Personality problems cause of sexual impropriety among Catholic priests - Monsignor Ntim

Rev. Monsignor Professor Stephen Ntim, Dean of the faculty of education at the Catholic University College of Ghana has opined that personality problems could be the cause of sexual impropriety by some Catholic Priests.

According to Rev. Monsignor Professor Stephen Ntim, the church could stop the menace by rigorously screening candidates who present themselves for the priesthood in the Catholic Church.

Speaking at the opening ceremony of the 26th national and 14th biennial congress of the National Union of Ghana Diocesan Priests’ Associations (NUGDPA) at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology on Tuesday January, 3, Monsignor Ntim said priests are generally content and happy about their vocation and the few sex scandals and pedophilia recorded in the Church could be as a result of what he describes as childhood baggage from families.

“If generally priests are happy and joyful, how do we reconcile these with the few clinical syndromes such as the sex scandal and the pedophilia in Europe and the US? How do we explain the few instances of embarrassing sexual misbehavior of some priests here in Ghana as well? Why do some priests leave the priesthood? In some parts of the world that has experienced priestly sexual scandals such as the U.S, these few priests were those found to have had childhood dysfunction and probably should not have entered the Seminary in the first place,

"Childhood dysfunction such as childhood sexual abuse places people at high risk of later adult psychological problems. Similarly in Ghana, many of our brothers experiencing some struggle in the priesthood either with themselves or with their Bishops because of sexual impropriety for most of the time could be that they have personality problems,” Prof Ntim said.

He said to stop the menace from reoccurring, the onus lied on individual priests and collectively in diocesan associations, to help the diocesan vocations offices to rigorously screen candidates who present themselves for the priesthood.