I don’t know Cardinal Marx, so I can’t comment on his intentions or what his vision is for the Catholic Church in Germany. But one thing has been bothering me in this whole debate over relaxing the discipline of priestly celibacy. Celibacy and marriage are two sides of the same coin. When you devalue one, you devalue the other. Both St. John Chrysostom and Pope St. John Paul II (quoting Chrysostom) point this out, stating that one cannot fully appreciate the “greater good” of celibacy without first fully appreciating the “great good” of marriage and vice-versa.
As an Eastern (Maronite) Catholic, I have absolutely no problem with a married priesthood. But marriage ought not to be treated as a “remedy for sin” in the sense that it gives spouses an outlet to indulge their lusts and disordered passions. It’s a “remedy for sin” in the sense that it becomes an arena in which to combat our lusts and disordered passions so that, overcoming them through the grace of God and the power of the Cross, we can then be freed to love with the “freedom of the sons of God.”
If the Germans (or anyone else) think that relaxing the discipline of celibacy in order to give priests an outlet for sexual expression is the solution to the sex abuse crisis, then they’re wrong. It may, at least initially, reduce the numbers of incidence of child sexual abuse, but at what cost? If a man treats a woman simply as an object to release his own sexual tensions, where’s the respect for the dignity of the person? And if a husband can’t respect the dignity of his own wife, what makes anyone think he’ll respect the dignity of children (whether his own or others) or his parishioners in the case of a priest? A relaxation of the discipline of priestly celibacy - when done for the wrong reasons - potentially opens the door to increased child sexual abuse, not to mention physical and emotional abuse, if the reason for the relaxation is, at its core, a concession to sin (lust).
Repentance and conversion are the only solutions to this crisis. That, and priests remembering that their chosen vocation of celibacy is not an end in itself. As Pope St. John Paul II pointed out over and over again, priestly celibacy is only a good insofar as it is oriented to the Kingdom of God. Celibate priests need to rediscover this fundamental orientation of their call to celibacy - not try to skirt around it.
