I think we can say that deference to the priesthood allowed some families to give pedophile priests privileged access to young boys when they shouldn't have had it. Informed laity must avoid this now. But it's only part of the problem. Harassment of adult seminarians and tolerance of consensual same-sex conduct is an entirely different dimension that "clericalism" doesn't address -- often gay priests and bishops aren't even secretive about these things, after all.
In fact, it seems to me that the Bergoglian faction and its supporters, like Cardinal Cupich, are hiding behind their own version of clericalist authoritarianism to define the problem to suit themselves. Cupich in public remarks seeks to limit the definition of "abuse" to the pedophilia addressed in the First Crisis and insists that harassment be addressed separately in a category of same-sex conduct over the canonical age of consent, which he appears to believe is always "consensual". And he leaves out entirely the question of whether same-sex conduct is rampant in the clergy and a corrupting influence.
I think the editorial also tries to make McCloskey a figurehead for the entire traditionalist wing of Catholicism, when it's become plain that he, like several similar figures in the editorial, was a self-promoter who got media attention. His prelature exploited this for as long as it worked, as did Merton's order, but nobody fooled all of the people all of the time.
And the Reporter has only a very general suggestion for how to move forward from the problem of McCloskey. My regular correspondent is more enthusiastic than I am:
I found the NCR editorial very insightful and helpful in clarifying my thinking. I see now that while it is probably impossible to prove whether the celibacy requirement means that the Latin Rite Catholic Church attracts a disproportionate number of gays into the priesthood, that is probably not the nub of the problem anyway. It is that the celibacy requirement is a major contributor to "what the late and hastily sainted pope saw as 'heroic priesthood'."Well, the priesthood is meant to follow the sacrificial example of the Founder. It also embraces humility, after all. My guess is that when John Paul used the term "heroic", he was thinking more in the context of the military hero who throws himself on a grenade to protect his comrades, rather than the TV wrestling hero. I think it's possible to confuse the two, but a self-promoter priest who gains media acclaim isn't the same thing as Ven Fulton Sheen, who often told hilarious jokes about himself. My correspondent goes on,
Celibacy, the renunciation not only of sex but of particularity and intimacy, is a great gift and potentially of great service in ministry, but I think it is also a rare gift and best nurtured in a religious order which provides appropriate community and support. As practised in the contemporary Church it is a badge of a clerical class "believed to be distinctive from human kind" which gets to play by different rules in far too many cases.But let's take the North American ordinariate as a sort of beta version of a non-celibate Catholic priesthood. Frankly, it's often comical -- take the examples of the married fringe-denomination "Anglican" military chaplains who are secretively prepared for Catholic ordination so they can make their move over a single weekend and not miss a military paycheck. Compare that to the need for secrecy in post-Reformation England, where the Catholic priests who provided the sacraments to recusant families risked, and often gained, martyrdom.
And the OCSP is not attracting high-quality married candidates. The crop in Florida and Georgia hasn't been encouraging; they seem to have been highly marginal as either Catholics or Anglicans.
There are occasional married Catholic priests in dioceses. The most visible, Fr Longenecker, had anything but an instant weekend ordination. There was real sacrifice in his journey. I don't think it's a coincidence that he has almost nothing to do with the OCSP. It's a little like Gerald Ford's rueful remark, "I played football for Michigan. Reagan played it for Warner Brothers." One is the real thing. The others are phonies.
And of course, marriage is no guarantee of anything. There's been adultery as long as there's been marriage. Even a married Catholic priest is fully capable of groping a woman in counseling, or indeed abusing a preteen boy on a camping trip. It's hard for me to avoid one conclusion implicit in the NCR editorial, that at least a gay priest would be less likely to grope a married lady, but of course, even that isn't locked in.
