Sex is the Answer to the Catholic Church's Sex Problem. Really.

On screen: The Shame of the Church
Also: The Catholic Church’s Rotherham


Here we go again...

The Church—and clearly not just in Pennsylvania—has descended into a nest of predatory perverts, largely but not exclusively homosexual, but child-molesters all. Even worse, its upper administrative reaches, the bishops, have conducted a cover-up under the guise of “compassion” and “protecting the Church,” denying, obfuscating, and lying about the extent of the problem—even as some of them were charter members of the racket. Their sanctimony is even more sickening than the sins they concealed, if such a thing is possible.

A grand jury in Pennsylvania has completed and published the findings of their investigation into 70+ years of child sexual abuse in dioceses in the state. It's brutal reading, which, when combined with a steady stream of past revelations about clergy raping and abusing children around the US and the world, demands reforms. Real ones.

Let's start with a disclaimer: I'm not Catholic, though I have many relatives who are, or who grew up in the church. I recognize no Papal authority. I'm unaffected by how the Roman Catholic Church conducts its affairs, except in the general sense of being horrified by its continuing descent into evil, and the trail of broken lives and severed relationships with God that result. But God damn it (literally), isn't it about time the assholes that run the institution actually do something about this?

I think we can start with two facts that are simply not open to debate:

1. The Catholic Church's priesthood and leadership has a severe and longstanding problem with sexual perversion. This can be taken as a given. Read the Pennsylvania grand jury report, if you can, and remember that it's just one example. It's not the first, and won't be the last that we hear of these awful crimes. Pretending otherwise is simply willful ignorance and accommodation with evil.
2. Men who are willing to live a celibate life are, by definition, sexual deviants. Given a large population of deviants, some degree of criminal deviancy is inevitable. 

By deviants, I mean it in the scientific sense rather than the criminal sense. Not all deviants are criminals, although the word does carry that stigma in common use. I simply mean that they are well outside the behavioral norm. But... men who attempt to suppress their sex drive are fighting against their very natures, and are indeed abnormal. Sexuality is a powerful force that will break through all attempts to suppress it, for the vast majority of men (and women). This is what Paul means in 1 Corinthians 7:8-9:

Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I do. ⁹ But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.

I won't speak for women, but I think I can speak for men when I say the overwhelming percentage of men cannot control themselves. The sex drive is going to seek an outlet. For a disturbing percentage of the Catholic priesthood, that outlet is little boys and young male teens (with them making up about 80% of all victims). Worse, the leadership of the organization obviously sympathizes more with the abusers than the victims, which makes them even worse deviants. They were probably raping little boys when they were younger, so of course they protect the next generation of abusers.

I like to play video games. Doom is one of my favorites, and the levels where our hero goes into Hell are very interesting from a graphical point of view and game play. But it's just a harmless game designer's vision of Hell. For a glimpse of the real thing, read this from the second link:

The Pennsylvania grand-jury report names hundreds of predator priests across seven decades of life in six Catholic diocese in the state. Some of the details in the report are so vile and lurid they would have been rejected from the writer’s room of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. They include priests “marking” their preferred boy-victims with special crosses, priests trading and compiling their own homemade child pornography. At one point in the report, a large redaction is made over what appears to be, in context, a ritualized and satanic gang-rape of a young boy by four priests.

Giving special crosses to compliant boys so other deviant priests would know who to rape. Holy. Fuck. This might be the single most perverted and evil detail I've ever heard of related to this whole scandal, and that's saying something.

Some will say that as bad is this all is, it's only a tiny percentage of the Catholic priesthood, and that all that is needed is to do away with the bad apples. Sorry, but no. That's a bullshit defense. 

My advice, for what it's worth: burn it all down. Start over. Here's how: 

1. Defrock any priest or bishop with even a hint of exposure to these behaviors. No counseling. No treatment. Get them out of the church - or alternately, offer them the chance to live their lives out in a monastic setting well away from the laity. 
2. Those whose crimes are within the statutes of limitations, where sufficient evidence exists, should be prosecuted, with the church's enthusiastic cooperation, from the laity if the church leadership does not provide it.
3. Immediate end to the use of settlements and NDA's by the church. Pass laws as needed to remove NDA protection for criminal behavior.
4. Establish a lay council to run the local dioceses and take bishops out of the organizational management of the churches, allowing them to minister to their flocks. The priestly hierarchy have proven themselves incapable of managing their own church. The laity needs to step in.
5. In other words, turn the hierarchy upside down, so the clergy serves the flock and not the other way around. 
6. Finally: allow priests to marry. Let young men pursue their vocation without having to put away their normal natures and desires. Paul is right. Listen to him.

The Catholic Church's denial of the negative effect of priestly celibacy is tiresome. The whole concept is a failure, and they need to admit that it has served them and their congregations poorly (to say the least). Men and women who want to serve that way are welcome to pursue a monastic life, if they wish. Most men won't choose it. Don't make them. Otherwise, this (from the first link): 

But as vocations cratered—if the Church could so lightly cast off centuries of rite and dogma, why should novitiates bother to sign up?—and the priestly ranks thinned out, new recruits had to come from somewhere. And an all-male order with easy access to children of both sexes was tailor-made for the molesters, who realized there was no point in hanging around schoolyards when the schoolyards would hang around you.

The best prescription to fix an organization run by sexual deviants is to remove the deviants and open the doors to people with NORMAL sexual behavior and values. Married clergy is the norm in almost all faiths. Sure, Paul praises the idea of celibate service to God, but remember, Paul is a saint. Few others are. Certainly too few to staff the clergy.

The alternative is to destroy your church. How any of the Catholic hierarchy can stand the thought of facing God after doing that is beyond my comprehension. 

Postscript: I wasn't going to bring this up, but since a Cardinal has, I'll link to it. Make of it what you will. The solution is the same as far as I'm concerned.

It was clear after the studies following the 2002 sexual abuse crisis that most of the acts of abuse were in fact homosexual acts committed with adolescent young men. There was a studied attempt to either overlook or to deny this. Now it seems clear in light of these recent terrible scandals that indeed there is a homosexual culture, not only among the clergy but even within the hierarchy, which needs to be purified at the root. It is of course a tendency that is disordered.

Again, just some friendly advice to my Catholic friends: clean it out and rebuild the clergy with normal family men.