Sipe, A W Richard, Sex, Priests, and Power: Anatomy of a Crisis,
New York: Brunner/Mazel Publishers, 1995, 220 pp, $24.95.
By now we have been flooded with information about various abuses of power by priests, often through sexual exploitation of youngsters and women. Sipe seeks to explain the structural and psychological causes underlying these abuses. He isolates and clarifies the issues involved, especially systemic secrecy. Some priests use undefined celibacy as a shield for dysfunctional behavior. The benefits of guaranteed employment, prestige and power continue for the individual even if, secretly, celibacy is repeatedly violated. What is publicly condemned is privately indulged. This hypocrisy created the current crisis, long underway, now overwhelming. The church's policy of concealment to avoid scandal and maintain control isn't working anymore.
An excerpt from pages 162-163 expresses well the author's stance: "Celibacy, as the practice of non-marriage and sexual self-denial in the service of the community, is not the problem or the crisis in the church today. It never has been. The crisis is the claim to celibate privilege and authority not based on reality and religious service but dependent on law, ideal, and control in the service of economic, social, and political or sexual domination. Power perverted in the name of religion is the problem. The current crisis involves the exposure of the structure that underlies a power system using celibacy for the domination and control of others."
On pages 114-128 Sipe theorizes and seeks to dispel seven myths that he identifies concerning priests and women. They range from the myth that priests are not involved sexually with women to the myth that spiritual friendships with women are easy for celibates to maintain without slipping into sexual situations. The myth that "celibacy being a superior state, women can be used to foster and support it" is particularly perverse. Sipe proposes a code of sexual ethics for priests, which in the past was considered unnecessary because it would be taken care of by custom and common sense, but which we now know is desperately needed in specific clear terms.
Unfortunately this book is flawed, as was his previous book, by the author's recurrent intellectual posturing which is very self-defeating. The critically important cause pursued in the book is seriously compromised by his adoption of the same kind of capricious authority which he rightly criticizes in church structures. The author indulges in sensationalism. He asserts on his own authority as if indisputable that pre-historic human beings were sexually active as early as age 6, usually died by age 12, and rarely lived to be 16 years of age. He gives precise percentages from tiny non-random samples as if they were accurate portrayals of the entire universe under discussion. Without evidence he writes (p 67): "At any one time 2% of vowed celibate clergy can be said to have achieved celibacy..." He qualifies the meaning of the term but this percentage is picked up in the foreword on page ix: "Sipe estimates that approximately 2% of those vowed to celibacy achieve it." Thus, the conventional wisdom will soon include the 2% figure as fact! The same goes for his statement that 30% of priests are homosexual. Sipe does a disservice to thoughtful inquiry and discussion by giving these exact numbers without sufficient evidence in the style of a preacher rather than in the nuanced and carefully qualified manner of a respectable social scientist. He also indulges in exaggerations as, for example, on page 7 he writes that it is "the clear and unbending sexual moral doctrine of Catholic christianity (that) every sexual thought, word, desire, and action outside marriage is mortally sinful." This seems to be a caricature rather than a characterization of Catholic moral teaching.
Despite these weaknesses, this book deserves a wide readership. It makes a genuine contribution to understanding. The author tries to be helpful and constructive. The analysis of structural factors and the delineation of psycho-social sexual development illuminate the dire situation within the clergy in our time. This reviewer thinks that the officials of the Catholic church owe Sipe grateful attention but wishes that an editor had toned down the author's detracting arrogance.
ST