Bill Donohue, and his
group the Catholic League, go to some extreme lengths to try and
absolve the Catholic Church of blame for the multitude of horrific
sexual abuse scandals which have been revealed over recent years. See
here for some of their ludicrous claims, all of which seem to play
towards some misplaced “meme” that fundamentalist Catholics like
Donohue like to perpetuate.
For instance, the
absurd myth that Catholics and the Catholic Church are somehow a
persecuted and oppressed group who are currently having their
religious rights and privileges threatened. Ignoring of course the
reality that they are represented everywhere with a massive, vocal
presence all over the world. And the fact that in the US, other
secular non-profit organisations have to pay their tax returns and
get audited and have to meet strict government standards for
childcare, for instance – which is something that religious
charities can simply avoid. I suggest you read some of Sean Faircloth's excellent writings like “Attack of the Theocrats...”
if you want to learn more about this.
The fact that Donohue has held his position as President of The Catholic League for 20 years should be reason enough in itself to suggest he is behind the
times, but of course in these ridiculous religious circles, this type
of myopic conservatism is seen as an advantage.
Moving on to the main
claims from Donohue, he says of the Catholic sex abuse crisis “it's
been a homosexual crisis. Eighty percent of the victims of priestly
sexual abuse are male and most of them are post-pubescent (1). While
homosexuality does not cause predatory behaviour (2), and most gay
priests are not molesters, most of the molesters have been gay (3)”.
(1) He is very much
mistaken. Since most of the young people that the priests have been
coming into regular contact with have been male (the stereotypical
“Altar boys”), and of a certain age, those statistics are hardly
surprising. Instead, what I believe we see is that the extreme sexual repression caused by the dangerous, enforced celibacy rules in the Catholic church is a strong risk factor for sexual abuse. And
that is just those priests who may have become abusers after becoming
priests, not established abusers who may have seen the priesthood as
a means to easy access to plenty of young boys. And I don't see what
pubescence has to do with any of this. They are children under the
legal age of consent. Oh, and Bill seems to have forgotten about the
abusive Nuns as well. They weren't being “homosexual” when they
abused many young boys in their convents around the world.
(2) Gee, thanks for the
vote of confidence to those “homosexuals” Bill. Spoiler:
that's about as good as it gets.
(3) I question how many
“gay” priests there actually are – I suspect less than some
fundamentalist Catholics would have us believe. Religion itself is
hardly a welcoming place for gay people. I wouldn't want to be a
priest who had “come out” as gay, let me say that much. I've seen
enough to confirm my suspicions that they would not be well liked in
the upper tiers of the Church. So that's hardly an incentive. And I'd
like to know how Donohue knows that most of the molesters are
gay. Doesn't he realise that paedophilia is completely distinct from gay and heterosexual orientations? It is a psychiatric
disorder, whereas being gay is a completely natural sexual
orientation. The research shows that many paedophiles are only
attracted to children so don't conform to our normal orientation
axis. And as the priests aren't allowed to express their sexuality due to
celibacy, how can Donohue even tell if they're gay? Were they gay
before they became priests, or actually more likely to be straight
(as in the proportions of sexual orientation prevalent in normal
society)? Neither possibility leaves the Catholic Church looking very
good at all. Either they're wrong and are being homophobic (is in the
latter case – more likely) or (according to their twisted logic)
they recruited gay priests all the while, knowing they were “more
likely” to be sexual abusers.
The Catholic Church
can't escape its culpability in these horrendous sexual abuse
scandals. They claim that the rates of sexual abuse in the Church are similar to other parts of society,
but actually it's worse than that. In other occupations or areas of
society, any known paedophiles are stopped, exposed and made subject
to the justice of the law. But in the Catholic church they were
protected, and allowed to continue by simply being moved around to
different areas when suspicion was raised. The senior members and
officials of the Church had a moral duty to report any wrongdoings of
their priests to the authorities, but they monumentally failed to
do this.
In my view the
homophobia institutionalised so deeply into the Catholic church stems
in part from the fact that gay people typically wouldn't have
children, who would also follow on into the Catholic tradition. And
the Church is not really interested in people who aren't going to do
their part to guarantee them their future congregations. That's not
how they've “got where they are today” as Reggie Perrin would
say.
But look where the
Catholic Church is today. In a right old state, that's where.
And it's going to take a sea change in attitudes amongst religious
leaders to change this.
We can see another
example here of just how much trust we should put in a certain
Catholic fundamentalist's logic.
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