Church links celibacy and child sexual abuse

Tuesday, December 16th, 2014

A report from the Australian Church’s Truth Justice and Healing Council into sexual abuse has linked priestly celibacy and child abuse.

It is the first time the Church has made such a link.

However the finding is not a first step to ending celibacy for priests.

The 40 page report touches briefly on celibacy, saying “Obligatory celibacy may also have contributed to abuse in some circumstances.”

But Council chairman, Francis Sullivan indicated, Friday, that it is drawing a long-bow to use the report’s findings to say the Council is recommending the end of compulsory celibacy for priests.

“There would be a long way to go before that conversation would be had and it would be beyond our brief anyway,” he said.

Mr Sullivan said the church would step up screening and education for candidate priests to assess their personality type, psychological readiness and emotional maturity in preparation.

“They need to be given the skills and the support to make good decisions around that, particularly when they are working with vulnerable people,” he said.

Mr Sullivan said the fact that such screening and education was needed did not mean that celibacy was, of itself, a problem.

“Many people in the world, either by choice or by circumstance, will have celibate lives – that’s just how life is,” he said.

The extraordinary mention of celibacy in relation to child abuse runs against the position taken by the Catholic church previously.

Children more at risk in modern families

Responding to the report Sex Therapist, Bettina Arndt told the ABC enforced celibacy is not a recipe for disaster.

Arndt says there are a lot of married men who are in a state of involuntary celibacy and that in terms of what the Church asks its priests, “We’re only talking of a minority, a minority who really struggle with this.”

“I just think, as a society we are obsessed by sexual abuse,” she said.

“The only thing matters is if a child gets touched in a sexual way, and I don’t get that.

“I don’t get why we’re so distorting what are the real risks to children and it’s something to do with our inability as a society to deal with sexual matters.”

Arndt did not deny there was an issue with clerical sexual abuse as shown by the significant numbers in the caseload before Australia’s child abuse royal commission.

But, she told ABC’s Nick Grimm, “Children are far more at risk from family situations and particularly from the growing risk of strangers being involved and the families where children are being raised; mum’s boyfriend, partners of single mums. That is the new and ever-growing list for children that is never discussed”.