Catholic Clergy Under Vows of Chastity Should Be Required By the Church to Become Eunuchs

I have one question for my opponent, when will this ritual surgery take place? After ordination? Upon entering the seminary? When someone is half way through the seminary? When exactly? Priests who leave the priesthood Think about a man for second. He decides to join the priesthood. Goes through college, into the seminary, and a few years later, he is ordained a priest. A few years later, after much thought and consideration, he feels that the priesthood is not his calling. And this does happen, a lot. Between the 1960s and 1997, “More than 100,000 men worldwide [had] left the priesthood.” (1) And this trend continues today. More priests are leaving than the United States can handle, well the catholic community that is. These men leave for a variety of reasons, mostly though, to get married and have a family. In what my opponent proposes, they will deprive a priest this option. A priest could not leave the priesthood and have sons and daughters of his own. It is totally unfair and unjust to portion out one section of the population on the basis that they give their lives up to a religion. The right of autonomy People own their bodies. They have the right to do whatever they wish with them (as long as they do not infringe upon the bodily rights of another.) Forcing priests to become eunuch’s means you are depriving them of their right to use their body. You are not allowing the person to choose their own will. Less people will enter the seminary Let’s be honest here. This is quite simple. People enter the seminary to devote their life to god and to serve god. That is the simple fact. But, you do not need to be a priest to devote your life to god. Chances are less people are going to want to endure the pain of the process to priesthood. With this new policy in place, you are going to have less people going to the seminary thus having less priests. Or you will have more people being ordained as permanent deacons, they do not have to take a vow of chastity. The point is, logically speaking, you are not going to have as many people entering the priesthood if one of the requirements is losing what makes a man, a man. People will find other ways to serve god. Attacks on my opponents arguments… Strengthening the Church My opponent makes the argument that making priests into eunuch’s will help them fulfill their vow of chastity. But, let’s think about this for a second, if a priest does not have a penis, how exactly would he be unchaste? He could not be, it is impossible. Thus, there is no temptation for him to fall to. Second, the point of these vows is so that the priests can live like Jesus did. Like Jesus, the priests must fight temptation. The priests must say no to lust and desire. If you remove the temptation, then choosing god over lust becomes meaningless. My opponent wishes to take away the meaning of the priesthood and the temptations of man. It is more meaningful to keep these temptations in place. As then you have a choice, good or evil. The choice of good becomes that much more powerful because you rejected evil from your life. My opponent wishes to remove this choice. Then my opponent goes on to argue that it would prevent child molestation. While I agree in part, the fact is, less than .3% of the clergy are pedophiles (2). “Dr. Richard Fitzgibbons is a psychiatrist who has spent years treating sexually abusive priests. Concludes that "Many psychologists and psychiatrists have shown that there is no link between celibacy and pedophilia," (3) there is no reason to believe that priests are more likely to become pedophiles. So why are we singling them out like there is a reason to believe this? Don’t believe this evidence? How about this for a change “A Perspective on Clergy Sexual Abuse by Dr. Thomas Plante… states that "approximately 4% of priests during the past half century (and mostly in the 1960s and 1970s) have had a sexual experience with a minor" which "is consistent with male clergy from other religious traditions and is significantly lower than the general adult male population which may double these numbers." So the reality is, priests are not the horror you think they are. In fact, percentage wise, there is a less percentage of priests who are pedophiles then the general population. (4) Health Benefits At least quote and take something from the article. And not force me to make your case for you and then argue against it. To save time, I read it. Basically, the results of these studies have not been replicated and thus cannot be considered valid scientific evidence. Furthermore, some of the studies do not even take into account, diet, genetic differences, and other factors into the equation. So we should basically just throw this contention out the hypothetical window. God loves eunuchs I reply: God loves all people. Not just eunuchs. Furthermore, even if you were right, forcing people to accept god is impossible. It is what’s in the heart that counts. If an eunuch truly does not want to be an eunuch for god, then it does not really matter whether they are or not, they are rejecting the praises given in those verses. Doing these procedures without giving people a choice or a middle ground is sort of well…wrong for lack of a better word. Also, for the future, maybe analyze what you are writing. Just saying. http://www.motherjones.com... Pedophiles and Priests: Anatomy of a Contemporary Crisis, Philip Jenkins http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com... http://en.wikipedia.org...