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

[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. :)