The Catholic Church has torn families apart - in more ways than one

Eighty years ago my pretty young aunt fell in love with her Prince Charming; a tall, handsome, charismatic fellow on Chicago's North Side. Alas, they couldn't follow a conventional route to happily ever after because of one roadblock; Prince Charming was a priest at her local parish. So they did as other star crossed lovers in those days; eloped. They tied the knot in DuBuque, IA, fled west to Denver, where he apparently partnered with another fellow in a gas station. Then it was off to La La Land where the 1940 census lists him as a hat salesman, while my aunt aunt was unemployed, expecting her child, my cousin, in December. Apparently, the child and his 34 years kept him out of WWII which found him working in a dairy. Around 1944, consumed by guilt at leaving the priesthood, he petitioned the Chicago Archdiocese to be re-instated. Sympathetic to his plight the Church advised no such consideration could be given while married so a divorce was obtained in 1946. Consultation with the Vatican followed and my former uncle was granted provisional status as a priest, having to serve a year's probation before re-instatement. Alas, during that year he became ill with cancer. Two weeks after being fully restored to the priesthood, he died. 

When I hear endless stories of priestly sexual abuse of children, which I firmly believe are rooted in the bizarre, destructive, unconscionable centuries long practice of celibacy, I ponder my own family's experience of three ruined lives and an extended family deprived of knowing and caring for them because of it.