9 best donald cozzens

Sacred Silence is a book about failed leadership in the Catholic Church. Donald Cozzens looks at various challenges and the scandal gripping the Church and offers an historical overview of our church leadership. He explains how the misplaced loyalties of those in leadership positions created the current crisis.

Cozzens clarifies why bishops and church authorities think the way they do and why the ecclesiastical system might be the real villain in the abuse scandal. With compassion and understanding Cozzens answers the why of the present and past leadership failures and proposes a new direction.

Chapters in Part One: Masks of Denial are "Sacred Silence," and Forms of Denial. Chapters in Part Two: Faces of Denial are Sacred Oaths, Sacred Promises, Voices of Women, Religious Life and the Priesthood, Abuse of Our Children, Clerical Culture, Gay Men in the Priesthood, and Ministry and Leadership. The chapter in Part Three: Beyond Denial is Sacred Silence, Sacred Speech.

"Would removing the celibacy requirement really eliminate priest pedophilia?" Won't tough corrective measures such as a zero tolerance policy only exacerbate the priest shortage? These questions reflect the kind of concerns many of us are thinking and talking about lately. Despite the ongoing media coverage of sexual impropriety in the Church, there is relatively little known about sexuality issues involving priests. Sex, Priestly Ministry, and the Church provides an objective and authoritative account of psychosexual development in priests and key background information on the many sexual issues facing the Church today. It is a concise, comprehensive, one-of-a-kind resource of the most current information needed to understand these sexual issues and controversies and make reasoned, responsible decisions.

Chapters under Part I: Essential Facts: Psychosexual Development are Sex and Sexuality: Everything You Need to Know, The Process of Psychosexual Development, and Sexuality, Intimacy and Celibacy. Chapters under Part II: Essential Facts: Sexual Misconduct are Determinants of Ministry Health and Sexual Misconduct, Abusiveness and Sexual Misconduct, Narcissism, Sexuality and Sexual Misconduct, and Priest Sexual Misconduct with Children, Adolescents and Adults. Chapters under Part III: Pressing Sexual Issues are Selecting Suitable Candidates for the Priesthood, Homosexuality and the Priesthood, Decisions About Removing Priests, and Preventing Sexual Misconduct in Ministry.

Sacred Silence is a book about failed leadership in the Catholic Church. Donald Cozzens looks at various challenges and the scandal gripping the Church and offers an historical overview of our church leadership. He explains how the misplaced loyalties of those in leadership positions created the current crisis.

Cozzens clarifies why bishops and church authorities think the way they do and why the ecclesiastical system might be the real villain in the abuse scandal. With compassion and understanding Cozzens answers the why of the present and past leadership failures and proposes a new direction.

Chapters in Part One: Masks of Denial are "Sacred Silence," and Forms of Denial. Chapters in Part Two: Faces of Denial are Sacred Oaths, Sacred Promises, Voices of Women, Religious Life and the Priesthood, Abuse of Our Children, Clerical Culture, Gay Men in the Priesthood, and Ministry and Leadership. The chapter in Part Three: Beyond Denial is Sacred Silence, Sacred Speech.

2007 Catholic Press Association Award Winner!

Mandatory celibacy for Latin rite Catholic priests has been the norm for almost 900 years. Now the clergy sexual abuse scandal and the rapidly declining number of priests have pushed many of the faithful to the point of questioning this tradition of the church. To this sometimes tense discussion of sex and power Donald Cozzens brings his signature calmness, his own gifted experience of celibate life, and his talent for distilling the spiritual truth of the human condition.

Cozzens explores priestly celibacy as source of power and burden of obligation, as spiritual calling and gift of the Spirit. Putting mandatory celibacy in historic perspective, he examines the ancient and contemporary experience of married clergy in the Eastern churches and the Roman rite church. It is time, he concludes, to set celibacy free from canonical mandate to become what it is meant to be: a graced way of life for some but not all of the church's ordained ministers.

Drawing on his own experience in responding to abuse, Bishop Geoffrey Robinson methodically offers a critique of the church's use and misuse of power, from the pope proclaiming infallibly down to the preacher claiming a divine authority for every word spoken from the pulpit. Going back to the Bible and, above all, to the teaching of Jesus, he presents an approach to sexual morality that is profound, compassionate, and people-centered. He stresses the priority of the hierarchy of holiness over the hierarchy of power.

He offers nothing less than a vision for a church of the third millennium 'a church that wants to see in its members the responsibility appropriate to adults rather than the obedience appropriate to children and wants to help all people to grow to become all they are capable of being.

You will love or hate this book but not be ale to remain neutral.

Through the story of sexual abuse and the church's response, I came to the unshakeable belief that within the Catholic Church there absolutely must be profound and enduring change. In particular, there must be change on the two subjects of power and sex.
'From the Introduction

Bishop Geoffrey Robinson, who has degrees in philosophy, theology, and church law, was Auxiliary Bishop in the Archdiocese of Sydney from 1984 until his retirement in 2004. In 1994, he was elected by the Australian Bishops to the National Committee for professional Standards, coordinating the response of the Catholic Church in Australia to revelations of sexual abuse, and from 1997 until 2003 he was cochairman of this committee.