let me ask you a difficult question about the darker side of human nature of human power of institutions what's your view on the long history and widespread reports of sexual abuse of children by a catholic priest so this is a a difficult topic but maybe an important one to shine a light on yeah it's awful you know and it's it's been a problem go back to peter damien back in the 11th century was talking about it so it's been a problem and whenever really sinful human beings have been in close proximity to children we've we
find this issue has it been around the church yes um has it surfaced in a kind of sickening way in the last 30 years absolutely um i'm glad the church has made important strides and it has back in 2002 there was a thing called the dallas accords where the bishops of america put a lot of these protocols in place that really have been effective at ameliorating this problem the numbers spiked in the 70s and 80s and that's been demonstrated over and over again and then they fell dramatically after that so that's not to excuse anything
but to say i think progress has been made with it what's the impulse to secrecy yeah well to protect institutions you know that's always that's a sinful uh instinct uh i'm not all together i mean sure an institution is worth protecting but if it reaches the point where you're indifferent to people's uh well-being then you're in trouble so institutions role should be transparent and honest with the sins of its members and itself sure yeah so maybe you can speak to the fact uh as a priest the bishop as part of catholicism you're not allowed to
marry you're not allowed to have sex uh you're you're sworn to celibacy what is what is behind that idea what is the sort of we talked about some broad stroke yeah ideas of love you know what's behind the idea of celibacy and that's a good way to get at it it's a path of love so it the church is always in favor of inculcating love marriage is a path of love but so is celibacy um saint paul talks about someone who is preoccupied with the things of of this world and family and those who are
free from that are freer for doing the the work of god so that's kind of a pragmatic justification for celibacy and we still i think take that seriously look at my own life i mean celibacy has enabled me to do all kinds of things and go places and and and minister in a way that i could not if i had been married so i get it i get the pragmatic side but i i'm more interested in the sort of mystical side of it um remember jesus was challenged about the person who had a whole series
of of uh husbands and and then they all died and so in heaven which one will uh you know which which husband will the wife have and his answer is in heaven people don't marry and they're not given in marriage there's a there's a higher way of love it's a more radical way of love it's not tied to a particular but i think through god is tied to everybody the celibate and this has been to the beginning of the church not as a law but there were there were celibates from the very beginning of the
church including jesus of course and paul um they sensed something that that way of living mystically anticipates the way we'll love in heaven it's a sign even now within this world of how we will all love in heaven so in that way it's a bit like pacifists um i'm glad there are pacifists in the church and i i've known some you know some very powerful witnesses to pacifism i'm glad they're pacifists because they witness even now to how we will be in heaven when every tear is wiped away and we beat our swords into plowshares
and you know heaven's a place of radical peace that some people even now live it at the same time i'm glad not everyone's a pacifist because i i would hold with the church to just war theory that there's sometimes all we can do in this finite world is to is to fight you know uh manifest wickedness so and just in the same way there's just sex well no right i'm glad there are celibates but i'm glad not everyone's a celebrity i wouldn't want that i mean because because uh married love is a marvelous expression of
the divine love so that's why it's good there are some and it's always been a small number the actual experience of it would you uh the spiritual nature of it is it similar to fasting so i've been enjoying fasting uh recently so not eating yeah uh for several days that kind of stuff and that somehow brings you even deeper i'm in general in love with everything in nate with nature and everything i see the beauty in the world but there's a greater intensity to that when you're fasting for example yeah i i might use the
language of you know sublimation or redirection of energy and all that um i i think that's true there's a certain sublimation of energies into um prayer into mysticism into ministry um a redirection of energies so it's meant to be life enhancing the same way fasting is is meant ultimately to be life enhancing and make you healthier and happier so celibacy is a is a path of love and i think it does involve you a certain redirection of energies i'd say that don't you think do you think it's a heavy burden for some humans to bear
some priest to bear is that sure is that the thing given this the the the sexual abuse scandal um is that the thing that breaks no i i wouldn't tie that to celibacy and that's been uh demonstrated over and over again there's a priest named andrew greeley who was a priest from my home diocese of chicago and andy did a lot of research he was sociologist of religion did a lot of research into that very question and there really is not a correlation between celibacy per se and the sexual abuse of children or anybody so
i wouldn't make that correlation so bad people sinful people are going to do what they're going to do i think people who have a tendency toward abusing children sexually are drawn to situations where they get ready access to kids and they get institutional cover so that's something that you go through the list of you know from sports and and boy scouts etc um and that's been proven again and again so i would tie it more to that i wouldn't tie it to celibacy you
