With the Pennsylvania grand jury report and some calls for the Pope to resign is the Catholic Church in eclipse? What's bizarre imo is the seeming lack of "normal" sex scandals (e.g. a high-ranking bishop having an affair with a prioress say). How did ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick rise so far for so long? Is there no fear of Hell? How many clerics are in actual prison these days? Is this a case of trying to destroy the Church from within? Thoughts:)
A couple observations; the problem of sexual abuse by those in power over those in their power has been going on a long time. It is not confined to the Catholic Church: it happens in evangelical, mainline protestant, public education, colleges, government and businesses. For years, perhaps eons,
ReplyDeletethe victims had little choice but to remain silent, quit or escape: the perpetrators were protected. Consider the transfer of offending priests, the transfer of offending teachers and the promotion of
offending business leaders. Then, along came the internet and broad distribution of information.
The victims now had the ability to have their complaints heard.
And so now, the above-mentioned entities and organizations have little choice but to take action,
be it churches, schools businesses, etc. Religions, especially Catholic, have a moral construct concerning sex, which is strict and specific; the Evangelicals as well. The first group involves mostly children victims (as does education), the second (protestant churches, businesses etc) involves non
consenusal adult sex from harrassment to rape. In the case of religion and abuse, the arbitors of morality shred their very own rules in acts of theological hypocricy as well as common law, while
the others just break given moral codes as well as the law.
Considering the long history of the problem, it may take some time, introspection, empathy and
consideration of human dignity to address, but complete eradication seems improbable. We ponder
the gender problem, especially in religion- priestly celebacy and the argument that married priests
would better understand families and children (while observing that married clergy in other religions continue to be involved in extra-marital problems). “..lead us not into temptation” doesn't always
work, nor does “forgive me for I have sinned” for most of the offending individuals. Perhaps swift
judgement and punishment fell by the wayside somewhere along the line?
Dunno, Z-Man, some of the worlds's problems seem immune to theoretical phyisics, ya know?
Great dissertation and dissection of the problem but are pedophiles and pederasts simply attracted to the clerical lifestyle or for some weird reason does this abnormal psychology develop later on?
DeleteHard to say, given lack of hard data and studies. One such had psychopaths attracted to and filling
DeleteCEO positions (and listed clergy as #8 -just above chefs!). Of course there are all sorts of flavors
of socio and psycho pathology and there is a wide difference IMO between a serial rapist-killer and
a priestly pedophile. Given several instances of the problem in the Boy Scouts and a few studies suggesting such types are attracted to a handy 'pool' of victims, it may be that some enter the priesthood for that reason. I have know a number of priests who seemed somewhat on the gay side, at least to the extent of a kind of distain for the opposite sex: perhaps some in that category carry a latent tendency
which might lead to a later move to homosexual pedophilia. It is probably more complex, since those
entering the priesthood are very religious. We note in an article by an FBI profiler that neither the Boy
Scouts nor the Church require the background and psychological evaluations that public schools and
law enforcement do. It seems that some low percentage either knowingly or with some subconcious
latency end up as abusers. That seems to be a bit lower than the national percentage of 4%, but given
the proximity to groups of youngsters on a regular basis, the perpetrators (and most of them serially)
seem to be more in church and scouts. For starters, if some priest can be defrocked for mocking the
Trinity, surely he can be for molesting children, no? To guess at an answer to the question, let's say
25% of the pedophiles entered knowingly, the remainder were latent late bloomers. That's my wild
guess as an outsider and one time head acolyte.
For years cops and preachers/priests have been serial abusers. Their position of trust made it really difficult for victims to come forward. So... are bad people drawn there? Or are they corrupted once they get there? I go for the later and the opportunities these positions have given ppl to live out their dysfunctional urges.
ReplyDelete