Vol. 15 No. 29 (2025): Situare il sapere: sfide epistemologiche e questioni di metodo tra nord e sud
Open Essays and Researches

Celibacy and sexual abuse: is there a link?

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  • Marco Marzano
Marco Marzano
Università degli studi di Bergamo, Italia
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/cambio-15995

Published 2024-07-31

Keywords

  • Celibacy,
  • Clerical Abuse,
  • Catholic Church,
  • Catholic Priests

How to Cite

Marzano, M. (2024). Celibacy and sexual abuse: is there a link?. Cambio. Rivista Sulle Trasformazioni Sociali, 15(29), 137–146. https://doi.org/10.36253/cambio-15995

Copyright (c) 2025 Marco Marzano

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

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.

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