but we certainly are<\/a>. Baptist pastors are men who can marry; in fact, a married pastor is not merely permitted but presumed to be the norm. They\u2019re supposed to have a helpmate and children. It hasn\u2019t stopped them from acting eerily like Catholic priests have been caught acting time and again. Anybody, from any walk of life, can abuse, but what is it about those religious traditions that makes sexual abuse by clergy so endemic there? What do they have in common? It\u2019s not clerical celibacy.<\/p>\nAnd in any case, if you say that being married will keep a man from abusing, you\u2019re putting the responsibility to stop him onto his wife.<\/h3>\n
You\u2019re suggesting either that the wife will hold him accountable and protect any potential victims, or that she\u2019s supposed to sexually gratify him so he doesn\u2019t seek victims in the first place.<\/p>\n
If you believe that married priests would end the abuse crisis because women would hold their husbands accountable: I don\u2019t know how to begin to explain how crass it is to instrumentalize Catholic women and the sacrament of Holy Matrimony by using it as a pair of handcuffs for an abusive man. But most of the people who support giving priests wives to end sexual abuse seem to be claiming the latter. They seem to think that sexual abuse happens because priests are celibate, so having an outlet in the form of a wife will satisfy them so they don\u2019t find a victim to force themselves onto.<\/p>\n
This is also a disgusting instrumentalization of women, and of sex, which is supposed to be a free gift of love from one spouse to another. And it assumes that abusers abuse because they\u2019re craving sex, which isn\u2019t the case\u2013 most abusive people abuse because they get off on dominating others and making them suffer, not because they\u2019re desperate to have sex. Sex and sexual abuse are fundamentally different things. But in addition, this idea betrays an extremely\u00a0disturbing notion about how sexual urges and self control are supposed to work.<\/p>\n
You don\u2019t have to accept the Church\u2019s teaching on sexuality to see the problem.<\/h3>\n
Any kind of healthy or ethical relationship with sex begins with the understanding that people don\u2019t have to act on their urges. Sex, or at least sex with another person, is one of those things you can\u2019t have merely because you think you\u2019d like it; it always involves another person\u2019s consent, and even if the other person is willing you can\u2019t just have it wherever and whenever you think might be fun. No one can constantly be sexually gratified exactly as they\u2019d like. Everybody is, in practice, celibate most of the time. You have to have self-control to exist among other people.<\/p>\n
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Being a functioning human involves being able to say \u201cno\u201d when your urges say \u201cyes\u2013\u201d whether your urge is to shoplift Nutella and eat the whole jar in the supermarket, or to drive your car at 120 miles per hour in the middle of the city, or to have sex. If you can\u2019t handle that, you shouldn\u2019t be a priest;\u00a0 you shouldn\u2019t even be allowed around other people. You should be locked up.\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
I am deeply disturbed that a sizable number of people don\u2019t seem to understand that having an outlet for his sexual urges isn\u2019t going to fix a man who can\u2019t control himself\u2013 even if that were fair to his wife.<\/div>\n
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If you want to say that expecting a man to be celibate for his entire life is bad for his mental health, we can have that argument. If you want to say that a vow of celibacy, combined with the Church\u2019s stance on sexual issues, is only going to be attractive to a man who\u2019s prone to abuse, we can argue about that too. We can sure talk about ordaining married men for other reasons. But if you think that sexual abuse is something that happens because a man needs an outlet one way or another so we\u2019d better give him a wife, that\u2019s not a position that can be defended. Because women are people, and because that\u2019s not how sexuality works.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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