Catholic Priests and the Women Who Love Them
Roberta Kyle, Senior Editor | Saturday, May 29, 2010 at 5:16AM Not since the days of the Borgia popes have there been so many scandals surrounding Roman Catholic priests and their vows of celibacy. In addition to the ongoing bruhaha about pedophila and its cover up, we now have a group of 39 Italian women, all of whom have had affairs with priests, writing a letter to the Pope asking him to reconsider priestly celibacy.
There’s a certain irony here, dontchathink? Henry VIII must be rolling with laughter in his grave. British journalists hopped on this story yesterday. I can hardly blame them. It was on the websites of three London papers, the Telegraph, The Daily Mail, and the Mirror. The American media largely ignored it.
Here’s what the Mirror had to say:
Thirty-NINE women who had secret relationships with priests want the Pope to abolish the ban on sex.
The women, some giving their names, spoke out after a cardinal suggested celibacy could lead to further abuse by priests.
They said on a website: “To become effective witnesses to the need for love, priests need to experience it fully, in the way their nature demands it.”
Earlier this month a survey of Italians revealed more than 50% had lost faith in the Catholic Church and more than half believed priests should be allowed to marry.
One Antonella Carisio, 41, told how her two-year affair with a priest ended after church officials found out and he was moved.
The Telegraph put it this way:
A group of Italian women in relationships with priests have sent the Pope a letter pleading for an end to the celibacy rule. The last time a churchman raised the issue of priestly celibacy, it was in the context of the paedophile scandals: Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna suggested that the two were linked, and that the Church ought to ditch celibacy in order to allow its priests to channel their erotic energy in a sensible, grown-up way. The Pope swatted the cardinal like a fly, reiterating the Church’s holy principle of celibacy.
The Guardian weighed in with this:
Dozens of Italian women who have had relationships with Roman Catholic priests or lay monks have endorsed an open letter to the pope that calls for the abolition of the celibacy rule. The letter, thought by one signatory to be unprecedented, argues that a priest “needs to live with his fellow human beings, experience feelings, love and be loved”.
It also pleads for understanding of those who “live out in secrecy those few moments the priest manages to grant [us] and experience on a daily basis the doubts, fears and insecurities of our men”.
image source: jobsanger
Here’s What I Have To Say
Priests are human beings too. Even the pope has a confessor. Perhaps it is time to take a good hard look at the elephant in the Vatican living room. That’s what these women are asking for and they are right. From St. Paul and St. Augustine on down, the Church’s fear of women and dislike for sex has created nothing but dysfunctional deception.
Let’s hear it for these women and the Catholic priests they love. They are doing their best to help the Church as well as the men who run it move to a healthier, more honest view of human sexuality.
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Reader Comments (5)
Well said! I'm not hopeful though. Having grown up with that specific brand of dysfunction, I've come to the opinion late in life that there are very few sexual adults around anywhere, but looking for one in the Catholic hierarchy is like trying to find life on the Moon.
They say the most bitter people on earth are graduate students and lapsed Catholics, but disillusionment can be a good thing sometimes, I think, if it leads to adulthood. :)
Now that is what I call a pithy comment-- I love your final observation about disillusionment and adulthood-- it makes me want to make some sort of quip about adultery and adulthood but I shall restrain myself and be serious. I think that the biggest impediment to adulthood is secrets and lies which require one to bend objective reality to make it fit a personal scenario--eventually reality wins, sometimes at a terrible cost, but it always wins.
I had to check in for this one, just to see another's take....and since, in graduate school, I bitterly wrote about Catholicism's derogatory view of women as can be seen in their conception of them through religious art history. And basically, I'm completely in agreement with other lapsed Catholics here.
I'd take it a step further, however. I'd say anyone who is serious about spirituality already completely discounts the doctrine. See John O'Donohue.
LOL! Adultery and adulthood--now there's a mine rich in some kinda humor! :)
I guess this topic is tough for me because of the 'terrible cost' thing. I like your thoughts on it, and they are always detached enough to be sensible and sane. For me it always seems to work out more like the John Cougar Mellencamp song, so I just have to let the fight go.
Bravo to those women in Italy! And bravo to you for making us aware of them! The Catholic church is the only mainstream religion that would have us believe priests left their sex drive at the seminary door. Puhlease...
Also, if priests were allowed to marry, I suspect pedophiles within the priesthood would be less tolerated and more likely to land in jail instead of simply transferred to a new parish.
What the Vatican is trying to avoid, of course, is opening the door to female priests...and the possibility that one could become pope.
As for adulthood and adultery, I think it's safe to say the two are mutually exclusive. ;D