Hans Kung on "Unfortunate" Celibacy.

After a few (too few) voices were raised last week from within the church's establishment suggesting, ever so cautiously, that perhaps the insistence on clerical celibacy should be reviewed, the Vatican was quick to stamp down hard on this unaccustomed sign of dissent within the ranks. Pope Benedict described celibacy as "sacred" and a sign of "full devotion" to the Catholic Church. The first thing that strikes me in this, is that once again the emphasis is on devotion to the "Church" , and not to the Gospels, or to the people who have been damaged by the whole sorry mess.

German theologian Hans Kung has a sound rebuttal to Benedict's stance. Writing in National Catholic Reporter, he points out the contradiction between Benedict's claim, and he evidence of both Scripture and Church history:

Why does the pope continue to assert that what he calls "holy" celibacy is a "precious gift", thus ignoring the biblical teaching that explicitly permits and even encourages marriage for all office holders in the Church? Celibacy is not "holy"; it is not even "fortunate"; it is "unfortunate", for it excludes many perfectly good candidates from the priesthood and forces numerous priests out of their office, simply because they want to marry. The rule of celibacy is not a truth of faith, but a church law going back to the 11th Century; it should have been abolished already in the 16th Century, when it was trenchantly criticized by the Reformers.

There is, of course, still another reason the rule is "unfortunate" and much more: for all the denials by the Vatican, there is substantial evidence that it is indeed a key factor in the problems of sexual abuse, of both children and adults. Archbishop Zollitsch insists, that "all the experts" agree that abuse of minors by clergymen and the celibacy rule have nothing to do with each other. This is yet another instance of the way in which the Church establishment deals with dissenting views by simply denying their existence (another is in the statement in "Homosexualitatis Problema", that it is "undeniable" that Scripture condemns homosexual relationships, when in fact a large number of reputable scholars very strongly deny that view). This is a consistent failure of honesty, which should be a core catholic virtue.

The failure of honesty also extends to the question of the secrecy and cover-ups. Finally, we are starting to get acknowledgements that there have been cover-ups, but this is blamed on individuals, not on the Church as a whole.

Bishop Ackermann of Trier, special delegate of the German Bischops' Conference for sexual abuse cases, publically acknowledged the existence of such a cover-up, but characteristically he put the blame not on the church as institution, but rather on the individual perpetrators and the false considerations of their superiors.

But this claim directly contradicts the documentary evidence, from the infamous 2001 letter from Benedict himself at the CDF, insisting on the utmost secrecy. Nor was this a news rule: it simply updated and restated a much earlier document from the 1960's. just over the last week, there have been reports from Ireland of how young children who had been abused, were made to swear oaths of secrecy. This was not the aberrant decision of a local bishop, but was quite explicitly required by the Vatican directive. (See "From Dublin Cover -up to Vatican Cover-up")

Then there is the all-important question of Benedict's own culpability. There have been repeated claims of his "courage" and "determination" on assuming the papacy to cleanse the Church of its "filth". But beyond early on dismissing from ministry a couple of the most notorious miscreants, and copious expressions later of "regret", there has been little evidence of any actual action, nor any admission of what he must surely have known, both during his time in Munich, and during his tenure at the CDF.

The fundamental problem, as Joan Chittister argued in another NCR post today, is that the Church has confused fidelity to the Gospels and blind obedience and loyalty to the Church. We have allowed a culture to develop in which dissent or criticism is mistaken for disloyalty, or even hostility. In these circumstances, any actions which might present the church in an unfavourable light are studiously obscured in a veil of secrecy, and any evidence from actual observation or empirical research which conflicts with the party line is either ignored, or actively repressed.

If we are to move beyond the present crisis, says Kung, we need far more honesty, which demands:

• that the pope, at the very least, promise to rethink this rule -- something the vast majority of the clergy and laity have wanted for a long time now;
• that we take the correlation between abuse and celibacy seriously. The American psychotherapist Richard Sipe has clearly demonstrated, on the basis of a 25 year study published in 2004 under the title Knowledge of sexual activity and abuse within the clerical system of the Roman Catholic church, that the celibate way of life can indeed reinforce pedophile tendencies;
• that the chairman of the German Bishops' Conference should clearly and definitively announce that, in the future, the hierarchy will cease to deal with cases of criminal acts committed by those in the service of the church by circumventing the state system of justice;
• that Joseph Ratzinger himself, the man who for decades has been principally responsible for the worldwide cover-up, at last pronounce his own "mea culpa".

Indeed.