The Catholic order is being put to test as some of its American priests are subjected to litigious wrath from disgruntled lads who say they were molested by ill-mannered and prurient clergymen over the past years.

There are many factors at play: dereliction of duty on the part of the cardinals who keep convicted priests in the clergy and, more so, the fundamental problem of sexual abstinence.

It obviously appears specious to suggest that celibacy in priesthood holds a high moral ground. The truth is that mammals under normal circumstances are sexual beings.

For men, the journey commences with wet dreams to teenage fantasies to procreative urges. The ailing pontiff recently summoned cardinals to the Vatican in response to American paedophile cases, but he categorically ruled out eradicating the celibacy vow in priesthood.

Here is what drives me nuts. The Catholic Church may be taking facts of life for granted. I am sure the church realises the difference between religious vows and spiritual convictions. The men who become ordained take celibacy vows as a religious obligation but they may not have the spiritual capacity to suppress their biological instincts. The Vatican has to face reality here.

The crux of the matter is that the fellows who join priesthood may have good intentions but the reality is that we live in a complicated and sophisticated world.

Imagine a lonely priest watching television and a programme called Girls Go Wild appears. It may be difficult for the clergyman to change to another channel, and even if he does, it is still likely that on another channel there might be a commercial or show that revolves around salacious-looking nude women. They may be in bikinis or total nudity and the visual stimuli may end up conspiring with the heart, hence prompting the circulatory system to increase blood flow to the groin region. What happens afterwards is a matter of speculation.

The church should thus not be surprised to find its priests going to the bathroom with a Playboy magazine because of continued deprivation of what is due to them. The monotony of self-manipulation is what compels the priests to end up bringing their appendages into friction with young boys' ordure passages. It is desperation that leads to such wayward behaviour. That is why I believe that priests should be allowed to marry and explore the beauty of nature.

That is what nature dictates - to bring a male and a female together physically in this fashionable way. In any case all members in the animal kingdom do this. So why should Catholic priests be an exception?

If the papacy remains adamant that celibacy must be a requirement into Catholic priesthood, then the church shall continue to purge sexual miscreants ad infinitum because men shall always respond to their innermost instinct to have sex.

The 11th century argument given by the Catholic Church that priests can not experience connubial bliss because the practice was banned after children of priests inherited land looks flimsy. Church laws can govern church property and real estate issues but sexual instincts are controlled by laws of nature.

Probably the only way the church can overcome sex scandals is to have all men ordained into priesthood undergo a compulsory medical procedure that causes impotence and total loss of libido. That way ensures that priests will only wish but may not take action.

But those folks don't want to lose their sex drive. So why then choose celibacy?

As suggested before, this starts with molestation of unsuspecting kids, then to downright bestiality with vulnerable children.

The pastors obviously have no courage or experience in negotiating that touchy issue with adult women. Hence they may choose to exercise their lust on the unfortunate kids in our society.

So the Vatican must give this issue a second thought precisely to avoid future opprobrium from sexual solecism committed by the priests. In the United States, there has been a steady media focus on Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston who is being accused of covering up possible sexual abuse by priests.

Law, 70, faces enormous moral pressure from politicians and critics to step down because of harbouring knowledge concerning Reverend Paul Shanely's sexual escapades. Shanely, 71, a self-confessed sodomite, was transferred from one parish to the other amid allegations of sexual impropriety.

Meanwhile, Shanely has been arraigned in San Diego and signed extradition papers so that he could face trial in Boston. He faces three charges of child rape. Despite that the Cardinal issued a public apology over the matter, it is indubitable that his moral authority has suffered tremendous corrosion.

The Vatican loves Cardinal Law, who presides over an archdiocese of two million Roman Catholics and the likely move would be to reassign him to the Vatican.

Most American conservatives are advocating a complete purge of the clergy, including a new policy that would relieve any convicted priest of religious duties. Nonetheless Catholic apologists insist that the transition or any amendments may take decades, if not centuries.

Catholic reformists who expected the Pope to take drastic action had their egos bruised when the Vatican remained firm on the issue of celibacy. To their intense disappointment, critics expected tough punitive decisions to come from the papacy but nothing concrete has emerged. However, critics maintain that if the Vatican does not give a wide berth to sex offenders, it risks losing its credibility as a moral institution.

Like I suggested before, the most feasible and dignified way to prevent such a crisis is to allow priests to go for nuptials. If that method is unacceptable then the other effective but humiliating method is to enforce medically induced impotence in all ordained priests. That way they will ignore any visual stimuli such as television nudity or even a real naked woman.

Gwinyai Dziwa is a Zimbabwean writer based in Michigan in the United States of America.