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Leading Catholic: Let priests have sex

Published: 23 Nov 12 09:19 CET | Print version
Online: http://www.thelocal.de/society/20121123-46339.html

Abolishing celibacy for priests would encourage more to take up the cloth, Alois Glück, president of the central committee for German Catholics argued on Friday.

"Abolishing celibacy is not a magic solution, but there would definitely be more priests," the former Christian Social Union politician told the Augsburger Allgemeine newspaper. "There are more and more bishops in the world church that think a change is necessary."

But Glück admitted that since the Vatican was unlikely to change its stance on the issue in the foreseeable future, lay Catholics would hopefully play a bigger role in local parishes. "Women will have to take up more responsibilities," he said.

He added that the Catholic Church was facing a crossroads - either centralizing decisions or distributing responsibilities among priests and lay people. But he warned that "centralisation of the spiritual guidance of the congregation will necessarily lead to alienation from the Church."

The German Catholic lay organization is due to meet for its autumn conference in Bonn on Friday, where the further development of the Church will be one the central themes. "We have to be aware that the number of christened and people who feel connected to the church is dropping sharply," he said.

The Local/bk

What do you think? Leave your comment below.


Your comments about this article:

09:44 November 23, 2012 by grinners
hmmm. not sure why they need to impliment such a ruling. The Churches stance on celibacy is yet to stop them sexually assualting young boys across the globe. Perhaps addressing this and their stance on gays will help them bring more people back to the church???
09:59 November 23, 2012 by munichiscool
This makes sense. In this way these people at least will be able to spend life like normal human beings and will also be able to understand the problems that families have. This will help the priests to serve the people coming to church in a better way. This will definitely save many children from sex abuse in future also.
10:04 November 23, 2012 by lumberjack
Are they still trying to make people believe that they are celibate?
11:39 November 23, 2012 by lucksi
"Abolishing celibacy is not a magic solution, but there would definitely be more priests,"

That is just what we need. More priests, yay
12:05 November 23, 2012 by yllusion
Religion shouldn't be a political party where they change rules in order to please the masses. They should stand by their values, if there are any left. But the problem is that the catholic church is a corrupt form of christianity, like most of the others, i.e., their values are false and twisted from their roots, and the problems that the priests have are exactly because of that. Celibacy in the common sense is not in the roots of christianity. The original meaning of celibacy means that a man/woman should not have sex outside marriage, and that both man and woman should not waste their life force during intercourse, but rather direct it for spiritual enlightenment. Sex is therefore a necessity. Sexual energy is meant to be worked with. It is in our nature. What happens when we suppress it or misuse it is exactly what we see: people adopt perverted behaviour. This energy will make its way out either constructively (enlightenment) or destructively (pervertion).
12:11 November 23, 2012 by dintojose
Interesting!! It seems TheLocal want to become a catholic newspaper. Guys, it´s none of your business how catholic church is run. Write about that concerns general public, rather than writing for getting cheap comments from the bunch of pagens here at Thelocal.
12:22 November 23, 2012 by yllusion
@dintojose Why not? Religion is part of our cultures and a cornerstone of our societies. But it is ruled by men, and consequently it is not free of corruption and deviations from their true values. Therefore any reasonable person will agree that religions is a debatable matter which concerns us all.
13:47 November 23, 2012 by bwjijsdtd
One question, and I hope it does not start a firestorm ... "Was Jesus a virgin when he died and how do you know? If you have read and kept up with it, there is some belief that he was married ... there is no proof that he was ... but then there is no proof that he was not ...
18:38 November 23, 2012 by jg.
I thought this was already allowed as part of the Catholic defection package for Anglican clergy. Anglican vicars are often married and have children - and they remain married if they defect to the Catholic Church.
01:34 November 24, 2012 by iseedaftpeople
The problem isn't so much with Catholic priests being allowed to get their rocks off (we all know they have been having little trouble doing that, to a large extent by abusing children). The Catholic Church needs to rethink its whole approach, its entire attitude towards sexuality, most of all within the priesthood.

Many men have become priests because they were ashamed and felt great guilt about their sexuality, and that includes not only pedophilic but also homosexual tendencies, and often this shame has been caused by growing up Catholic and having had instilled the forbidding and restrictive sexual mores that Catholicism has unfortunately made itself a name for. For these poor unfortunate men, the celibate priesthood offered a chance to rid themselves of their sexuality which they were so much taught to loathe. But as we all know, you can't forever suppress the fact that for better or worse you are a sexual being, and that's also in the end why so many priests have gone on to abuse defenseless children.

The only answer to this is not to open the Priesthood for marriage, but for the Catholic Church to rethink its entire stance on human sexuality.

Unfortunately, we are - pardon the pun - much more likely to see hell freeze over before that is ever going to happen.
10:44 November 24, 2012 by dintojose
@iseedaftpeople: Catholic church have been a save heaven for pedophiles and homosexuals. If u look at the cases, most of the abuse were on young boys. However, u have to understand that this is a very small portion of the priests. It is highly unfair to classify all the priests as pedophiles or homosexuals.

The good thing about the catholic church is that it is very robust in its teachings and principles, at least it has not changed its stance in most of the aspects for 2000 years. How can someone trust something if it change all the time. I hope Church remains as it is. Why is that everything has to be defined based on SEX. Even the title of this article says priests should be allowed to have sex, while the topic that was actually discussed was about allowing priests to get married.

Thankyou TheLocal for being the new catholic newspaper.
11:36 November 24, 2012 by AA Cunningham
Alois Glück is a dishonest apostate. 21 of the 22 Churches sui juris which comprise the Catholic Church already ordain married men, as a norm. All 21 of those Churches have a shortage of Priests. The specious argument that if the Latin Rite would ordain married men to the Priesthood then there would be no shortage of priests is simply that. Glück should be asked why protestant churches also have a shortage of clergy since celibacy can't be used as a crutch in explaining the reason for their lack of vocations. The fact is that in an increasingly immoral, materialistic and narcissistic world the thought of sacrificing of self to serve the Almighty isn't attractive.

Regarding the specious arguments offered by some here that ordaining married men to the Priesthood would solve the sinful and criminal behavior of the small percentage of pedophiles and ephebophiles masquerading as Priests, I wonder what explanation they have for the sexual crimes of those in the public education system since you can't blame that behavior on the vow of celibacy? I also wonder what knots they'd tie themselves into in attempting to explain why the overwhelming majority of pedophiles are married men.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/08/24/opinion/main1933687.shtml
10:36 November 25, 2012 by raandy
AA Cunningham all excellent points,concerning pedophiles. I agree that celibacy is not the problem. The problem is the way institutions try and cover these crimes up instead of immediately calling the authorities, there by removing a safe haven for these undesirable's. The recent events at Penn State should be an iconic reminder of what results when the truth emerges.
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