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I estimate that at any one time 50 percent of priests are practicing celibacy.

Sociologists Dean Hoge and Jacqueline reported on a 2001 survey of 1,200 priests that 87 percent of active diocesan priests and 74 percent of active religious priests were "satisfied with celibate life." This conclusion of self-satisfaction reveals nothing about the observance or practice.

Greeley's, study mentioned before used data from a 1992 and 2001 Los Angeles Times survey of 2,000 priests. On the strength of his data he estimated that 82 percent of priests "honor their celibacy." Honor of celibacy also says nothing about the practice.

On survey to "be satisfied with celibate life" or to "honor celibacy" is not the same thing as practicing celibacy/abstaining from sexual activity. In-depth long-term interviews and reports of actual sexual/celibate practice trace quite a different clerical topography. The mountain tops, hills and valleys, forests, caves, swamps and deserts of actual priestly struggles to achieve celibate integration cannot be mapped by a survey. Sex is not static. Neither is abstinent observance.

In one study of homosexually active priests, 88 percent of those interviewed said that they would "choose the priesthood again" had they the chance. (Wagner, 1981 & Wolf, 1989) Between 2002 and 2004 700 priests were dismissed from American dioceses because of allegations of sexual contact with minors. Their dismissal was not due to their dissatisfaction with "celibate life."

Perfect and perpetual chastity is an ideal of the highest order.


I estimate that only 2 percent of priests achieve it in its fullest and most complete sense.


The efforts of those who honestly and persistently try to practice celibacy are not to be denigrated. But sexual patterns and practices cannot be discounted as if they do not vitally effect celibacy. This is exactly what has happened in the church with regard to sex with minors. Bishops and priests have honored celibacy in word not in deed.



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