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Sex, Priests, And Power: Anatomy Of A Crisis
First published in 1995. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
240 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 1995
2 people are currently reading
363 people want to read
About the author
A.W. Richard Sipe
11 books6 followersFormer Benedictine monk for 18 years, sociologist and author.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
June 7, 2016
"It is not good that the man should be alone" (לֹא-טוֹב הֱיוֹת הָאָדָם לְבַדּוֹ). Celibacy, as a practice and as an institution of the Catholic church, has brought untold evils into the world, and is responsible for thousands of cases of sexual abuse, including abuse of children. Richard Sipe, a retired Catholic priest is now a married psychotherapist who has counseled hundreds of priests and victims of priestly sexual abuse. His perspective on sexual abuse by priests is Christian (by his own definition), sociological and psychoanalytic.
Perhaps we could only get this kind of reportage from someone who had lived the life of a priest himself, and could approach his subjects as a fellow priest. Yet because he remains a Christian, his anthropologically insightful reportage is mingled with an argument about the real truth of Jesus and the proper functioning of a true Christian church which can only be of interest to Christians. To get the value of the anthropological and psychological analysis of sexual abuse, you have to shlep through quite a few pages of Christian theology, but it’s always interesting to see how an alien religious tradition thinks about itself.
Sipe says that only two percent of priests are true “Eunuchs for Christ,” having transcended sexual desire and achieved some kind of emotional and spiritual maturity. Maybe they have. However I note that approximately two percent of people in the general population are thought to be “asexual” - lacking any interest in sex anyway. It’s just as likely that those 2% of priests are true asexuals from the start rather than people who have somehow transcended their sexuality. Indeed, Sipe quotes Augustine (on Corinthians) to the effect that chastity is a gift, not an achievement. It seems likely that either it’s who you are or it isn’t - nothing a person does can change it. But that’s where his Christianity comes into play, because he sees this elite 2% as having “achieved” true celibacy. I doubt it. I think it’s who they always were.
Based on 1500 interviews, and innumerable conversations, Sipe estimates that another 8% of priests are “almost there”, and another 40% are working on it and are strongly rooted in at least a five year period of young celibacy, although they may fall out of it later. Whatevs. I see no evidence that they are not, in Sipe’s words, engaged in a miserable, futile “teeth grinding” struggle with their nature as human beings. The thing that Sipes believes they are working to achieve is probably not achievable, except perhaps through exhaustion and old age, and in any case what nobility is there in it? Besides that, who knows how much sexual activity remains unreported in this group?
The remaining 50% of priests are, according to Sipe, living busy sexual lives, with their own hands, with women, with other men (inside the church and beyond it), or with adolescents and children. These sexual lives are an open secret within the church. Many or most of these relationships involve a violation of trust and abuse of power.
A key insight Sipe provides concerns the terrible cost of lacking a language to speak about sex. He finds that priests lack the words to describe sexual desires and emotional intimacy, and are therefore unable to talk about them. Most, he finds, are stuck in a state of emotional and sexual immaturity, and unable to move forward developmentally. It seems little wonder that sexual behavior must burst out, more or less unexpectedly and often abusively, when a whole class of people lacks a language to discuss an essential component of their bio-psychological being, and lacks a practice of regularly doing so. Words and conversation enable us to know ourselves. Without them we are strangers to ourselves and know not what we are, or what we may do. And if priests were inaugurated into a discourse of sexuality in theological seminary - nudged along toward sexual maturity - how many would elect a life of sexual denial? In any case, my understanding is that a declining number of young men are making that choice, thank God.
The church is a structure of male power, says Sipe, promulgating misogyny and secrecy. He heavily emphasizes the conspiracy of silence and self-protection that the Church wraps around the lives of celibate priests. Celibacy, he emphasizes, means “not married” - it does not mean chaste. To maintain one’s position as a “celibate” priest every priest knows that his sexual life must remain publicly hidden and unspoken, but a lack of chastity (from masturbation to sex with adults to abusive sexual crimes, including against children) is something that is often known within the organization. These known-but-hidden, whispered-but-never-spoken secrets, can fester and metastasize and destroy lives.
The picture that emerges in Sex, Priests and Power completes with details everything you might have expected about the humanity distorting, soul destroying, institution of priestly celibacy. Celibacy is a sick doctrine that infects the world’s largest church from top to bottom. It is the consequence of an ancient set of Christian doctrines that Sipe attempts vainly to deconstruct and to suggest must be replaced by something better. An unnamed high ranking American cleric tells Sipe directly that the Church “is rotten from the top down” and celibacy is the central reason. But this rottenness is paradoxically part of the control mechanism by which the power structure of the Church maintains its position and influences its clerics. The institution is locked in a self-reinforcing doctrine of inhumanity that can destroy lives, but that also continues to reinforce its own power.
Perhaps we could only get this kind of reportage from someone who had lived the life of a priest himself, and could approach his subjects as a fellow priest. Yet because he remains a Christian, his anthropologically insightful reportage is mingled with an argument about the real truth of Jesus and the proper functioning of a true Christian church which can only be of interest to Christians. To get the value of the anthropological and psychological analysis of sexual abuse, you have to shlep through quite a few pages of Christian theology, but it’s always interesting to see how an alien religious tradition thinks about itself.
Sipe says that only two percent of priests are true “Eunuchs for Christ,” having transcended sexual desire and achieved some kind of emotional and spiritual maturity. Maybe they have. However I note that approximately two percent of people in the general population are thought to be “asexual” - lacking any interest in sex anyway. It’s just as likely that those 2% of priests are true asexuals from the start rather than people who have somehow transcended their sexuality. Indeed, Sipe quotes Augustine (on Corinthians) to the effect that chastity is a gift, not an achievement. It seems likely that either it’s who you are or it isn’t - nothing a person does can change it. But that’s where his Christianity comes into play, because he sees this elite 2% as having “achieved” true celibacy. I doubt it. I think it’s who they always were.
Based on 1500 interviews, and innumerable conversations, Sipe estimates that another 8% of priests are “almost there”, and another 40% are working on it and are strongly rooted in at least a five year period of young celibacy, although they may fall out of it later. Whatevs. I see no evidence that they are not, in Sipe’s words, engaged in a miserable, futile “teeth grinding” struggle with their nature as human beings. The thing that Sipes believes they are working to achieve is probably not achievable, except perhaps through exhaustion and old age, and in any case what nobility is there in it? Besides that, who knows how much sexual activity remains unreported in this group?
The remaining 50% of priests are, according to Sipe, living busy sexual lives, with their own hands, with women, with other men (inside the church and beyond it), or with adolescents and children. These sexual lives are an open secret within the church. Many or most of these relationships involve a violation of trust and abuse of power.
A key insight Sipe provides concerns the terrible cost of lacking a language to speak about sex. He finds that priests lack the words to describe sexual desires and emotional intimacy, and are therefore unable to talk about them. Most, he finds, are stuck in a state of emotional and sexual immaturity, and unable to move forward developmentally. It seems little wonder that sexual behavior must burst out, more or less unexpectedly and often abusively, when a whole class of people lacks a language to discuss an essential component of their bio-psychological being, and lacks a practice of regularly doing so. Words and conversation enable us to know ourselves. Without them we are strangers to ourselves and know not what we are, or what we may do. And if priests were inaugurated into a discourse of sexuality in theological seminary - nudged along toward sexual maturity - how many would elect a life of sexual denial? In any case, my understanding is that a declining number of young men are making that choice, thank God.
The church is a structure of male power, says Sipe, promulgating misogyny and secrecy. He heavily emphasizes the conspiracy of silence and self-protection that the Church wraps around the lives of celibate priests. Celibacy, he emphasizes, means “not married” - it does not mean chaste. To maintain one’s position as a “celibate” priest every priest knows that his sexual life must remain publicly hidden and unspoken, but a lack of chastity (from masturbation to sex with adults to abusive sexual crimes, including against children) is something that is often known within the organization. These known-but-hidden, whispered-but-never-spoken secrets, can fester and metastasize and destroy lives.
The picture that emerges in Sex, Priests and Power completes with details everything you might have expected about the humanity distorting, soul destroying, institution of priestly celibacy. Celibacy is a sick doctrine that infects the world’s largest church from top to bottom. It is the consequence of an ancient set of Christian doctrines that Sipe attempts vainly to deconstruct and to suggest must be replaced by something better. An unnamed high ranking American cleric tells Sipe directly that the Church “is rotten from the top down” and celibacy is the central reason. But this rottenness is paradoxically part of the control mechanism by which the power structure of the Church maintains its position and influences its clerics. The institution is locked in a self-reinforcing doctrine of inhumanity that can destroy lives, but that also continues to reinforce its own power.
May 3, 2010
A.W. Richard Sipe has spent most of his adult life studying priestly celibacy, and he brings deep insight to this scholarly volume. Highly recommended reading for anyone who wants to understand how power works in the Catholic Church, and what celibacy means (and doesn't mean) for priests. An eye-opener.
January 2, 2024
Closer to a 3.5/5.
July 26, 2023
It was interesting. I think what really shocked me is some of the older priests or bishops sexually abuse their younger priests as well. The example that really struck me was when a bishop ordered a young man to perform a sexual act on him in order to be hired as a priest. When the young candidate rejected, the bishop warned him that he is going to have to because he is going to need “friends” in this field. One really needs to read this book closely; it can be wordy. From my understanding, the church definitely distorts the idea of celibacy and uses it as power. Anyway, Sipe is right: the church needs to face the clerical sexual abuse responsibly. They cannot hide forever.
I would recommend it if you are interested in learning about the sexual abuse crisis of the church.
I would recommend it if you are interested in learning about the sexual abuse crisis of the church.
September 19, 2024
SIPE FOLLOWS UP ON HIS EARLIER "A SECRET WORLD" STUDY
A. W. Richard Sipe (born 1932) is a former Benedictine monk-priest of 18 years (he resigned his priesthood, and is now married), a sociologist and author/coauthor of books such as 'A Secret World: Sexuality And The Search For Celibacy' and 'Sex, Priests, and Secret Codes: The Catholic Church's 2,000 Year Paper Trail of Sexual Abuse.'
He wrote in the Preface to this 1995 book, "In 1960 when I began studying the practice, process, and achievement of priestly celibacy, I had no sense of any crisis or any idea that my explorations would lead me inexorably to the vortex of a critical contest that engages moral doctrine and religious discipline." (Pg. xv)
"This book is not an attack on an important religious practice---celibacy---much less on a church or religion. It is an invitation to dialogue about issues that have profound effects on people. It is an effort to analyze the function and structure of a system that exerts real power in an area of existence vital to human service, happiness, and productivity: sexuality as it is understood by the celibate/sexual teaching and practice of the Catholic Church." (Pg. xvi)
He adds, "In this present study, two questions led me... Why does celibacy persist as a personal and cultural entity...? And how are celibacy and sexuality connected to the power system of the Catholic Church?" (Pg. xvii)
He notes in the first chapter, "When asked why the American bishops were having such a difficult time with priest sexual abusers, another bishop responded, 'Undoubtedly part of the problem is that some of the bishops themselves are abusers.' When reminded that he was speaking on record and not merely on background, he repeated [the statement]." (Pg. 4)
He states, "In 1976 I was convinced that I had enough data to estimate that at any one time 6% of Catholic priests in the United States were having sex with minors. Since 1985 I have reviewed an additional 1,800 accusations by adults who claim that as children they were sexually abused by priests. I have also seen the histories of nearly 500 priests who are known to have been abused. This further study convinces me that the celibate/sexual system as it exists fosters and produces, and will continue to produce... priests who sexually abuse minors... Public exposure prompted by the victims' movement and litigation if validating my 6% estimate." (Pg. 27)
He asserts, "No seminary teaches celibacy/sexuality adequately. Most training programs value and foster naiveté and sexual immaturity. Emotional 13-year olds support the system and vice versa." (Pg. 46)
He says, "At any one time, 2% of vowed celibate clergy can be said to have achieved celibacy---that is, they have successfully negotiated each step of celibate development at the more or less appropriate stage and are characterologically so firmly established that their state is, for all intents and purposes, irreversible... this group of men is awesome. They manifest an interior freedom and integration that unite their individuality and their service. Their spirituality is marked by their efforts and achievements." (Pg. 67)
He asserts, "Fifteen percent of priests involve themselves with homosexual relationships or identifiable patterns beyond experimentation. In 1985 I estimated that 23% of Catholic priests in the United States would clam a homosexual orientation... I now estimate that at any one time 30% of Catholic priests have a homosexual orientation. But I find no proportionate increase in sexual behavior; that is, roughly 50% of homosexually oriented priests are celibate just as are the heterosexually oriented ones." (Pg. 73)
He admits, "the subject matter and the population do not lend themselves to easy objective observation and analysis. For me, the psychotherapeutic perspective and setting provided the arena and the long-term support for self-disclosure..." (Pg. 78) Later, he adds, "If the church today were to exclude all men of homosexual orientation from its celibate/sexual system, the church as we know it would cease to exist." (Pg. 95)
He also states, "According to the conservative estimates of one church official, 350 Catholic priests test HIV positive. It is known in Rome that at least one bishop is seropositive. By 1994 several dozen priests had died of AIDS... Many dioceses and religious orders require candidates to be tested for AIDS as part of a routine entrance into the seminary. Altogether, it is obvious that clergy are emerging as a clear subgroup of the homosexual population that has so far contracted AIDS." (Pg. 155)
Like Sipe's other books, this one will be "must reading" for anyone studying this controversial area.
A. W. Richard Sipe (born 1932) is a former Benedictine monk-priest of 18 years (he resigned his priesthood, and is now married), a sociologist and author/coauthor of books such as 'A Secret World: Sexuality And The Search For Celibacy' and 'Sex, Priests, and Secret Codes: The Catholic Church's 2,000 Year Paper Trail of Sexual Abuse.'
He wrote in the Preface to this 1995 book, "In 1960 when I began studying the practice, process, and achievement of priestly celibacy, I had no sense of any crisis or any idea that my explorations would lead me inexorably to the vortex of a critical contest that engages moral doctrine and religious discipline." (Pg. xv)
"This book is not an attack on an important religious practice---celibacy---much less on a church or religion. It is an invitation to dialogue about issues that have profound effects on people. It is an effort to analyze the function and structure of a system that exerts real power in an area of existence vital to human service, happiness, and productivity: sexuality as it is understood by the celibate/sexual teaching and practice of the Catholic Church." (Pg. xvi)
He adds, "In this present study, two questions led me... Why does celibacy persist as a personal and cultural entity...? And how are celibacy and sexuality connected to the power system of the Catholic Church?" (Pg. xvii)
He notes in the first chapter, "When asked why the American bishops were having such a difficult time with priest sexual abusers, another bishop responded, 'Undoubtedly part of the problem is that some of the bishops themselves are abusers.' When reminded that he was speaking on record and not merely on background, he repeated [the statement]." (Pg. 4)
He states, "In 1976 I was convinced that I had enough data to estimate that at any one time 6% of Catholic priests in the United States were having sex with minors. Since 1985 I have reviewed an additional 1,800 accusations by adults who claim that as children they were sexually abused by priests. I have also seen the histories of nearly 500 priests who are known to have been abused. This further study convinces me that the celibate/sexual system as it exists fosters and produces, and will continue to produce... priests who sexually abuse minors... Public exposure prompted by the victims' movement and litigation if validating my 6% estimate." (Pg. 27)
He asserts, "No seminary teaches celibacy/sexuality adequately. Most training programs value and foster naiveté and sexual immaturity. Emotional 13-year olds support the system and vice versa." (Pg. 46)
He says, "At any one time, 2% of vowed celibate clergy can be said to have achieved celibacy---that is, they have successfully negotiated each step of celibate development at the more or less appropriate stage and are characterologically so firmly established that their state is, for all intents and purposes, irreversible... this group of men is awesome. They manifest an interior freedom and integration that unite their individuality and their service. Their spirituality is marked by their efforts and achievements." (Pg. 67)
He asserts, "Fifteen percent of priests involve themselves with homosexual relationships or identifiable patterns beyond experimentation. In 1985 I estimated that 23% of Catholic priests in the United States would clam a homosexual orientation... I now estimate that at any one time 30% of Catholic priests have a homosexual orientation. But I find no proportionate increase in sexual behavior; that is, roughly 50% of homosexually oriented priests are celibate just as are the heterosexually oriented ones." (Pg. 73)
He admits, "the subject matter and the population do not lend themselves to easy objective observation and analysis. For me, the psychotherapeutic perspective and setting provided the arena and the long-term support for self-disclosure..." (Pg. 78) Later, he adds, "If the church today were to exclude all men of homosexual orientation from its celibate/sexual system, the church as we know it would cease to exist." (Pg. 95)
He also states, "According to the conservative estimates of one church official, 350 Catholic priests test HIV positive. It is known in Rome that at least one bishop is seropositive. By 1994 several dozen priests had died of AIDS... Many dioceses and religious orders require candidates to be tested for AIDS as part of a routine entrance into the seminary. Altogether, it is obvious that clergy are emerging as a clear subgroup of the homosexual population that has so far contracted AIDS." (Pg. 155)
Like Sipe's other books, this one will be "must reading" for anyone studying this controversial area.
October 14, 2024
Read October 2024
February 8, 2013
This is not the kind of book you read for fun, but rather, to learn. It was very informative and made me think.
May 17, 2021
Unshelved review here: http://www.unshelved.com/bookclub/201...
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews