Article linking child molesting with celibacy.Clerical celibacy and paedophilic priests

Clerical Celibacy and Pedophilic Priests

Reports of priests sexually molesting children have come to light in virtually every major U.S. city. The Catholic Church has paid over $2 billion in damages to victims, who are often emotionally scarred for decades.

The Church has acknowledged, moreover, that 13,000 credible accusations of sexual abuse have been made against Catholic clerics since 1950.

There is strong evidence that this widespread problem is caused, at least in part, by the Catholic Church’s clerical celibacy requirement and its other sexually repressive doctrines. Persons concerned about the problem should therefore urge Catholic leaders to reexamine and modify their teachings about sex.

Desmond Morris’s classic book on human behavior, The Naked Ape, reports that homosexual behavior is often “seen in situations where the ideal sexual object (a member of the opposite sex) is unavailable. This applies in many groups of animals.”

Morris goes on to state: “Similar situations occur with high frequency in our own species and the response is much the same. If either males or females cannot for some reason obtain sexual access to their opposite members, they will find sexual outlets in other ways.” (Emphasis added.)

Psychiatrist and ex-priest A. W. Richard Sipe likewise relates: “Doctor Lewis Hill, former medical director of Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital in Towson, Maryland, used to tell his resident psychiatrists, ‘Man is a loving animal, and he is going to love whatever he is near.’ The sexual histories of farm boys frequently recorded passing involvements with animals.”

These facts about human sexuality indicate that Catholic priests, who are required by their Church to remain celibate and taught to abhor sexual relationships with women, might in some cases seek outlets for their sexuality in other ways. The behavior could include homosexuality or pedophilia.
In fact, statements by Dr. Jay Feierman support a link between sexual repression and pedophilia. As a psychiatrist who has met with hundreds of pedophilic priests at a Catholic treatment center in New Mexico, Feierman is in a position to recognize the connection.

Feierman says celibacy is not “a natural state for humans to be in.” Pointing to the celibacy requirement as a cause of clergy abuse of children, he explains: “If you tell a man that he’s not allowed to have particular friends, he’s not allowed to be affectionate, he’s not allowed to be in love, he’s not allowed to be a sexual being, you shouldn’t be surprised at anything that happens.”

Research by the University of New Hampshire’s David Finkelhor, Ph.D., supports the same position. Finkelhor, a recognized expert on the study of sexual abuse of children, has shown that repressive sexual attitudes linked to many religions may predispose some persons toward sexual activities with children.

Further support for that causal connection is provided by Dr. John Money, a leading expert on sexual violence. Money has pioneered treatments for deviate sexuality at Johns Hopkins Medical School. He says people raised in conditions where sex is viewed as evil, and where sexual curiosity is a punishable offense, are likely to end up with warped sexual identities. Those surroundings are often produced by conservative religions.

Money describes the harmful effects of such environments: “In girls, often you extinguish the lust completely, so that they can never have an orgasm, and marriage becomes a dreary business where you put up with sex to serve the maternal instinct. In boys, sex gets redirected into abnormal channels.” (Emphasis added.)

Money’s observations as to the different effects of repressive sexual environments on males and females may explain why pedophilia is a much greater problem among priests than among nuns, who also must take a celibacy vow.

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