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Comparing clerical celibacy to torture, a British peer has voiced a public defence of disgraced Cardinal Keith O’Brien and criticised the Catholic Church for not allowing him to have a sex life.
Cardinal O’Brien resigned as Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh after the public release of accusations that he had made homosexual advances on young priests.
Baroness Helena Kennedy, a barrister, broadcaster and Labour member of the House of Lords, said: “I feel very sad for Cardinal O’Brien because here was a man who quite clearly had wanted to have a sexual life and felt that it was a failing for him to want to have a sexual life and that he was going against his commitment to celibacy.
“It is terrible to torture people by expecting that of them and I just feel huge compassion for him. I do not like the idea that there might be an issue of being predatory but I do not want to make a judgment on that.
“But he himself has said that he was involved in sexual activity and I feel very sad that that was something that he had to in some way bury, then give expression to — then feel shame and guilt and presumably is absolutely covered with guilt now.”
Lady Kennedy, who was brought up in a Catholic family in Glasgow, said she was not speaking as someone who would consider herself to be a “devout” Catholic. She said she preferred to call herself a “bad” Catholic.
She was speaking in the House of Commons at the launch of a declaration by a group of 179 Catholic scholars on authority in the Church.
The group’s declaration said the faithful had suffered from “misguided” Church rulings on sexual ethics, including contraception, homosexuality and remarriage, and called for a new pope to introduce more democracy in the Church.
Lady Kennedy was joined at the launch by Catholic peer Lord Hylton, Professor Ursula King of Bristol University, Labour MP Siobhain McDonagh, and former priest John Wijngaards.
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Image: The Guardian
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