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	And Now the Pope By Raymond A. Schroth NJ.com March 14, 2010 http://blog.nj.com/njv_ray_schroth/2010/03/and_now_the_pope.html Sometimes it is not hard to feel sympathy for Pope Benedict XVI (age 82) as now his own name appears in the headlines spreading across the world like the cloud from a nuclear explosion. The cloud blew from the United States 20 years ago, then to Ireland, and now to the Netherlands and Germany, and ultimately has blown down to the Vatican itself. If this were a novel or a film about and aging world leader, he would be waking up each morning wondering whether there was some half-forgotten moment in his past that would suddenly pop back into his life and embarrass him. Last month dominoes began to fall. Joseph Ratzinger's older priest brother George (86), who had been director of a famous Regenesburg boys' choir school, said he knew nothing about the alleged sexual abuse of its students, but he had heard the boys' complaints about harsh physical punishments and did nothing about it. He confessed to a newspaper that he had slapped boys across the face and afterwards "had a bad conscience" about it. Then (New York Times, March 5) a story broke about a Nigerian Vatican choir singer who procured male prostitutes, including seminarians, for a member of an elite group called The Gentlemen of His Holiness, ushers in the Apostolic Palace. Finally (Times March 14 and the London Tablet), more details emerged about a priest, in the Munich archdiocese when Pope Benedict was its archbishop, who was accused of abuse in 1979, and was sent to therapy with the assurance to his accuser that he would never work with children again. But the priest was allowed to return very soon and abused again. Ratzinger's vicar general at the time has taken full responsibility for the mistake. Meanwhile the director of the tribunal inside the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has denounced accusations that then Cardinal Ratzinger had covered up abuse cases when he oversaw abuse investigations in his four years before becoming Pope. But he acknowledged that the Vatican had received about 3,000 accusations of abuse over ten years, 80 percent from the United States. Though this is only a fraction of the number of cases worldwide. Against this background, the renowned theologian Fr. Hans Kung, author of On Being A Christian, who has been forbidden to teach in Catholic universities, has come out against priestly celibacy in the London Tablet (March 6). Though inspired by the sex abuse crisis, his arguments come from the New Testament. Jesus and Paul, he makes clear, practiced celibacy "in an exemplary way for the sake of their ministry," but allowed each person, including the apostles, freedom to choose whether or not to marry. Obligatory celibacy, says Kung, is responsible for the shortage of priests, the neglect of eucharistic celebrations, and the breakdown in pastoral ministry. This is probably true, but the sex crisis in itself does not mean that celibacy can't work. Read the papers: all kinds of non-celibate people — parents, uncles, teachers, rabbis, ministers, coaches, kidnappers, mixed-up teenagers — sexually abuse the young. The dominant force that corrupts the church and breeds the cover-up climate, suggests Fr. Gerry O'Hanlon, former Irish Jesuit provincial in a Tablet article, is the "dominant culture of dysfunctional, autocratic clericalism." Clericalism is a privileged relationship which isolates priests from ordinary life — not just from women, but from varieties of friendship with the young and old, rich and poor, from the intellectual excitement of new and challenging ideas, from new experiences and risks — and replaces these values with clerical ambition. In Matthew's gospel it is the Pharisaical desire for status and titles which Jesus condemns. To become a pastor, bishop, cardinal, or Pope, a priest feels he must join the club, oppose optional celibacy and women priests, keep silent on allowing contraception, and not talk about change. In an article on alcoholic priests, which I recently discovered in U. S. Catholic (January 1967,) a Catholic psychiatrist observed that the most dangerous thing for some priests after ordination is not drinking or celibacy, but the inability to handle hostility when they are required to obey, to perform certain duties. The psychiatrist tells them to go hit golf balls. But they hit the bottle instead. And some, if the article were rewritten for today, still emotionally in adolescence, turn young people into sex objects. The real problem is that, at least partly because of the clerical structures, they lack the warm, mature personal relationships with both men and women that sustain other people in big and small crises. These relationships are available to celibate priests, but only if they have supportive communities, meaningful and satisfying work, intellectual interests that help them deal with change, and prayer centered on both the life of Christ and their love for their fellow priests, family, friends, parishioners and students. Unfortunately evidence that the hierarchical church wants to reform its structures to achieve this spirit is not today at hand. Contact: raymondschroth@aol.com
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