The Catholic Church Can Start Fixing Itself by Changing Its Celibacy Rule

By Charles P. Pierce
Esquire
August 17, 2017

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a57068/catholic-church-spotlight/

Now that all that pesky Oscar Buzz has died down, it's important to note that my old Boston Phoenix running buddy, Mike Rezendes, is Still On The Case. As part of The Boston Globe's Spotlight team, Mike has written a sad and remarkable series about people who are the sons and daughters of purportedly celibate Roman Catholic clergy, and the shameful abandonment of those people by the institution for which their fathers worked.

Jim Graham couldn't know in that moment that the stunning secret which had seemed his alone was not that unusual. By any reasonable measure, there are thousands of others who have strong evidence that they are the sons and daughters of Catholic priests, though most are unaware that they have so much company in their pain. In Ireland, Mexico, Poland, Paraguay, and other countries, in American cities big and small — indeed, virtually anywhere the church has a presence — the children of priests form an invisible legion of secrecy and neglect, a Spotlight Team review has found. Their exact number can't be known, but with more than 400,000 priests worldwide, many of them inconstant in their promise of celibacy, the potential for unplanned children is vast.

And this also comes through loud and plain: The sons and daughters of priests often grow up without the love and support of their fathers, and are often pressured or shamed into keeping the existence of the relationship a secret. They are the victims of a church that has, for nearly 900 years, forbidden priests to marry or have sex, but has never set rules for what priests or bishops must do when a clergyman fathers a child.

The history of HMC is dotted with the sons of popes who themselves became popes, and the sons of bishops who became bishops, and the like. But this series once again pulls back the velvet curtain on the systematic, institutional indulgence in what the Good Sisters who taught me would have called "sins against charity."

Tuesday's installment focuses on the attempts of these throwaway children, now grown into adults, to reconnect with their fathers. It tells the story of a German-American woman who managed to forge a relationship with her natural father, the Father.

"He was in this tiny town with maybe 5,000 or 7,000 people, and I knew that if word got out, it would ruin his reputation," Thieme said. "I cared more about the relationship with my father than whether it was a secret of not." Shulte-Berge did his best to answer all Thieme's questions, explaining that her adoption was intended to be an act of compassion after he confessed to another priest that he was involved with a woman who was pregnant. Shulte-Berge said the priest — with the approval of their bishop — quietly arranged to have a Catholic couple adopt the child. That couple, Thieme's parents, were college professors working in Germany who would soon return to the United States.

The basis of the difficulties, as it has been in so many of the Church's scandals and human tragedies, is the institution's moronic insistence on a celibate clergy. Nine hundred years is a sufficient data set to conclude that the experiment, which has no basis in the gospels unless you reverse engineer them beyond all recognition, has been a terrible failure on every level. If Papa Francesco wants to leave a mark on the Church, and on the people in it, that will bring him the praise of ages, he at least could make the requirement optional. Otherwise, the Church is going to be working poor Rezendes to death.