The original sin here is doctrinal.
The problem isn’t celibacy – or only celibacy – it’s the Church’s cramped and careless view of nature, and specifically sexual nature. The Church trumpets the notion that God has ordained sex only for procreation, and that God’s nature is itself being violated by every sexual act with any other intention; and even a correct intention isn’t enough if the act isn’t within a properly consecrated heterosexual marriage. This is nature writ very small.
In contrast, the demand that priests be lifelong celibates is a decree to those who are merely human to defy nature itself. What was originally crafted as a supreme sacrifice to God has turned into (if it has not always been) the institutional torture of human beings that plays out in these all too predictable everyday tragedies. Yes, some priests don’t molest children. Perhaps the Vatican is correct that the vast majority of priests are entirely innocent of the charge.
But if anyone believes any majority of priests is actually celibate, they certainly aren’t very vocal about it. A reasoned definition of nature must include human nature. Even without being philosophers, most Catholics have a more coherent view of human nature than their Church does, as they mock the Vatican’s mad directive about birth control.
Priests and homosexuals are the only small groups that the Vatican still feels it can impose its disordered view of nature upon. The priests can speak for themselves, as can the remaining homosexuals who continue on as Catholics.
But the Vatican insists on burdening the rest of the world with its error about human nature in its stepped up campaign against gay marriage — and gay rights more generally — worldwide. What it cannot enforce upon its own clergy it wishes civil government to order for homosexual citizens – and digs deep into its pockets for the funds. This miserable crusade is the best the Vatican can do to distract from its barely existent threads of credibility on sexual matters.
None of the Church’s problems will or can be solved until it is able to acknowledge that it is wrong about sex
