17 October 2009

Catholicism and pedophilia

Loaded subject, right. Totally.

So in the news recently is Bishop Lahey, a bishop from Nova Scotia, who has been charged with owning child porn. Disgusting. (Though, honestly, with all the priests who are actually raping children, the "poor guy" has to be shaking his head).

As soon as the subject comes up, someone always brings up the "Well, if they let priests get married, this wouldn't happen as much" canard. Excuse me while I call bullshit. For several reasons: 1) Married men are abusers too. Many a father and stepfather has abused his kids. 2) Celibacy doesn't cause pedophilia. There are plenty of celibate people who don't fuck kids or collect child porn. If suddenly you couldn't have sex again - without breaking some self-inflicted ban on it, I might add, would you decide that children were a good alternative that didn't somehow violate your vow? No? I thought not.

All/most child abusers were abused as children - not to be confused with 'all/most people who are abused as children will become abusers', I might add. If the church wants to stop the child abuse, they will STOP THE CHILD ABUSE. Find out a priest is abusing a kid? Call the cops. If you're insistent on covering it up, and clearly the church is, then take the priest out of the parish and put him somewhere where there are no kids. Break the cycle! Because right now, the church is known to be a safe haven for pedophiles. There are men who become priests simply because it gives them access to children. There are men who become priests because priests abused them and it's what they know to do.

Stop the insanity. Stop the priests from hurting kids. Stop all men from hurting kids, and within a generation or two, it won't happen any more. Or at least not nearly as much.

2 comments:

CK said...

I have one question I keep hoping a priest will answer: why do they simply reassign the pedophiles & child abusers and when a priest is caught having consensual sex with another adult, they are automatically defrocked.

Another thing, off topic perhaps, I do think Catholic Priests & Nuns should be allowed to marry. This rule was man-made many years ago; priests used to be allowed to marry. Nothing in the bible even suggests they remain celebate. Might solve that clergy shortage issue.

I know it don't solve the child abuse issues, but it would solve a shortage

MgS said...

Random thoughts:

(1) The church's approach has been nothing less than direct enablement of pedophiles. That makes them accessory to the crime if not as culpable as the pedophile themselves.

(2) I suspect that the rate of pedophilia in the population is relatively constant - just as it seems to be for most sexual minorities. (recognizing that although it may be naturally occurring, doesn't mean we can ignore the impact on the children)

This means that vigilance is forever the shared obligation of our communities.