The Boston Globe has an article explaining the Pope’s latest stance on why homosexuals should not be allowed to become priests, even if they are celibate. Why? Because people with same-sex attractions are pedophiles.
The church is looking into the question of homosexuality because some church officials believe there is a link between a high number of gay men in the priesthood and a high incidence of sexual abuse. But specialists say there is no evidence for such a link.
”There is no evidence that a male homosexual is any more risk to a boy than a male heterosexual is to a girl, and one of the problems within the church is that they are confusing the issue of homosexuality with the issues of child abuse and pedophilia,” said Dr. Fred S. Berlin, an associate professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Medicine.
The Pope has launched this investigation as a belated response to the child abuse scandals the church suffered, but has conveniently decided to blame the whole affair on homosexuals rather than fix the cover-ups and manipulations of the clergy. Since the Roman Catholic church does not advocate reparative therapy, but relies entirely on celibacy, this new development constitutes nothing less than educational and employment discrimination. The investigation also has the tantalizing possibility of becoming the new witch hunts, since individual clergy will be looking for “evidence of homosexuality” at seminaries rather than relying on personal testimony.
It seems to me that Pope Benedict is really hoping to capitalize on condemning homosexuality in much the way John Paul II did, except he plans to go further with it than his predecessor. Introducing reorientation therapy as a Catholic doctrine seems to be a logical next step, as being outwardly celibate is no longer enough.
It never ceases to amaze me how willing people are to accept that man-on-woman rape is “about power, not sex” but refuse to accept it regarding man-on-boy rape.
Same pathology, just a different manifestation.
The Catholic Church has already declared that a homosexual orientation is a “given” and that is why they do not support “reparative therapy.” According to reports yesterday, that came after this Globe piece was printed, Mr. Ratzinger, the head of the Catholic Church and a foreign head of state (of Vatican City), has already signed onto the policy of stopping all gay men from entering the priesthood, while NOT forcing all gay men out of the priesthood, which is even more cynical. The Vatican knows if they forced out all gay priests there would not be enough priests to continue the Church in this country (it also would raise a lot of questions – is my sister still married and was my mother properly buried? as pretty effeminate priests officiated at those ceremonies).
Echoing Kip, there is the issue of power, and not sex, potentially at the root of the abuses in the Church, as well as the question of whether repression of sexuality on the scale the Church requires is itself perverse enough to drive “normal” men to go after children, remembering that priests have much more contact with boys than girls.
But I also think we have to wonder about this alleged figure that 80% of the victims of abuse were boys. For one thing, the abuse scandal does not scratch the surface of the percentage of priests breaking their celibacy vows. And as we saw with the case of the Monsignor at St. Patrick’s in NYC, who was forced to resign after he was accused of having an affair with his female secretary, those breaking their vows of celibacy are not necessarily going after either children or males.
But more importantly, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), reports 40 – 50% of its members are female. There have been anecdotal reports that female victims were pressued by the church into not formally reporting their abuse cases, on the theory that it was the female victims “fault” for “leading the priest on.” Did the analysis of victims review all self-identified victims, or only those who filed formal charges, and is that percentage actually reflective of the real problem?
Finally, as I have said before, if the abuse scandal was caused by homosexuality, then we must assume that every bishop in this country is gay. After all, it was the bishops who participated in obstruction of justice, perpetuated fraud on their parishioners, aided and abetted known felons, and conspired to keep the whole thing quiet. Yet NOT ONE bishop has ever been disciplined by the church.
Shouldn’t the ex-gay movement be all over this? After all, if someone is celibate, struggling, has vestiges of attractions to the same-sex, but is, for all intents and purposes, “ex-gay”, should the church condemn that?
It’ll be interesting to see how the Catholic ex-gay groups respond.
I would trust the figures of the Survivors’ Network over those of the Church. The Survivors’ Network does not have a history of lies.
CPT_Doom, you bring up an excellent point. As it stands now, the church is ordaining very few priests in the industrialized countries, and those still working’s average age, I believe is 65, in the U.S. (I can’t recall the source for that number).
By closing the priesthood to gay men, the church is bringing on its demise even faster. In view of the fact that priests are to be celibate, what’s the difference if they’re gay or straight? What’s the point of re-orienation therapy if they’re supposed to be celibate?
I’ve said this many times over to friends and family, the Roman Catholic Church is quickly fading into irrelevancy in North America and Europe, and the same thing is starting to happen now in Latin America.
One big reason for this is the requirement that priests remain celibate, but another is the church’s inflexibility women as priests.
Other reasons are the church’s stands on birth control, gays/lesbians, and its irrational insistence on remaining a non-democratic institution, e.g., refusing to let laity become more involved in policy-making and day to day operations.
It seems odd, but as societies democratize and become more affluent, the influence of the church seems to wane.
Am I alone in thinking this?
[“It seems odd, but as societies democratize and become more affluent, the influence of the church seems to wane.
Am I alone in thinking this?”]
Of course not. Look at that soon-to-be-no-longer-a-catholic-country Ireland. But it’s more affulency than democracy. It’s the reason Bin Laden went to Aghanistan and couldn’t kick off his “jihad” in Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt or Jordan. Blessed are the poor.
But just let me applaud the catholic churches latest inquisition (I’m sure they’ll find a few jews along the way too, maybe even an Unitarian) because the more of this crap they do, the faster this archaic institution disappears from the planet.
The cruel paradox (from my POV) is this –
the RCC calls all clergy/religious to lead lives of chastity.
It also calls ALL gays and lesbians to lead lives of chastity.
BUT. . . is now requiring that the two groups remain strictly separate. Seems to me that having a reservoir of members who are ‘pre-qualified’ for Holy Orders would be a godsend (pardon the bleak pun) for them. Alas.
On the humorous end, I came across a reference lately to a phenomenon allegedly encountered in seminary – the piously observant and liturgically traditional ‘scroop’ (scrupulous observer) who is obviously as gay as a cageful of parakeets on laughing gas. These priests-in-training were known as ‘Daughters of Trent’.
I hope that you realize that more than a few churches are little more than sexpools. My partner, who was raised in an Eastern Rite church after they emigrated to New Britain CT, was propositioned by the choirmaster when he was a mid-teen. The choirmaster, who was married has trying to have sex with any mid-teen who moved.
The “frosting on the cake” is that, after the priest (who was also married) conducting his father’s funeral in 1981, tried to solicit sex from his mother–the widow–immediately after the funeral ceremony.
Amazing.
Found this on the Courage website in response to the term ‘objectively disordered’ which is bandied around with regard to gays and lesbians:
Notice that the second line is now in need of modification…
And then from the official Catholic Catechism which apparently is not the most recently updated version from God and his mouthpiece, the Pope…
I just completed a paper about homosexuality and child sexual abuse. It can be found at:
https://www.lookingforsam.com/archive/Issues/csa01.htm
Nice work JimI’m glad no-one’s holding their breath for our own page on this, but I have prepared a spreadsheet that works out what proportion of CSA one would expect to see involving boys or girls based on the three aspects of:Fixated vs Regressedproportion of gay/bi/straight men in the pop. group“opportunity” or “access” to either boys or girls.When I shoved the numbers in I was stunned (frankly, I didn’t think it would fall out so easily) to find that the ratios match fairly well to what we see in reality. (such as 1:2 in general, 80%+ in the Catholic Church scandles). I also added an example of the Boy Scouts who ban all gay men but still see molestations etc occuring.You may download the simple spreadsheet here and do your own fiddling around. The “W01” in the file name indicates I’m still working on it, but it’s been interesting to alter the ratios etc and see what falls out. Well, I found it interesting… 🙂
Found this humorous look at the subject:
https://www.tidmus.com/blog/index.php?id=176
Good graphics, but I don’t know how to put the magazine cover here.
>>I just completed a paper about homosexuality and child sexual abuse. It can be found at:
>>https://www.lookingforsam.com/archive/Issues/csa01.htm
Twas a good paper (tho as a trannie my gag reflex activates automatically anytime anyone references the Clark Institute). You might want to add a note on NAMBLA’s attempts to infiltrate pride parades, since that’s also something the RR brings up as often as they can.
Boo.
I understand completely the gag reflex thing about the Clarke Institute, given their history. I was very hesitant to use it, but felt it was an important piece of the puzzle.
Good point about NAMBLA’s activities. They’re not so active out here in the hinterlands, so I’ll have to go digging into news accounts since I have no first-hand info. If anybody knows of any sources offhand, I’d appreciate the tip.
Grant/Dale
That is a fascinating spreadsheet. I’d like to look deeper into some of these what-ifs. Stunning indeed, as you say.
That would be great Jim.As I said, it’s about a simple as it can be to account for the three basic variables but I’d welcome any suggestions you see could be useful.And by simple — I mean things like: once you assume the % of gay, bi and straight men then the numbers for regressed-type CSA will reflect that primary orientation (so, no girls get molested by gay men/no boys by straight men etc). Also, fixated-type CSA is in direct ratio to the ratio of boys to girls (no pref. for either assumed for those molestors — they target who’s available). I also didn’t include a factor for the absolute numbers involving individual fixated vs regressed molestors (it has been reported that fixated-types molest a high number vs the average regressed-type).I know CSA isn’t that simple for individual cases, but overall it’s probably not a rude initial assumption.I initially prepared the spreadsheet after the Johns Report into the Priesthood scandals (to simply see what should have been “expected” in terms of ratios etc) and plugged in the %gay/bi priests being talked about and asked a local bishop what sort of opportunity would prsent itself to a molestor (he estimated that prob. 90% of the type of access required was with boys). And… I got nearly the same predicted result as was reported by Johns. I repeated it for the general population — same.
Re NAMBLA: I doubt you’ll find any press about their lack of inclusion in the community.
Back in the mid 90’s I was on the Pride Committee for CSW, the LA (WeHo) gay pride parade. We simply said “no” when NAMBLA applied. Our attitude was that this was our community’s parade and that it was up to us who we wanted to include (we also exluded Club F**k and some others we thought were purely advertising rather than participating).
I don’t recall any reporting on the issue.