The Hypocrites: The Catholic Church and Sex

There are some who say that I am far too hard on the Roman Catholic Church when it comes to the Church's hypocrisy and the ever expanding sex abuse scandal which now show signs of potentially exploding in Germany. In my opinion, it is unfortunate that more Catholics worldwide refuse to open their eyes and I merely discuss what needs to be talked about until the Catholic laity wakes up and demands changes from Rome. Yes, that's right, demands change - the hierarchy will never willingly change. The other reason that a tough stance on the Catholic Church is the Church's venture into to politics to inflict its religious views on all. More recently, the Catholic Church has spent large sums to assist in depriving gays in California and Maine of CIVIL legal rights. Meanwhile, the Church continues to tell new generations of LGBT youth that they are damaged goods and "inherently disordered." If an institution is going to cause so much harm, self-hatred and engage in the constant condemnation of individuals, then it had better be lily white and sin free itself. Of course, the Roman Catholic Church is anything but sin free and its hypocrisy needs to be subjected to a continual spotlight. The English version of Der Spiegel has a lengthy, must read article that is far less than kind to the Church and Catholics around the world need to be made to look at the foul stench that continues to emanate from the Church hierarchy, starting with Papa Ratzi himself. As you will note, the document that authorizes cover ups dates from 1962. Here are some story highlights:
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This is what it looks like, the document of a conspiracy: 24 pages, with appendix, in Latin, published by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at the Vatican. A "norma interna," or confidential set of guidelines for all bishops, who were required to keep it a secret for all eternity, in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost
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The guidelines, issued in the year of our Lord 1962, address a sensitive subject: sex in the confessional. The Vatican doesn't put it quite that directly, preferring to use more guarded terminology to describe what happens when a priest leads a member of his flock astray before, during or after the confession -- in other words, when he provokes a penitent "toward impure and obscene matters" through "words or signs or nods of the head (or) by touch."
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According to the instructions from Rome, the bishops were to deal very firmly with each individual case -- so firmly, in fact, that everything would remain within the confines of the Holy Church. After all, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith -- formerly known as the Inquisition -- has centuries of experience in conducting internal investigations. The Vatican has always filled all the positions in such investigations -- prosecutors, defendants, judges -- from within its own ranks, while the investigation files have been kept in the secret archives of the Roman Curia.
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On the surface, the Vatican's objective is to protect the sacrament of the confession. In reality, however, it is trying to uphold the Catholic Church's claim to being a superior moral authority. Nothing can be allowed to besmirch this authority: not the sexual abuse of children and adolescents, committed by thousands of Catholic priests worldwide; not the secret relationships between pastor and their housekeepers; not the covering-up of priests' children; and not the love affairs between gay clerics. They are all cases of a double standard that arose because it is difficult for people -- even priests -- to subordinate their human desires to a papal encyclical. This code of silence has been upheld for decades, in some cases informally and in some cases by virtue of Vatican directives like the 1962 guideline. But now the wall of silence is coming down here in Germany.
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There has never been a systematic investigation into how many Catholic schools, homes and rectories were the scenes of abuse, even when there was evidence in the files.
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The scandal is just beginning, and yet it has already made a deep impression: on parents, who expect Catholic schools to provide their children with moral guidance; on the victims, who are now confronting their dark past after living with it half their lives; and on the faithful, who now regard their church with dismay. Their shock stems not only from the fact that there are pedophiles in the church, as there are elsewhere in society. It also comes from the fact that the church systematically protected the perpetrators and ignored the victims, and that it repressed and covered up sexual abuse in its own ranks for decades -- and in doing so enabled pedophile priests to leave behind a trail of emotional devastation throughout Germany.
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[T]he clerics are still a long way from any sort of true self-criticism or far-reaching analysis, because it would require them to examine the Church's repressed sexual morality that is dictated from above. It would require an honest discussion about celibacy and its consequences, particularly when it comes to the Church's recruitment practices. In a church that is having trouble attracting men to the priesthood, particularly as a result of the ban on marriage, the number of good candidates has become so small that too many inappropriate candidates get admitted.
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"If you are forced, by virtue of your profession, to live a life without a wife and children, there is a great risk that healthy integration of sexuality will fail, which can lead to pedophile acts, for example," theologian Hans Küng wrote in SPIEGEL in 2005. . . . There is widespread agreement that this climate of repressed sexuality promotes sexual molestation of children in schools, homes and parishes.

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To be brutally honest, rank and file Catholics who continue to meekly go to mass and contribute to the collection plate are enablers and part of the problem. They have funded the morally bankrupt Church hierarchy and system that has protected sexual predators and knowingly allowed children and youth to be abused and violated.