Catholics Priests Have Fathered Countless Children, Only To Abandon Them

[NeoGreen]

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2017/08/17/catholics-priests-have-fathered-countless-children-only-to-abandon-them/

Catholics Priests Have Fathered Countless Children, Only To Abandon Them
August 17, 2017 by Hemant Mehta

The Catholic Church has always required celibacy for its priests. It’s an absurd rule to deprive people of sex in exchange for admission into the brotherhood, and it’s one argument for why the number of priests isn’t as high as it could be. Other religions allow leaders to have families and a life outside church walls. The Catholic Church doesn’t.

But even priests break the vow of celibacy.

Michael Rezendes of The Boston Globe‘s Spotlight Team (yeah, that one) just published an incredible story of children whose fathers were fathers.

Their exact number can’t be known, but with more than 400,000 priests worldwide, many of them inconstant in their promise of celibacy, the potential for unplanned children is vast. And this also comes through loud and plain: The sons and daughters of priests often grow up without the love and support of their fathers, and are often pressured or shamed into keeping the existence of the relationship a secret. They are the unfortunate victims of a church that has, for nearly 900 years, forbidden priests to marry or have sex, but has never set rules for what priests or bishops must do when a clergyman fathers a child.

The stories are heartbreaking, in part because some of the priests have children only to walk out of their lives, back into the Church.

Maybe the saddest passage was a promise made by some of the priest-daddies:

… others consoled the women with assurances that it was only a matter of time before the church dropped the celibacy requirement, which pope after pope, including Francis, has declined to do.

The Church isn’t going to come to its senses anytime soon. Not on something like this. Which means many of these kids are growing up without a father for the sole reason that the Catholic Church forbids it.

[A HERETIC I AM]

1. As a writer I once read said;

The Catholic church prohibits sex among its strictly male clergy, thus creating the largest closet in the history of human sexuality.

I also read that for centuries in many societies in Europe, becoming a priest was the only way a homosexual could have a decent life.

[Warpy]

2. The celibacy rule was based on greed

It wasn't so much the local parish priest they were concerned about, it was the aggressive climber who made it to bishop and above who accumulated property, often vast quantity of property, gold, palaces, and other accoutrements of great wealth. The last thing Mother Church wanted was for any of the loot to go to the kiddies. It should go to Rome.

And of course, celibacy was always a cruel fiction, the woman, often still in her teens, blamed for the seduction of the priest and abandoned by her family like the child was abandoned by the priest.

The Magdalene Laundries were full of women who were knocked up by the local priest.

One of my dad's first regular jobs when he was sixteen was driving the parish priest over to the next town for a visit to a whorehouse. He always said the guy was the only normal priest he ever met.

It went on like this for centuries. Nobody got upset until it came out they were also diddling male children.

[rurallib]

3. One of the priests in my parish growing up was reputed to have 6 kids

He married the mother of at least some of them shortly after I left high school.

But at least he wasn't trying to have sex with me like the other priest in the parish.

[BluesRunTheGame]

4. "Unwed Fathers"