When Father Joe’s world fell apart, he was 35 years old. He had served at St. Ambrose for five years and had come to love its people. He was thinking about that very thing on that sunny spring day he first violated his vows and began his journey of deceit.  

      Billy was thirteen. He had had been a prize pupil in Father Joe’s catechism class the year before. Since then, he had been coming early for mass and to help his pastor prepare for the service. He had even begun to wonder if God might be calling him into holy orders.  

      The boy was unprepared for what happened that morning and, I suppose it should be said, so was Father Joe. Billy had helped lay out the vestments – the season called for purple -- and was about to leave the room where Father Joe was vesting. Then, as he was about to open the door, Billy turned and bumped into Father Joe, who had turned to pick up a church bulletin from the floor. As they looked at one another in amused surprise, the priest suddenly grabbed Billy’s face, kissed him and pushed his tongue between Billy’s lips.  

      The blood rushed to Billy’s face as he stood staring into his pastor’s eyes. No words seem to make themselves available for what had just happened. So Billy did what he had been planning to do before the earthquake had shaken his soul; he ran out the door and into the sanctuary. There he said his prayers, listened to the sermon and went forward to receive Holy Communion. He had fallen into the trance from which he would not awaken until three years latter, when he told this story to his school counselor.  

      Billy’s parents had no idea what had happened. They knew only that their son had begun to act differently. He found new friends, refused to go to church and lost all interest in school. They didn’t know that the week after the incident at church, Father Joe had begged Billy not to tell anyone what had happened. “The church would be hurt,” he said, “including your parents. Besides, I didn’t mean anything by what I did. I really do think of you like a beloved friend.”  

      Neither Billy nor his family had any way of knowing that in the months to come, Father Joe would act out with three other boys in the parish. He would kiss two of them and touch one of them inappropriately. As the boys would later reveal, the priest had apologized profusely to each of them and had said similar things to each of them that he had said to Billy.  

      Father Joe knew he was out of control but he had no idea what to do. So he was deeply relieved when, a year later, the bishop transferred him to the other side of the state. There, at St. Cecelia’s, he determined that he would studiously avoid all contact with adolescent boys. Because he was able to keep his promise for over a year, he sincerely believed he had put his bad behavior behind him.

      Then, one day as he was preparing for a homily, Father Joe discovered a chat room. Teenage boys were talking about sex and he joined in. He found himself doing this several nights a week after that for the next two months. This was his final undoing. One of the boy's fathers had been suspicious about his son's long hours on the computer.  So he printed out the conversation from the chat rooms and turned the copies over to a detective friend. The detective had a hunch that some of the participants were not really teenagers and was able to uncover Father Joe's identity. When the detective realized that Father Joe lived in a near-by town, he filed a formal complaint.  

       It was same month that Billy’s school counselor filed hers. 

      Because Father Joe’s abuse did not involve grosser forms of sexual misconduct and because of a number of legal technicalities, he never served time. His church however, ruled that he was a sex offender and revoked his authority to perform ministerial duties.  

      Today, Father Joe is forty-five. He teaches history at a community college in a town fifty miles away from St. Cecilia’s. Despite his intelligence and likeable manner, he seems only mildly aware of the damage he caused, not only to the boys he violated but to the hundreds of people whose faith he undermined. Though he is a predator that wrecked a number of lives, one cannot escape the feeling that in matters of relationship, romance and sexuality, Joe McBride is no older than the boys he molested.  

      It is impossible for a Protestant Christian not to assume that a connection exists between the requirement for celibacy in the Roman priesthood and the worldwide epidemic of cases like those involving Father Joe. However, the truth is much more complicated. There have always been reports of sexual improprieties in the priesthood, of course. However, until fairly recently these were relatively few and nearly always heterosexual in nature.  They also involved consenting adults.  

      What the Roman Church seems determined to suppress is the fact that so many of its priests now are homosexual and that they are not celibate. This present condition of the Roman church in America is due to four causes. The first is the inhuman, unscriptural and profoundly foolish requirement that its priests must live celibate lives. The second cause is the sexual naiveté that has permeated the Roman hierarchy. The third cause is the widespread belief of earlier decades of Roman Catholics that the sacrament of ordination would sanctify and deliver men of God from sexual desire. The forth was the erroneous belief of the Roman hierarchy that their first duty was to protect the church as an institution rather than to care for their parishioner's souls.  

      Enforced celibacy is so weird a practice that one hardly knows where to begin to denounce it. The Roman church does not attempt to defend it scripturally. No pope ever pronounced it to be a doctrinal matter ex cathedra, in which a pope evokes the authority of God to legitimatize church teaching. Roman leaders are fully aware of this and do not try to deny the relatively late origin of the practice.  

      So what keeps them from changing?  

      What else, if not pride?  

      I am not anti-Roman Catholic. I know and respect many godly priest and lay people. Though I have some important differences of opinion with them, I do not hesitate to call them my brothers and sisters. Nonetheless, something has gone seriously wrong with the American priesthood that has damaged far too many people, including the priests themselves.  

      It has to stop.