Consequently, I'm sorry with the way they have handled the relationship between Matt, the oldest son, and Sarah, who is not only Jewish but the daughter of a rabbi as well.

What bothers me about what they are doing is that they have Matt considering a conversion to Judaism, and not because of a spiritual journey or because he has become convinced of the truth of its teachings. No, Matt is considering converting because he's in love with a Jewish girl whose father is a rabbi.

The fact is that Judaism and Christianity, despite all the have in common, do have some differences that are mutually exclusive, most notably the resurrection of Jesus. If Matt truly believes Jesus rose from the dead, then he is being dishonest and disrespectful by considering converting to a religion whose teachings he does not believe. If on the other hand, Matt does not believe Jesus rose from the dead, then he never has been a Christian because the resurrection is one of the creedal doctrines, without which you no longer have Christianity.

In either case, if Matt doesn't really care one way or the other and is doing this because the woman he loves is Jewish, then he insults both Judaism and Christianity by supposedly converting from one religion to another, neither of which he genuinely cares about.

Religion is not like an ethnic culture which you can adopt or reject based on clothing, diet, music, etc. Religion is about what you believe is true about the nature and/or existence of God and God's relationship with man. For a show that normally respects faith to trivialize it as if it was nothing more than a shirt, to change as the desire of the moment changes, is disappointing.

Brad Pardee
Editor

Unfortunately, there are those who are attempting to use this situation to call for married priests and women priests, as opposed to the celibate, all-male priesthood that the Church has established in response to its understanding of God's will and teaching. Perhaps they are unaware and uninformed, or perhaps they are attempting distort the debate as an act of political opportunism. In either case, however, they are drawing a false parallel that is based on flawed thinking and consequently does not serve to protect children at all.

If marriage was a way to prevent someone from becoming a sexual abuser, then it would stand to reason that the fewest cases of abuse would happen within the family. The statistics make it clear, however, that abuse happens within the family not in the minority of cases but rather in the overwhelming majority. Married men, who had no call to celibacy and no expectation of such, are the predators in the majority of instances. Consequently, if there's a reason for thinking that allowing priests to marry will somehow bring an end to sexual abuse, I have yet to hear one that makes logical sense.

There's a deeper flaw in the thinking that celibacy is to blame for sexual abuse which I haven't heard discussed anywhere, and to look at that flaw, we have to go back and take a before-and-after look at the sexual revolution of the 1960s.

Prior to the 1960s, there certainly were those who had sex prior to and outside of marriage. However, it was not embraced as a norm to follow. Men and women were expected, at least in the public sentiment, to wait until they were married to have sex.

Even as the sexual norms were challenged and, to a degree, toppled in the 1960s, the argument of those who chose to be sexually active outside of marriage was an appeal to the notion of individual freedom. In essence, they said, "If you don't want to have sex, then don't, but don't say I shouldn't."

Now, however, it is understood that virginity at marriage is the exception rather than the rule, and those who choose to abstain are somehow looked at with curiosity, and in some instances, suspicion. 

A classic example of this is in the romantic comedy, "While You Were Sleeping", which certainly is not a "pushing the envelope" kind of film. In the film, the heroine is a Chicago El token taker named Lucy Eleanor Moderatz. When one of her friends thinks Lucy is pregnant, Lucy answers, "You have to have sex to get pregnant." The friend says that she thought Lucy was engaged, and Lucy says, "Well, we're … waiting." The friend raises her eyebrows, and with a tone of voice usually reserved for mystery meat in the school cafeteria, says, "You're … waiting?" The clear message is that, certainly anybody who's engaged should be having sex, and if they're not, something's odd.

The attempt to link celibacy with sexual abuse takes this even one step further. What once was an exception to the rule became a matter of individual freedom before moving on to become the norm to be expected. Now it's not just odd to not have sex, but anybody who does not have sex runs the risk of becoming an unbalanced predator.

This attempt to question the very emotional stability of someone who embraces a traditional sexual morality instead of the popular hedonistic norm is something that should not go unchallenged. It is my hope that, even as the Catholic Church acts in response to the abuse, the discussion will also foster a newer and healthier view of those who do choose to remain celibate, either because of a priestly vocation or a state of singleness. Animals mate because they are driven to by instinct. The arguments of 1960s revolutionaries notwithstanding, we humans are supposed to know better.