Free The Silence We Keep: A Nun's View of the Catholic Priest Scandal by Karol Jackowski Page B

it, do it with a woman—don’t do it with another man. And if you get her pregnant, come to me—I’ll take care of it.
    It appears as though the Catholic Church has a long Vatican-approved tradition of encouraging responsible sex in the priesthood. And it sends chills up my spine thinking of all the women who were “taken care of” in that way by the Catholic Church, whether by financial settlements, adoption, or priestly pressure to abort. It’s a heart stopper and an eye opener for me, not to mention the women tormented by the church’s teachings against them on birth control and abortion—mortal sins for women, not men, and clearly not for the “men of God” in the priesthood. I imagine Cardinal Cushing’s fatherly advice is just a tiny glimpse of the teachings that created this priesthood, as we’re beginning to see its criminally deviant results. With every new revelation of scandal, it appears as though karmic laws of Fate are indeed at work, some divine force beyond the church’s control that’s breaking the silence, some hidden God revealing painful truths that serve to set us free from the erroneous teachings of misguided Church Fathers.
    For all who believe blindly that this whole mess is the result of the anti-Catholic media seeing things that aren’t there and making up scandals, there’s a growing mound of research that demonstrates this is no illusion. A vast majority of Catholic priests worldwide are living openly or secretly uncelibate lives. Data on sexual activity in the priesthood demonstrate what everyone seems to know and accept, but no one, especially the Vatican, admits as really happening. The Catholic priesthood is nowhere near as celibate as the Catholic Church still wants us to believe. It reminds me of the wisdom of The X-Files: Nothing is as it appears. But here we have statistics to prove it.
    In 1990, a former monk and current psychotherapist, Richard Sipe, conducted a study of clerical sexual habits. 2 Believing the results to be conservative given what he knew, he reported approximately 20 percent of priests were sexually active with women, with another 10 percent thinking about it seriously. He also found 20 percent were homosexual, 10 percent of whom were sexually active, 4 percent of those with children. Some critics and seminarians, and most sisters I asked, felt the numbers should be doubled. Sex researchers also talk about the likelihood of an underreporting bias in sex research. So if you double the numbers, and add a little more for priestly bias, that’s an overwhelming majority. Nearly every priest was sexually active or thinking about it. And that was more than ten years ago.
    All over the world, research demonstrates that celibacy among priests is practiced mainly in the breach. In Brazil and Indonesia, where there is little cultural value to celibacy, it is more common than not for priests (60 to 70 percent) to have wives, lovers, and affairs. And in parts of Africa where polygamy is common, the burning question among priests is not celibacy, but limiting themselves to one wife. In Latin America, it’s reported that approximately 80 percent of Peruvian priestsmarry or live with women. A Peruvian sister explained that many of those priests are missionaries who live alone in isolated areas and in another culture where celibacy is neither valued nor expected of priests by the people. The whole world sees that Catholicism no longer has (and probably never had) a celibate priesthood. All evidence points to the contrary. We can all see now that the mandatory celibate part of the Catholic priesthood has already changed, and without a Vatican Council.

    Even more disturbing than what we know about the Catholic priesthood is what we don’t know about the criminal and immoral activity going on. And the worst revelations are yet to come. If this is what we’ve been forced to know after decades, if not centuries of hidden criminal activity, can you imagine what we don’t