Celibacy and sexual abuse: is there a link?

This paper examines a highly controversial issue: the structural relationship between sexual abuse by the Catholic clergy and the clerical celibacy rule. The first part of the paper reviews the literature on the relationship between clerical celibacy and sexual abuse and examines the various arguments. The second part of the paper is based on the results of a number of empirical social studies and focuses on precisely identifying certain dysfunctions resulting from mandatory clerical celibacy that ultimately affect clerical sexual behaviour, namely: 1) loneliness; 2) sexual immaturity; 3) emotional detachment (an inability to nurture authentic feeling and to put oneself in others’ shoes) 4) an excessively legalistic mindset (more interested in abstract norms than in human beings); and 5) permanent coexistence with secrecy and lies.