Here’s a question for you, amid increased scandal in the Catholic Church regarding sex abuse by priests. If priests must remain celibate, why aren’t they just castrated? Becoming a eunuch would seem to be the ideal way to deal with preventing future abuse. A gelded priest is no threat (or much less of a threat) to children, and such an action would further reinforce their lifelong commitment to faith. It would also discourage sex offenders from escaping into the cloth and help push the church toward allowing priests to marry and women to become priests.
No doubt selling a gelding program for priests would be hard work. Especially for those priests currently serving, the thought of such embarrassing surgery is not appealing. And there are probably some health effects associated with castration. According to Wikipedia, they mostly involve lowered sex drive. Perfect, I say. Priests might still want to save their manhood, but their arguments would likely fall flat.
The Catholic Church has two options, as I see it, if they want to stop their priests from becoming criminals. Either geld them or let them enter into consensual sexual relationships. I honestly believe that it is a lack of sexual release that is causing these priests to engage in such despicable behavior. If they had proper channels for their sexual energy, they might be capable of thinking rationally. Such a change would be better for the children in the church and for faith as well. A thinking priest is a faithful priest. But until the Catholic Church changes their laughably backwards policies, no matter how much they spend trying to prevent sex abuse and prosecute the abusers, there will still be incidents. Anyone who can stand by the church in the face of such scandal is ridiculous. Support gelding, support sex, or support child abuse; those are your only options.
castration may not stop them. And as for marriage, the church would have to allow birth control, or go broke supporting the priest’s large families.
Two Points:
1. You’re right that castration may not stop all sex offender priests. The underlying question seems to be whether the crimes occur out of desperation and opportunity or out of incurable criminal pathology. The latter is always possible, but the former seems a more likely cause. Castration would likely reduce desperation associated with a lack of sexual release.
2. I’m not sure the church would need to support priests’ huge families. While the initial impetus for preventing priest marriage was to protect church property from inheritance, I’m not sure how much of a role that plays today. Churches may instead provide a housing stipend, rather than a place to live, especially in large parishes. Further, if a priest were to rack up massive debts while in the employ of the church, would they have to pay those debts? Maybe so, but it seems more likely that that responsibility would fall to the offending priest.