Holy Fathers
by: Harriet Fraad on May 15th, 2010 | 15 Comments »
The global Catholic Church is confronting an extraordinary crisis not faced since the Reformation, which began with sharp criticisms of the Church and ended with a schism out of which emerged the establishment of a separate Protestant Church.
Today, sexual abuse allegations against priests are surging in a startling array of nations: the United States and Canada, New Zealand, Australia, France, Italy, Austria, Germany, The Netherlands, Ireland, Switzerland, Belgium, Bolivia, Mexico, Brazil and Chile. New abuse scandals erupt daily. The John Jay School of Criminal Justice estimates that, in the U.S. alone between 1950 and 2002 hundreds of thousands of children have been sexually abused by Catholic Clergy.
In fact, the Catholic Church has a 2,000 year history of sex abuse. In their acclaimed book, Sex, Priests and Secret Codes (2006), Father Thomas Doyle, with former monks Richard Sipes and Patrick Wall, used its own documents to confirm the Church’s 2,000-year problem with clerical sex abuse.
Why has the Church been plagued by so much pedophilia – predominantly homosexual? And why has a scandal regarding this situation erupted only now?
Why Pedophilia?
As to the first question, the sheer extent of homosexual pedophilic abuse within the Church prompts my speculation that an extremely patriarchal institution, combined with the all-male hierarchy’s repudiation of women as equal partners in service and governance, perhaps engenders a homoerotic internal culture that attracts homosexual men to the priesthood. However, those factors alone cannot explain the predominance of homosexual pedophilia. After all, a high proportion of nuns operating in Catholic all-female environments tend to be lesbians — but not lesbian pedophiles (See Lesbian Nuns: Breaking Silence by Rosemary Curb, LibraryThing).
A therapist who treats abuser priests, Leslie Lothstein, proffers another possible explanation. Lothstein implicates the sexual immaturity of priests, who by entering the seminary often as young as 14, miss a critical passage of maturation — first-time sexual experimentation — that is accessible to their non-seminarian peers. Caught in a bind of stunted sexual growth, such men may be driven emotionally to claim and possess their past unexplored adolescent territory that the rules of a celibate priesthood had placed out of bounds.
My own complementary explanation derives from working with two active priests, two former priests, and several ex-seminarians, who quit their studies partly out of disgust with the sexual abuse to which their teachers subjected them. My work demonstrated, sadly, that sexual abuse at the seminary can simultaneously initiate youngsters into homosexual pedophilia and impart the lesson that Catholic institutions tolerate pedophilia. Moreover, such abuse can also cause a victim to later appropriate his former abuser’s predatory/aggressive behavior as psychological compensation for the shame he had felt during the time he was being abused at the seminary.
Let us take note, however, as we consider these issues, that, yes, homosexual pedophilia predominates behind the Church’s walls. Priests do have greater access to males than to females within Catholicism’s sex-segregated communities — there are no altar girls. Priests take boys, not girls, on retreats and camping trips. And yes, solid evidence invites speculation that the generational reproduction of homosexual pedophilia within the Church is partly attributable to a role-reversal syndrome playing out among officials — from priests to bishops — who themselves had been child victims of abuse. All that being as it may, equally solid documentation exists to show that female children, too, are sometimes the victims of sexual abuse within the Church. In fact girls are one quarter of the victims and they are disproportionately under eight years old.
Why Now?
The second and, I think, more crucial question, is why has this long history of a major church’s institutional practice of pedophilia been exposed only now? Why has silence about an explosive open secret persisted for millennia among a leading church’s Faithful, yet been fully exposed within a single decade? What is happening in the world that is prompting Catholics to expose the criminal behavior of numerous “Godly” and “infallible” custodians of their faith?
1. Feudal relationships under attack by the Reformation and capitalism
For an answer, we must return to Christianity’s last great rupture — the Reformation — which ensued as the economic system known as feudalism began to crumble. Under feudalism, serfs labored on the estates of lords, keeping no more than meager amounts of the food and goods needed for their subsistence and reproduction of the next serf generation. Lords of the Manor were entitled to appropriate almost all of the fruits of their serfs’ labor. Both lords and serfs swore love and fealty to each other, but the one party in power — the lords — determined the content of, and enforced, this commitment.
Medieval Catholicism justified this system, holding that God had decreed the lord/serf arrangement. Not coincidentally, the feudal model was compatible with the interests of the Church itself, which was in effect a feudal lordship that owned vast lands.
The Catholic monk, Martin Luther, counted himself among the many who saw and abhorred the extensive corruption existing within the Church. Particularly offensive were the Church’s sale of religious pardons, called “indulgences,” whereby a sinner could purchase exemption from specific penalties and, thus, gain entry into Heaven. Indulgences amounted to the proverbial last straw of corruption that inspired Martin Luther to nail his writ of protest and demands for reform on the door of the Wittenberg Castle Church. Luther’s example spurred the mobilization of a Protestant movement, which grew in spite of the Pope’s excommunication of Luther and attempt to belittle and suppress his criticisms.
This rise of Protestantism was integral with the emergence of new capitalist formations that would spell the beginning of the end of feudalism. The Protestant Church dismissed the concept that salvation depended on obedience to a Catholic hierarchy. And it disdained the feudal laws of birth on which social position and the near enslavement of serfs were predicated.
Consonant with the needs of an ascendant capitalism and its emerging elite, whose status was based on making money, not on birth, an ideology of personal, individual communion with God arose to replace feudalism’s more cumbersome, hierarchical, and expensive constructs.
Historically, turbulence marks periods of momentous change, and the period under discussion here is no exception. As capitalism pressed its economic reorganization of the production of goods and services in the larger economy, pressure came to bear on the rigidly patriarchal extended families that still populated the feudal estates but would not remain there for much longer. As the lords converted to more profitable forms of production, such as sheepherding, evictions of serfs from the lands their families had farmed for centuries accelerated. Other serfs ran away and migrated to cities in search of employment.
The customs and laws of the past could not hold. Families were falling apart. Pregnant women were left unprotected in suddenly undefined and unproscribed circumstances. Children were abandoned. Faced with various social and economic dislocations, people organized and began to make revolutionary demands — demands that proved frightening to both the new elites and the old church.
2. Feudalism resurrected as a model for the family under capitalism
What happened in France just after the French Revolution illustrates the problem. The most radical and youngest elements among the rebels were demanding state assistance to families, including financial support for all children. The new capitalists strongly opposed such state support for the public since they, the remnants of the aristocracy and the Catholic Church, were the only sectors of society wealthy enough to be taxed to pay the bill.
How, then, to lighten the burden of the commoners’ devastated lives and, thus, hold at bay the threat of more revolution? Ironically, feudalism would provide the solution. The French historian, Jacques Donzelot, documents the invention of the “nuclear” household: how a feudalism-inspired model for the organization of household labor and family relationships was facilitated and reinforced.
In the world of serfdom, the father was the autocratic head of the family, who controlled the lives of his wife, his children and his children’s families. The eldest son was second in command, heir to the father’s rigidly patriarchal role. Replication of this model in the world of nascent capitalism elevated the importance of every married man. It conferred upon an ex-serf the role of feudal lord, a wielder of absolute power over his own home — his castle — wife and children. Women enjoyed the “protection,” in pregnancy and child rearing, of a wage-earning male dictator.
The French nation born of the 1789 revolution reinforced “nuclear” families by giving employment and benefits exclusively to men with dependent wives and children. For eligible families, that state support spelled survival — but survival at a price. The new nuclear model reinforced lines of dominance and subordination, teaching children and women alike absolute obedience to a male paternal authority. Birth control in the 17- and early 1800s included abandoning or killing children one did not want. See The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance: By John Boswell. The children who survived learned absolute obedience, as well as many other strategies for pleasing their parents.
In sum, power elites forged, out of feudal concepts of domination, submission, authority and obedience, instruments of social control that have served them well to this day in sustaining their elite power and wealth. Largely ignoring people’s cries for help from the state, they shifted onto the nuclear family the cost of raising future generations. Men were disciplined to work until their last breath to support their wives and children. Women were disciplined to maintain homes and raise future obedient employees. (Child-rearing guides developed by religious right-wingers still emphasize absolute obedience; they also affirm women’s subordinate positions within churches: see Spare The Child: The Religious Roots of Punishment; and Does The Catholic Church Hate Women). Interestingly, at its inception the U.S. defined itself as a nation opposed to feudalism, yet it has continued the feudal organization of domestic and emotional labor in the household.
3. How household feudalism is breaking down today
How does all of this relate to the contemporary scandals that are rocking the Catholic Church? The “traditional” family idealized by the religious right and the Catholic Church is feudal in its economic organization. Notwithstanding the housekeeping aids found in most homes, housework is often organized along feudal lines. The wife, like the serf, provides use-value goods like cooked foods, order, cleanliness, and use-value services like food shopping, laundering, child care, low-tech nursing care, management of both children’s and adults’ social lives, elder care, etc. And like the serf, she holds back a portion of her goods and services for her personal use and sustenance. She cooks for herself, her husband and family; she makes the whole bed, including her husband’s side; in many and probably most homes, she cleans everyone’s dishes, etc.
Her labor was, and is today, not considered work worthy of acknowledgment. Rather, it is often viewed as an aspect of her biological makeup and destiny by the Christian, Jewish and Muslim religions, according to each of their Gods’ law. Not only is she not regarded as a wage laborer, she is not seen as a laborer at all, but rather as a person whose DNA compels her to produce use-values consumed in the household. Like her medieval counterpart, she swears love and fidelity to her husband. See Class Struggle on the Homefront: Work, Conflict, and Exploitation ….Until recently, the terms of this oath were subject to enforcement by her husband without recourse. But even though ongoing struggles for women’s rights have won passage of laws against abuse in the home, domestic violence is still a leading cause of death for women aged 15-44. Women are often killed after leaving a relationship with a spouse or lover who felt entitled to enforce his terms on her departure.
Children have also been accorded some rights, owing again to feminist activism. However, murdered children are still overwhelmingly the victims of their own families in their own homes (see here and here). Certain prevalent circumstances of the past appeared to rationalize the existence of household feudalism: a family wage for men; unreliable birth control methods; unavailable legal abortion, and the widespread belief in biologically determined sex roles. Let’s consider these factors:
- The family wage paid to North American white men between 1820 and 1970 enabled the recipients to support a wife whose full time job was cleaning, cooking and providing emotional service to the male head-of-household and the couple’s children. An ideological rationale for that arrangement was the belief that biology is a God-decreed destiny: Women must work at home providing use value services to husbands and children. Women in such feudal households are subordinate to the authority of a male-in-chief. However, this patriarchal, feudal family structure, so enthusiastically celebrated by the Catholic Church, is now eroding, in large part because men’s real wages, i.e. what they can actually buy, have been flat since 1970. Women must work outside of the home for the survival of their families.
- Birth control is now widely available.
- Abortion, though often difficult to obtain, is accessible nonetheless.
- Gender ideology is changing, which means economic conditions supportive of the feudal marriage paradigm are no longer guaranteed. The three quarters of US women who now hold outside jobs are less likely to accept doing all the domestic and emotional labor after a long day’s work in the marketplace. Catholicism’s gender ideology no longer makes sense in modern family life, as evidenced by the faithfuls’ overwhelming disregard for their Church’s prohibition against birth control. More and more people choose not to marry, even when they bear children. A majority of marriages end in separation or divorce, usually initiated by overworked women. Meanwhile, the unquestioned authority of men is eroding along with the feudal family structure. See again Class Struggle on the Home Front . Yet The Catholic Church still bans divorce.
4. A mass movement of Catholics once again challenges the Church’s support of a feudal ideology
The Reformation challenged Catholic Church authority, in part, because its ideology was a class-based justification of feudal exploitation. Today, Catholic Church authority can reasonably be taken to task for being an ideology that justifies the exploitation of women in the household. Today, the feudal “nuclear” family is under scrutiny in the U.S., Europe, New Zealand, Australia, and among educated people in South America — where gender roles are transforming. Those are the places where Catholics are breaking the silence and speaking out about sexual abuse committed by Church fathers.
Just as in the Reformation the feudal economic structure of society at large was breaking down, opening the way for a corrupt religious institution to be exposed and fought, today feudalism’s gradual breakdown within the family is proceeding parallel to a sharp decline in tolerance for the perpetration of sexual abuse by priests and other Catholic clergy.
- Feudal lords were privileged to demand sex from their serfs, while fathers of the feudal “nuclear” family have had the privilege of committing incest with their children.
- Although incest among biological fathers has never been legally sanctioned, it has long existed as a devastating secret shame until being exposed by the women’s movement. Similarly, “incestuous” abuse by the Church’s Holy Fathers was an open secret that left its victims ashamed and devastated. Now, Catholic clergy, like other fathers, are increasingly seen as men who must be held accountable to the laws of the land and the laws of their professed morality.
- Just as during the Reformation, a mass movement arose to expose the corruption of a Church that hid its own criminal sin, in our own time a mass movement of Catholics is again forming to demand transparency, change and punishment of sex crimes.
The Church’s efforts to respond
The Catholic Church’s rigid controls are breaking down. Some priests are demanding the right to marry. Women are demanding the right to be priests. A whopping 59,000 nuns defied their bishops’ orders and supported the Obama health Care plan.
Pope Benedict the XVI, like his predecessor, Pope John Paul, had insisted on his “infallible” authority to use his personal discretion in handling internal Church matters, despite the protection that approach has extended to sex offenders in Church officialdom at the expense of children. In one reported instance, Benedict and John Paul explicitly praised a French Bishop for accepting imprisonment rather than handing over a French pedophile priest to legal authorities: Memo From Vatican City – In Abuse Crisis, a Church Is Pitted ... Benedict and the Vatican hierarchy tried to silence critics by reasserting the absolute authority of the Church hierarchy.
In recent weeks, the Pope and his closest deputies tried to silence critics and restore faith in the Church’s upper echelons with contradictory pronouncements. Their statements gave the impression that they were testing the effects of possible excuses for the Pope’s tolerance of sex crimes in his former position as the Church’s enforcer of doctrine, as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and as Pope. Clearly, Church leaders are feeling the urgency of needing to deflect attacks on the Pope, in light of evidence that throughout his career he has consistently failed to defrock, or even strongly condemn, pedophiles: Sex abuse reports spread in Europe; focus on pope | National … The Pope, Pedophilia and the Class Struggle, Voice from the Desert » Blog Archive » Piercing a papal shroud …, Under attack, Pope says faith will give courage to fight …. The Pope’s spokesmen dismissed the revelations of rampant sex abuse as “Petty Gossip” Pope dismisses ‘petty gossip’ of sexual abuse allegations | World … They attributed the accusations to U.S. media bias Catholic Culture : Latest Headlines : Cardinal Levada decries …. They then equated the Pope’s having to suffer accusations with Jesus’ suffering for humanity Archbishop says Pope is just like Jesus Christ « True Discernment.. They equated accusations of pedophilia to anti-Semitism Vatican slams New York Times “attack” on Pope Benedict in sex … Vatican Official Compares Attacks On Pope Benedict To Anti-Semitism. Jewish groups protested, particularly in light of the Pope’s former membership in the Hitler Youth and his move to sanctify his endorser, Pope John Paul, who had a record of condoning fascism (see here, here and here ). [For commentary on Tikkun, see David Sylvester's "The Deepest Wound: Why the Catholic Church Needs to Heal its Anti-Jewish Legacy - Now!" Ed.]
Church spokesmen tried to blame the problem of pedophile sex abuse on homosexuals, implying that homosexuality is synonymous with pedophilia — that too caused outrage. Next, they stressed the need for forgiveness and repentance, without taking any steps to discipline either abusive priests and bishops or their enablers Pope breaks silence on abuse, urges repentance – Yahoo! News.. The issue was not silenced. Finally on May 12, 2010 the Pope declared that sex abuse is a sin and sickness within the Catholic Church.
It seems significant that the Pope did not declare pedophilia a “crime,” in other words a legal, civil crime, for the justice system to punish.[1]
For the first time, on April 13, 2010 Pope Benedict XVI ordered priests to report their allegations of crimes against children directly to the police, in those states where relevant laws are in effect (New Vatican Guide: Clergy Must Report Sex Abuse – CBS News). One wonders why this order merely references a single specific law which may or may not be on the books, and not a general body of laws against rape, molestation and child abuse?
In addressing those aspects of public outrage aimed directly at himself, Benedict finally took control of The Legionaries of Christ, whose longtime international leader, The Reverend Marcial Maciel Degollado, was the subject of a huge scandal (Vatican Set To Rule On Legionaries Of Christ : NPR). He was known as Father Maciel. Pedophilic sex abuse charges made against Father Maciel by eight priests, along with charges that he fathered several children, had been pending for half a century and noted periodically during that time-span. In 1998, more than four decades after the first reports, the current pope, who was then Cardinal Ratzinger, finally accepted the Maciel case. Within a year, however, he halted the inquiry on the ground that “it isn’t prudent.” Maciel was a hugely successful fund raiser for the Catholic Church which may had had something to do with the Pope’s decision. Eight years later, with Church sex abuse scandals raging in the news media, Pope Benedict banished Father Maciel to a life of prayer with no public statement on The Reverend’s half century of crime (Vatican Set To Rule On Legionaries Of Christ : NPR). The Pope’s takeover of the Legionaries of Christ failed to deflect public outrage and demands for change.
The Church’s crimes
The Catholic Church hierarchy (priests, bishops, cardinals and the Pope himself) has not yet been held accountable, publically and appropriately, for the crimes committed on their watch over several decades: crimes of molestation, rape, assault, and yes, torture of children.
What have been the effects of these crimes on their child victims? A small sample of the Church’s record in this matter conveys the monumentality of this history. The first eruption of accusations occurred in Boston, 2002. Case in point: Father Paul Richard Shanley of Greater Boston.
Example: Shanley
Father Shanley abused scores of children in eight locations, six of those locations in Massachusetts. When reports of the rapes and molestations he had committed[2] came to Church officials’ attention, they simply transferred him to a new post. His male victims ranged in age from six to 21. For example, he raped Kevin Ford in Newton, Massachusetts beginning when Kevin was six years old and continuing for six consecutive years. In other cases, he made proposals of sado-masochistic sex to a young Massachusetts mental patient, and he raped a 15-year-old at the Warwick House for “alienated youth” in Roxbury. Each time the Archdiocese received reports of these crimes, they moved Shanley to another parish with a glowing testament to the competence of his youth ministry. Father Shanley’s final posting was in San Bernardino, California, where Cardinal Law recommended him to Saint Anne’s and Saint John’s Churches as “a priest in good standing.” When more reports of his sex crimes were submitted, he spent a brief time in therapy, paid for by the Church, at Hartford, Connecticut’s Institute for Living. Finally, in 1994, the Boston Archdiocese under Cardinal Law suggested that Shanley be put on medical leave, with full pay, to remove him from sight. At that point, he took up residence at the California resort of his choice: Whispering Palms, a facility owned by a fellow priest named Father White. The Catholic Church financed Shanley’s stay at Whispering Palms which was a clothing optional homosexual resort where sex was practiced around the pool. Father Shanley’s tenure as a priest known by the Church to be a pedophile dated from 1965 to 1994 — almost 30 years. In 1996, citing Father Shanley’s “impressive record,” Cardinal Law of Boston recommended him for retirement-with-full-benefits as a senior priest. In 2002, as scandal consumed the Diocese and dominated news headlines, the police arrested Father Shanley for sex crimes. He was sentenced to 12 to 15 years for rape of a child. He was defrocked in 2004. See a timeline here.
By the time of Shanley’s arrest, Cardinal Law was wanted for questioning in numerous priest-related sex abuse cases. He left Boston for the Vatican (evading media requests for public comment), where he received a salaried Church position and a rent-free apartment in Rome (Vatican Appoints Law Head of Basilica).
Example: Murphy
Another U.S. case is that of Father Lawrence Murphy, who sexually abused 200 deaf boys in Wisconsin over a 24-year period strewn with reports sent to the Vatican about his crimes. Pope Benedict X!V permitted Father Murphy to retire as a paid priest, with full benefits, and exempted him from any investigative proceedings so he could die “with honor” (For Years, Deaf Boys Tried to Tell of Priest’s Abuse – NYTimes.com, CNS STORY: Vatican defends action in case of Wisconsin priest abuser). No assistance or compensation was provided to the hundreds of Father Murphy’s deaf victims. Those who had not committed suicide or withdrawn in shame from society, tried valiantly to bring Father Murphy to justice. They reported him to the bishop repeatedly. They contacted the police and the district attorney’s office, which referred their case back to the Church. They picketed the Church. Their only success was in triggering his retirement to his parent’s country home, where he went on to volunteer at a boy’s prison, free to molest others (Vatican Declined to Defrock U.S. Priest Who Abused Boys – NYTimes.com, For Years, Deaf Boys Tried to Tell of Priest’s Abuse – NYTimes.com …. The priest who abused deaf boys for 24 years).
Example: Irish beatings of children
Sex abuse was not the only crime perpetrated against children inside the Catholic Church. Severe beatings often accompanied sex abuse or were administered separately. In these instances, priests were sometimes joined by nuns. The most well-documented recent case involved 35,000 children, who suffered ritual beatings over a period of 60 years at Catholic residential schools in Ireland (Revealed, six decades of ‘ritual’ child abuse: Catholic schools …).
Examples worldwide
Similar examples, far too numerous to cite, exist wherever officials of the Catholic Church have had unfettered access to children, whether in orphanages, programs for troubled youngsters, small group homes, parochial schools, choir academies, etc. Currently, there are cases of sexual abuse in Ireland, Malta, Germany, Austria, The Netherlands, Italy, Switzerland, Poland, France, Belgium, Italy, Chile, Mexico and Spain. These cases are marked by the same sordid program of protection for the abusing Church official, and lifelong torment for the victims.
Holy Fathers have appropriated unto themselves the rights of lords in a feudal world, a world of their — not God’s — creation. As in olden days, the rights of serf-children in their custody within this world are non-existent.
What are the effects on children of crimes committed against them by “men of the cloth”? Priests tend to elicit from the faithful the love, trust and respect one associates with family. And like family, they have special access to children, including the opportunity to influence children’s development. In residential facilities, authorized by the state, they are substitute parents. Perceived as messengers of God whose duties supposedly include hearing confessions, giving advice, giving comfort, moral support and a hand of friendship — priests enjoy power rivaling that of biological fathers. And priests, too, are called “father.”
The sexual crimes committed against children by men addressed officially as “father” are crimes of incest, betrayal, emotional and physical harm. When a child is confronted with the invisibility of his suffering to the protector/abuser, or the man’s indifference to that suffering, the wounds inflicted are as deep as the ocean. The scars left — emotional, relational and sexual scars — never heal completely in the victim’s lifetime. Because children’s egos, intellects and personalities are still in formation, they tend to feel they have perpetrated the crimes of which they are actually the victims. They feel guilty, ashamed, unprotected and helpless, especially if and when they summon the courage to report the abuse and nothing is done. They are vulnerable to repeated abuse because they’re afraid to recognize what happened to them. Feeling powerless to stop it, they dissociate if and when the abuse repeats. They psychologically refuse conscious knowledge of their own experience. Their sex abuse remains as an unconscious, guilty wound. They are prone to depression. They are disproportionately dysfunctional and, as they grow up, may not be able to enjoy their sexuality. They are disproportionately suicidal The Dark Life-Altering Effects of Incest – Associated Content…Impact of child sexual abuse: A review of the research.
The Church long ago ceded to secular government the realms of foreign policy and corporate business practices. The Church has no comment on the practice of usury with regard to credit card bills, or on the fact that the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” exempts governments from its reach. The Church’s influence has noticeably shrunk. The last, bastion it can claim is a personal/family life paradigm of medieval design. But even in that realm, although feudalism lives with the blessing and encouragement of the Holy Fathers, the days of their rule may be numbered.
An end in sight
The oppressed faithful — male and female — have found their voices, which are blending with voices outside the walls of institutional Catholicism. For example, a new generation of reflexively feminist women, who seem to have come by their self-assurance and determination via a different route than the feminist movement of yesterday, are challenging their partners to renegotiate domestic contracts — and a lot of partners are “getting it.”
Perhaps when more people in the U.S. recognize that their “American dream” has been robbed; that vast wealth is accumulating every minute at their expense; that they are being used and abused; that they are not personally to blame for the disintegration of life in their homeland …. perhaps, they too, will lose their shame and call for justice. The men and women whose adolescence and human rights were violated by callous and hypocritical men may show us the way.
_______________________________
[1] I am indebted to Jean Bond for this point.
[2] I recognize that this man has not been tried in a court of law and, thus, not legally been found guilty. However, since there are multiple accusations and the Church and state colluded in keeping these cases within the secret sanctum of the Catholic Church, I presume guilt on the basis of evidence rather than the legal conviction.
This is such an insightful piece, with a fresh perspective!! Thanks.
Really great article pulling the information all together and very insightful as to how the church and family have the same model. Serfdom does not work and neither do patriarchal dictatorships. They are models for how not to do things and how to dominate, control and subordinate others. If we are truly civilized then realization needs to occur that these are unhealthy habits for the human race, and especially terrible those who are the victims of abusive lords.
You are so correct. In The New York Times,their is a story about the Pope who is again addressing himself to the feudal family. In spite of the terrible abuses he has condoned, he is in Portugal warning against the sins of gay marriage and abortion. The prohibition against gay marriage is part of a stated homophobic agenda. If sex roles are not biologically determined than the birth order that assigns the feudal order in the household is questioned. There is no word about the rain of abuses and his reign in which abuse is silenced until there are expensive legal penalties that could be levied.
PERVE
“I pray to you, O Holy Father,
Who represents Our Lord on earth
But Whom I’d rather not now bother
(Although He was of virgin birth)
To bless me with your intercession
And so I would make my confession
To you, O Pontiff. Hear me, please.
Il Papa, I’m on bended knees
And beg you for your consecration.
Allow me, please, to kiss your ring;
And, if you want… your other thing.
Cure Mother Church of aggravation
So we can go on saving souls…
But, Pontiff, O… their buttonholes…”
While there are many super strong points for achieiing a fuller understanding of the weaknesses of the Catholic church, there are some decided flaws of omission and commission. First, the strengths of the Church and its faith path are completely absent. Any analysis of the Catholic church that is fair and balnced needs to look at its witness to social justice, its many female saints, its hitory of being open to new paths of approach to worship including orders which ahve focusedwith beauty and strength in servicem that lights up and heals the hard burdens of others.
The Catholic church via Vatican II was able to provide a model of beauty, maturity, Love and witness to the Gospel in action, that reclaimed the beauty of the Catholic faith and its fidelity to the Gospel by bearing witness honestly to the example of Jesus, and to the guidnce of a merciful, respectful God.
Next, the mystics in the Church have a long history of showing how important it can be to have a sense of the majesty and power of God.
What the writer misses here, and space of course is her limitation, are recognition that power ABUSED is the common problem to any social system that mitigates anarchy, tribalism and reductionism.
When Pope John Paul I was assassinated by the violent Vatican powermongers who set Pope JP on the throne to undo Vatican II, the violence of that act roild the Church into confusion and reinforced of all the ills which Harriet addresses. But let us not forget that the Church herself gave rise to vatican II, perhaps one of the most wonderful reform efforts ever, and one which has borne good global fruit and shared visionaries with a timeless message such as the great saint Oscar Arnulfo Romero.
Omitted from this analysis are the stats which show that the Protestant church with its married clergy has confirmed cases of Child Sexual Assault which outnumber those in the Catholic church.
Child Sexual Assault is a compulsively disordered behavior: an addiction. It stems from violence done to the assaulter, or witnessed by the assaulter, that has resulted in the combination of a trauma repeatedly acted out, and an appetite that masquerades as a need, which becomes an incessant one.
One of the reasons that CSA is so difficult to eradicate is the lack of treatment options, the derth of prevention protection, and the failure of the many different , many very effective therapies to be offered to victims. This means that many too many survivors never prevail. Too many victims never become survivors. And some of those victims become perps.
This is not rooted in patriarchalism. It is rooted in social pathology. While there are inherent pathologies in any social construct, including so called matriarchies, we can well use an eclectic iconoclastic and necessarily fresh approach to stop demonizing the “other”.
How about if we evaluate the flaws of permissive, indulgent, hedonistic, often anarchic social constructs like our own global oligarchies and plutocracies that mistake lack of limit setting and loss of boundaries, hypersexualization and objectifcation of women girls and boys, black market crime as an economic engine, and social darwinism as a way of life within and among nations?
Certainly we have strengths also, and one of them is true, particpatory, messy, oppositonal democracy. And a moderate way through the oppositional forces that is strength based and inclusive, even of those who tend to demonize us, and we reductutionistically instead of with an eye for strengths, demonize polaristically in return. from my POVthe result is gridlock and violence.
that is not to say, that insofar as space permits this is not a thoroughly remarkable, insightful, and very compelling article for one’s thinking arsenal.
These men should be imprisoned! If this were your children, your children’s children, your friends children, your neighbors children – how would you feel? That these men have been hidden, shielded & PROTECTED from their crimes against humanity’s most innocent beings, that they have been shuffled from one place to another to keep them out of sight – and allowed to perpetrate these heinous crimes on yet more and more children is an absolute OUTRAGE!
Where are the WOMEN of the Catholic Church? Why have they not stood up to this monstrousity of an institution – why have they not stood up for the children??!!! WHY HAVE THEY NOT PROTESTED EN MASS – IN THE US AND IN ROME! 2,000 years of RAPE, SODOMY, AND SUICIDE OF CHILDREN – ALL DONE UNDER THE NAME OF GOD! JB.
after the sentence about mystics please add–”and a cloistered , prayer-full full monastic or sororal community to support that.”
There must be checks and balances in any human system. We cannot ever pretend that any of us are “infallible.” We cannot eliminate people from service on the basis of class, gender or any other arbitrary separation among people. I am in awe of the worker priest movement which then Cardinal Ratzinger tried to crush. We cannot ever allow any human institution that is not open. We all need each other and are equal beings.Rigid hierarchies are the enemies of human connection and empowerment.
Dear Harriet,
I thought searchingly for a moment as to whether to stop here in this discussion, which is dear to my heart and exercises my mind, on your last words.
And then i thought, life is short and opportunities to share ideas and views that are the product of an elder reflecting, fleeting. Here goes, then.
My view is this, all institutions are flawed, most tend to become hierarchical over time, the bureaucratic process seems to be a systems stage process and unless we are very vigilant, then control freakism, aka neuroto-nannyism, which is a major oppressor of our times, becomes a decadent factor in virtually any social microcosm (as in a family or other agency) or macrocosm (as in a locality, nation or international vestiture ).
To me it seems that the enemies of human connection and empowerment are fundamental: they are certain base human behaviors in families, the workplace and on the world stage that cathect our interactions with others as a toxin or pollutant and whether they manifest their etiology or are hidden with subterfuge, they rot and contaminate all that they touch. When enabled by the organizational culture of ANY model of a religious or a government entity, they spread like a virus, and it is these behaviors wherever they are found that are the essential enemies of human connection and empowerment.
Every system has strengths and weaknesses. these are often percieved differently over time. As part of our evolutionary process as a species, it seems tht many of these systems co-exist, and when they do, they preserve within them much that is important not only to the microcosm of their nurturance, but also to the macrocosm within which the microcosm exists.
So for example, an Amish family may seem increasingly outside the mainstream in a technocratic society. Yet apart from the enduring strength of the Amish as role models for a microcosmic society that is cooperative and peaceful, the capacity for mastery of skills for living and maintaining a happy home, building durable, functional, attractive goods ‘from scratch” , providing honest, hard work for modest pay, yet finding ways to live well within their means, and living with values which are the antithesis of materialistic, within a community which rewards beauty of spirit and in which virtually every child becomes an adult who fulfills a meaningful role and is needed,and valued by themselves, their families, and their neighbors…and often loved as well…well if there is ever a cyber war or biological war that shreds our infrastructure, here we have a model for how optimally, it can be done.
Meaningful, fulfilling, beautiful lives can be lived in a variety of ways. Systems that are so called “open” are often much more harmful because we hold on to the illusion that they are open when they have been “closed” by the major enemy to human connection and empowerment.
And that is the lie.
The authenticity of human connection and empowerment is based upon truth in words and action.
Our so-called open systems are rotten with liars. Some rationalize their dishonesty because they want to maintain their social standing in sysytems which depend on dishonesty to stay in a marriage, avoid conrontation in their all too brief family moments, or stay in business. Many too many lie, dissemble, cover-up, overlook, and enable actual harm to others on their watch because it is part of compulsively disordered behavior, ie active addiction to do so. A few, though we are creating more and more, are just sociopaths–any means to a desired end.
You can do more harm with the traditonal weapons of the oppressed, lies, rumors, gossip, innuendo, washington hatchet jobs, ridicule, castigating as a social deviant, using every tool in the book that ostracizes, marginalizes, devaluates, eviscerates, objectifies, and renders impotent another human being, than with a gun.And you will kill them anyway.
While we are analyzing, let’s try to recognize that that any mob of group thinkers that is self-righteous and oriented to controlling others instead of eliciting informed consent or independent thinking; any social agency that demonizes, polarizes, stereotypes, simplifies, preaches at others for their own good, and denies thinking breathing, striving, dissident, complex, precious people a voice and their CHOICE … is an actualized enemy to human connection and empowerment, no matter what it believs and how popular that belief may be among like others.
The more authoritarian, hierarchical and rigid a structure is, the more there are occasions for corruption. Criticism must move from the bottom up as well as the top down. The recent Catholic Church scandals reveal the perils of the above. The Church could not hear its tortured children. Abuse is built into their huge bureauracy accountable to only to those who dominate it.No one can set himself up as “holier ” than others without abuses of power. What is most amazing about the Catholic Church scandals is that the abused children actually found their voices and screamed!
Harriet,
Thanks very much for this thought-provoking and well researched post. It contains many links and ideas to follow. The psychological perspective will be very important in this process of uncovering answers and finding the path toward healing from this catastrophe of sexual abuse by priests. The stories of the victims will probably provide the most important clues for greater understanding and change.
There needs to be, and undoubtedly will be, a thorough-going examination of all aspects that you mention, including sexual immaturity, the lack of women’s participation in the Catholic hierarchy, traditions of authoritarianism and patriarchy, the “homo-erotic” culture you refer to etc. Your experiences and that of Lester Lothstein seem very imprortant. In terms of the structural issues of power and authority, many aspects of the long-standing Protestant critique of Catholicism that you mention may bear a new hearing. In looking back on history, I’m probably less enthusiastic than you are about capitalism and the substitution for a money-making culture that replaced “feudalism’s more cumbersome, hierarchical, and expensive constructs.” But 10 minutes in any history book will disabuse a person of any infatuation with feudalism!
I also certainly agree that there are many healthy signs of change emerging right now, not the least of which is the exposure of this chamber of horrors that has been suppressed, ignored and discounted for so many decades.
Aside from the evidence in your post, I do notice that your method of analysis focuses almost exclusively on the history and nature of pathologies, not just in the Church but also within the family and within western civilization in general. Aminah Carroll has also pointed this out. Perhaps you follow the tradition within the field of psychology that focuses on pathology and sets a goal of finding a “cure,” often within the context of a hierarchical doctor/patient relationship that was typified by Freud. Unless I’m wrong, Jung broke from Freud partly b/c Jung had success by focusing on and supporting the growth of the healthy aspects still existing within the mental ill person, even severely disturbed schizophrenics. This focus on health instead of pathology has continued in other types of modern therapeutic models, such as “solution-oriented” approaches popularized by Bill O’Hanlon.
I personally find social change much more akin to Jung’s approach than Freud’s. In my experience, social change often comes from the healthy strata within a social structure, whether the family or society, and usually from the margins and victims, as you rightly emphasize. If supported and strengthened, these healthy and marginalized voices erode the paralyzing grip of the pathology and create movement to new, unexpected solutions over time. It is often a slow, organic, collaborative process as the many parts of the social system interact. Spontaneous and surprising, the solutions are rarely obvious in advance. To my way of thinking, many of the manifestations of social health – the fall of the Berlin Wall, or the election of Obama (we hope!) – are surprises.
In contrast, the hierarchical point of view underlying some of your analysis postulates that the rational conscious mind can look at the evidence, figure out what’s wrong in advance, prescribe and then impose change. The conscious mind can act as a kind of “doctor’ which observes the pathology in life with scientific detachment, and can prescribe the “cure.” Many modern theorists adopted this manner of thinking, such as Freud and Marx. I wonder if Marxism has historically led to dictatorship largely because of this fundamental approach of imposing a “cure” on a social structure based an analytical, right brain hierarchical way of thinking.
This hierarchical approach also seems to carry with it something of an “outside-in” assumption of agency. Change comes from an outside power, such as social structures, or “power elites,” as you describe. Change is not “inside-out,” that is, agency does not come from the individual who changes on the interior and then interacts with social structures in a new way, forcing changes on the “outside.”
This “outside-in” assumption seems reflected in your use of passive verbs that keeps the agent invisible: “housework is organized…” (by … whom?) “men are disciplined to work…” (by…??) “women are disciplined to maintain homes…” (by .. ?) Are people passive pawns? Do you and I have no ability to know what’s best for us and make choices independent of the power centers in society? That seems to me to be a very despairing view of humans, including me and you!
To my reading, some of your analysis also relies on a modern, industrial sense of time: the past is a series of the old, outworn models to be discarded or improved in favor of a “new” way of thinking that will lead to the dawning of a “new age.” Ben Franklin once talked about the “perfectability” of humans through constant improvement, which drew the derision of D.H.Lawrence as peculiarly American in his Studies of American Literature. I actually sympathize very much with your sense of progressive time, since in my experience, individuals are capable of dramatic spiritual growth over time. But for me, spiritual growth is the source of progress, not new, conscious, rational ideas.
If I read you right, your enthusiasm for the modern age and dismissal of the past doesn’t explain, to my mind, the emptiness, rootlessness, meaninglessness and despair that seems so endemic in our so-called “advanced, modern” societies. We’ve had a couple of centuries of “cures” and “new ages” now and we in the industrialized societies may be among the loneliest, most lost and despairing group of people ever to live on earth.
However, I do appreciate your thoughtful post. My reflections are only impromptu responses since it will take time for the truth to slowly emerge and I know I have a lot to learn from all involved, especially the victims and outcasts of the system. In all of this, the one thing that we have in abundance is pain.
Peace,
David
I agree with this post. I wrote this post in moral outrage. I think change happens when for reasons that are overdetermined, people are empowered to act. There are times when people can escape the passive acquiescence they learned in their authoritarian families and orthodox religions and hierarchical educational systems. In my post I am trying to reach people with history, moral, emotional and spiritual outrage, and reason. I am trying in every way I can.
As an update, the Catholic Church was immediate in it’s response to a nun who was head nurse at Saint Joseph’s hospital. Sister McBride was excomminicated right away for allowing an abortion for a woman who would have died from pulmonary disease if her pregnancy continued. The fetus at 11 weeks was not viable in any case. See http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/05/21/pedophilia-is-fine-but-hold-the-abortion/
They acted immediately as they acted to excomminicate a nine year old Brazilian girl, her mother and her doctor. The doctor performed an abortion for the 9 year old who was raped by her step-father. She was pregnant with twins. There was such international outrage that they reversed themselves. Misogyny and hatred for children is part of this heinous hierarchy. The latter case is also a testimony to their folding against moral outrage and political organization.
I do not believe in inevitable progress. I could not in the US now. Women’s rights, our earnings relative to men and the sexual attacks against us are increasing as is racial injustice, hatred of foreigners and hateful, homophobic, religious beliefs. I do believe we can together heal the world.
I have no need to understand much more about the rape of children and vulnerable adults. When an adult rapes a child it is a felony. When a priest rapes a child it is a felony. When children and vulnerable adults are emotionally or physically tortured, it is a crime. The Pope, Cardinals, Bishops, Priests, Nuns, and anybody employed by the Catholic church that rapes a child or vulnerable adult is a criminal.
I am sick of this Nazi Pope and his goon squads getting off the hook and not be held accountable for their crimes agains innocent children and vulnerable adults.
If guilty, I say NO MERCY. PRISON PRISON PRISON FOR LIFE WITH NO POSSIBILITY OF PAROLE.
CASE CLOSED!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rpnkj1p_jPE This video was made by Joey Piscitelli. He is a good friend and I think that a few of you might be interested in it.
All best,
Quico Antonio Lostaunau
After reading and sharing this article more than once, I am finally commenting. This article is enlightening, insightful, with a depth of understanding and an unflinching expression. I have heard back from one friend that it is exactly articles like this one that have led her to subscribe to Tikkun for years. Ms. Fraad’s responses to the longer comments are equally clarifying and cut to the roots of the problem; for instance, “Rigid hierarchies are the enemies of human connection and empowerment.” Thank you for a valuable piece of journalism.