Volume > Issue > Note List > Show & Tell for Priests

Show & Tell for Priests

By now you’ve probably heard every conceivable remedy — and quack remedy — for the priestly sex scandals.

Bet you haven’t heard this one: Writing in the Jesuit weekly America (May 13), Fr. Michael L. Papesh blames the scandals on “a repressive clerical culture” and says the remedy is for priests to get together for “forthright, discerning and free discussions about male sexuality.”

Fr. Papesh, who was ordained in 1983, takes us back to his years as a seminarian: “When a friend was propositioned by a priest one evening, my friend winked and we winked. Even when, after being plied with alcohol, I was sexually assaulted, I winked. My seminarian friends winked…. Before I was 19, I learned that when it came to sexual matters, the clerical culture winked.”

Fr. Papesh doesn’t like the winking, nor do we. But his remedy is zany: “open discussion about sexual curiosity, orientation, experience, joy, fear and anxiety” among priests.

Enjoyed reading this?

READ MORE! REGISTER TODAY

SUBSCRIBE

You May Also Enjoy

A Deficit of Heroes

We must maintain an emotional distance even from those who project an aura of holiness. Often, God’s holy ones are known only to Him.

The Pastoral Problem of Priests in Prison

"Ordinary" criminals -- murderers and thieves -- still retain a sense of moral outrage against the hideous evil of child sexual abuse.

Uncle Ted McCarrick: Queen Pin of the Lavender Mafia

Many, many priests and bishops knew Theodore McCarrick was a serial molester and yet, somehow, McCarrick got the ultimate appointment to the Archdiocese of Washington D.C., and was elevated to the rank of cardinal.