My thoughts on the Catholic Church and its Pedophilia Problem

[spritechan]

The level of disgust that I feel towards people who cover up sexual abuse crimes is almost immeasurable.

The Catholic church has been hiding their abuse of children for centuries, and this started because the people of the church wanted to ensure that property of men went to the church when they died, not families? The requirement of celibacy came about very early on in the church, because the church wasn't satisfied with the married bishops, etc. passing their land on to their sons. Nothing in the Bible says anything about being celibate as a member of the church, and the apostles had families. So what the fuck, Catholicism?

Many men who become a part of the church start at a very early age, like 14 years old. When they make these decisions to join the church, it's like they're halting their psychosexual development. They're fed all these rules about controlling themselves, when really they're just BEGGING for these... kids, really... to become pedophiles. They're not taught how to understand their bodies and the urges they feel, and they are discouraged from exploring these feelings. All of us know how pleasurable sexual feelings are since we're free to express them. But what about a 20-year-old (or what-have-you) priest who never learned to understand and channel his feelings? He works with children. He feels affectionate towards these children. He feels connected to these children. In effect, he's nearly at the same stage of psychosexual development they are at. Children are trusting, and naive. What better subjects to explore your sexual curiosity with without feeling like you're really breaking the rules?

Let's not forget that it's safe to assume that a large number of these men were ALSO abused as children, and are simply perpetuating what they learned as children themselves. Did it feel wrong, or bad, or uncomfortable when it happened to them? Certainly. Did they learn those behaviors from their abusers? Almost definitely. They first are against the actions, but then learn to accept them. Learn to squash their feelings and accept the fear and pain. It's just a part of life, and surely their priest, their vessel of Jesus, wouldn't do something to them that wasn't okay! And yet... they know it's not something they should be telling people. Because deep down it really hurts. It's scary. It's involving parts of their body that they were taught were private.

I firmly believe that if the Catholic church allowed their priests to have families, that this would happen a lot less. There would still be abusers within the church, but I think the number would be far fewer. Because these men would have been given the chance to grow into their sexuality and express it in a healthy way. Personally I think celibacy itself is appalling, but that's likely here nor there.

I don't think that pedophiles are inherently monsters. I think that they learned a specific way to behave, and found an outlet for their sexuality. I think that that outlet is viewed by the Catholic church as no worse than being sexual with an adult. It's just another form of "sex," in a world where "sex" is forbidden, and is probably considered lesser because they're children, and also because children are less likely to tell. I think that these priests are stuck in the wrong stage of psychosexual development, and they need help in order to correct that. By ignoring claims of abuse (and even pleas for help from the pedophile priests), the church is only exacerbating the problem, and preventing these men from getting the help they desperately need. 

I wish that we could live in a world where a priest could confess his feelings (hopefully it would only be urges, but likely it would be reported abuse) to his leader, and the leader could arrange for counseling, for therapy, to help them work through it. I really think that, especially at the beginning, these men could be helped in controlling those urges. Attraction towards children is likely never to go away, but at least they could understand why they CANNOT do that, and WHY it's so horrifically wrong for them to hurt children, and that what happened to them as kids (likely) is no less wrong. That THEY are victims too. I also wish that the Catholic church would realize how negative the requirement for celibacy really is, and repeal that. The cycle of pain and suffering just has to end, and it has to start somewhere. It has to start with the church facing their mistakes and taking steps to amend for what has been broken.

Just.. UNNNGHFHGHFH

Comments

[namidanotsuki.livejournal.com]

Yes, I agree. There's just one problem. The underlying reason as to why the RCC won't out pedophiles relates to church structure.

You see, as you well know, Catholics believe that the Pope talks to God. They believe that God tells him who should be a Cardinal, who should work in hierarchy of the church right down the ranks. If they admitted to the problem, they would essentially have to admit one of two things: a. God chose to have a pedophile spread the word of his gospel or b. the Pope does not talk to God. Admitting either of those things would be absolutely catastrophic, thus why they tend to act like the problem doesn't exist at all.

In other words, it's not that the church condones it, they just don't know how to deal with it without ripping out the foundations of their hierarchy. Obviously it's not right, but that's why things are as they are.

Until there is a fundamental change in structure of the church, this problem is unlikely to go away. Sadly, it would require something of the magnitude of the first council of Nicaea to resolve it. Nearly 1700 years ago, it resulted in the Nicene Creed; basically a mission statement of the church defining the basic tenants of the faith and what it means to be a Christian. That would essentially need to happen all over again. Not very likely.

But, I mean you never know. It was just last year that the Catholic church came out and said that they believe life on other planets is highly probable and not at all offensive to the christian faith. As late as 100 years ago that would have gotten you excommunicated. As far as change goes, Catholics are by far the most malleable of all denominations. In that sense, there may be hope; it's just unlikely to be swift change.

[vixenofflames.livejournal.com]

Yes, the enormity of this situation astounds me. I know I write as if it's simple, but I know that to admit to something like that would destroy the foundation they've worked so hard to build. But shit, that doesn't make it right!

[namidanotsuki.livejournal.com]

Obviously not. For personal reasons, I have incredibly strong feelings about people who take advantage of the unconditional love and trust of children. To abuse that purity in the context of faith, to me, is unspeakably vile. It's beyond wrong.

Anyhow, with that said, if the Catholic church isn't very circumspect about how they fix this problem, it could cause a crisis of faith for millions of people. I think religion is a waste of time. It is the word of man. But there's people who possess true faith. I wouldn't even begin to screw with that. In other words, they need to come up with something damn clever. There's a reason George Carlin in Dogma makes the buddy christ joke. As you pointed out, Catholics are fantastic at making shit up to control their congregation.

But I wouldn't beat on them too hard. Had it not been for the church, the words of the great Greek philosophers, eastern medical science and large amounts of mathematics would have never survived to become a part of Western culture in the future. Let's not forget that monks in monasteries were writing the Renaissance long before it ever happened. Even great saints (Thomas Aquinas, for example) were interested in all kinds of science at the time. He even dabbled in alchemy, despite the fact that it was outlawed.

What I'm trying to say is that religion has its purposes. As an institution, they can thumb their nose at the conventions of society, for better or worse. In the case of the current crisis of the RCC, it's for the worst.

As I see it, pedophile priests have to die some time. In the future, the church should convene secretly to decide how to select better candidates for priesthood. It's not a perfect solution and certainly doesn't provide closure to those who have suffered in the past, but life is rarely fair.

[absinthe-satori.livejournal.com]

Dogma is in my top five fave movies. Kevin Smith is a Catholic. I am not a Christian of any sort. But overall I agree with much of what has been said here. However, there are smart Christians who have churches that don't eschew marriage or other sane sexuality among their anointed leaders. Even gay-friendly ones. And those do NOT look the other way when pedophilia is involved. Pedophilia is not, as stated by one poster, necessarily sociopathic. It is often a misdirection of natural impulses. It can be cured, oftentimes. And prevented, by choosing the right church (if any), among other good parenting practices. If your church demands celibacy, run away quickly. I also am not monogamous (though I have only had sex with the same woman,my wife, for over 8 years now, after losing count at about 50 in the decade before that) but I understand the reasoning behind that.,But asking of spiritual leaders to be "nonogamous" is disaster.Sexuality is medically proven to be necessary to mental health in adults.

[vixenofflames.livejournal.com]

Pedophilia can be treated, but I don't think the thoughts and urges go away. It's as if their mental growth was stunted when they entered the church and the lack of connection with adult women and the comfort of doe-eyed children called to them more strongly. I don't think pedophiles by nature are sociopathic, not at all. On the contrary, oftentimes. I think they feel like they're being affectionate and loving, and use excuses and warped reasoning in order to justify their actions.

I agree that if I were religious I would never take my child to a church that requires celibacy, not only for fear of my child's safety but because of my basic disagreement with the idea. I completely agree with you that sexuality is a requirement of a healthy individual, and forcing a person to repress their sexual side their entire life is almost barbaric, if not completely wrong.

[absinthe-satori.livejournal.com]

You may be right about the entrainment of pedophilia in those cases. But the mind has ENORMOUS plasticity unless it is severely defective, as in the case of the true sociopath. It is possible to rewire a "mostly normal" brain, although things that are that primal and that deeply embedded that early and that strongly.. Maybe, maybe not. But yes, in he non-sociopath, I think coping skills and proper ethics can at least smetimes be "overlaid" on the deformed template that was entrained. A couple tangentially similar psychological phenomena (although dealing with far less heinous problems) are the fact that ADHD sufferers (such as myself) learn and entrain coping skills which reduce the overall pathology of ADHD as we age. (My ADHD is still severe, and now medicated which helps, but even before my diagnosis and treatment, I had learned some ways of reducing the problems with focus, social skills, etc.) And sufferers of Borderline Personality Disorder (a horrible horrible thing, which affects some people very close to me) can tend to subside, as the sufferer ages and is no longer exposed to the traumas that caused it to develop in childhood, and develops overlapping, positive experience-patterns.

Mind (or at least brain) IS matter, and is constantly re-wiring itself (either good or bad) through experience or atrophy. I am right-handed, but about 15 years ago I became ambidextrous to a large extent, simply by "mirror-imaging" everything I did. for a month. I had laid the groundwork for years by being a guitarist and keyboardist, but I took it to the next level. I ate, shaved, brushed my teeth, did bathroom stuff, EVERYTHING with the opposite hand from the usual. Switched which side of my pants I carried my money, my keys, etc in, For the first few days, I tied my right wrist to my belt to keep me from accidentally using it. I am still mostly right-hand-dominant, but I can write legibly (although slowly) with either hand, even upside down and/or backwards. People with traumatic brain injuries who become partially paralyzed can re-wire their brains to use different parts to control motion and regain dexterity. Etc.

Not sure how much this translates to the original subject, but I think that even deep-rooted entrainments can often be rewired. I've had no reason to discuss pedophilia with my psychiatrist, but he was impressed and fully agreed with my ideas about brain plasticity. As did my cornea doctor, when I suffered a corneal scar in my dominant eye, and re-entrained my other eye to be (mostly) dominant.

[vixenofflames.livejournal.com]

The problem here lies with desire. Comparing becoming ambidextrous with learning to be attracted to something that you are not formerly attracted to are not on the same plane of learning. NOT abusing children can be learned, but the desires are likely never to disappear, which is part of the reason sex offenders are on a registered list (not saying I agree with the violation of privacy, but the general consensus is that it cannot simply be "cured").

I work in an intensive rehab facility for the mentally ill (level 4-5, just below a hospital setting), and deal with many disorders, most commonly BPD and schizoaffective. I see where you're coming there as well, but again, treated borderline is learning different behaviors and coping mechanisms, whereas this particular type of sex offender is physically and emotionally attracted to children, not men or women. Can you teach someone to be attracted to something they're not? If so, can you teach homosexuals to become hetero?

[absinthe-satori.livejournal.com]

I wrote a long missive about this, but decided to wait and see about posting it. Very personal. But suffice it to say I have experienced and dealt with psychosexual issues, healthy and otherwise, in myself and others. Gender/preference orientation is not very plastic, but many actual damages and dysfunctions can be, at least in some people.. In others, well, not so much.

I beat a psychosexual drug/sex tie-in addiction from hell, the last few years. Mostly. Still miss the marathon sex.. Or, any sex at all, lately. The meth can go to hell though. That was several years and several grand I'll never get back. The 24-hour marathon sex was the best EVAR, tho. But, I guess I need to begin reflecting on how rich in experience, if not money, my life has been. I've lived a dozen lives, been a total outcast (my name was a curse-word, for a time) a minor local celebrity an video art mentor, operated a government supercomputer, invented and played my own musical and video instruments as well as damn near anything with strings or keys on it, gained, lost, and regained a 3 1/2 to 4 octave voice range with expressive variation, politely insulted the most powerful (at the time) man on earth and he hook my hand before and after (Bush the Elder), partied (and worked with, and jammed) with rock stars, drank with a federal judge (at about 10 years old), at least once used telekinesis and many many times had clairvoyance, had my art and writing published in a 5,000 circulation wordlwide-circulated magazine a few times, helped redesign the 5th-most powerful pumpkin-cannon in the country, stood naked on a bucket at a party and took 3 foot long electric sparks into my hand, and passed part of that through my other hand to make a spark between my girl's hand and mine (after repairing that device for its owners), survived a half-dozen or so potentially lethal car wrecks with only whiplash one time, been gifted tens of thousands of dollars worth of video gear by my wonderful scary cool crazy-ass art mentor and many others, ridden in tens of millions of dollars worth of exotic cars,... ... Maybe I need to appreciate more what I've had and less what I feel I'm missing.

[vixenofflames.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you've been able to overcome demons and experience a live so full. Not everyone can defeat their monsters, and not everyone wants to.

[vixenofflames.livejournal.com]

Also, if you ever want to PM me something vs writing it in a comment, you're always welcome.

[absinthe-satori.livejournal.com]

I developed a fetish for long-haired hippie girls, bordering on obsession. Then goth girls. And especially hippie-goth girls. That resulted from very formative experiences in my earlier life. Then, my wife lost her lovely long red hair she grew out just for me, to an illness. I never liked short hair, on me or my lovers. But I rewired my desire, and she is as beautiful to me as ever, with more or less a crew-cut.

[vixenofflames.livejournal.com]

However, your wife is still a woman. Not a child, not a teenager, not a man. However different her hair may be, her functional anatomy is still the same. She has breasts and a mature vagina - of which children and men do not. You simply adapted your specific taste of hair type, not the gender or stage of growth of human with which you are attracted.

[vixenofflames.livejournal.com]

I don't really feel it's a matter of "better selection" of candidates, unless you mean selecting candidates who have no yet been abused. I really feel like the cycle of pedophilia needs to stop from the top. True, the elders are going to die sometime, but in the meantime, they're passing on the abuse to their successors. I think the church needs a secret convening on how to JUST STOP IT NOW. It is ridiculously similar to the episode of South Park about the Catholic church, where they convene, and one priest suggests they stop abusing children. Everyone laughs and says it's impossible, that abuse has been around forever and will be around forever. It's not the young people going into the church; it's being taught that the behavior is okay and that true sexuality is not.

It's hard for me not to be against the church, whatever good it has done. I'm blinded by all the bad it has done instead. I don't know how I feel about religious institutions existing, because they'll exist whether I want them to or not. Science still would have happened even if religion wasn't involved. We're humans, and curious creatures.

[absinthe-satori.livejournal.com]

I think the possible solution-at-large to church pedophilia is COMPLETE AND TOTAL TRANSPARENCY. No meetings, no rituals, and NO CHILDREN behind closed doors. Ever. Period.

[vixenofflames.livejournal.com]

That would be a good solution, honestly. It sounds so simple, haha!

[absinthe-satori.livejournal.com]

I mean, really, if God created all men (and, to editorialize for fairness, women) equal, what other than nasty wrong things do they need to hide? What's in the damn Vatican basement that only the pope gets to see, and why? Going by THEIR instruction manual, which few of them bother to read or implement, or even comprehend as it was meant to be understood, it seems to me that no (wo)man is more than human since Christ, and even he took human form - therefore, logic dictates to me that we should ALL be in on the whole story and all the proceedings and have access to all the evidence, even if we are not to usurp God's job and judge..

I'm a neo-shamanic sorcerer, so maybe I got no biz stickin my nose in, but those sickos got no biz stickin their, uh, you know what I was about to say. I know some very good smart educated Christians who actually read the book and took it to heart. I dated one, even. She was (well, probably still is) an ordained evangelical minister. In a very unconventional (by their standards) relationship. She intended to complete her pHD and teach at a Christian university. Another is a professor of chemistry now, and when we run into each other at the goth club, he's more interested in hearing about my beliefs than telling me his - though he does share his, pretty freely, when asked. He said once, to heavily paraphrase, "Jesus hung out with the drunks and the whores and the lepers and the lost, not the anointed. He listened to them. He helped show them the way not from on high, but standing among them." He is a humble, unassuming, brilliant, and non-judgmental guy. I think, the epitome of what their good book tries to teach. But I'm just a heathen, so what would I know except that if I ever caught anyone of any faith abusing a child the way we're discussing, I might break a law or six and several of their biblical commandments.

[vixenofflames.livejournal.com]

Preaching to the choir, my friend. Although I choose not to pick a faith, or have any real beliefs in particular (I'm of the school of, "Live your life as best you can while you're here, and we'll all find out [or not] what the afterlife is like when we die, but until then, just be happy."), I support those beliefs you posed. And the things your friend said are what others have told me as well - that Jesus didn't put himself on a pedestal, and instead embraced everyone, and the church shouldn't be abusing the power of faith by acting like THEY are god.

[absinthe-satori.livejournal.com]

I didn't choose my beliefs. I tried many on for size, from across the spectrum and across the world, and kept what fit. And I remain skeptical even f those. I chose a moniker for what I am, spiritually, based on a summary of what has worked best for me. The real "name" for my religion would take more than the total of words I have so far written on your journal, and require a number of them that are not in any known, shared language, and not reproducible in ASCII.

Csnanc forml narla obsequiec bernutal.

You get the idea, I think. We seem to share certain ideas, though, to be sure.

My minister-ex called my belief-system "salad-bar spirituality". I still like that one too.

We are all God, splintered and permutated through 11 dimensions. It wanted to know itself, and also not be alone. So it exploded into what became time and space, infinitely iterating itself into many, that are all still one. Every particle, every cosmic ray, all of it is one thing, folded and refolded through all these dimensions. At least, that's what the angel and the devil sitting on my shoulders agreed upon to tell me. All is One. I'm a wack-job, but am occasionally overrun with the Divine Madness, which actually physically hurts and taxes me to try to communicate. But I find that in such matters, as you say, we can really only wait and see. But study of resonance, relativity, music, mythology, quantum mechanics, sexuality, psychopharmacology, philosophy, telepathy, and mental illnesses (real and misperceived) and a hundred other subjects (which are all One) has brought me to this understanding. Because you are manifest from a different angle "down here" it is quite likely that your permutation is different and you will see many things from that different perspective that you inherently are. As was the whole idea of the "expansion". :) But, I already know you will find resonances, like tuning in to radio stations, in some of these ideas. Even if you think I'm a looney-tune. :)

Synchronous timeless meticulously mindless

[absinthe-satori.livejournal.com]

Heuristic cybernetic,adaptive aesthetic, flow-eidetic, reality synthetic..

I just minutes ago learned that the amazing and quirky Freeman Dyson led the design team that created the safe, small nuclear research reactor reactor pictured 30 feet below me in this userpic from about 8 years ago.

And, quoting someone,
"Dyson has suggested a kind of cosmic metaphysics of mind. In his book Infinite in all Directions he is writing about three levels of mind: "The universe shows evidence of the operations of mind on three levels. The first level is the level of elementary physical processes in quantum mechanics. Matter in quantum mechanics is [...] constantly making choices between alternative possibilities according to probabilistic laws. [...] The second level at which we detect the operations of mind is the level of direct human experience. [...] [I]t is reasonable to believe in the existence of a third level of mind, a mental component of the universe. If we believe in this mental component and call it God, then we can say that we are small pieces of God's mental apparatus"

Dyson has won awards and broken ground in many actual and theoreretical sciences for like 60 years. Early and smart thought on village-level green energy, space colonization and ways of looking for advanced extraterrestrial civilizations, nuclear physics, quantum mechanics, visionary futurism, theoretical n-dimensional math, nuclear energy and propulsion, math formulas so out-there I don't comprehend them, including reconciling Heisenberg and Einstein in certain ways I don't grasp (Sorry, Albert, but in the lower dimensions at least, God DOES play at dice. But it all reconciles in higher ones., to where determinism and free will are One. Just my input, there. Heh.)

Just thought it was funny since I re-added that userpic this morning, then read a bit on on the TRIGA reactor series, (of which the one I posed with is a Mark-1 used to transmute elements for analytical purposes by USGS) and by entirely other surfed waves, came upon Dyson's wikipedia entry after writing my last missive here, without knowing of his involvement with that reactor design OR the quote I placed in this post. I'd, of course, heard of him, but not this stuff..

Re: Synchronous timeless meticulously mindless

[vixenofflames.livejournal.com]

While most of this is completely over my scope of understanding, I appreciate your thirst for knowledge. I'm open and accepting to most believe systems, but I can assure you that my beliefs are pretty solid right now, and I am on a different plane of understanding and perspective. I'm not a denier; I'm a *shrug*-er, a maybe-er. :)