by Michael Harkins

Created on: April 19, 2008

My wonderful parents raised their three children Roman Catholic, as it was their duty to. I went to parochial schools for most of my life and I was caught in the middle of Pope John XXIII's Vatican II reforms. That spanned the old catechism of holding a priest in higher regard that my father in second grade, to a high school 'rap' class where all we did was sit in a circle and rapped about anything that would come to mind.

Much confused me about the religion I was raised in. When I was old enough to choose my faith, I enrolled in an course in college about Catholicism in hope to resolve some questions. With Father Martin as the professor, to my surprise, I became aware of many things I was not taught previously in my many years of Catholic Schools. "The Roman Catholic Church has tried to change with the times." To my shock, Father Martin then revealed that he was a Marriage Counselor. No, they had not changed! This is an example of what I believe is the problem with the Roman Catholic Church.

The vow of celibacy prevents a Priest from the of the most common human activities, which is so important in marriage. There is one thought I could never get out of my mind since college: The teacher has no experience. How can someone who has never flown console flyers in need? There is an easy answer to that question. Simply because they are told to.

One cannot deny the authoritarian structure of the church, not to mention the culture of celibacy. I believe this is at the heart of the sexual abuse problem. One can easily blame homosexuality or pedophilia, however, the issue is deep in the core of the institution. For centuries future priests have been anchored in seminaries all but far away from the human race, where the iron fist renouncements of sex are heard loud and clear.

In my childhood years of Catholic instruction, sex was never discussed, in fact, it was as if any mention of it was hidden under the covers or locked in the closet. What about the opposite sex? Women could only receive six of the seven holy sacraments, since they could not be priests. The implication sometimes lead one to casually surmise that males are the dominate sex and women are mere objects. Another blow to healthy sexual attitudes.

Once the sexual abuse was discovered and revealed, the Roman Catholic Church hid it from the rest of us, a crime almost as severe. The guilty were moved, and many of them did it again! The sacrament of confession, I have always thought, was like a revolving door. One

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