I received the same email yesterday, and just like you I started looking for sources to confirm or defy it. However, I cannot say I am convinced yet one way or the other.

I have a question, I wonder if you could help me on this. As you say, in the article about last year’s wedding, it says the event took place AFTER the weddings. Why then could the brides not be with the grooms? As far as I know, the bride and groom are separate until the ceremony, but after they sign the marriage contract, they can see each other, and they usually are together during the celebration that takes place afterward.

Also, it does seem rather strange that the girls in the video should be dressed like western brides. On the other hand, the grooms also have western type clothes. As you pointed out, it would be rather unusual to have muslim brides dressed western style – but it is equally unsusual to have muslim bridesmaids dressed like that, is it not? I am not even sure it is the custom to have bridesmaids in muslim weddings, it is the first time I saw something like this.

Forgive my doubt, I have no intention of slandering muslims, I do not take anybody’s part, I am just trying to seek out the truth.

I would agree with this, but it’s a straw man. While some people have a naive idea that married priests would solve the problem because priests wouldn’t be repressed, the more nuanced of us obviously do not believe such a thing.

However, that doesn’t mean the institutional dynamics of mandatory celibacy didn’t cause the cover-ups, etc.

Whenever the concepts of sex and obedience are used in the same sentence…you are going to have problems.

Combine that with a homosocial Old Boys Club authority structure, and you’ve got the perfect storm.

It’s the same reason there are problems with rape in prison, with hazing in frat houses, with sexual harassment in the military. These problems ARE sociologically STRUCTURAL.

And at the heart of it, in the Catholic clergy, is a bizarre link forged long ago between SEX and POWER. Of which “mandatory” celibacy is only one manifestation.

It is naive to blame celibacy in itself, as if simply being single and chaste makes one molest children. But the institutional dynamics involved with this idea that it is “mandatory”…are a different beast entirely, and at the heart of the problem.

I don’t have a dirty electricity filter, but I do shut down every night and unplug from the wall.