'We have such difficulty understanding this renunciation today because the relationship to marriage and children has clearly shifted. To have to die without children was once synonymous with a useless life: The echoes of my own life die away, and I am completely dead. If I have children, then I continue to live in them; it's a sort of immortality through posterity. ...

'I think the essential point is a weakness of faith.'

'The renunciation of marriage and family is thus to be understood in terms of this vision: I renounce what, humanly speaking, is not only the most normal but a…

In the United States, there is constant news on this topic, but less than 1 percent of priests are guilty of acts of this type. The constant presence of these …