Piety = Celibacy?

Doesn't make much sense. Although, it would appear, it once did. The rule of celibacy among the Catholic priesthood dates from the 12th Century, seen as a way to prevent religious dynasties. Or so we're informed. There were early popes who fathered offspring. Celibacy is not a normal human condition, however. Human beings are gregarious in nature, and they are also imprinted by nature to reproduce. There is nothing more normal than gender-pairing, and there is nothing more natural than love between a man and a woman.

To deny that basic fundamental human nature is to deny nature's scheme for procreation, in obeying a heritage of survival hard-wired into all living creatures, to pass on their genetic materials, the imperative of survival of the species. It's a tough battle, the struggle to deny an urge both physical and emotional that we've been imprinted with as a species. But the call to serve the Roman Catholic Church comes replete with the first order of business; to observe a celibate life. This is the measure of the Church's piety.

Submitting entirely to the worship of God, eschewing all earthly ambitions, aspirations and natural urges. Priests were not supposed to amass wealth and property, although they did if they were sufficiently high in the hierarchy. All wealth in theory was presumed to belong to the Church, which did not stop any who could from enriching themselves or living well within the Church. In this instance the Church proposes and man disposes, and the Church requires itself to look the other way.

Without the worldly experience of human attachments, love for others, the experience of caring for a partner, cherishing one's children, managing to overcome all the trials and tribulations that family groups must surmount to survive as a unit within a larger society, what prepares a man better than that experience to pastoral duties? How can one give advice on matters not experienced and therefore not fully understood?

The Church hierarchy, hidebound in the convention of tradition, cleaves to the concept of celibacy. As though to be attached intimately to another human being would diminish a priest's dedication and commitment to his God, and his Church. Following the Church's logic, its priests must be humble and pure in their love of the Almighty, and struggle forever against their human nature. In so doing succumbing to the imperative of relieving their passions by illicit means.

Bringing dishonour to themselves as decent human beings and besmirching the reputation of the Roman Catholic Church which historically has taken steps to shelter the priests who prey on their parishioners, shunting them from one pasturage to another.