Jack Van Impe Presents: Falsehood

Jack Van Impe, a man who likes to describe himself as "the walking Bible," had some disparaging comments for the Catholic Church this morning on his program "Jack Van Impe Presents." Mr. Van Impe said that the Catholic Church is doing its priests a disservice by insisting upon clerical celibacy. The "walking Bible" cited 1 Timothy 3:2 to "prove" that clerical celibacy is unscriptural. This verse reads, "..a bishop must be irreproachable, married only once..." As with most fundamentalists, Mr. Van Impe cites one verse to make his case while ignoring those scriptural verses which contradict his view. While it is true that celibacy is not required by the nature of the priesthood itself (and Mr. Van Impe might be surprised to learn that some Roman Catholic priests are indeed married), still, as Paul Whitcomb explains nicely, "Catholic priests do not marry because, while Christ does indeed approve of marriage for the Christian clergy, He much prefers that they do not marry. He made this quite clear when He praised the Apostles for giving up "all" to follow Him, saying, "And every one that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands for my name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall possess life everlasting." (Matt. 19:27-29).

The Apostle Paul explained why the unmarried state is preferable to the married state for the Christian clergy: "He that is without a wife, is solicitous for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please God. But he that is with a wife, is solicitous for the things of the world, how he may please his wife: and he is divided." (1 Cor. 7:32-33). In other words, matrimony is good – Christ made it one of the holy sacraments of His Church – but it is not conducive to that complete dedication which is incumbent upon those who submit themselves to another of Christ's holy sacraments – that of Holy Orders. Even so, the unmarried state of the Catholic priesthood is not an inflexible law – under certain conditions a priest may be dispensed from this law." (See here).

Mr. Van Impe attempted to convince his viewers that the Church founded by the Lord Jesus is imposing an unscriptural "man-made" teaching on its priests. The scriptures cited above refute the so-called "walking Bible." As Vatican II explains, "Celibacy is to be embraced and esteemed as a gift. Perfect and perpetual continence for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, commended by Christ the Lord (cf. Mt 19: 22) and through the course of time as well as in our own days freely accepted and observed in a praiseworthy manner by many of the faithful, is held by the Church to be of great value in a special manner for the priestly life. It is at the same time a sign and a stimulus for pastoral charity and a special source of spiritual fecundity in the world. Indeed, it is not demanded by the very nature of the priesthood, as is apparent from the practice of the early Church (cf. 1 Tm 3: 2-5; Ti 1: 6)..." (Presbyterorum Ordinis, No. 16).

This document goes on to say that, "..celibacy has a many-faceted suitability for the priesthood. For the whole priestly mission is dedicated to the service of a new humanity which Christ, the victor over death, has aroused through his Spirit in the world and which has its origin 'not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man but of God' (Jn 1: 13). Through virginity, then, or celibacy observed for the kingdom of heaven (cf. Mt 19: 12), priests are consecrated to Christ by a new and exceptional reason. They adhere to him more easily with an undivided heart (cf. 1 Cor 7: 32-34), they dedicate themselves more freely in him and through him to the service of God and men, and they more expeditiously minister to his kingdom and the work of heavenly regeneration..." (No. 16).

Perhaps the "walking Bible" should spend a little more time with the Bible. And rather than criticizing the Church founded by Jesus Christ, perhaps he should make more of an effort to actually learn what the Catholic Church teaches. I challenge Mr. Van Impe to purchase (and study) the Catechism of the Catholic Church. He just might discover, providing he is truly open to the Spirit, the fullness of Christian truth

Father Emile "Mike" Boutin of the Boston Archdiocese and the Roman Collar

"Father Angel Mariano, S.J. was arrested about midnight Sept. 21, 1998, in Campbell, Calif., near San Jose when a police officer caught him in a sex act with a 17-year-old student in a parked car. According to police reports, Mariano arranged to meet two teenagers by posing as a 25-year-old woman on an Internet chat room. He wore lipstick and rouge when he met the boys.... Mariano was removed without any explanation. Asked why parishioners at Holy Trinity were not made aware of the reasons for Mariano's departure, [Provincial Father Tom] Smolich said: "Why should they? This is an Internet cruising thing. This is anonymous sex. This doesn't involve people at the parish. It wasn't a priest thing. He wasn't dressed in a collar." [Glenn Bunting, "Lawsuit Ends Silence on Abuse at Jesuit Retreat," Los Angeles Times, March 24, 2002

The Directory for the Ministry and Life of Priests, prepared by the Congregation for the Clergy and approved by Pope John Paul II on January 31, 1994, says:

"In a secularized and tendentiously materialistic society, where even
the external signs of sacred and supernatural realities tend to be
disappearing, the necessity is particularly felt that the priest-man
of God, dispenser of His mysteries-should be recognizable in the
sight of the community, even through the clothing he wears, as an
unmistakable sign of his dedication and of his identity as a
recipient of a public ministry. The priest should be recognizable
above all through his behavior, but also through his dressing in a
way that renders immediately perceptible to all the faithful, even to
all men, his identity and his belonging to God and to the Church.

For this reason, the cleric should wear 'suitable clerical clothing,
according to the norms issued by the Episcopal Conference and
according to legitimate local customs.' (Canon 284) This means that
such clothing, when it is not the cassock, should be distinct from
the manner in which laymen dress, and in conformity with the dignity
and sacredness of the ministry.

Apart from entirely exceptional circumstances, the non-use of
clerical clothing on the part of the cleric can manifest a weak sense
of his own identity as a pastor completely dedicated to the service
of the Church (# 66).

Father Emile "Mike" Boutin of the Boston Archdiocese disagrees. In a Blog post entitled "Sitting by the pool in my Roman collar....another myth debunked!," the priest who was just recently arrested and charged with indecent assault and battery, wrote: "Honestly, I don’t wear my Roman collar all that often even when I’m not on vacation. I wear it when I go to wakes or to the hospital to visit the sick or when I’m going to an official Archdiocesan meeting or event, but almost never when I’m in the office, or even when I celebrate Mass on Sunday. Now, I know I’m opening myself up to a whole lot of criticism from a whole bunch of folks, including my bishop, but I find today that sometimes the collar “gets in the way.” It represents a lot of things to a lot of people, and at least some of those things aren’t so helpful…and since there are plenty of priests who wear their collar all the time, I figure they have me covered! Seriously, it seems to me that if they can’t tell I’m a priest from what’s on the inside, what I wear on the outside doesn’t make one bit of difference…I'm getting back to the pool...without my Roman Collar." (August 6, 2009).

Pope John Paul II stressed the importance of clerical dress. In a September 8, 1982 letter to Ugo Cardinal Poletti, his Vicar for the Diocese of Rome, instructing him to promulgate norms concerning the use of the Roman collar and religious habit, the Holy Father observed that clerical dress is valuable "...not only because it contributes to the propriety of the priest in his external behavior or in the exercise of his ministry, but above all because it gives evidence within the ecclesiastical community of the public witness that each priest is held to give of his own identity and special belonging to God."

The propriety of the priest in his external behavior. Reflect on that. How many priests shed the collar to hide their identity in order to engage in behaviors which are hardly Christ-like? Such as "sex games"? This is all the more troubling when the priest argues against celibacy.

Related reading here and here.

Devilish Tactics: Father Emile Boutin's Posts Suddenly Vanish

In my last post, I included links to two Blog posts written by Father Emile "Mike" Boutin and posted at the Men in Black Blog. These links are not working because someone has apparently deleted the Blog posts in question. The first post was entitled simply "Sexual Abuse" and was posted on April 8, 2010. This was the post where Father Boutin wrote, "Should priests be celibate today? No. Celibacy should be its own charism in the Church, for those who are called to it."

The second Blog post which appears to have been deleted was entitled "Who's to blame? The Sexual Abuse Scandal, Part 2" and was posted on April 16, 2010. This was the Blog post where Father Boutin wrote, "..contrary to Cardinal Bertone's absolutely outlandish claims, there are no studies that suggest that homosexuality is the cause of this scandal, but there certainly are plenty of studies that loudly proclaim that the attitudes of bishops like Cardinal Bertone certainly contributed to the climate that encouraged it." In the same post, Father Boutin writes, "..one of the 'serial offenders' was my friend and priest mentor. He was the pastor of my home parish, and served as my priest mentor in a number of parishes I worked in during the summer while in the seminary. On the day of my ordination, he was chosen by me to put the priestly vestment, the chasuble, over my head for the first time. He abused countless altar boys, including most of the ones who served at my First Mass as a priest….I don’t look at my own ordination or First Mass pictures any more…Why won’t I name him? Why don’t I just print his name here and destroy his life the way he destroyed so many other lives? Because I can’t….and that’s part of the problem."

I'll say. Most assuredly part of the problem. The Code of Silence.

These Blog posts are disturbing. For not only do they show Father Boutin's opposition to clerical celibacy, but they provide snapshots of the mind of a Catholic priest who seems to believe that homosexuality has not been at the root of most of the clerical abuse cases [even though numerous studies have shown otherwise] and who is willing to cast aspersions on faithful Bishops such as Cardinal Bertone while protecting a "serial offender."

Small wonder these posts have been deleted. The Men in Black campaign is supposed to be a vehicle for promoting vocations to the Diocesan priesthood. But the Men in Black Blog authored by Father Boutin was being used as a vehicle for promoting dissent.

Our sad time.

Oh and by the way, these posts may have been deleted. But I made copies.

Father Emile "Mike" Boutin: Priests should not be celibate and homosexuality is not behind the sexual abuse scandals in the Church

Father Emile "Mike" Boutin, the priest charged with indecent assault and battery on a 21 year- old adult male, has said that priests should not be celibate, writing, "Should priests be celibate today? No. Celibacy should be its own charism in the Church, for those who are called to it." (See here). In another Blog post, Fr. Boutin ridicules Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone while asserting that homosexuality is not behind the sexual abuse scandals in the Church. He writes, "...contrary to Cardinal Bertone's absolutely outlandish claims, there are no studies that suggest that homosexuality is the cause of this scandal, but there certainly are plenty of studies that loudly proclaim that the attitudes of bishops like Cardinal Bertone certainly contributed to the climate that encouraged it." (See here).

Actually, many studies [such as the John Jay Study] have shown that most of the abuse which has taken place within the Church has been homosexual in nature. Dr. Richard Fitzgibbons [and others] have said that Cardinal Bertone was correct. See here.

Father Boutin's rejection of clerical celibacy is troubling. Vatican II teaches us that: "Through virginity, then, or celibacy observed for the kingdom of heaven (cf. Mt 19:12), priests are consecrated to Christ by a new and exceptional reason. They adhere to him more easily with an undivided heart (cf. 1 Cor 7: 32-34), they dedicate themselves more freely in him and through him to the service of God and men, and they more expeditiously minister to his kingdom and the work of heavenly regeneration, and thus they are apt to accept, in a broad sense, paternity in Christ. In this way they profess themselves before men as willing to be dedicated to the office committed to them - namely, to commit the faithful to one man and to present them as a chaste virgin to Christ (cf. 2 Cor 11:2) and thus to evoke the mysterious marriage established by Christ and fully to be manifested in the future, in which the Church has Christ as her only spouse. They give, moreover, a living sign of the world to come, by a faith and charity already made present, in which the children of the resurrection neither marry nor take wives." (Presbyterorum Ordinis, No. 16).

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone: Vow of celibacy by the clergy may be open to review

Since celibacy has had nothing to do with the sex abuse crisis, why review the practice? The Church should concentrate its efforts on the problem of homosexuality since most of the abuse has been homosexual in nature.


The question is: Why? As Father Peter Stravinskas has explained, "..both marriage and celibacy are signs of the Kingdom, but in different ways. Marriage (with sexual relations) is a sign of Christ's love for His Church right now; celibacy (without sexual relations) is a sign of the future and absolute union of Christ and His Church, or God and His People, when God will be all in all. These two ways of life, then, are not in contradiction to each other."

Sure, the Church has the authority to change the practice. But why would She want to? Have we become so anxious to water-down the demands of the Gospel? Have we given up striving for a priesthood which embodies a total gift of self? Pope John Paul II, in his book "Rise, Let Us Be On Our Way," has this to say:

"For Saint Joseph, life with Jesus was a continuous discovery of his own vocation as a father. He became a father in an extraordinary way, without begetting his son in the flesh. Isn't this, perhaps, an example of the type of fatherhood that is proposed to us, priests and bishops, as a model?....We should think particularly of the home Saint Joseph built for the Son of God when we touch upon the subject of priestly and episcopal celibacy. Celibacy, in fact, provides the fullest opportunity to live out this type of fatherhood: chaste and totally dedicated to Christ and His Virgin Mother. Unconstrained by any personal solicitude for a family, a priest can dedicate himself with his whole heart to his pastoral responsibilities. One can therefore understand the tenacity with which the Latin Church has defended the tradition of celibacy for its priests, resisting the pressures that have arisen from time to time throughout history. This tradition is clearly demanding, but it has yielded particularly rich fruit.....It is important to point out that there are profound theological reasons supporting the discipline of celibacy. The encyclical Sacerdotalis Caelibatus, published in 1967 by my venerable predecessor Pope Paul VI, synthesizes them as follows (cf. nn. 19-34). First and foremost there is a Christological motivation: as Mediator between the Father and the human race, Christ remained celibate so as to dedicate Himself totally to the service of God and men. Those whose fortune it is to share in the dignity and mission of Christ are called to share also in this total gift of self. Then there is an ecclesiological motivation: Christ loved the Church, offering Himself entirely for her sake, in order to make her a glorious, holy, and immaculate Spouse. By choosing celibacy, the sacred ministers themselves manifest the virginal love of Christ for the Church, drawing forth the supernatural vigor of spiritual fruitfulness. Finally there is an eschatological motivation: at the resurrection of the dead, Jesus said, 'they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven' (Matt. 22:30). Priestly celibacy proclaims the arrival of a new dawn of salvation, and in a way it anticipates the fulfillment of the kingdom as it sets forth its supreme values that will one day shine forth in all the children of God..." (pp. 140-142).

Of course, celibacy is not "untouchable" as Cardinal Bertone says. Vatican II emphasized this, "Indeed, it is not demanded by the very nature of the priesthood, as is apparent from the practice of the early Church (cf. 1 Tm 3:2-5; Ti 1:6), and from the traditions of the Eastern Churches, where besides those who with all the bishops, by a gift of grace, choose to observe celibacy, there are also married priests of highest merit." (Presbyterorum Ordinis, No. 16). But the same conciliar document teaches just as emphatically that, "Through virginity, then, or celibacy observed for the kingdom of heaven (cf. Mt 19:12), priests are consecrated to Christ by a new and exceptional reason. They adhere to him more easily with an undivided heart (cf. 1 Cor 7: 32-34), they dedicate themselves more freely in him and through him to the service of God and men, and they more expeditiously minister to his kingdom and the work of heavenly regeneration, and thus they are apt to accept, in a broad sense, paternity in Christ. In this way they profess themselves before men as willing to be dedicated to the office committed to them - namely, to commit the faithful to one man and to present them as a chaste virgin to Christ (cf. 2 Cor 11:2) and thus to evoke the mysterious marriage established by Christ and fully to be manifested in the future, in which the Church has Christ as her only spouse. They give, moreover, a living sign of the world to come, by a faith and charity already made present, in which the children of the resurrection neither marry nor take wives." (Presbyterorum Ordinis, No. 16).

What is there to review? Are we willing to jettison the beautiful tradition of priestly celibacy because of the world and its pressures?

Has the Cult of Softness made such inroads into the Church?

By the grace of God, not!


Related reading here.

Dianne Williamson's private war against celibacy

Dianne Williamson, a columnist for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, is at it again. What this woman doesn't know about Roman Catholicism could fill a library. But once again she has found it necessary to pontificate on matters which are really beyond her grasp. Ms. Williamson writes, "The most facile observation one can make about the latest Catholic sex scandal - this one involving a popular priest caught cavorting on the beach with his girlfriend - is: Well, thank God she's a grown-up. It could have been - and has been - so much worse. As noted though, that's just the easy part of the story. The aptly named Rev. Alberto Cutie is the latest clergyman to reignite the debate over celibacy within the priesthood, and call rather heart-breaking attention to the unreasonable demands the Church places on its priests.." (Another rigor of priesthood ends in scandal, Sunday May 31 edition of the Worcester Telegram & Gazette).

First of all, as Bishop Juan Ruben Martinez has reminded us, celibacy cannot be reduced to a "mere imposition on the Church." It was the Apostle Paul who explained why the unmarried state is preferable to the married state for the clergy: "He that is without a wife, is solicitous for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please God. But he that is with a wife, is solicitous for the things of the world, how he may please his wife: and he is divided." (1 Corinthians 7: 32-33).

In its Decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests (Presbyterorum Ordinis) No. 16, the Second Vatican Council taught that, "Celibacy is to be embraced and esteemed as a gift. Perfect and perpetual continence for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, commended by Christ the Lord (cf. Mt 19: 22) and through the course of time as well as in our own days freely accepted and observed in a praiseworthy manner by many of the faithful, is held by the Church to be of great value in a special manner for the priestly life. It is at the same time a sign and a stimulus for pastoral charity and a special source of spiritual fecundity in the world...celibacy has a many-faceted suitability for the priesthood. For the whole priestly mission is dedicated to the service of a new humanity which Christ, the victor over death, has aroused through his Spirit in the world and which has its origin 'not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man but of God" (Jn 1: 13). Through virginity, then, or celibacy observed for the kingdom of heaven (cf. Mt 19: 12), priests are consecrated to Christ by a new and exceptional reason. They adhere to him more easily with an undivided heart (cf. 1 Cor 7: 32-34), they dedicate themselves more freely in him and through him to the service of God and men, and they more expeditiously minister to his kingdomand the work of heavenly regeneration, and thus they are apt to accept in a broad sense, paternity in Christ.."

Do some priests fail to remain celibate? Of course. But as Bishop Martinez has said, "bad examples and even our own limitations do not invalidate the contribution of so many who, in the past and today, give their lives for others." There has been sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. But there has been much more across society - including in the public schools. But Ms. Williamson hasn't addressed this fact. Why? I think we all know the answer to that one. As Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan has said himself, "This [child abuse] is a societal problem, not a Catholic problem."

Another point Ms. Williamson fails to acknowledge in her column: most of the abuse which has taken place within the Church has been homosexual in nature. But then, as an ardent propagandist for the homosexual "lifestyle," why would she? In fact, she perpetuates the myth that most of the abuse has constituted pedophilia writing, "..his actions [Cuties] likely won't elicit as much condemnation from the flock as Church leaders may expect, partly because it seems tame compared to the sickening parade of priestly pedophilia and coverup we've witnessed over decades."

Surely the Telegram & Gazette can do better than Dianne Williamson. Its readers (what few remain) deserve better.