10/9/2009

Imagine yourself 16 or 17 years old and in college, working towards a degree in journalism. The rules say that, before you are accepted into the discipline, you must make a promise that you will live a life of perfect continence—no marriage, no sex no intimacy. Your personal friendships must be kept at arms’ length so you can give 24/7 to your profession. You make the promise because more than anything else you want to be a journalist.

You graduate and then begin work toward a major assignment as a network or major newspaper reporter. Seven, eight, or even 10 years go by. You’ve been living alone. Being a normal human being with normal needs, you get lonely. Maybe you get depressed because you are lonely. You realize that your colleagues don’t fill the physical and/or emotional needs you might have. You might begin to think there is something wrong with you. You may lose focus on your profession. You might begin to drink or abuse drugs in your solitude.

You might fall in love, knowing that you must do this in secrecy. You won’t mention it to anyone because of the promise you were forced to make--though you may witness or hear about other journalists breaking that promise too. It becomes a Secret Society. You’re living a double life and become conflicted. You may go from person to person just to fill your temporary need for intimacy--maybe not always with willing partners. You might even make a pass at a news subject or two, which you know you’re not supposed to do. If you have any integrity, however, you will probably leave your beloved career so you can feel more complete as a person.

The purpose of the above scenario is to put you in the shoes of the real story: Prior to the year 1139, when celibacy was made mandatory for anyone entering the Catholic priesthood, popes, bishops and priests were married. Some 800 years later, in the early 1960s at an international meeting of Catholic bishops, Pope John 23rd opened discussions on making celibacy for priests optional. It was expected by many people, including a large number of priests, that the 1139 law would finally be reversed so priests would be allowed to marry.

John 23rd died during Vatican II and was replaced by Pope Paul VI. Everything changed. It was decided to retain mandatory celibacy in the priesthood. After the Council ended in 1968, there began a mass exodus of priests. In only seventeen years--by 1985—in the U.S. alone, almost 18,000 left clerical ministry. Nine out of 10 would marry. And priests continued to leave at an average of 1200 per year. (Full Pews and Empty Altars, 1990; “Assessing and updating the Schoenherr-Yung projections of clergy decline in the United States Roman Catholic Church – The Roman Catholic Priesthood,” Lawrence A. Young, Sociology of Religion, Vol. 59, 1998).

There were priests, however, who stayed. Maybe they didn’t struggle with mandatory celibacy; maybe they were too busy climbing the hierarchical ladder, maybe they were afraid to leave; fear of not finding a job, fear of being blackballed by bishops in their community. Many believed that this profession—this calling—had been divinely chosen for them, and so the greatest fear was going to hell if they left. We now know that a Secret Sexual Society among these priests and bishops has existed for centuries in the U.S. and elsewhere, evidenced by reports released in the Boston Globe and elsewhere since 2002, with additional evidence updated regularly on the www.bishopsaccountability.org website. Actually, the first North American abuse story occurred in 1989 in Newfoundland involving an entire boy’s school that was later made into a movie (The Boys of St. Vincent) and was distributed worldwide (Connors, Fr. Canice. 1993. “The Issue of Sexual Misconduct & the Clergy,” as presented at the 25th annual National Federation of Priests Council Convention & House of Delegates. May 3-7, 1993. Hyatt Regency, Chicago).

This, however, is not about the Secret Sexual Society because enough has been written about the lack of integrity in the priesthood, revelations that have been made public during the past seven years*. This is about the “intense loneliness” that has caused these sinful realities, a loneliness that while disregarded as a minor issue by the hierarchy, comes up anecdotally in interviews and books by priests and others studying the priesthood and mandatory celibacy. Loneliness is also listed as one of the major factors in Durkheim’s theory of suicide.

There are several sociological and psychological studies available today on the Roman Catholic priesthood and mandatory celibacy. One of these, The Bingo Report (Haggett, 2004), reports on quantitative empirical studies conducted in 1997 (priests) and 1999 (clergy sexual abuse victims) where both sets of respondents pointed to “loneliness” as being a major problem in the priesthood, with priests admitting that mandatory celibacy leads to loneliness and lack of intimacy. The conclusion of the study theorized one step further, from evidence in additional literary research on “intense loneliness” that such can lead to low self-esteem, substance abuse as well as tragedies such as sexual abuse and suicide. Interestingly, intense loneliness was among the Differential Diagnoses in the Pedophilia section of American Psychiatric Association’s DSM-IIIR until the early 1990s. Complimentary copies of the academic studies in The Bingo Report are available to the media by contacting CSRI99@aol.com, the rentapriest.com website or by calling 301-464-5690.

*Details: Betrayal: The Crisis in the Catholic Church by the Investigative Staff of the Boston Globe, 1993; and www.bishopsaccountability.org.