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CNN Crossfire

Should Priests Remain Celibate?; Does New Airport Screening Device Show Too Much?

Aired March 18, 2002 - 19:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL PRESS, CO-HOST: Tonight, Catholic controversy. Amid a growing scandal, should priests be required to remain celibate? And X-rated x-rays, does a new airport screening device show too much?

ANNOUNCER: From Washington, CROSSFIRE. On the left, Bill Press. On the right, Robert Novak. In the crossfire, Father C. John McCloskey, director of the Catholic Information Center and Notre Dame University Professor Father Richard McBrien. And later, Orlando Mayor Glenda Hood and Barry Steinhardt, Associate Director of the ACLU.

PRESS: It's CROSSFIRE. Thanks for joining us.

Holy smoke. For once there's a tale of illicit sex and cover up. And it's not about politicians. Sadly, it's about priests. Every day, more reports of priests across the country sexually abusing young boys, never reported to law enforcement, and in some cases merely shifted from one parish to the next, and the next set of victims.

The controversy has not only rocked the Catholic church, cost hundreds of millions of dollars and forced two bishops to resign, it has also triggered serious questions about the priesthood itself. Many have talked about it privately, but on Friday the official newspaper of the archdiocese of Boston, "The Pilot," shouted it out publicly, "if celibacy were optional, would there be fewer scandals of this nature in the priesthood?" Tonight, who better to ask than two priests.

Bob?

ROBERT NOVAK, CO-HOST: Father McBrien, welcome.

RICHARD MCBRIEN, FATHER, UNIV. OF NOTRE DAME: Hi, Bob.

NOVAK: There is no doubt whatsoever that there are pedophiles throughout the teaching professions, people who deal with young boys, athletic coaches, teachers, counselors, most of them not being Catholic priests. Do you have the slightest bit of evidence, father, that the celibacy of Catholic priests has any connection with the tendency of some of them to be pedophiles?

MCBRIEN: Well, the connection is indirect, Bob. First of all, Catholic priests shouldn't be relying upon comparative statistics. We are held to a higher standard. But secondly, there is an indirect connection. And where celibacy is relevant is that because of the rule of obligatory celibacy for all Roman Catholic priests, the church is forced to draw from the thinnest slice of the population for the most important ministry that it has.

And that is where the difficulty lies. It isn't so much that if you had married priests, you wouldn't have pedophilia or any other problems. But in drawing from its recruits for the priesthood, we have now limited ourselves so narrowly to a very thin slice of the population.

Now you could say well, wasn't it always that way? It's been that way for a long time, but for first half of the history of the church, it wasn't that way. The apostles were married, popes were married. And in the Catholic church today in the so-called eastern rites, thousands of priests are married priests. They're as much a Catholic priest as I am or Father McCloskey.

NOVAK: But for a couple of thousand years it's been a requirement in the Western...

MCBRIEN: No, Bob, that isn't true. You said a couple of thousand. The church has only been around for 2000. For half the history of the church, our priests were not required to be celibate. And in fact, in the Catholic church today, thousands of priests are married. And they are priests in good standing. That's in the eastern rites.

PRESS Father McCloskey, I want to pick up on that point and ask you again the question, one of the questions that is raised in the editorial of "The Pilot" last Friday. If celibacy were optional, would there be fewer scandals of this nature in the priesthood?

May I suggest why the answer should be yes is a point that Father McBrien just made, that by eliminating right up front those who have a healthy normal sex life and want to get married, you are limiting the pool so much that you're getting more people necessarily who don't have a normal, healthy sex life and may end up doing some of this stuff.

C. JOHN MCCLOSKEY, FATHER, CATHOLIC INFORMATION CENTER: Celibacy is something that contrary to what Father McBrien said has been in the church for 2000 years. Priests who were married, who wanted to -- I should say laymen who were married who wanted to become priests, both the priests to be and the wife also took a vow of perfect continence.

Some or other, your question is the idea that celibacy is something abnormal and that one has in order to be normal has to have a healthy sex life. There's no connection whatsoever between a person -- people living their celibacy well and these scandals that have just come up. The problem is precisely there's not evidently been enough good selection in terms of young men who are capable of living the particular commitment they make upon being celibate as priests.

PRESS: Well, we could debate whether celibacy is a normal lifestyle. I would say not, but I think you're overlooking the importance of experience and the importance of, again, that healthy sex drive, if you will. We had a -- this seems to be the day for priests on CNN. But there was another priest on our show "TALK BACK LIVE" this afternoon, Father Michael Fahey from Marquette University, who spoke to the issue, related issue of experience. I'd like you listen to him and then respond, please. Here's Father Fahey.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MICHAEL FAHEY, FATHER, MARQUETTE UNIV.: One of the things, however, is the fact that so many of the Catholic clergy are not married. They don't have the direct experience of parenthood. And they're not perhaps as sensitized to the needs and the need to protect children.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PRESS: So again, you're selecting out, these are men who don't have the experience of marriage, don't have the experience of having their own children, and really don't have that sensitivity as Father says.

MCCLOSKEY: Catholic priests have been celibate for 2000 years and have been able to give advice to married couples and single people, for that matter, with great success producing hundreds of millions of very happy, satisfied Catholics who have never complained that their priest did not have sufficient experience in a sexual sort of way. I disagree with that comment completely.

MCBRIEN: Well, Peter's mother-in-law would have been surprised that priests were not married. The original apostles were married. And there have been at least two popes, I mean several popes were married, but at least two of them were succeeded, not immediately, but down the line by their sons. So of course there was celibacy from the very beginning, but it was not a universal law of the church until toward the end of the 11th century. And it is still not a universal law of the church unless you're going to exclude over 20 millions of non-Roman eastern rite Catholics priests or Catholics, among whom, there are married priests. And they're as much as Catholic priest as Father McCloskey or myself.

NOVAK: Father McBrien, prior to what happened 2000 years ago, and I think we could have a very interesting intellectual on that.

MCBRIEN: No, I don't want to.

NOVAK: There's no question with the present situation is. And Pope John Paul II, the Holy Father, some of us feel is one of the great figures of the contemporary world. I'd like to read something that he has said on this subject. And we'll put it up on the screen.

"The priests, by renouncing the fatherhood proper to married men, seeks another fatherhood and as it were even another motherhood recalling the words of the Apostle Paul about the children whom he begets in the suffering." Do you disagree with the Pope on that?

MCBRIEN: No, it depends on how you interpret it. I mean, I agree with Paul. It's a gift. And if you don't have the gift, then you don't follow it. The problem is that we have linked the gift in the Roman Catholic church today with the call to priesthood. I mean, there's no necessary link. There's been a tradition, but there's no necessary link between the two.

And again, I insist that we have thousands of Roman -- of Catholic priests who are married. And they are priests in good standing. And we've also accepted into the Roman Catholic church some former episcopal priests who have come over and have been reordained and have been allowed to continue as married priests.

PRESS: Well, let me ask you about that, Father. I mean, I think it's an important point. I mean, of all these other -- Roman Catholics are not the only Catholics. You've got the Armenian Catholics. You've got I think the Greek Catholics, the Orthodox Catholics. They're all married. Only the Roman Catholics are not married. So are you saying that the Roman Catholics have it straight from Jesus and the others are, you know, they're off the mark or something?

MCCLOSKEY: I'm saying from the...

PRESS: Just a second, Father.

MCCLOSKEY: From the beginning of Christianity, the discipline was, both in the West and in the East, celibacy.

PRESS: So they got it wrong and you got it right?

MCCLOSKEY: They did not get it wrong. They've had change or relaxation in discipline.

MCBRIEN: Father McCloskey, I don't know where you're drawing your history.

MCCLOSKEY: I'm a church historian, Father McBrien. That's what I'm doing.

PRESS: Go for it, father.

MCBRIEN: I am too. I've written a book on the history of the papacy. I mean, how can you say that when popes themselves were married, two popes, and they were saints, had sons who later became popes. How can you say that priests have always been celibate? When in fact we've had popes who have been married, and had children, some of whom became popes.

MCCLOSKEY: Every man who was a priest -- every man who wanted to become a priest, and was married, both the wife and the priest-to-be had to take a vow of perfect continence. And you knew that.

MCBRIEN: Then how come we don't require of that the former episcopal priests who've come over? They do not have to take a vow of continence.

MCCLOSKEY: That's correct. MCBRIEN: They do not have to live as brother and sister. Are you saying that we should give special preference to former episcopal priests?

NOVAK: Do you want to quickly answer that?

MCCLOSKEY: Yes, I was -- say I know many of those priests who have become Catholic priests who are married. And I can assure you, every one of them tells me that the role of celibacy for the Latin church is something of great worth, because it's extremely difficult to serve the people of God and be married with children at the same time.

MCBRIEN: But not for them.

NOVAK: That will have to be the last word. Father McCloskey, thank you very much. Father McBrien, thank you.

MCBRIEN: You're welcome. Bob, nice to be with you and Bill.

PRESS: Thank you.

NOVAK: We'll be back with a new super x-ray to screen airline passengers. Or is it an electronic strip search?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

NOVAK: Welcome to CROSSFIRE, part two. When it comes to airport security, you ain't seen nothing yet. At Orlando Florida International Airport, six prototype security systems soon will go into operation. These are super x-ray machines, to be used only when the regular screening shows some irregularity. They search and reveal every last inch of the human body. They sure will reveal hidden weapons and explosives, but civil libertarians ask is it an invasion of privacy to also reveal that a passenger has also been circumcised?

We're talking to Barry Steinhardt, associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union. He's in New York City, and to the mayor of Orlando, Florida, Glenda Hood. She's in Orlando.

Bill Press?

PRESS: Miss Mayor, for the record, I don't care whether any passenger getting on any plane is circumcised or not, but I do care about an invasion of privacy. So let me ask you first. I mean, you say -- all the literature says these machines are voluntary.

BRENDA HOOD, MAYOR, ORLANDO: Absolutely.

PRESS: But Mayor, you would not be gone through all this trouble, spending all this money if you didn't intend to make these machines mandatory as soon as they've been tested. Be honest. Isn't that correct?

HOOD: Well first of all, you have to understand this is merely a test. There's data being gathered with a series of high, technologically advanced machines. And Orlando International Airport has been selected as that test site. This data will be will be gathered. That will be sent to different federal agencies, along with the National Safe Skies Alliance that's working on this project.

And then, there'll be a determination as far as whether this equipment will be utilized or not. So there's a variety of pieces of technologically advanced equipment. I think during the length of the tests, the technologies will even change. So we have no idea what kinds of equipment we'll see in airports in the future.

PRESS: So it is being tested for a reason, I'm glad you admit that. And the reason will be install them. And when they're installed, they'll certainly be mandatory, which gets to my next question is, what's the point? People have already gone through a metal detector. Their bags have already been screened. And then they have to go through this second thing, which is nothing other than to permit people to look through their clothes and see them naked. Why don't you just ask them to take their clothes off?

HOOD: Well, first of all, weapons, for example, are not just made out of metal. They're made out of plastics, they're made out of other kinds of materials. And I will tell you, as mayor of this city, and I would think every other mayor and public official would agree that bottom line for me is making sure that the people travel in and out of my city, through my airport, are as safe and secure as possible.

Right now, we're going through all kinds of changes as far as different security measures. It's important for the traveling public, it's important for us as Americans, and we need to do everything possible. We need to make sure that everybody is safe and secure.

NOVAK: Barry Steinhardt, I'd like to add another witness to support Mayor Hood's position. And that is one of the leading congressman on the question of security. And that's John Mica of Florida. Let's listen to what Congressman Mica had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. JOHN MICA (R), FLORIDA: We're facing a new type of terrorist threat. And we found terrorists are willing to blow themselves up. And they can conceal explosives even within body cavities. So we're going to have to have equipment that will detect those explosives if we want people to be able to fly with security and safety.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

NOVAK: There's really no logical, rational rebuttal to what Congressman Mica says, is there, Mr. Steinhardt?

BARRY STEINHARDT, ASSOC. DIR. ACLU: Well, first of all of course is that the technology you just showed is not going to solve the problem that he cites. It doesn't look inside body cavities. I was actually on the show with Congressman Mica when he made that point. And I must say that I was somewhat amazed by it, because I think that there's a tendency to exaggerate what this technology can do.

We know what the technology can do. It does function in a way that gives us a very graphic image, an image, which by the way, I think the one you're showing is a little bit tame for what it actually produces. It's a very graphic image, an outline of the naked body. But it doesn't look inside body cavities.

The question is does Congressman Mica want everybody to undergo the kind of body cavity search that prisoners undergo, where someone actually strips you down, looks inside your private cavities. Is that how far we're prepared to go?

NOVAK: Well Mr. Steinhardt, my understanding, I'm a long way from being an expert, I understand they are developing things that can find the composition of any kind of fluid in a bottle that you're carrying. Or they can do almost anything with this investigation, but here's the question I have. Why is the American Civil Liberties Union, which is so worried about my privacy, why do you keep quiet when an incompetent airport screener pats me down and feels my whole body up, and you're also excited when it's done impersonally through a mechanical means?

STEINHARDT: Well, Bob, you haven't been reading all the press. We do talk -- we do speak about, for example, what amounts to the sexual assault on women in this country, including the flight attendants, scores of whom have come forward and said that the so- called searchers are really a pretext for a form of sexual harassment. We have a feature up on our Web site in which we urge people to tell us about these stories, so we can have them investigated by federal authorities.

NOVAK: Mayor Hood?

HOOD: Oh, I was just going to say we all have to get comfortable with the different types of screening measures that we're going through. And there are countries around the globe that for years have had much higher security measures than we have. I know 20 and 30 years ago, traveling throughout Europe and other parts of the world, I certainly went through added security measures that we didn't see in this country until decades later.

And so right now, we have to make sure we're doing everything possible to protect the traveling public. That is my bottom line. That should be everybody's bottom line.

STEINHARDT: It's my bottom line as well. We're not opposed to all security measures. For example, one of the things they're testing in Orlando is a device that will allow them to look for traces of explosives.

HOOD: That's right.

STEINHARDT: We're not opposed to that, we're not opposed to that at all.

HOOD: It's a vapor and particle detection system. It immediate analyzes it, but that may through the data that's collected, they may determine that we won't use that, that there will be another piece of equipment that's used.

STEINHARDT: I hope that's in fact what you'll choose to use. It's both more effective and least invasive of our privacy.

PRESS: All right, let me jump in, Mayor, and just on the record, we're all in favor of whatever security is necessary. The question is, does this go over the line? Let me ask you, we've shown here a few times, you've probably seen it, this picture of this man down there who volunteered to look in the screener.

HOOD: Yes, I've seen it.

PRESS: An x-ray takes the picture. I want to ask you what happens to those pictures? What happens to that videotape of all those young women who are going into that machine when they become mandatory?

HOOD: It's private, first of all. The screener does not see the individual that goes through the piece of equipment. That image comes up immediately, that screener is behind a wall where the passenger is being x-rayed. Immediately after that is viewed, if there is no reason to detain that individual, then the picture goes away. And so it's a very private thing. And again, we don't know if this is going to be used in the future or not.

PRESS: Mayor, I have to interrupt you, because we're short on time. Do you know of any government tape that has ever remained private? Why is it on the Drudge Report if it's private? You know it'll get out there.

HOOD: Well, it's not exactly a tape. And so, you know, I can't sit here and explain all the complexities of high tech equipment, but I can assure that it is private. I can assure you that that is not maintained for any type of record. And someone is only detained if they have a weapon on them. And I want to make sure that people are safe and secure when they travel. And...

NOVAK: We're out of time, Barry Steinhardt, I want to give you briefly the last word.

STEINHARDT: Sure, this is really a kind of electronic strip search. And we ought to recognize that. The photographs that you showed are really the tame version. The question is, is Mayor Hood, for example, willing to go through a search at the airport that's going to reveal her naked body?

PRESS: With that challenge, Mayor Hood...

HOOD: I'm willing to go through anything where I feel safe and secure. Thank you.

PRESS: Barry Steinhardt, thank you too for being with us. We'll see you at the airport. And when we come back, Al Gore sticks his chin out and faces the first real decision of his next presidential campaign. To shave or not to shave. Will it be the Abe Lincoln look or the Bill Press look? That tops today's exciting CROSSFIRE news alert.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

NOVAK: And now, CROSSFIRE alert. Our report on news stories that don't make the headlines, but are more interesting than those that do. Al Gore did it. He shaved off the beard he grew when he lost the Florida recount and the presidency. I figured that when the former vice president bought a razor and a necktie, we would know that he was running for president in '04. But a spokesman says Al's beard removal was just a signal to wife, Tipper, that he would support her if she ran for the U.S. Senate, which she isn't. I like my theory better.

PRESS: In Arkansas, it's all in the family. Republican Governor Mike Huckabee is running for reelection. And now his wife Janet has thrown her bonnet in the ring, too. She's running for Secretary of State. Mrs. Huckabee has never run for office before, but she says her time renovating the governor's mansion is all she needs. You know, clean up the mess around the house, clean up the mess in state government. For campaign contributors, it's a real bargain, two Huckabees for the price of one.

NOVAK: Now we know the possible reason why Senator Joe Biden of Delaware was not elected as president when he ran in 1988. It's just been revealed that he was bugged. A listening device inserted at the conference table where his presidential plans were laid. Now Senator Biden is thinking of running again in 2004, 16 years later. He better hire a good security service this time.

PRESS: Bugged. In Washington, the political circus is in town 365 days a year, but once a year, the real circus comes to town. You know, the one with lions and clowns and look, elephants. And today was the proud day. The proud pachyderms paraded up Independence Avenue, past the U.S. capital and onto the D.C. Armory, of course, leaving behind more than their footprints.

Democrats, outraged at seeing so many elephants get so much media attention, have demanded equal time. So the official jack ass parade will be held tomorrow. CNN will be sure to cover it.

NOVAK: Is there really a jack ass parade or did you just make that up?

PRESS: Oh, Bob, I just made it up. But you had to get me to admit it.

NOVAK: Yeah. You know, Bill, do you agree with my theory that this has nothing to do with Tipper's imaginary run for the Senate? This has to do with him -- with Al Gore running for president?

PRESS: Yes, this is the beginning. Re-elect Gore in 2004.

NOVAK: You're on board, huh?

PRESS: That's for tonight. Good-night, folks. See you tomorrow night.

NOVAK: From the right, I'm Robert Novak. Join us again next time for another edition of CROSSFIRE.

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