As an atheist and an ex-Catholic, I cannot claim to be displeased at the spectacle of the Roman Catholic Church continuing to shoot itself in the foot by refusing to ordain women or to allow priests to marry. If I cared about the survival of the Catholic Church, however, I would have to say that the severe priest shortage would end tomorrow if the church simply allowed its preachers to have a normal family and sexual life. But Palestinians and Israelis are going to embrace one another in a joint ceremony at the Wailing Wall and the Dome of the Rock before the rigid old men who run the Vatican open up the doors of the priesthood to people who want to serve their god and enter into the full experience of loving and being loved by another human being.

The vast majority of American Catholics see no need for priestly celibacy and support the ordination of women. Father Alberto Cutie, the appropriately named Miami priest and television star who was caught embracing an adult female companion on the beach, has received strong support from many of his parishioners and fans. He has said that he loves the women in question and would like to marry her and remain a priest. Fat chance. (I must confess that Cutie does not have the same meaning in Spanish as in English, but I couldn’t resist.)
Pope Benedict XVI will not change his position on female priests or on priestly celibacy. One of the most ridiculous rationales for priestly celibacy used by the church has always been the notion that the celibacy requirement is not just about sex but about the need for a priest to be fully free to devote himself to the spiritual needs of his parishioners. The notion that a priest somehow becomes better attuned to the needs of his or her flock by forgoing intimate human love is so illogical that it needs no further comment. It may even be more illogical than the rationale for not admitting women to the priesthood, which rests on the biblical depiction of the twelve apostles as men. (By that logic, all priests should be Jews because the biblical Jesus and the Apostles were Jews.)

The priest shortage in the United States and western Europe began to develop in the late 1960s, when many young priests—who had once hoped that the Second Vatican Council would drop the requirement of priestly celibacy—began to realize that the successor to the great-hearted Pope John XXIII was not open to any fundamental change. Large numbers of heterosexual men left the priesthood at that time because they were no longer willing to give up the love of a woman for their priestly vocation.

This church, with no room in its priesthood for women or for men who simply wanted to love and live with another adult, then proceeded to turn a blind eye to the pedophile predators whose evil deeds were covered up by the hierarchy for decades.

The Rev. Donald Cozzens a celibate priest and professor of religious studies at John Carroll University in Ohio, says, “I’ve asked dozens of men here that showed signs of deep faith if they had thought about going into the priesthood. They all said, ‘I’ve thought of it, but I want to have a family.’” You can be sure that Father Cozzens, the author of Freeing Celibacy, will not be promoted to monsignor or bishop any time soon.
Really, who cares about this other than the old men in the Vatican who want all younger priests to lead the same repressed, rigid, and lonely lives as their elders? In the U.S., an astonishing 25 percent of those raised as Catholics have left the church. Priestly celibacy, like the church’s position on birth control and female priests, is part of the mix that has led so many once-loyal Catholics out of the church. As an atheist, I am pleased by news of the rising dropout rate. If I were the pope, I would be really, really worried. Oh wait. Even if I weren’t an athiest, I couldn’t become pope because I am a woman.

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