Priest Abuse and Clergy Sexual Abuse Information

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8381119.stm

There’s a new revelation of child abuse every other week in the Roman Catholic Church of Ireland. Surely, being 2009 lessons have to be learnt that not allowing priests to marry will only be to the detrament of an outdated church. Are these beasts even vetted before they enter the ‘world of God’?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situational_sexual_behavior

I was received into the Catholic Church when my parish church was still a Benedictine Mission from Douai, in Northern France, near to where my first girlfriend came from. I have always found Irish Catholicism rather stuffy, narrow-minded and Jesus-centred, rather than founded on thoughtfulness and application to the spiritual issues we find today.

The schism within the Church of England over women priests and bishops has created a number of married priests entering the Roman Catholic church.

I do think priests should be allowed to marry. I find it rather sad and unhealthy that a spiritual leader must guide parishioners on the joys of marriage, without ever himself being allowed to experience this. It is truly dreadful that their sexual frustration must express itself on children in their care, rather than on grown women openly and willing to share themselves in marriage.

St Paul goes into this in some detail: "Yes, it is a good thing for a man not to touch a woman; but since sex is always a danger, let each man have his own wife and each woman her own husband… …if they cannot control their sexual urges, they should get married, since it is better to be married than to be tortured".

He goes on to argue strongly in favour of celibacy, but also that whatever the marital state was at the time of the calling, it should remain so. Also that celibacy should be optional, and his advice is there to avoid suffering brought on by the conflicts of serving God and serving a spouse and keeping a family at the same time.

I personally think that in marriage, a husband and wife are united in one, and that one bestows a State of Grace on the other. The man who has taken Holy Orders therefore bestows his Grace on his wife, so the logical process is to ordain the wife too, with the status of Deacon.

My mother, who is the daughter of an Anglican clergyman, told me her mother would have been horrified to be ordained, and certainly did not see herself as particularly holy! She had a simple but effective remedy to all political ills: "I think we should line them all up against a wall and shoot them". Not something that would sit well with an ordained minister!