fit for survival in the dog-eat-dog world of religious-dogma memes?
When Christianity started, it was quite the opposite. The Jews believed that sex, wine, and other pleasures were God's gift to humanity, to be enjoyed &ndash with proper moderation and respect. To deny oneself these pleasures was to reject God's gifts. The Jews even today expect their rabbis to marry and have children, after all, a rabbi is supposed to set a good example for his people.
A great deal of the Christian vilification of sex came from St. Augustine, who wrote extensively on the subject, and really laid the foundation for the modern Christian attitudes for sex. But that doesn't answer the more fundamental question: Why did St. Augustine's anti-woman, anti-sex attitudes become Christian dogma? There were many other writers who advocated a more reasonable and healthy attitude towards sex. Why were they ignored?
I'm still working on this puzzle. But in the mean time, the damage goes on. And on, and on, and on.
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