Is the Catholic Church losing its grip?

The vow of celibacy was also a vow to resist sexual feelings. Forbidding anything naturally appealing simply makes it more tempting. The Catholic Church created a life of serious psychological stress for its priests - and unbearable stress leads to aberrant behaviour.

So, the victim of abuse is not the only victim. Twenty or 30 years of begging God’s forgiveness after every sexual feeling creates an unhappy neurotic.

In the very week before the pope arrived, Cardinal George Pell was trying to explain to the nation why he had botched the handling of an investigation of an allegation of sexual abuse by a priest. Why the apparent cover-up? It was because God’s church was in danger.

Decisions by bishops to forgive sexual aberrations, which the public at large regard as unforgivable, are being made under conditions few executives would ever be placed under. Priests are highly educated men, who after having their basic living expenses met, are left with little more than pocket money. The shortage of such people has long passed the critical stage.

Now, to keep the working priest on and to avoid paying out compensation, requires a devaluing of the allegation against him. It is then that the plan can jump the rails. Victims do not like to have their trauma dismissed as imaginary. And, neither does the media.

The offending priest under the public spotlight recently was an old and respected friend of my in-laws. If the effect that he had on my in-laws is any measure of the man, then over the many years since his ordination, the good feelings that he generated in his parishioners would have been immense. Now he is ruined.

Increasing isolation regarding contraception is a terminal illness

The church’s steadfast opposition to any artificial aid to contraception is aggravating the suffering in developing countries due to both overpopulation and the spread of AIDS.

The firm stance the church is taking is that if a society does not care if men and women have sexual relations outside of marriage, and does not care if an unwanted fetus is destroyed, then that society has adopted a lower level of civilisation than one which does care.

There can be no doubt that the church has made a reasonable judgment. What it fails to recognise is that no society is capable of living at that higher level. Its total focus is on respecting the rules rather than on minimising the damage when the rules are inevitably broken.

There may be sympathetic priests on the ground, but only the pope can make policy changes, and his hands are tied on this ruling. Thus, the church is doomed to become increasingly at odds with, not only non-Catholics, but much of its own flock over this issue.

The money running out is a terminal illness

Even before the damage to the image of priests, Christianity has become less relevant in modern life causing donations and bequests to drop off dramatically. If this was not bad enough, the billions of dollars paid out as compensation for the thousands of victims of pedophilia has been a major financial setback for the Vatican.

Properties peripheral to the core of operations are being sold off to meet the essential running costs of that core. Some have very fine buildings on them. The church is now burning the decks to keep the ship’s boiler going. In the meanwhile, we must prevent those in government with their hands on our money from handing it over to the church. This does no more than prolong the church’s death agony.