Many priests and nuns are suffering and as a result they are making others suffer. Child abuse cases reported are only a tip of a hidden iceberg and the decline in vocations is related to the question of celibacy. Many priests and nuns are suffocated, frustrated and give vent on the innocent entrusted to their care. The Catholic Church with all its good intentions is unbiblical in this regard and is becoming the antithesis of Scripture in many respects not least in insisting that no deacon or bishop can be married, when Biblically, in the New Testament Books of Paul to Timothy and Titus we read about the injunction that Deacons and Bishops should be married.

The celibacy question arose in the Middle Ages when the main concern of the Catholic Church was that married priests were conveying Church property to their heirs after dying and also that a priest should focus on the matters of God rather than his wife and children. But this has backlashed in the face of the Catholic Church with clergy having homosexual affairs, and also abusing of the innocent ones. To the contrary the Eastern Orthodox Church continued to allow priests to marry and this has reaped fruits. Indeed you reap what you sow! For example in the Greek Orthodox Church child molestation is minimal to non-existent.

I am sure that with Holy Spirit wisdom and common sense, the Catholic Church can do so much spring cleaning by removing the ‘spiders and their webs’ within its ranks and reform itself not to allow more monsters to creep inside and outside of the Vatican quarters. A way has to be found not only to recruit good heterosexual male clergy but also to marry and be loyal to the Church and their wife. After all a priest is a human being who should be allowed to express healthily the God-given right and gift of concupiscence with a woman. No man should put this asunder.

I do hope and pray with an expectant heart that this present Pope who is visiting our islands will realise the seriousness of the case that some are trying to ‘mellow down’ as well as the huge responsibility and accountability that he faces in front of the Heavenly Realm to implement healthy changes to combat such sin within his Church’s ranks. Jesus warned us that it is better for one to tie a weight and drown in the sea that give a scandal to His innocent ones.

Anthony Zarb-Dimech

Sliema