{"id":1874,"date":"2002-04-14T13:09:37","date_gmt":"2002-04-14T18:09:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/?p=1874"},"modified":"2002-04-14T13:09:37","modified_gmt":"2002-04-14T18:09:37","slug":"priests_and_mar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/04\/14\/priests_and_mar.html","title":{"rendered":"Priests and Marriage"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here’s an interesting article on married priests in the Catholic Church<\/a>. There are a few officially sanctioned — former Episcopalian priests, already married, who changed denominations. From the way the article describes it, they live and act not unlike … well, not unlike our Episcopalian pastor.<\/p>\n

So what’s the big deal? Why is this okay in the eyes of Rome, but not marriage for other priests?<\/p>\n

No idea. But, while it is a worthy debate in and of itself, it’s not suitable as a panacea for the sexual abuse scandel rocking the church. <\/p>\n

Why not? Because the statistics I’m seeing indicate that such abuse is no more prevalent among Catholic priests than elsewhere in the general population. The actual numbers are actually quite small, and in keeping with other professionals.<\/p>\n

What’s got folks raising the roof over all these goings-on is not the fact of the abuse (admittedly the more shocking among avowed servants of God), but that it was hushed up and mishandled and even, through inaction, allowed to happen again and again by the higher-ups in the Church.<\/p>\n

Granted, dealing with such matters — especially among spiritual brothers, people who have taken the same vows as you, and in a profession where forgiveness is expected — would be extremely difficult. But it is the betrayal of trust by the Church hierarchy <\/a>that is seriously hurting the Catholic church in the US today, from the standpoint of its parishioners.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s an interesting article on married priests in the Catholic Church. There are a few officially sanctioned — former Episcopalian priests, already married, who changed denominations. From the way the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":21070,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2011\/05\/19\/the-jay-report-on-priestly-abuse.html","url_meta":{"origin":1874,"position":0},"title":"The Jay Report on priestly abuse","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 19-May-11 6:43am","format":false,"excerpt":"It's probably unfair to comment too much on this new report based solely on a newspaper account of what it contains, but lacking an actual copy, take the following with that caveat. The report, \u201cThe Causes and Context of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests in the United States,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Religion"","block_context":{"text":"Religion","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2564,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/06\/04\/maybe_theyve_fi.html","url_meta":{"origin":1874,"position":1},"title":"Maybe they’ve finally figured it out","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 4-Jun-02 10:41am","format":false,"excerpt":"The proposed plan by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops looks like it might actually reasonably address the problem of abusive priests and the hierarchy that enables them. The plans...","rel":"","context":"In "Fourth Estate"","block_context":{"text":"Fourth Estate","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/media\/fourth-estate"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2681,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/05\/17\/and_on_a_more_s.html","url_meta":{"origin":1874,"position":2},"title":"And on a more somber note, again …","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 17-May-02 1:20pm","format":false,"excerpt":"The Catholic Church Molestation Cover-Up Scandal continues to worsen, as more and more facts come out. Though this story touches on a number of areas (starting with Baltimore), it's the...","rel":"","context":"In "Fourth Estate"","block_context":{"text":"Fourth Estate","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/media\/fourth-estate"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2479,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/06\/17\/the_bishops_dec.html","url_meta":{"origin":1874,"position":3},"title":"The Bishops decide","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 17-Jun-02 2:02pm","format":false,"excerpt":"The USCCB (United States Council of Catholic Bishops) new policies regarding the abuse scandal came on Friday, just when I was dealing with other stuff in my schedule (and lack...","rel":"","context":"In "Religion"","block_context":{"text":"Religion","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3115,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/08\/07\/priorities_2.html","url_meta":{"origin":1874,"position":4},"title":"Priorities","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 7-Aug-02 6:35pm","format":false,"excerpt":"You would think that with major molestation scandals rocking at the Catholic Church -- you know, the ones where priests who raped and molested minors were protected, given a slap...","rel":"","context":"In "Religion"","block_context":{"text":"Religion","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1798,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/04\/29\/the_scandal.html","url_meta":{"origin":1874,"position":5},"title":"The Scandal","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 29-Apr-02 8:22am","format":false,"excerpt":"Latest news in the current Church Pedophilia Mismanagement Scandal is an oddly mixed bag. The cardinals back a Zero Tolerance policy. No, they don't. Yes, they really do. Stay tuned....","rel":"","context":"In "Religion"","block_context":{"text":"Religion","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1874\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}