Belgium is shaken up nowadays. A day after the collapse of the government the Belgians got another shock, when various media reported that Roger Vangheluwe, bishop of Bruges, confessed to years of sexual abuse of a nephew. This confession came only a week after he had given a lecture at K.U Leuven’s Theology faculty where blank faced, he answered questions on the paedophilia scandals in the Catholic Church.

In light of the recent shock waves that went through the Catholic institution worldwide it was only a matter of time for Belgian scandals to come out. Until then it was stated in the papers that at least Belgium, with the only recently processed paedophile scandals of the latter part of the nineties would be prepared to cope with any situation.

Still, this confession was a hard one to swallow, especially in an area as Catholic as Bruges and a country as Catholic as Belgium. Moreover, this was not just one random priest in a random village, this was all about a bishop! Radical reactions were angrily voiced out in all papers and magazines. “Religion is opium for the people, religions should not legislatively be acknowledged, instead they should be legislatively forbidden!” one could read in Knack. Commentator Yves Desmet stated in De Morgen that the “Catholic Church currently has lost all moral right to point to anyone with their well-known pedantic finger.” He wonders whether there really exists a God who allows ‘his representatives on Earth’ to commit such loathsome crimes with impunity.

So, it seems as though the people of Belgium would now collectively lose faith. Many (relatively young) people here – as in other parts of (Western) Europe are officially Catholic, but do not practise the faith. They go to church only at Christmas or Easter to please their parents or grannies, or not even then – I for example, though not Belgian, belong to this latter category, as I find it hypocritical to go to church only on feast days, which in the way they are celebrated nowadays have more to do with uncurbed (though well-meant) capitalism than with pure religious piety and reflection.

Of course the Catholic Church should not be doomed or stigmatized in its entirety, but with the Irish, Dutch, German and now also Belgian scandals coming to the surface, it is clear that the problem is widespread. The urgent question here is whether celibacy causes abnormal sexuality and by extension sexual abuse. To me the reasoning seems logical. Denying people to have sexual relations on the basis of some old-fashioned doctrine, thereby placing them on a pedestal and as confidants people can trust, but without an earthly voice to listen to their personal problems, doubts and worries, only cause frustration and a terrible need for affection, which in the end will in some cases be projected to the young, so blindly entrusted to the landmarks of integrity and virtue that God’s servants are supposed to be.

I would say, and I think many people would agree, that the (European) Church now needs to take time for some self-reflection. It should reconsider the rule of celibacy, which moreover keeps many potential priests from becoming men of the cloth, as they do not want to commit themselves to a life deprived of true human relationships, as of course it is not all about sex: normal relationships between priests and women are also an official no-go area in the Catholic church.

The Belgian and European Church may with these recent affairs have lost many of its firm believers, but radicals who think it is now finally over for the Church, should not celebrate too early, as the American sociologist Philip S. Gorsky states that “the history of religion is rife with ebbs and flows, and Christianity is no exception to this rule”. We’ll see.|