Let priests who father kids stay with church, bishops say
Irish Catholic bishops, who have taken the lead in addressing the plight of children of Catholic priests, are signalling another envelope-pushing response to a problem that the church has long sought to hide.
The Irish bishops’ conference has left open the possibility that a priest who fathers a child could remain in the priesthood under certain circumstances, such as if it is in the best interest of the child and if the priest respects his vow of celibacy in future.
‘‘All reasonable and fair options should be considered as possible, so this neither rules in or rules out various outcomes,’’ said conference executive secretary Monsignor Gearoid Dullea.
Dullea made the comments in an April 10 letter obtained this week by The Associated Press. He was responding to written questions posed to the conference by Irish psychotherapist Vincent Doyle, the son of a priest who has been lobbying the Catholic Church at large to better care for these secret families.
Doyle founded Coping International, an online self-help resource that also seeks to educate church leaders about the emotional and psychological problems that sometimes afflict priests’ children and their mothers. They often suffer depression, anxiety and other mental health issues due to the silence and stigmatisation imposed on them by the church to hide the ‘‘scandal’’ of priests having sex.
Doyle has successfully pressed Catholic dioceses and religious orders around the world to adopt guidelines drafted by the Irish bishops that emphasise the wellbeing of the child and the need to respect the mother, rather than focusing exclusively on the obligations of the priest.
For Doyle, the wellbeing of the child often depends on the father’s ability to provide financially – which is difficult when the church’s knee-jerk response is to effectively fire a priest him from a job that has few parallels in secular life.
Pope Francis, for example, has said that if he were confronted with a priest who fathered a child, he would try to persuade him to leave the ministry, even if he didn’t marry the mother. ‘‘Because the child deserves to have a mother as well as a father with a face,’’ thenCardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio wrote in a 2010 book, On Heaven and Earth.
Doyle bristles at such a response, which is common practice in the church. While getting rid of the priest may save the church embarrassment and the financial strain of providing for a family, it may not necessarily be in the child’s best interest if the father cannot find work, Doyle says, noting that Francis has frequently extolled the need for ‘‘dignified’’ work for all.
‘‘How can we ethically respond to the birth of a child with an assumption that the biological father must automatically leave his livelihood owing to this child’s existence?’’ he said.
Doyle says he knows of several destitute former priests who are struggling to care for their families, as well as mothers who cannot openly press for more financial help because the fathers have chosen to remain priests and keep their families secret.
He praised the Irish bishops for having ‘‘opened a new path’’.
In pressing the bishops, Doyle made it clear that he was not challenging the Catholic tradition of priestly celibacy, and that any such decisions would obviously need to be made on a case-by-case basis, in consultation with the priest’s bishop.
The conference declined further comment beyond Dullea’s letter. In it, Dullea stressed that each situation required careful consideration. ‘‘It is not possible to rule out, at the beginning, any possible response to these situations which involves a simple default position of insisting that a man ‘leave the priesthood’, or that he automatically be permitted to continue in active ministry,’’ Dullea wrote.