I’ve done some posting lately about the recent news activity concerning Catholic priests and sexual abuse. As I’ve noted before, I avoid the word “scandal” because the sense of immediacy (and the lack of proportion) is largely being manufactured by the press. Most of the allegedly abusive¹ activity took place at least two or three decades ago, and the occurrence of sex abusers among priests is about half the occurrence of sex abusers among the population in general.

Those two myths are damaging on their own, but the myth that seems the most damning is the idea that clerical celibacy is a root cause of the sexual abuse. Nothing could be further from the truth, and linking them shows a superficial understanding of both issues. The actual truth is that neither issue is truly about sex at all.

Celibacy is about discipline. By choosing to become a priest, a candidate must accept a requirement about abstaining from sexual activity. There’s no requirement that a priest be sexless; in fact, some in the Church would posit that only men with “normal” heterosexual inclinations should be priests at all². The requirement is about self-control.

This isn’t as unusual as it sounds. Most religious traditions require sexual self-control in their teachings about abstaining from sex outside of marriage. The root of this requirement isn’t about sexual pleasure but about whether we’re going to give free rein to our baser desires or whether we’re going to make deliberate and adult choices about handling those desires.

I object to any suggestion that it’s “unnatural” to choose to control our sexual urges rather than letting them control us. Any thinking person should. That’s why we have minds, and that’s what self-discipline is all about.

Abuse, on the other hand, is about power. It doesn’t matter whether it’s physical, emotional or sexual: the intent of the abuser is to demonstrate that he or she is capable of controlling the other person, and/or using the other person as an object to satisfy desires (or urges) rather than managing them appropriately. It’s a misuse of trust.

Again, this isn’t unusual. Managing personal power is a critical social skill. We all have the ability to affect others’ lives and need to be mindful of that when making choices. It’s no accident that many abusers grow up in circumstances that model inappropriate usage of personal power.

And, again, I object to the idea that thinking people don’t bear a responsibility to ensure that their actions don’t devalue and objectify those around them, especially with respect to children. We have minds — and morals — for a reason.

Numerous studies have borne out the idea that sexual abuse is about power; and pages of philosophy and theology have been written about clerical celibacy as an exercise in self-discipline. Neither of these have anything to do with sexuality itself and, as such, the issues have absolutely nothing to do with each other.

The apparent connection is a coincidence of the kind that can only be drawn by those who live in a super-sexed world. Unfortunately, that applies to most people in modern Western civilization. We have sex on the brain and are bombarded with messages that demonize any idea about self-regulation on the matter.

I’m not surprised that so many people link the two together; it’s a result of something that many religious traditions decry. But that doesn’t mean it’s correct to link them. It isn’t. It’s a fallacy, and it’s a dangerous one because it obscures the true nature of both issues.

1. By using “allegedly,” I’m not suggesting that abuse didn’t occur. I do, however, subscribe to “innocent until proven guilty” and draw a distinction with respect to the age of the younger party. But each of those is another post.
2. I’m not one of them. I care whether a priest is abstaining at all; I don’t really care whether he’s abstaining from relationships with men, women or both. That, too, is a subject for another post.