Monday, March 15, 2010

Church should think about sex rules - Czech Catholic priest Halik

Church representatives in cooperation with theologians, psychologists and teachers should think about problems of Christian ethic and church rules for sex life, Czech Catholic priest Tomas Halik has told CTK in reaction to sexual abuse of children in church facilities.

Tens and even hundreds of cases of sexual abuse in Austria, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands and Switzerland are now being talked about.

Halik said, however, he would not directly link sexual abuse with celibacy.

Archbishop of Olomouc Jan Graubner, chairman of the Czech Bishops´ Conference (CBK), said he, too, is convinced that celibacy and sexual abuse of children are not connected.

He said this is proved by expert studies.

"Unfortunately, many more cases of children´s abuse by their own fathers or by teachers at school are registered," Graubner told CTK.

Foreign media wrote recently about celibacy playing a role in the scandals. The Vatican, through Catholic media, has repeatedly ruled out any link between celibacy and sexual abuse of children.

Halik praised the courage with which the church has decided to deal with the painful matter, irrespective of the risks involved.

He said "unfounded accusations may be made out of desire for financial compensation and the public may unrightfully generalise the scandals."

The Czech Republic has not had such big scandals. At the time when children were abused in church schools and institutions in west Europe, no such facilities existed in the present-day Czech Republic.

Yet, the Czech Republic is not an isolated island.

"Similar cases were also registered in the Czech Republic in the past, but they were settled through regular means. The church has never been opposed to such an attitude," newly appointed Prague Archbishop Dominik Duka and journalist Milan Badal wrote in the black chapter of the White Paper of the Church recently.

"It would be neither a solution nor a correct attitude to say on the basis of these deplorable events that celibacy must be removed," they wrote.

Albert-Peter Rethmann, from the Catholic Theological Faculty of Charles University in Prague, said on Czech Television last week, however, that the possibility of ordaining married men has been discussed within the church.

Cardinal Miloslav Vlk, who¨will be replaced by Duka in mid-April, also admitted in an interview he granted some time ago that the discussion on ordaining married men has been underway within the church.

Czech sexologist Petr Weiss says 9 percent of girls and about 4 percent of boys under 15 have experienced sexual abuse.

According to scientific findings, men with a personality disorder, not pedophiles, are responsible for 90 percent of sexual abuse cases.

The biggest number of the cases happens in the family.
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