The Catholic Church should take the opportunity to acknowledge the wrong done to the partners and children of priests, writes Gina Menzies
The programme Life with the Clearys screened last Monday highlights yet again the path the official church needs to travel in dealing with human sexuality and the rule of celibacy. Michael Cleary, priest, performer and parent left a partner and child in need of recognition and care. Judging by the programme footage, to all intents and purposes this was a family unit, albeit denied public recognition of its existence.
Ireland is a very different place to the world of the 1990s when revelations about priestly parenthood first broke with the story of Bishop Eamon Casey in 1993.
His sexual relationship and child with Annie Murphy was followed, within a short time, by the story of Fr Cleary's double life as celibate priest and sexual partner. The legacy of secrecy in Irish society and more significantly in many aspects of the Irish Catholic Church was breached with the disclosure of the hidden children of these well-known clerics who revelled in the limelight of public acclaim.
Both churchmen challenged the traditional role of priests in a strange way. Fr Cleary took part in the Jimmy McGee All-Stars charity football gigs and he sang in The All Priests show. He highlighted the inadequate treatment of single mothers, took 17-year-old Phyllis Hamilton into his home and through his radio chat show berated the rest of the country for its immoral sexual behaviour.
Bishop Casey promoted an increase in awareness of poverty in the Third World; although his own lifestyle was one of luxury cars, fine dining and sexual exploits. Both men provided the "supporting acts" for Pope John Paul II when he visited Galway. Their public profile is remembered most perhaps by the images of exuberance and bombast at Ballybrit racecourse during the papal visit in 1979 - an unhappy legacy for many.
But, even before 1979, many inside and outside the church had begun to question the basis of the church's rigorous and inhumane teachings on issues such as contraception, divorce and homosexuality, not to mention the need for a debate on the rule of celibacy for priests and the exclusion of women from fully-ordained ministry and the powerhouses of the church.
Fourteen years ago, any attempt to suggest that some church leaders were less than perfect witnesses of the Gospel message was met with disbelief and denial. The high-profile cases of clerical sexual abuse, perpetrated by those who were the most trusted members of God's church, shocked virtually all. The inadequate responses to clerical sexual abuse only served to highlight the hopeless inadequacy of the Catholic Church's understanding, and hence teaching, on sexual morality. A consequence of the failure to understand human sexuality has led to further disregard by the "faithful" of the teaching authority in the Catholic Church. Edward Schillebeeckx, the eminent Dutch theologian says of the church's attitude to celibacy ". . . celibacy law has been governed by the antiquated and ancient conviction that there is something unclean and slightly sinful about sexual intercourse (even in the context of a sacramental marriage)".
Intelligent members of the "People of God" (a term used in Vatican II to describe the non-ordained) deserve a theology of sexuality that gives meaning to the place of human sexuality in their lives. A new informed theology of relationships based on the Gospel values of justice and equality would better serve today's people of God.
This theology could only emerge from a joint enterprise between the ordained and non-ordained. This is a theology that would not discount the lived experiences of people in human relationships and that would try to connect the Gospel values of justice, equity, forgiveness and love with the celebration of sexual expression as a reflection of the love of God.
Some changes have taken place at the micro as opposed to the macro level of the Catholic Church in this regard. A revelation in 2006 of a 73-year-old priest in rural Galway who had fathered a child created far less public comment than the Bishop Casey and Fr Cleary cases. In this instance the local bishop defended the personal privacy of the couple.
Stories of clerical sexual relationships no longer shock, at least to the same degree, as the revelations did in the past. There is recognition that sexuality is part of all our humanity.
Another sign of the changing times is reforms of ministerial formation. Today those in formation receive more adequate training in their own sexual understanding, while many priests at local level exercise a pastoral approach to difficult sexual dilemmas.
It cannot be easy for them, as they must work within the strictures of what remains an inadequate theology of human sexuality that is more reflective of the negativity of Augustine than the celebration of human love in The Song of Songs.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that any efforts to creatively develop this theology are quickly stifled, on the basis that the greater good is the immutability and sanctity of the institution itself.
The use of condoms in the fight against Aids is immediately met with rebuke as well as the treatment meted out to the Irish theologian Fr Seán Fagan in recent years by the Irish hierarchy for his efforts to articulate a humane theology of human sexuality.
The implementation of the theology of reconciliation is easily transferred to the issues above. It would demonstrate a willingness by church authorities to acknowledge the existence of these former secret relationships.
If the church were to acknowledge the wrong done to the partners and children of priests, if it resolved never again to sweep similar situations under the carpet, express true remorse for what was done, rather than the outcome, and make financial and social restitution (in these cases it would mean making restitution to the children - by whatever means necessary for their future happiness), then the church would be seen to behave in a Christ-like manner and sow the seeds for a renewed theology of human sexuality based on justice in all human relationships.
Gina Menzies is a theologian and commentator