Boston’s Official Catholic Newspaper Questions Celibacy Policy for Priests

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, staggering under the weight of a national sex scandal, published a stunning editorial in its official newspaper Friday that questioned whether priests should remain celibate.

Late Friday, Boston’s archbishop, Cardinal Bernard Law, issued a statement contending the editorial was not intended to question the church’s position on celibacy. Law, the senior cardinal in the United States and the paper’s publisher, said the editorial was merely a reflection of issues raised by others.

Experts, however, said the fact that a major archdiocese would delve into one of the church’s most fundamental laws reflects how deeply the church’s U.S. hierarchy has been touched by public outrage. In past weeks, dioceses in numerous states have been accused of or admitted knowingly employing priests with a history of molesting minors.

The editorial in the Boston Archdiocese’s newspaper, the Pilot, also raised the question of whether the priesthood attracts too many gay men. And it promised to explore next week the question of ordaining women--a topic that Pope John Paul has forbidden to be discussed within the church.

“These scandals have raised serious questions in the minds of the laity that simply will not disappear,” wrote Msgr. Peter V. Conley, the paper’s executive editor, in the editorial.

“They’re asking questions the pope doesn’t want to discuss,” said Arthur Jones, editor-at-large for the National Catholic Reporter, an independent weekly newspaper with a liberal reputation, who applauded the editorial.

Prior to Cardinal Law’s statement, Father Christopher Coyne, a diocesan spokesman, said, “The editorial simply restates the questions that have been raised by the laity in the listening sessions and says in light of all this we should respond with appropriate answers.”

The editorial offered no solutions and only raised the provocative questions: “Should celibacy continue to be a normative condition for the diocesan priesthood? . . . Does priesthood, in fact, attract a disproportionate number of men with a homosexual orientation? . . . Lastly, why are a substantial number of Catholics not convinced that an all-male priesthood was intended by Christ and is unchangeable?”

The church allowed married priests prior to the 11th century.

In Boston, recent allegations that defrocked priest John J. Geoghan molested 130 children while being moved from parish to parish sparked national outrage. Since January, the Boston Archdiocese has given prosecutors the names of close to 90 priests suspected of child abuse over 40 years.

Scores of priests in a total of 11 states also have been accused this year of sexual misconduct with children. In Southern California, as many as a dozen priests have been ordered to retire or resign.

Jones speculated that the purpose of the Boston Archdiocese’s editor is to “get the conversation past this priest [Geoghan] and on to the issues.”

The debate over whether priests should be allowed to marry or whether women can serve as priests has continued within the Roman Catholic Church since the reforms of the Second Vatican Council in the mid-1960s. But the editorial in a diocesan newspaper took both liberals and conservatives within the church by surprise.

Jaime Soto, the auxiliary Bishop of Orange, warned that inserting celibacy into the molestation debate was inappropriate because there is no linkage between celibacy and pedophilia.

“Celibacy has always been challenged, more now than probably ever,” Soto said. “But to insert [that debate] into the current scandal is inaccurate and could lead to inaccurate speculation about what lies at the heart of this crisis.”

Soto defended the doctrine of celibacy in a written statement last year, saying the priesthood “is a demanding discipline that requires prayer and sacrifice from those who assume it. This long-standing tradition with the church is very countercultural for a society that knows no limits or boundaries.”

Vatican Says Pope’s Position Hasn’t Changed

In Rome, a Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Ciro Benedettini, said: “The pope has spoken to this. He has said celibacy remains, it is a great gift to the church. He has spoken clearly in favor of celibacy.”

The 100,000 copies of the diocesan paper will be distributed to Boston parishioners over the weekend.

In a related development, the nation’s Catholic bishops announced they would tackle the problem of pedophilia at their June 13-15 meeting in Dallas.

The bishops have asked their Ad Hoc Committee on Sexual Abuse to present recommendations and guidelines to help the church “address this problem more effectively,” the bishops’ administrative committee said in a statement.

Any recommendations, however, would probably be voluntary because the bishops conference does not have the power to make national policy for the 194 U.S. dioceses.

*

Times wire services contributed to this report.