More news keeps appearing about sexual misconduct in the Catholic Church. Seems like no matter how much they crack down on this, they can't control it. Not even a total police state would work.
Seems to me that two radical changes in their doctrine might help. Allowing women into the priesthood and dropping the celibacy requirement for priesthood.
Allowing women in the priesthood would bring more diversity and different kinds of emotional energy to the profession. Dropping celibacy as a requirement would help to provide other erotic outlets for people who need that.
I tend to think that celibacy could still be upheld as a virtue without making it a rigid requirement for the job. The virtue would be the idea that people can strive to not always be enslaved by their animal / emotional instincts. The preaching of mind over matter so to speak. Making total celibacy as a vocational requirement is problematic however.
In a lot of ways, fundamentalist Protestant churches have even more hypocrisy and problems of their own. The Catholic Church does have a little more tolerance and compassion than a lot of churches, depending on who's in charge. I would think that the best churches tend to be the liberal non fundamentalist churches of several denominations as well as liberal leaning gatherings of many non Christian faiths. Outdated, rigid doctrines cause problems.
No comments:
Post a Comment