Even Roman Catholic scholars and intellectuals favoring a reform idea of “optional celibacy” for priests worry about stereotypes and assumptions at a time of public anger that crudely equate vows of chastity with pedophilia. A strong orthodox core at the Vatican has treated the subject as closed – even as questioning celibacy has become a coin-of-the-realm topic among ordinary Catholics.
“In Catholic opinion, in terms of surveys and studies about what Catholics actually believe on the ground, ever greater numbers are talking about optional celibacy and the ordination of women – that toothpaste is not going back in the tube,” says theologian Tom Beaudoin of Jesuit-run Fordham University in New York, echoing numerous Catholic scholars and lay people interviewed for this article.
Mr. Bertone, known as a hard-liner who last month equated homosexuality with pedophilia (something he later retracted), nonetheless opened the celibacy question in a context that has been a vexing conundrum for bishops and priests for years: that while Catholic priests must be celibate, the church has slowly accepted married priests from orthodox and Anglican traditions. As Bertone put it, “There are married priests in the Catholic as well as oriental church."
The subject continues to roil. Last week, an auxiliary Catholic bishop in Australia, Pat Power, wrote in an opinion piece that the closed nature of sexual identity and rules in the church needed review in light of daily headlines on abuse and cover up: “The reform needed by the Church today will involve much more than just ‘tinkering around the edge,’ Mr. Power stated. “Issues such as the authoritarian nature of the Church, compulsory celibacy for the clergy, the participation of women in the Church, the teaching on sexuality in all aspects cannot be brushed aside.”
