RELIGION-BRAZIL: Bishops Question Celibacy Rule

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Apr 30 2002 (IPS) - The expanding sexual abuse scandal surrounding the Roman Catholic Church has fuelled an offensive by Brazilian bishops and theologians to eliminate mandatory celibacy for priests.

Celibacy should be optional, rather than mandatory, two high- ranking Catholic clerics said recently in separate statements.

The celibacy rule stands in the way of finding a solution to the shortage of priests in Brazil, which has the largest Catholic population in the world, argued Bishop Angélico Sándalo Bernardino of the diocese of the southern city of Blumenau.

Around 70,000 grassroots Church groups are unable to hold Sunday mass because no priest is available in their community – a problem that is difficult to overcome under the current conditions, lamented Sándalo Bernardino, in charge of training and education in Brazil’s Bishops’ Conference.

Cardinal Paulo Evaristo Arns, archbishop emeritus of Sao Paulo, also criticised obligatory celibacy, in an interview published Sunday by the Rio de Janeiro newspaper O Globo.

The celibacy rule is “legislation of the Church, not of Christ or the gospel,” and for that reason it can be modified, said Arns, who is now retired. He also lamented that Pope John Paul II would not even allow the issue to be discussed. But, he added, “we discuss it here, because we are free.”

Nevertheless, the comments of Arns and Sándalo Bernardino do not represent a view shared by all of Brazil’s bishops, even though the latter is in charge of training and education in the Bishops’ Conference, theologian Francisco Salatiel Barbosa, who was forced to abandon the Church because he decided to marry, told IPS.

The two bishops form part of the so-called “progressive” current of the Church, have worked together for years in Sao Paulo, and see eye to eye on many issues.

At any rate, the argument that the Church loses many priests and potential priests due to the celibacy rule is a strong one. The Brazilian Movement of Married Priests, which puts out the magazine “Rumos”, estimates that 4,000 have had to abandon the priesthood because they opted for family life – equivalent to nearly one-quarter of the total number of priests in Brazil.

Worldwide there are an estimated 100,000 “married priests” – a considerable number for a Church that is facing the competition of many fast-growing creeds, said Salatiel Barbosa.

The theologian, who is completing his doctoral thesis in anthropology on a traditional religious celebration in northeastern Brazil, said priest celibacy could be the focus of a possible new Ecumenical Council to analyse the situation in the Catholic Church.

According to Salatiel Barbosa, “celibacy should already have been discussed” during the last Council, Vatican II, held between 1962 and 1965.

He also said the rule was part of “a narrow, clerical vision” of the Church, closed to grassroots base communities, urban slumdwellers and social movements.

That conservative trend was aggravated by the Vatican’s offensive against liberation theology – the so-called “option for the poor” – and is reflected in the training that priests receive, he said, although he pointed out that the Catholic Church in Brazil has maintained its tradition of social activism.

However, the debate on celibacy has gained strength due to the wave of clerical sex scandals which broke out in the United States and has spread to Brazil, Mexico and a number of countries in Europe.

U.S. bishops decided this month in the Vatican to apply stiff new procedures to eradicate sex abuse among the clergy, in a landmark meeting called by the Pope to discuss what to do with paedophile priests.

The special assembly of bishops was called after a number of U.S. priests and bishops were implicated in a chain of sex scandals.

The archbishop of the diocese of Boston, Bernard Law, was one of the first in the United States accused of shielding a paedophile priest, after which around 400 other cases cropped up.

In Brazil, a priest was reassigned to another diocese after he was found to be the father of a pregnant 16-year-old’s child. Two reports of paedophilia also received high-profile coverage in the local press in recent weeks.

On Apr 15, the local magazine Epoca printed the story of psychologist Lurdes Orcelino Barcelos, 52, who said she had been living with Bishop Herminio Malzone Hugo of Governador Valadares, a town in the southeastern state of Minas Gerais, for 27 years.

Outraged because Church authorities did not allow her to remain by the side of her lifelong partner in his dying moments, Orcelino Barcelos decided to speak out, and claimed she knew of many cases similar to her own.

She also told of losing her virginity at the age of 19 when she was raped by another bishop, and said she suffered sexual abuse at the hands of priests as a novice in a Rio de Janeiro convent.

Such scandals have provided fuel for the fight against the celibacy rule. However, many bishops and theologians note that there is no proven connection between celibacy and paedophilia or other sexual pathologies, and argue that what is needed is better training for priests.

Brazil’s “married priests” plan to debate the question at a July gathering in Sao Luis, the capital of the northeastern state of Maranhao.

Salatiel Barbosa pointed out that most of them do not participate in the Movement of Married Priests – which organises periodic meetings like the one scheduled for July – but merely move on with their lives, having lost all hope of returning to the Church.