Sex and The Single Priest

By RICHARD N. OSTLING Reported Adam Biegel/Atlanta and John Moody/Rome

For he who gives scandal, it would be better to have a great millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea."

The message thundered out of the Vatican with the force of the Gospel from which it was taken. "How severe are Christ's words," wrote the Pope in a letter released last week to America's bishops; "how great must be that evil." After years in which the Vatican downplayed the sex scandals that have plagued the Roman Catholic Church in the U.S., John Paul II publicly acknowledged the enormity of the problem. Indeed, the bishops, who have long petitioned Rome for special disciplinary powers to deal with the crisis, are deeply aware of its dimensions. In June the hierarchy had to elect a new national secretary to replace New Mexico's Robert Sanchez, the Archbishop of Santa Fe, who resigned from the post and his see amid revelations that he had conducted affairs with three young women.

The scandals -- ranging from clandestine liaisons with adult parishioners to clerical pedophilia -- have focused fresh attention on the life of the Catholic priest and turned him into a suspect figure in many eyes. Says Monsignor Edwin O'Brien, rector of the North American Pontifical College in Rome: "A priest would have to be out of his mind now to touch a kid, even if it's just to pat him on the head or tap him on the shoulder." The scandals are forcing the American clergy -- and, ever so reluctantly, the Vatican -- to examine the nature and tradition of the priesthood. But what can be done? And how much reform is the church willing to undertake?

Among young American seminarians in Rome, a sense of siege has set in. "Our eroticized society degrades us, and somehow that eroticism invades our lives no matter how we fight it," says Enrique Lopez, 28, a New Mexico native who knew Archbishop Sanchez and who is training to be a diocesan priest. "If Sanchez had been embezzling money or something like that, it would have been a scandal. But because he was involved in a sex scandal, it touched his dignity. I don't think that's fair." Says Lopez's fellow seminarian John Riccardo, 28, of Detroit: "How can you give up sex? It's such a central value in our society. What we're doing is weird; why deny it? But it's wrong to assume that because I'm doing this weird thing, I must be weird. People figure either I'm not a man because I don't want sex or I'm a superman because I can give it up. Both of these are lies. The temptations are all there, every day, all the time. The key to celibacy is prayer."

For some advocates of change, however, the key to reform is dropping the 870-year-old tradition of priestly celibacy. "If someone really has a true call to a celibate vocation, God bless it," says Eugene Bianchi, an ex-Jesuit priest who currently teaches religion at Emory University. "But I think those kinds of persons are far fewer than the priests we have." Mandatory celibacy, Bianchi contends, encourages sexual immorality, which is symptomatic of larger structural problems in what he calls a "monarchical, absolutist" church: "The celibate clerical system is collapsing, and it is not going to be regenerated."

Two weeks ago, the National Office of Black Catholics, a Washington-based advocacy group that grew out of the civil rights movement, issued a plea to the Pope to make celibacy optional, to allow more Catholics to serve as priests and to help prevent further scandals. "We suspect that these publicized stories are only the tip of the iceberg," said the document. Some experts insist that celibacy is already a mirage. On the basis of work with numerous priestly patients, A.W. Richard Sipe, a former Benedictine monk and psychotherapist, estimates that only half the clergy obey the rule. Priest- sociologist Andrew Greeley believes the number of obedient priests is far greater than that, though he once conducted a poll that showed a majority of American priests favoring optional celibacy.

Reforming celibacy, however, may not be enough to weed out pedophiles among the clerical ranks. The church's role as the dispenser of forgiveness has hampered and may continue to intrude on its ability to deal with the problem. Says a church official in Rome: "When a man comes in either admitting to or accused of inappropriate behavior, what can you do? You can listen to what he has to say and try to make a determination about what happened, why it happened and if it's likely to happen again. Often he is contrite, bewildered and offers all the requisite assurances that it won't ever happen again. What do you do at that point? You forgive, and you hope that it won't happen again. Unfortunately, what we're learning from scientific research is that pedophilia is a recidivist activity, so it probably will happen again."

Would-be seminarians now undergo extensive psychological testing, but, says O'Brien, "like alcoholics, pedophiles can hide their behavior from almost anyone and even convince themselves that they've overcome it. But unless they're counseled adequately, at some time they'll slip, they'll find a way to indulge their behavior."

The Pope's pronouncements emphasized to the bishops that Article 1395 of the Code of Canon Law permits pedophile priests to be defrocked. But that legal instrument has always been available -- and at times its implementation has been hindered by the conflict between a desire to take action against suspected offenders and the need to protect their rights. In March, for example, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette revealed that the Vatican's highest court, the Apostolic Segnatura, had overridden Bishop Donald Wuerl's disciplinary actions in the case of Father Anthony Cipolla, who faced child- molesting charges in civil court. Wuerl had suspended the priest pending a verdict.

While the Vatican clearly recognizes the damage done by the sex scandals, it believes the problem is a limited, if not distinctly American, one. One bishop who recently visited Rome noted that "the United States is a very sexual society." And one with a special talent for the propagation of scandal. In his letter John Paul bluntly criticized the U.S. media, charging them with making matters worse by their treatment of the problem. "Evil can indeed be sensational, but the sensationalism surrounding it is always dangerous for morality." The licentiousness of the secular world is another scapegoat. Last week Joaquin Navarro-Valls, the Vatican's chief spokesman, said, "One would have to ask if the real culprit is not a society that is irresponsibly permissive, hyperinflated with sexuality ((and)) capable of creating circumstances that induce even people who have received a solid moral formation to commit grave moral acts."

The Pontiff has directed bishops "not to lose heart" or create a "climate of discouragement" around celibacy. He also reinforced church adherence to the rule of celibacy in his Holy Thursday missive to the world's priests, saying "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever." As for the sinners among the ranks, many church officials feel they have little choice but to forgive. Says a Vatican official: "We'd all be in a mess if we couldn't be forgiven." However, for the women and children who have suffered, forgiveness is not only not divine, it is certainly not enough.