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.

All best,

Quico Antonio Lostaunau

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!

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 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.