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PhotographyThe Guardian posted an excellent article about paedophelia in the the Catholic Church. I’ll sum up the important parts (if I directly quote here, I quote the Guardian, not the Archbishop Silvano):
- “An international representative of the International Humanist and Ethical Union [...] accused the Catholic Church of covering up child abuse and being in breach of several articles under the Convention on the Rights of the Child.”
- “Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican’s permanent observer to the UN, defended the church by claiming that ‘available research’ showed that only 1.5%-5% of Catholic clergy were involved in child sex abuse“. Allow me to paraphrase: official Vatican statistics state that every 20th to 60th catholic priest actively molests/molested children. When you consider that these numbers are very likely to be lower than the actual numbers, and that only a small percentage of pedophiles molest children, that leaves us with very alarming numbers of pedophile priests.
- The Archbishop added that “problems with clerical sex abuse in other churches were as big, if not bigger”.
- He also said that “the majority of Catholic clergy who committed such acts were not pedophiles but homosexuals attracted to sex with adolescent males. [...] The statement said that rather than paedophilia, it would ‘be more correct’ to speak of ephebophilia, a homosexual attraction to adolescent males. ‘Of all priests involved in the abuses, 80 to 90% belong to this sexual orientation minority which is sexually engaged with adolescent boys between the ages of 11 and 17.’ ” To paraphrase again: the majority of the priests involved in child abuse are not pedophiles – they merely, amongst other things – force fellatio and anal sex on young boys, abusing their social authority society gives them to do that. That’s much better than “paedophilia”, we all agree on that, Mr. Tomasi.
- The Catholic Church has so far payed over two billion (!) Dollar in compensation to victims in the US.
Seriously, what is going on? The Catholic Church openly admits that they have sexually abused and exploited thousands of children (note: “thousands” just refers to the last few years), states that it’s not a big deal really because “only 1.5-5%” of the priests are pedophiles, says that it’s not an issue due to the fact that priests are not actually pedophiles but just ephebophiles, and furthermore declares that we shouldn’t accuse them because in other religions things are going not so well either?
And you support this organization with your tax-money? You pray to a God these people serve? You allow them to teach our children in public schools?
And just in case you forgot:
- The Pope officially declared a few months back that the use of condoms makes AIDS worse, not better (this probably costed many thousand people their lives, due to the fact that they listen to what this guy says).
- The Brasilian Archbishop recently excommunicated a 9 year old girl because of an abortion – she had been raped by her father and was pregnant with twins. Giving birth would have killed her, so the doctors decided to perform an abortion. The Archbishop was actively and openly supported by the Pope.
- The roman catholic PAX bank bought stocks in defence, tobacco and birth control companies. Of course the bank had previously advertised ethical investment funds, claiming to avoid arms and tobacco companies along with organisations that do not adhere to Catholic beliefs.
- In Ireland, several thousand children (perhaps much more) were systematically molested by nuns and priests.
- I could go on for another couple of hours with this.
October 1st, 2009 at 16:51
I could not agree more – though there is one thing that made me wonder:
Though the prevalence of sexual abuse in the catholic church is indeed alarming, I do not understand why you you are alarmed by the probably (which might or might not be the case, as child molesters are more often than not people obsessed with power and / or have an unhealty to nonexistant sex life, but are not pedophiles themselves) even higher rate of pedophiles in these churches per se. I actually do not care about the sexual orientation of other people. Though it might make the church look hypocritical, being a pedophile is not – and should not be – a crime; only abusing the helpless is.
October 1st, 2009 at 21:26
You bring up the question correlation vs. causality, which is always a difficult one, and in this case probably represented as twp paths (thinking of a path-analytical model): (1) pedophiles might have a higher probability becoming a priest, but also (2) complete sexual deprivation in general might increase the chances of people exploiting their power in order to get sexual satisfaction somehow. There are many reported cases of “pedophiles” whose sexual orientation clearly was female adults, but since they couldn’t get to them (in their world), they started with women they could get to: very young “women”. And then the classical conditioning did it’s job, you can sexually condition people to purple plastic guitars if you want to. Orgasm is an incredibly strong US (unconditioned stimulus).
From the work I did with the police I can say it is estimated that only a small minority of pedophiles actually commit crimes. I strongly belief that this is the case in the church (as long as no other evidence is presented), which leaves us with an incredible high percentage of pedophile priests compared to a normal control population.
And this alarms me, yes – because of point (2) I mentioned.
About paedophilia in general: I couldn’t agree more that it is a sexual orientation, and that people can’t be blamed or punished for it! I wrote a rather long article exactly about this topic quite some time ago.
October 3rd, 2009 at 15:00
@Eiko
I agree with your points, except the last one made in your comment. The word “sexual orientation” goes too far in my opinion. I agree that pedophiles can’t be blamed for having this drive, but calling it a sexual orientation implies that they have a right to express that orientation (“Freie Entfaltung der Persönlichkeit”).
October 3rd, 2009 at 15:12
For me a ’sexual orientation’ is simply a sexual orientation: it says what excites you. For heterophiles it’s the other, for homophiles the same sex, and for pedophiles usually other-sex-children (without pubic hair, <11 usually), although there is a minority of homophile pedophiles as well (read some studies while working at the Bavarian police).
Pedophiles are sexually orientated towards children. I really think you can keep it that simple with the phrase.
The reason I like to keep the legal issue you mention out of the definition is because I’m sure that we all agree here that it is under no circumstances tolerable at all to have sex with children (or young adolescents), it is a crime and must be severely punished.
Nonetheless you mention an important point – we need to use a term which makes it clear that paedophilia is not tolerated. On the other hand, like I mentioned in my posting about paedophilia, we must also make it clear that sexual orientation is nothing people “choose”, it’s not their “fault” (whether you’re hetero-, homo- or pedophile).
Again: orientation! Actively commiting a crime is a completely different thing. And I agree with you, paedophilia must be seen as psychological disease (simply because of the reason that it leads to enormous suffering), and we would have much less paedophilic crimes in Germany if society started changing their views of this disease.
October 6th, 2009 at 02:11
I couldn’t agree more. But one thing, you wrote “And you support this organization with your tax-money? You pray to a God these people serve? You allow them to teach our children in public schools?”.
This rant is not fair towards those in the church that do a very caring job. I personally know very caring nuns and priests. So – in all respect for your outburst – let’s be fair here. And even if the whole church was full of criminals, a judgement like “you pray to a god these people serve” is unfair towards those who are not affiliated with church, but worship to this god. Contrary to its conviction, the Roman Catholic Church / The Vatican does NOT speak for the whole christianity, not to speak of Jews that also pray to that god.
Aside from fairness issues you are right. I have “seen” cases myself (e.g. monk removed from monastery because he molested an adolescent under his supervision). It’s shocking to hear that such a wide range of priests has in fact abused children. This church that covers molesters can not be trusted and must be a shame for every roman catholic. I wonder how anyone can continue to have faith in that organisation. I have had years of contact and – given, there were some caring people – after some years you see what happens behind the curtain. It’s the opposite of what the Bible says. But which christian who is able to think reads the Bible? Either it’s very few or the decreasing number of faithful people are evidence enough that more and more get that this organisation is a betrayal of its very own principals.
October 6th, 2009 at 11:05
I could willingly try to misinterpret this as “rant” as well :) ….
I don’t see fairness issues, for the following reasons:
People who believe in a God but don’t follow the Catholic doctrine tell you that they believe in God, but in “another” God, a “different” God. And most Jews will also tell you that they pray to a different God than the Christians.
So I’m not trying to overgeneralize here. I specifically talked about conservative Catholics who belief that the Pope is indoctrinated by God, who follow the Catholic belief system and support this very church with their very money. Which is, I belief, the same group of people you refer to with your hard words (which are completely adquate, as far as I’m concerned).
I have been working in the Christian church for 5 years, leading two youth groups – it was a great time, and I met great people there. Of course many religious people are completely awesome – but that’s not what I’m talking about here.
October 6th, 2009 at 16:26
Please offer me one example of a person that can convincingly claim that the god of orthodox christians, protestants or other parts of christianity believes in a different god than roman catholics. It is simply not true and can certainly not be justified on any grounds. The main differences lie in the path of salvation and celestial beliefs (are there sacred people, are there angels etc.). The god is the same – otherwise you would need different versions of the Bible. Yet it was fixed in the 4th century, long before any of those major schisms occurred.
I can imagine that many Jews think they are praying to a different god. Christianity’s conviction that Jesus was/is the messiah is just too far away for Jews, as are several other assets of christian belief. Nevertheless, Christianity is convinced (or read: the Bible says) that its god is the god of the Jews, “Yahweh”. If we’re just looking at the facts it does not matter if the Jews accept that or don’t.
My point was that one has to discern between faith in god and religious/christian branches. I think we share quite the same opinion, but the sentences quoted seemed too much of a generalization to me. You are certainly right that this was a rant against the catholic church. But not a rant against believers in god, drawing a connection between them and molesters. It may yet be a little unfair as there are lots of good people in this church as well, yet they have to push for justice. As I pointed out with my example, even when a priest/monk molested a child, he is only sent to another monastery where he may continue his deeds – no therapy etc.
Now I see from your explanation that you only meant conservative catholics and not all belieers – then I can only agree. Supporting such an institution can best be described with the German “Kadavergehorsam”. It would be far better to stand up for children’s rights. But I guess it is extremely hard to form an inner opposition in the church and far easier to distance oneself.
To my background: I have worked for the catholic church for about 7 years, long years as altar server, shortly as instructor and then one year as a helper in the boarding school of a monastery.
October 7th, 2009 at 14:02
“Belieers”?
q.e.d.
October 17th, 2009 at 15:36
I think Eiko is right about the different gods. I even think that no two people who believe in God actually believe in the same god.
Logic tells us that two thing are identical if and only if all their properties are the same. This case is quite rare apart from abstract philosophy and mathematics. So let’s say more practically two things are (approximately) the same if most of their essential properties are the same.
Now, what are the properties every christian (and possibly every jew and muslim) believe in that would qualify the identity of theirs gods?
The name? Well, ‘God’ is merely a classification rather than a name. Every monotheist could (and usually would) refer to his only god as ‘God’.
The appearance? The christian churches have any official image of their particular god (in contrast to the Hindu, the Buddhist sects and virtually all polytheists).
Ok, ‘God’ has no name and no appearance. Aren’t those properties by their own right? No, since no property can be defined completely by negation (logic again; not-red is no color).
Now of course there are plenty of other properties associated with the christian god(s): God is loving. God is cruel (Hiob). God is forgiving. God is vengeful. God will forgive you every sin – and you will be punished though. God is the bearded father in the sky. God is almighty and all-caring – but you better help yourself cause he will not. God is a paradox (being three distinct things at the same time; being his own father and son and some strange being from Plato’s idea space). God is the unmoved mover. God is stands outside the universe (the creation). God is part of our world. God has no appearance – only that men are made after his image.
I could go on for some time. But now, what are the properties every christian agrees upon that would establish the identity of god?
February 19th, 2010 at 12:32
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