MARRIED PRIESTS? It works for the Orthodox.

We must pray for the strength of the Catholic Church," an Orthodox monk once told me. "If they collapse we will look pretty foolish, and we'll be alone." He was referring to his disappointment at the anti-Catholicism he had encountered on Mount Athos, and his point was that among the churches, only Orthodoxy and Catholicism had any living sacramental sense of a tradition extending uninterruptedly back to the apostolic age.

I remembered what he said as I read of the sex-abuse crisis facing Catholicism, talked with Orthodox and Catholic friends, and tried to address the questions raised by people in my parish. There is a widespread assumption that the problem is based in celibacy--an assumption that is, of course, far too simple.

Celibacy does have something to do with it, in the sense that someone who is confused about his sexual longings might make the mistake of thinking that celibacy undertaken in a religious context will repair the problem. Where Orthodoxy has had difficulties in the area of sexual abuse, they have usually occurred in monasteries or involved other celibate clergy. And there may be an evil minority who deliberately use the monastic life or priesthood as a way of gaining access to potential victims, but I am sure this is extremely rare.

Having seen the way priesthood is lived in both the Catholic and Orthodox churches, I do believe that the Orthodox discipline--which allows priests to marry before ordination--is the better one, for pastoral reasons. One argument made for celibacy has been that the commitment to celibacy frees someone to love all people in a way that the commitment to marriage does not. On the contrary, if you are not capable of loving one person deeply, in a committed way (this need not mean a sexual way), you are not capable of loving anyone, much less everyone. Catholic priests are not notably more loving or generous than the Orthodox priests and Protestant ministers I have known--not to speak of doctors, nurses, counselors, and other people whose work demands compassionate involvement with others.

But there are positive arguments for celibacy. To make it a part of the job description for every priestly candidate is a mistake, I think, because it unnecessarily limits the number of people willing to undertake the life; but it would be too easy in the current climate to see celibacy in merely negative terms. It is negative only in the sense that a fast is negative; and like a fast, it can teach us something. A fast teaches us what food we really need; it forces us by making us go against the grain of our usual desires to go more deeply into what desire does to us. Finally, no matter how intimate our relationship with another person is--as husband or wife, father or mother--we are alone before God. Those other relationships are given to us as trusts, but they end. How we have lived them will have an eternal import, but husbands and wives die, children grow up and leave. Ultimately those of us who are married must learn what celibates know, and live--just as we hope that those who are vowed celibates, through their commitments, will learn the love of particular people.

There is another important pastoral aspect of celibacy. The celibate can help to show those who are involuntarily single or divorced or widowed that a good life can be lived alone. In a time when the culture sends the message that it is healthy to yield to every desire, especially the sexual kind, this is important.

I mentioned the pastoral benefits of a married clergy. One Orthodox priest said to me, "The Catholic system can produce some saints and some real neurotics, but what it doesn't produce is a priest who lies awake at night worrying about his furnace, like everyone else in his parish." That was meant to be funny and is a half-truth, of course--there are celibate priests who also have to worry about furnaces--but it makes a good point. I have had parishioners tell me that they would find it impossible to confess to a priest who was not married, who had never had teenage children--how could he relate to their spiritual condition? It is not that there are never any celibate exceptions to this rule, but I do think a married priesthood makes more pastoral sense for ordinary parish ministries.

A couple of other things need to be said about this current controversy. The first is that although a growing number of gay clergy presents a pastoral problem of sorts if it discourages heterosexuals from choosing to enter the priesthood, it is wrong to say that the problem here is homosexuality. The problem is the violation of vows. I have known Catholic and Orthodox priests who were homosexual. In the great majority of cases, they were and are faithful to their vows of celibacy, and the church would be much poorer without their services. To say that such people cannot be validly ordained, as papal spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls recently did, is not only wrong-headed in the extreme but would also discourage good people from offering themselves to a church that needs good people more than ever. I am reasonably sure the statement would also rule invalid the ordinations of several canonized saints.

The second is more disturbing. As the revelations continue, it is clear that some bishops have also been personally involved in the sexual abuse of young people. Perhaps one reason for the secrecy with which these cases have been surrounded is the possibility of blackmail: Blow the whistle on me, and I'll let everyone know about you.

The anger of most of the people I know is not centered primarily on the fact that sexual abuse occurs in the church, though the violated trust makes the church an especially tragic locale for these crimes. It is directed at the hierarchy, who moved known abusers from parish to parish rather than defrock them. I was encouraged to hear a television interviewer corrected. "Are you angry at the church?" he asked. "No," the woman answered. "The church is all of us. I'm angry at the bishops." Her distinction is not only a good one; it offers whatever hope there is here.