Neil McNicholas: We should not blame celibacy for the sins that have shamed the priesthood

A priest should never “put up with” celibacy in order to pursue his vocation to priesthood, nor can the priesthood be a refuge for those who have difficulties establishing relationships.

Celibacy isn’t a shield to hide behind; it’s a context, a circumstance, within which a priest carries out his ministry.

First and foremost he is a priest not a celibate, hence Pope John Paul II’s comment that “celibacy isn’t essential to the priesthood” and his point is amply illustrated by the number of ex-Anglican married priests now ministering in the Catholic Church.

So why does the Church continue to require its priests to be celibate? It is a long answer but much would have to do with availability. As a priest, I’m on-call 24 hours a day, seven days a week (six if I manage to take a day off!). Such a level of availability would be an unjust and impossible expectation for a married man with a primary commitment to his family. And so, we might ask, how do ex-Anglican married priests manage? Is their situation any different to how it was in the Anglican Church?

Any change to making celibacy optional would have to take into account the fact that in many parishes the people would simply be unable to support married priests and their families.

Most priests at the moment receive a remuneration that is well below minimum wage and even then many parishes are struggling to support both their priest and the running costs of the parish. The prospect of having to pay a priest an actual and realistic salary, let alone one that would support him and his family, would be out of the question.

I mention all of this as a preliminary to the on-going scourge of child abuse and the claims that brought about the resignation of Cardinal Keith O’Brien in Scotland.

Despite claims to the contrary, studies show there are no direct connections between celibacy and the abuse of children by priests – if it were the only factor then such priests would be having affairs with adults, not abusing children.

Child abuse results from psychological and emotional problems not the issue of celibacy, and with procedures and psychological testing now in place, any such problems will hopefully be identified well before ordination.

The respect and regard given to the priesthood have provided an ideal cover for such people in the past and, of course, gave them ready access to children, children who trusted their priest. Only over time has their abhorrent behaviour come to light.

An automatic connection being made between child abuse and the perhaps little understood issue of celibacy, has resulted in the totally unjustified calumny of the priesthood in general, and Catholic priests in particular, by giving the impression that we are all potential abusers.

Most priests have begun to feel like targets on a fairground shooting gallery, with the media especially taking pot shot after pot shot at us while we have been in no real position to defend ourselves, constantly feeling under an obligation to apologise for “the sins of our fathers”, so 
to speak.

Yes, child abuse is an abhorrent evil, but I am not a child abuser and neither are the vast majority of my fellow priests, yet we are made to feel guilty until we prove ourselves innocent – and that isn’t the rule of law in this country.

As part of the first phase of trying to dissociate ourselves from what had gone before, we priests were required to obtain Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) clearance.

This I did, but it only applied to my general ministry in the parish. In order to visit in my parish school, even though that was part of my parish ministry, I was required to obtain a second CRB clearance. When I later moved to a parish with two schools, I was required to obtain CRB clearance for both of them. They have now changed the entire system, including its name (the Disclosure and Barring Service) and so we now have to start over and get official clearance once again.

If my initial CRB check was the guarantee it was supposed to be and was accurate and correct in the clearance it provided, then why was the second check required, or the third, or the fourth or, now this new fifth DBS check?

At best this is simply hoop-jumping taken to ridiculous lengths, and at worst it is simply an exercise in generating revenue – either way, the system has us over a barrel and we are forced to conform.

After all is said and done, however, these checks prove only that a person hasn’t been caught yet and offer no guarantee that he or she isn’t an abuser.

The system may appear to be doing its job by requiring CRB or DBS clearance of us priests and other professionals working with children and vulnerable adults, and yet every week, it seems, there are yet more cases of the abuse of elderly residents in care homes, and the injuring and tragic killing of children by parents and live-in partners and yet the law doesn’t require clearance of them. The reality is that there really isn’t a watertight system and the safety of our children and vulnerable adults depends more on the morality and vigilance of our society than on the endless stream of paper being issued by officialdom.