some priests to become emotionally and psychologically unstable.
Before the current scandal regarding the enormous number of children who had been molested and abused by priests, the Catholic Church was already having trouble recruiting people to enter the Church either as priests or nuns. In fact, the number of priests entering the ministry has decreased by 15% in the last thirty years, while membership in the Church has increased by 33%. One of the primary reasons people gave for finally not entering the Church was the celibacy requirement (Jabusch, 1998). In fact, there is an International Federation of Married Catholic Priests who working to get the Church to allow priests to remain active in the Church if they choose to marry (White, 1999).
There are those, including the Pope, who point out that whe
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