By JOHN CORNWELL - GUARDIAN.CO.UK
Updated: Sun, 12 Sep 2010 17:40:21 UTC

Thanks to LWS for the link

This week we Catholics will celebrate the pope's arrival in Britain. Well, up to a point, and by no means all of us. The victims of priestly abuse still suffer; and the scandal has prompted Catholics of every generation to question the leadership of the church. I am not alone in wanting to take issue with Pope Benedict's particular response to a scandal that is part of a crisis involving the entire Catholic priesthood.

Since the 70s it has been in trouble; 100,000 priests left the ministry in three decades. Today newly ordained priests in Britain leave the ministry on average after only six years. The liberation of the 60s prompted many priests to rebel against enforced celibacy and a way of life that seemed unnatural and impossible in the 20th century.

The Catholic priesthood attracts many good people. But its unearned exaltation also attracts men with unresolved sexual, social and psychological problems. The screening process does not involve laypeople with appropriate expertise. The long seminary formation, with its devotional preoccupations and protected schoolboy communal life, is an unrealistic preparation for the celibate, gregarious solitude that is the lot of most priests. The formation of mature and lasting relationships, known in seminaries as "particular friendships", is actively discouraged.

So what has the pope done about the crisis? What he hasn't done is to initiate reforms based on inquiries into the culture of the total clerical crisis. His solution to the complex problems of clericalism is to ask seminarians and priests to emulate a French priest called Jean Vianney, who died 150 years ago.
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