Martin Henry IT IS amazing how far the media has managed to get with its rolling exposé on the sexual abuse of children among a celibate priesthood. The usual strategies of suppression and deflection have been thoroughly outmanoeuvred.
How could that have happened? The calculated disinterest of secular Big Media in religion and the great settled strength and polished image of the Church may have led to this catastrophic letting down of the guard which has left the Church and its priesthood embarrassingly outflanked.
The strategies of recovery and restoration will be one of the great dramatic stories of our times, except that by the time the juggernaut rolls the media would have likely lost or be induced to lose interest and would have moved on to the next big story.
As part of the unfolding strategy of deflection comparisons have been drawn between the sexual misconduct of Roman Catholic clergy and Protestant clergy and the secular psychological view of sin as disease, which otherwise Rome would not endorse, has been expediently invoked as in the carefully crafted local response by the Bishop of Montego Bay, Charles Dufour (Sunday Gleaner, April 28). Positions of power, of authority and influence will always create opportunities for the sexual exploitation of subordinates and dependents, without or with 'consent.'
While the media has zeroed in on paedophilia, the problem extends to adults, particularly women and to youth, and is much worse. In a little story carried by The Gleaner from Reuters on May 7 one woman in Los Angeles claimed that her 19-year-old daughter was sired by one of six priests who had sexually seduced her.
A close examination of the issue will, I believe, reveal fundamental doctrinal and practical differences between Protestant and Catholic on the matter of the sexual behaviour of clergy.
For one thing, to an extraordinary degree, the Roman Catholic Church operates as a secret society. Only recently, when questions were raised here about the operations of Missionaries of the Poor with respect to the relationship between expatriate members of the Order and their families, Father Ho Lung told us essentially and matter-of-factly that the Church has her secrets which are not open to any sort of public scrutiny.
Newsweek of June 17, in an article by Alan Zarembo, "A priest and a crime caper: A new book sheds light on a sensational case and the complex relations between Mexico's church and state", contains this paragraph: "The implications of the accusations reaches beyond the murder mystery. In 1860 Mexico enacted some of the world's strictest laws dividing church and state. The church, however, largely continued to view itself as self-governing beholden only to its own laws. It rarely dealt with the justice system. The old attitude was on display... when the US paedophile-priest scandal spilled into Mexico... The Mexican Conference of Bishops defended the long-standing practice of covering up abuse cases to protect the reputation of the church and the victims. Some clergy members admitted that the church had paid victims 'reasonable sums' of money for their silence. The church backed away from that position after a public outcry."
It is virtually impossible to find an example among major Protestant groups that takes the Roman Catholic attitude of secrecy and supremacy above the state and its laws. One of the truly amazing things in the paedophilia issue, largely missed by a media not cued in to the significance of these things, is the huddling of the Church up to the level of the Pope on how to respond to the State on what is a criminal matter. As one letter writer to Newsweek put it: "Child abuse is a serious crime that must be dealt with according to the law of the land; it is not related to religion. The law that applies to [other abusers] should apply equally to the priests".
There are a number of doctrinal bases for the peculiar sexual dysfunctionality of the Roman Catholic Church. The celibate priesthood perhaps heads the list. Drawn straight out of pagan practice, with no defence in New Testament Christianity, Alexander Hislop in The Two Babylons tells us that "the records of all nations where priestly celibacy has been introduced have proved that, instead of ministering to the purity of those condemned to it, it has only plunged them in the deepest pollution."
Hislop cited several non-Christian examples and then dropped a bombshell of documented historical fact. When Pope Paul V sought to mediate the elimination of the licensed brothels in the 'Holy City,' the Roman Senate voted against their removal on the ground that their existence was the only means of hindering the priests from seducing their wives and daughters.
Despite the veil of secrecy and the strategy of suppression, there is considerable documented evidence of sexual engagements among priests and nuns and the disposal of offspring. Celibacy is unnatural, anti-Biblical and unattainable for many in the priesthood as elsewhere. One priest, speaking undoubtedly for many, made his position unequivocally clear: "I took a vow of celibacy [to remain unmarried] not chastity [to remain sexually inactive]". He has the example of several celibate popes like Alexander VI who publicly maintained a large family (Newsweek, May 6).
The celibate priesthood is a magnet for devout homosexual men who are either seeking spiritual refuge from their desires or clandestine opportunity to express them. The best guess, according to Newsweek (May 6), is that between 35 and 50 per cent of Roman Catholic priests are homosexual. The Church stridently opposes homosexuality. Gay Catholic and Professor of Religion at Emory University, Mark Jordan, says, "hypocrisy is almost too weak a word for what the hierarchy is doing. If there were no homosexuals in the priesthood, we would soon cease to have a functioning church." As the bishops know the paedophiles and have kept them covered and serving, so do they know the homosexuals.
MANIPULATION AND ABUSE
Lord Acton, the leading English Catholic historian of the 19th century has bequeathed to posterity this well known dictum: "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely." There are few other places on Earth where there is such absolute power concentrated in such a small space than in the confessional. The misappropriated absolute power of the priest to forgive sins and the demand that the penitent bares her inmost soul in secret to "an erring, sinful fellow mortal, too often corrupted with wine and licentiousness" creates unparalleled opportunities for manipulation and abuse.
Today is the 226th anniversary of the American Declaration of Independence. The First Amendment of her republican Constitution in a single stroke of divinely inspired genius, bars the establishment of a state church, protects the freedom of religion, and establishes freedom of speech and of the press. It is in the context of these constitutional freedoms that the media and public have been able to investigate and expose the matter of priestly paedophilia.
The Church has historically rejected every single one of these principles and is itself governed by a rigid hierarchical system terminating in an absolute monarch, whose office seeks to combine the powers of Caesar and Christ.
Bismarck once remarked, "We are not going to Canossa, either bodily or spiritually". He was referring to the humiliation of an earlier German emperor, Henry IV, who was declared ex-communicated and dethroned by the Pope for disregarding papal authority. Facing fomented rebellion, Henry crossed the Alps in mid-winter to the papal retreat at Canossa where he had to wait three days in fasting and confession before being granted audience and pardon.
Martin Henry is a communications consultant.
