A reader left the typical excuse being put forward by defenders of the Roman Catholic Church: Anglicans and other denominations have had sexual abuse problems - he cites a situation in Canada - and therefore, those of us "Protestants" who criticize the Catholic Church are hypocrites. First, as a former life long Catholic who was sickened by the Catholic Church's systematic cover up of sexual abuse, I believe I have more than some "Protestant" perspective - particularly having been an altar boy for 10 years and, hence, with an understanding of the Church's extremely warped attitude toward sex in general. I have NEVER said that other denominations are guilt free on this issue - indeed I have gone after the Southern Baptist Convention numerous times for its continued pretense that there is no child sexual abuse problem amongst its pastors.*
The difference that sets the Catholic Church apart from all other denominations are (1) the literally world wide scope of the problem and (2) the mandates from the Vatican not to report abuse and try to cover it all up to protect the Church's reputation. I have yet to see any reports that other denominations have had such centralized top down mandates to cover up abuse. Thus there is a HUGE distinction between relatively localized problems in scattered places involving other denominations and the global scope of the Catholic Church's problems, including Vatican directives threatening those who did not cover up abuse with excommunication.
*The other factors that makes the Catholic Church unique is it's forced celibacy requirement for priests - at least in the Roman Rite Church - and its obsession with sex being something foul and dirty. I am not aware of any study that has looked at the issue, but if married eastern rite Catholic clergy do not have the same magnitude of sexual abuse of children and youths, then that would be telling as well on the impact of compulsory celibacy.
*
Andrew Sullivan had a post late last week that in my view did a great analysis of the havoc that the closet and celibacy works on priests, especially those recruited into high school seminaries. Here are highlights:
*
What's fascinating in the steady onslaught of new incidences of previous cover-ups of child rape and molestation in the Catholic hierarchy is the notion that the hierarchs tended to see child rape as a sin rather than a crime. . . How could that be, one asks? Well: imagine you are a young gay Catholic teen coming into his sexuality and utterly convinced that it's vile and evil. What do you do? I can tell you from my own experience. You bury it. But of course, you can't bury it. So you objectify sex; and masturbate. You cannot have sexual or even emotional contact with a teenage girl, because it is simply impossible, and you certainly cannot have sex with another teenage boy or you will burn in hell for ever ... so you have sex with images in your own head. Your sex life becomes completely solitary.
*
Now suppose your powers of suppression and attachment to religious authority are also strong - perhaps stronger because you feel so adrift you need something solid to cling onto in your psyche. And you know you cannot marry a woman. But you want to have status and cover as a single man. If this is the 1950s and 1960s, it's into the Church you go. You think it will cure you. In fact, it only makes you sicker because your denial is buttressed by their collective denial. And the whole thing becomes one big and deepening spiral of lies and corruption.
*
Many of these tormented men have arrested sexual and emotional development. They have never had a sexual or intimate relationship with any other human being. Sex for them is an abstraction, a sin, not an interaction with an equal. And their sexuality has been frozen at the first real moment of internal terror: their early teens. So they tend to be attracted still to those who are in their own stage of development: teenage boys. And in their new positions, they are given total access to these kids who revere them for their power.
*
And they know that many around them have the same patterns, and so a truly sick subculture perpetuates this. In the end, it is all about themselves and their pathologies, how to express them and how to hide them. As social sexual tolerance advances, and as fewer straight men are prepared to give up sex for life to become priests, the proportion of screwed up pastors increases. In this self-protective environment, these priests do not even see the children as fellow humans. They remain like those solitary abstract images in their heads. So they cannot fully grasp the enormity of the crime they are committing and see it merely as another part of the vortex of their sexual sin.
*
These men are too objectively disordered to run a church. They bask in self-denial, while they wage a culture war against gay men who have actually dealt with their sexuality, who have owned it, and celebrated it and even found ways to channel it into adult relationships and even civil marriage.
*
Andrew's analysis is, in my opinion, point on and demonstrates the results of the Church's condemnation of all things sexual and the demand that priests live in an emotional void in terms of relationships. Experts such as the following have previously focused on portion of it and the fact that the Church, unwittingly, has created its own problem:
*
Many of the priests who have been accused of abuse attended seminaries at a time when sex was barely discussed in class. . . . some priests suffer from stunted sexual development - that their sexual feelings stopped changing when they entered the worlds of the seminary and the priesthood, or even before, so they act as if they were adolescents themselves.
"If you're exploring your sexuality and your sexuality is homosexual, where are you going to find a partner? You're going to find a partner with someone in your emotional age range," Demarest said. "This is where these guys are mentally and emotionally. I'm not a bang-on-the-drum antigay person, but people need to stop dancing around this issue."
*
"There is no evidence that an adult gay male is any more likely to seek out a boy for sexual activities than would there be a likelihood of an adult heterosexual man seeking out a little girl for sexual activities," said Berlin, who, along with Finkelhor, . . . . In the general public, the majority of adolescent sex abuse cases involve female victims. So why do boys seem to be victimized more frequently than girls by priests? Specialists say the answer is probably in part access: until recently, only boys were altar servers, for example.
*
And part of the answer may lie in the culture of the priesthood. "The priesthood is a homosocial culture - all the values within the culture are male, and the reason there has been such a tolerance across the board of sexual activity by priests or bishops is because there is a boys-will-be-boys atmosphere," said A.W. Richard Sipe, a psychotherapist and former priest. "It's kind of a spiritual fraternity - like a college fraternity, but with a spiritual aura around it." When you're young and vulnerable, being too close to that fraternity can sometimes be dangerous.
*
What's fascinating in the steady onslaught of new incidences of previous cover-ups of child rape and molestation in the Catholic hierarchy is the notion that the hierarchs tended to see child rape as a sin rather than a crime. . . How could that be, one asks? Well: imagine you are a young gay Catholic teen coming into his sexuality and utterly convinced that it's vile and evil. What do you do? I can tell you from my own experience. You bury it. But of course, you can't bury it. So you objectify sex; and masturbate. You cannot have sexual or even emotional contact with a teenage girl, because it is simply impossible, and you certainly cannot have sex with another teenage boy or you will burn in hell for ever ... so you have sex with images in your own head. Your sex life becomes completely solitary.
*
Now suppose your powers of suppression and attachment to religious authority are also strong - perhaps stronger because you feel so adrift you need something solid to cling onto in your psyche. And you know you cannot marry a woman. But you want to have status and cover as a single man. If this is the 1950s and 1960s, it's into the Church you go. You think it will cure you. In fact, it only makes you sicker because your denial is buttressed by their collective denial. And the whole thing becomes one big and deepening spiral of lies and corruption.
*
Many of these tormented men have arrested sexual and emotional development. They have never had a sexual or intimate relationship with any other human being. Sex for them is an abstraction, a sin, not an interaction with an equal. And their sexuality has been frozen at the first real moment of internal terror: their early teens. So they tend to be attracted still to those who are in their own stage of development: teenage boys. And in their new positions, they are given total access to these kids who revere them for their power.
*
And they know that many around them have the same patterns, and so a truly sick subculture perpetuates this. In the end, it is all about themselves and their pathologies, how to express them and how to hide them. As social sexual tolerance advances, and as fewer straight men are prepared to give up sex for life to become priests, the proportion of screwed up pastors increases. In this self-protective environment, these priests do not even see the children as fellow humans. They remain like those solitary abstract images in their heads. So they cannot fully grasp the enormity of the crime they are committing and see it merely as another part of the vortex of their sexual sin.
*
These men are too objectively disordered to run a church. They bask in self-denial, while they wage a culture war against gay men who have actually dealt with their sexuality, who have owned it, and celebrated it and even found ways to channel it into adult relationships and even civil marriage.
*
Andrew's analysis is, in my opinion, point on and demonstrates the results of the Church's condemnation of all things sexual and the demand that priests live in an emotional void in terms of relationships. Experts such as the following have previously focused on portion of it and the fact that the Church, unwittingly, has created its own problem:
*
Many of the priests who have been accused of abuse attended seminaries at a time when sex was barely discussed in class. . . . some priests suffer from stunted sexual development - that their sexual feelings stopped changing when they entered the worlds of the seminary and the priesthood, or even before, so they act as if they were adolescents themselves.
"If you're exploring your sexuality and your sexuality is homosexual, where are you going to find a partner? You're going to find a partner with someone in your emotional age range," Demarest said. "This is where these guys are mentally and emotionally. I'm not a bang-on-the-drum antigay person, but people need to stop dancing around this issue."
*
"There is no evidence that an adult gay male is any more likely to seek out a boy for sexual activities than would there be a likelihood of an adult heterosexual man seeking out a little girl for sexual activities," said Berlin, who, along with Finkelhor, . . . . In the general public, the majority of adolescent sex abuse cases involve female victims. So why do boys seem to be victimized more frequently than girls by priests? Specialists say the answer is probably in part access: until recently, only boys were altar servers, for example.
*
And part of the answer may lie in the culture of the priesthood. "The priesthood is a homosocial culture - all the values within the culture are male, and the reason there has been such a tolerance across the board of sexual activity by priests or bishops is because there is a boys-will-be-boys atmosphere," said A.W. Richard Sipe, a psychotherapist and former priest. "It's kind of a spiritual fraternity - like a college fraternity, but with a spiritual aura around it." When you're young and vulnerable, being too close to that fraternity can sometimes be dangerous.
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