UNITED STATES
Standing on My Head

Fr. Dwight Longenecker

In this article in the UK’s Guardian paper former Catholic Bishop Kieran Conry confirms what I suspected all along: that his understanding of celibacy is simply that the priest promises not to be married.

Conry said celibacy was not about sex but marriage. “When a priest makes a promise of celibacy, he promises to remain unmarried, that’s all. Then the ordinary rules of morality apply,” he said.

Is it possible that a man becomes a bishop so profoundly and willfully misinterprets this basic understanding of the vow of celibacy?

This is why he did not publicly apologize for the sin of fornication or adultery but simply that the vague admission that he was “unfaithful to his vows as a priest.”

Here’s how it works for priests and bishops like Kieran Conry: the vow of celibacy means he doesn’t get…