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I guess the issue of priests engaging in paedophilia is beyond denial. By priests fornicating I mean engaged in sex with women already considered in society to be grown up and not their wives in any kind of socially accepted wedlock as before a civil minister.
Some people deny that thee are such priests and their bishops do not remove them. What I mean bishops not removing them is that they could be waiting for them to repent, or in order that the faithfuls would not be deprived of the sacraments which only priests can deliver.
I for one am not sympathetic nor antipathic in regard to fornicating priests, provided the women are consenting and doing no harm to any third physical prties like their husbands.
This is a plug for readers to proceed to Married Priests in 60 Minutes, where I have some tips for priests and bishops on how to convince the Vatican to lift the obligation of celibacy.
Susma Rio Sep
Just in the interests of clarification, in case anybody else besides me didn’t understand what this meant–
–SRS is talking about his “married priests 60 minutes celibacy” GD thread.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=183311
Thanks, and God bless you, Duck.
At least one soul in the desert where I feel like a John the Baptist knows of my endeavors in union with our mentor, Cecil Adams, to conquer ignorance in the world (what gall and self-adulation!).
Susma Rio Sep
I said earlier:
I forgot to mention other reasons why bishops do not remove priests they know to be fornicating:
They are charitable towards their errant brethren in the priesthood; a bishop is a friend, a father, and a confidant to his priests, specially to those straying from the path of celibacy. If they should proceed with them according to canonical procedures to remove them, where will these errant priests go, when they are not prepared to make a living in any other way than by and through their priestly ministry.
Bishops themselves could be also into fornication with women; they could be facing fellow errant priests with the reminder from Jesus that only those without sins may cast the first stone.
Bishops don’t think that alarming the faithfuls who are not cognizant of human weakness even among priests, to the effect that such faithfuls could suffer spiritual loss as in a diminution of their trust for and docility toward their priests, namely not to the best interests of the whole Catholic community.
Also bishops know that removing fornicating priests will not necessarily bring them to repentance in their abandonment of their attachment to their fornicating partners. What could very well happen for the worse is that the errant priests continue with their women and continue with their priestly acts for whoever want them to minister to. In other words bishops could end up with separatist priests with their separatist followers who pursue their separatist (read that: schismatic) fellowship without the subordination to the official hierarchy of the Catholic Church.
So, there are many worthy reasons why bishops do not remove fornicating priests, all in the exercise of their pastoral discretion when and how to deal with their errant priests – and certainly not conniving with them.
Susma Rio Sep
[quote]
Just in the interests of clarification, in case anybody else besides me didn’t understand what this meant–
Awww…
I wanted to see everybody wait one hour and then locate the nearest married Priest (who would most likely be an Anglican, Orthodox, or Lutheran one) and proceed to him. Mass conversions!!
If we pass “Go” can we collect $200? 
======================
Susma, I have but one question to ask you:
There is absolutely no question in anyone’s mind, so far as I can tell, that the regulation prohibiting the ordination of married men as priests of the Roman Rite in the Papacephalic[sup]1[/sup] Catholic Church is a matter of church disicipline, not of divine command or theologically required.
Any priest has the option to marry, at his or her own discretion. But to preserve the tradition of priestly celibacy in the Roman Rite, such a priest is laicized, and while remaining a priest (the mark being indelible), is forbidden to exercise his priestly faculties except in cases of emergency, unless he receives a dispensation from his bishop or from Rome as appropriate.
Married men may be ordained priests of the Eastern Rites of the Papacephalic Catholic Church. Married men may be ordained priests in the Orthodox Churches (and the entire Catholic Church recognizes Orthodox ordinations as valid). Married men and women may be ordained in the Anglican communion, the Church of South India, and the Lutheran churches, which conceive themselves to have preserved the apostolic succession, and about the validity of which ordinations there are varying degrees of opinion in Catholic circles.
The case has been made time and again that the church imposed priestly celibacy in the Middle Ages as a means of avoiding the practice of nepotism and simoniacal amassing of land in clergy families, and has retained the tradition because it keeps the clergy free from family commitments in order to better serve their flock. (Any member of a Protestant or Anglican clergy family can speak with some authority on how real this problem can be. My childhood buddy Jonathan, a P.K., was devastated by his father up and leaving his eighth birthday party because a pillar of the church had chosen that precise time to suffer a severe heart attack.)
In short, the following are true:
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Married priests, many of whom are recognized by Rome as validly ordained, serve in their priestly capacities all over the place – in Eastern Rite Papacephalic Catholic churches, in Orthodox churches, and in selected Roman Rite Catholic churches where a married clergyman has been received into the Catholic church and ordained priest.
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Married Roman Catholic priests who have been laicized and retain their priestly faculties but are impeded by church law from exercising them except in emergencies are by no means uncommon.
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The magisterium of the Papacephalic Catholic Church teaches clearly that the rule forbidding married priests in the Roman Rite is a matter of church law, no different from fasting on Fridays, which it may change at will, dispense from, and does not impose on the other rites of the Papacephalic church.
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No doubt there are a few men who have chosen to marry, not seek dispensation, and remain active priests. They’re in violation of church law, not of God’s commandments.
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No doubt there are some priests who have broken their vows of celibacy by having sex outside of marriage. These people have sinned by breaking a vow and under the Catholic understanding of when one may and may not legitimately have sexual relations.
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There appears to have been some BS in the past about priests marrying but “abstaining from the conjugal privilege” (which I think means “not having sex”) but whatever the story on that may have been, the church law regarding it is no longer in place.
So what exactly is your problem here? In words of one syllable, what specific issue are you so concerned about that you have opened several threads on the general topic? I confess to utter mystification.
[sup]1[/sup] I have coined this term, which means “headed by the Pope,” with no intent to insult but to distinguish that body that is in communion with and under the authority of the Pope, usually called the Roman Catholic Church, from the schismatic bodies that also call themselves Catholic Churches, since it is necessary in this discussion to speak of Eastern Rite Catholics who are members of “the Roman Catholic Church” but who are Byzantine Catholics, Ukrainian Catholics, etc., not “Roman Catholics” (who are members of the Roman Rite).
Er, don’t get too excited there, Susma–I’m not necessarily on your side, just on the side of “forum tidiness”. 
And, what Poly said.
- Me too. You obviously have a bug up your butt about something, but what it is, I have no idea, either.
Dear Brother Polycarp:
You ask me:
If you read my very first involvement with the question on priestly celibacy, in page 2 of the thread started by TJ555, Catholics and Anal Sex, you will notice that I was not originally into this matter. But I got interested and the interest has grown, so that I am now thinking, here is one made for the laboratory project that I can pursue and see how it can be resolved.
My present interest is now focused on how to help bishops and priests who are inclined to convince the Vatican to lift the celibacy rule. I invite you to proceed to my thread on Married Priests in 60 Minutes Program:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb...threadid=183311
As I said earlier here:
What about you, wouldn’t you be interested in the name of humane concern for bishops and priests who want marriage and the priestly ministry at the same time, interested in advancing their advocacy?
It is a purely church discipline on the part of the Latin Rite Vatican Roman Catholic Church; if it means so much to bishops and priests who do want to see celibacy lifted, shall we not help them? In my own case, I will help them with my writing here and anywhere where I am asked to sign any petition. But honestly I don’t think I will exert any participation like marching or demonstrating, and certainly not contribute substantial personal finance toward that end.
Of course, as I have noted elsewhere, the movement for an optional celibacy is not an issue that the Vatican will allow itself to feel threatened in her duomillennial history. Yet the Vatican has changed in its long history in regard to discipline of purely human church origins, not to talk about declassifying doctrines which before theologians used to preach as though they were of divinely infallible property.
So, would you like to join me in thinking out ways and means to suggest to bishops and priests who are advocating for the lifting of the celibacy rule? Read some suggestions of mine in the thread on Married Men in 60 Minutes Program.
Best regards,
Susma Rio Sep
But, Duck, you are a good Samaritan in telling people what and where to go, in regard to my thread on Married Priests in 60 Minutes.
What about you, can you find any merits in joining the advocacy of bishops and priests to lift the celibacy rule?
Susma Rio Sep
Um, no, I really can’t think of any reason to go to bat for Catholic priests who want to get married. They chose careers in an organization that specifically forbids them to get married, so it seems to me that if they want to get married, they’ll have to choose between marriage and their careers. It’s a choice that women have historically had to make–guess it’s the guys’ turn now.
And like Poly said, it’s the organization’s stated policy. Why should the people who are in the organization who want to change its policy need me to help them? It’s their organization, let them crusade for changes in their organization. Or else join another organization.
If you go to work for IBM, and their rules state, “All discarded documents must be shredded in the official shredders before being put in the trash”, and you disagree with that policy, you can either try to change it yourself, or you can quit working for IBM and go somewhere else that has more liberal trash disposal policies. But I wouldn’t expect you to recruit me to help you change IBM’s policy on shredding–what’s it to me?
Sorry I can’t get more motivated in your crusade.
Dear Duck:
Please be patient with me, continue with me in this exchange of ideas and attitudes about obligatory celibacy in the Catholic priesthood.
Let’s go to an issue that might have some analogous connection with celibacy, namely, clitorectomy. Would you bat for women who are subject to clitorectomy in their society?
OK, clitorectomy with women in some Muslim societies is not the same as celibacy with priests in the U.S.A.
But suppose in the U.S.A. there is a hospital where women working there must be clitorectomized, owing to the peculiar belief and policy of the hospital’s founders/owners/managers; and some women who want to work there are rejected because they won’t submit to clitorectomy. Then women already inside and clitorectomized start to agitate against this policy of the hospital, in sympathy with women wanting to get in but opposing clitorectomy.
Would you bat for these women, or would you say to them:
Now, suppose that the women folk in your life and circle start taking up the advocacy of the women above, and try enlist your at the minimum moral support like writing in bulletin boards or signing petitions against clitorectomy in employment; would you not at least open your mind to study the possible merits on your part to lend at the most minimum your sympathy to their cause?
Susma Rio Sep
That’s a red herring and you know it.
The situations have fuck all to do with one another.
Amen to that, sister.
The priests aren’t being castrated. If they were routinely being castrated, then you’d have a talking point. But they’re not.
I believe the proper term is “straw man”, not “red herring”? No? I’m not really up on my technical debate terms…
Also, I would like to point out that your rephrasing of my post IMO skirts the border of the SDMB rule against misquoting other posters, found in the FAQ.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=106617
You are way out in left field, and your rephrasing of my post did not serve to make a valid point.
…perhaps I should say, not “castrated”, which means having the testicles cut off, but rather “having their penises cut off”, which is what clitoridectomy actually corresponds to.
If the Catholic Church was cutting off priests’ penises as soon as they took their final vows, then you’d have a talking point.
Although, since priests pee out of their penises, and women don’t pee out of their clitorises, maybe it isn’t an exact correspondence after all. Can I get a ruling from the judges?
I think the most precise analogy would be if priests had only the heads of their dicks clipped off. The head of the penis corresponds anotomically to the clitoris.
Dear Duck:
About the quotation, it was not intended to be a direct verbatim reproduction of your words; I regret that you had that impression.
Back to bishops and priests contemplating the lifting of celibacy by the Vatican, do you think that they might find some support from labor law and jurisprudence, on the ground of discrimination against married men for access to the priestly ministry?
Here is the situation: there is certainly a good number of vacancies in Catholic parishes, and there are competent and worthy men who could fill up these vacancies; but they are married or they would not accept the obligation of celibacy, therefore they are disqualified.
I think they can go to the law on a complaint against discrimination for employment and access to career owing to their marital attachment. Will the law accept such a complaint and give it due attention?
If I were the law, I would receive the complaint and resolve it in favor of the bishops and priests, ordering the removal of the celibacy requirement for employment as priestly ministers or access to such a career.
Here is my reasoning: The Vatican accepts previously married non-Catholic priest converts into the Catholic priestly ministry, allowing them to continue in their conjugal life; also from time immemorial it allows married priests in eastern churches recognizing the primacy of Rome; so it would be grossly arbitrary to discriminate against Catholic men married or not giving up prospects of marriage to receive priestly orders, considering that there are vacancies on the one hand, and these Catholic men are otherwise competent and worthy.
What bishops and priests in favor of lifting the celibacy duty is to file such a complaint with the law.
What do you say about this suggestion?
Susma Rio Sep
If it wasn’t meant to be a direct quotation, why did you suddenly decide to use the [**quote] tag? You’ve previously been unwilling to do this, apparently in a deliberate attempt to make your posts unreadable. Nonetheless, you clearly know how to do it, since you have used it to (falsely) assert that your alteration of Duck Duck Goose’s words was a quote.
Incidentally, are you the same person who has posted on the Tsinoy[1] forums as susmariosrp? You certainly seem to be, but I wouldn’t want to make an erroneous assumption.
[1]No direct link, but if you want to see what I’m talking about, google for “tsinoy” and either variation of the username in question.
If I were representing the Church, I would point out the the First Amendment to the US Constitution has long been interpreted as forbidding the government to judge such things as the application of the celibacy requirement to religious jobs.
Apparently not, according to Bricker.
Dear friend from Tsinoy:
About my previous failure to use the quote function, I was not yet conversant with it.
Please accept my good faith, I assure you that I am not possessed of a deceitful mind and heart just so as to win a debate.
I take that quote label back, for it seems to be giving the impression that I do have a deceitful intent. The quote label was just used, believe me, for a mechanism of setting apart a text for the purpose of giving it special attention.
Yes, I am the same person as in Tsinoy. I should visit that thread again one of these days. I met some posters there good and not so good, not that I am portraying myself to be good. I had some unpleasant experience there also which I have charged to learning in life.
If you have questions about my good faith, please let me know. I don’t engage in deceitful formalistic functions of word-processing, as I said, just to score points in debates.
May I ask for your opinion about the lifting of celibacy?
Susma Rio Sep