> Rev. Robert Prevost bears responsibility for allowing former Providence Catholic H.S. President and priest Richard McGrath to stay at the high school amidst sex abuse allegations that dated back to the 1990s.
> That's according to Eduardo Lopez de Casas, a clergy abuse survivor and national vice president of the Chicago-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP).
[0]: https://willcountygazette.com/stories/671124585-if-he-saw-an...
The zeitgeist is inaccurate. Sexual abuse and subsequent cover ups were a massive problem that has largely been addressed, but the numbers of offenders are proportionally lower than those in public schools. From wikipedia:
"Hofstra University researcher Charol Shakeshaft, the author of a 2002 report on sexual offenses in schools, said sexual violence is much more prevalent in schools than in the Church.[315] Ernie Allen, former president of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, stated: "we don't see the Catholic Church as a hotbed of this [sexual abuse and pedophilia] or as a place that has a bigger problem [with this issue] than anyone else."[316]"
Doesn't seem likely since none of the Churches that existed prior to the Protestant Reformation allow it.
All of the ancient churches, including the Catholic Church, do allow men who are already married to become priests. The rules are more strict for Catholics than the others.
Certainly not in general. You either have to be Eastern or Greek Catholic, Anglican/Episcopal convert etc. Overwhelming majority don't have that option.
Since, IIRC, the 1200s (may be off by a couple centuries), there has been a practice (not a doctrine) prohibiting ordination of married men in the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church.
Because this is a prohibition but not a doctrinal invalidity, it does not invalidate otherwise-valid ordinations (i.e., by Bishops holding valid apostolic succession), and the prohibition was never applied to the Eastern Churches that were at the time (Inthink the Maronite Church was) or later came into union with Rome. There is also now a special exception allowing (with individual permission, not automatically) married Anglican priests who convert to Catholicism and are otherwise eligible for ordination as Catholic priests to be ordained in the Latin Rite despite being married. So it is possible to encounter married priests in the Latin Rite (Western) Catholic Church, but the door is not generally open to married men becoming priests.
Nor are they expected to refrain from sex within marriage, which may be what you mean.
Of course, if a married Eastern Catholic priest decided to join the Latin Church with the rest of his family, this could happen too.
But generally, a married man will want to discern the diaconate, as the priesthood will simply be out of the question, except in these exceptional circumstances.