Ending celibacy for priests won’t stop abuse, says our top Catholic

By Noel Murphy
DROPPING the demand for Catholic priests to be celibate is unlikely to address sex abuse problems within the church, according to St Mary’s Basilica Fr Kevin Dillon.
Fr Dillon also doubted the move would attract new recruits to the clergy.
He was responding to a renewed debate that Jesus Christ could have been married, following the finding of a Fourth Century scrap of papyrus revealing early Christians thought he was married.
The ancient document was revealed this week at Harvard Divinity School, in the US.
But Fr Dillon said the issues of sexual abuse or declining numbers in the church were unlikely to be resolved with a one-dimensional change to celibacy requirements of priests.
“We do the victims of abuse a disservice to think what they’ve suffered is due to just one thing only,’’ he said.
“There are a lot of causes both within the church’s control and sometimes outside. Whether it had been better managed when people first suspected abuse, how many would have been saved.
“One might say when the alarm bells were ringing had they been heeded a lot of people who suffered may not have suffered. The question is why weren’t they heeded.
“It has nothing to do with celibacy.’’
Fr Dillon said the church had also been denied the ministry of some fine people, “well educated and well experienced”, after they fell in love and were obliged to leave the priesthood.
The ancient papyrus includes the words “Jesus said to them, my wife’’. It was thought to have been discovered in Egypt or Syria.
According to Harvard’s Professor Karen King, Jesus was thought until about 200 AD to have been married.