Celibacy

Fr Hunwicke's answer to those calling for a married clergy because of the pervert scandal. Father is a married, former Anglican priest who has been ordained a Priest of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, so he speaks with knowledge of the situation in the dying Church of England.

And, don't forget, it's that Anglican Communion, which is on its last legs, that Francis seems to be using as a template for the destruction of Christ's Holy Church.

From Fr Hunwicke's Mutual Enrichment

Inevitably, the idea is being spread around that the Latin Church's rule of Celibacy might have something to do with the horror of the sexual abuse of children by clerics in Major Orders.

I think it is extremely important that Catholics approach this matter with a clear, logical, and informed mind.

By informed, I mean, in plain terms, Look at the Church of England before you leap to 'obvious' but erroneous conclusions.

The dirty washing of that ecclesial body has, only recently, been in full view before the Independant Enquiry currently going on in this country. It is a story every bit as unsavoury as anything the Catholic Church has to offer.


In the Church of England married men are ordained and the clergy are allowed to marry. This has done nothing to prevent extensive abuse, and cover-ups, at the highest levels. The most notorious abuser is a former diocesan bishop, charismatic founder of a religious order, who was once, when he was riding high, described on Wikipedia as the holiest and wisest man in the Church of England. He was the darling of the British Establishment. He has recently emerged from prison. Two metropolitan archbishops, Primates of England, were removed from public ministry by their successors for doing cover-ups. (Yes, Canterbury and York make up 100% of the Metropolitan Primates of the C of E.. Carey covered up for Ball, and Hope protected a former Dean of Manchester).

You may argue that the clerics concerned were unmarried and belonged to the Anglo-Catholic 'wing' of the C of E, so that they were pretty well as unwholesome as real papists. But you would be wholly wrong on both counts. Archbishop Carey comes from an extremely Evangelical stable, and a convicted Rural Dean (=Vicar Forane) is another evangelical. And, as for marriage as a guarantee of sexual probity, well, yet another of the convicted clergy (I know him) is a married man with children. In any case, would anybody argue that only married men should be ordained?

Don't be naive.

I am not making an attack on Anglicanism. I happen to think that the Anglican tradition of a largely married parochial clergy is a gift of God which we should all cherish.


But the simplistic bilge floating across the oceans from Australia and America, linking celibacy with abuse, is unevidenced nonsense.

Worse, it is simply another ebullition of the sick centuries-old prejudice in WASP culture against the Catholic Church and, especially, against her clergy.