CELIBACY

So the article in the Daily Telegraph re my previous blog caused reaction from this country, the States and as far as Australia. Not quite death threats but violence and personal abuse from faithful Christians!

My crime in part? Suggesting that requiring celibacy as a condition of Holy Orders and the existence of closed Orders of Monks and Nuns is life denying.

My critics have protested that people have a free choice. Yes. However, is it not the vulnerable that are drawn towards such artificial and unnatural constructs created by the Church which prevent human beings from experiencing intimacy in their earthly lives? Is it not a denial of the Incarnation and an affront to the God of Love to wrest people from their families and loved ones and to exclude them from the opportunity of marital intimacy?

The sexual and physical abuse of the young which has disgraced the ministry of the church is one vivid indicator of the distortion in human relationships that the celibate priesthood and Orders of Monks and Nuns have produced.

If the Church is to begin criticising modern experiments in community and relationships it needs to put its own house in order, and there is no sign as yet of that happening.