Comments on: Madeleine McCann: A Catholic Writes

By: otherwize

otherwize — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 04:13:09 +0000

August, I don’t really understand what your point is with that comment about “homosexual, not pedophile” either.
The fact that more cases of paedophilia were homosexual rather than heterosexual is inevitable merely because in Catholic single sex schools men only come into contact with boys and women with girls. Whereas I know of many women disturbed by occurrences in convents sexual predation especially to the extent of rape by women on girls is rare in any walk of life.
The fact that the Church is faced with this problem of clergy as sexual predators on children and public outcry at its subsequent bad handling of the situation is to me plainly due to the fact that it does not understand nor accept the real nature of human sexual pathology. The notion - teaching- that humans are created perfect by God but sin (ie do anything other have heterosexual sex within marriage) because they are tempted by the Devil is deeply problematic and creates conditions where Catholic homosexuals (and I absolutely do not believe that homosexuality is in itself any more sinful than heterosexuality) and others with desires which are indeed aberrant and dangerous to others, in particular children, become priests or nuns in the mistaken belief that they are tempted by the Devil and therefore will be safest from harm and harming if they enter convents or monasteries. They might also, in the case of homosexuals, be able to escape the expectation of marriage.

Whether or not they confess or seek counselling or just try to ignore and deny their sexual natures the advice of the church is based on the concept of sin which is just not adequate to the job of dealing with it. What actually occurs is that their respected status as church men and women actually places them in a position of trust with both access to and power over young vulnerable people. I know of cases where monks have abused, been discovered, done penance during a period of removal from the school and then having been granted forgiveness, returned when clearly they should not have been in any environment where children were available to them ever again no matter how sorry they were. The whole thing is dealt with in some Catholic cloud of illusion about the nature of sexuality, what is normal what is not and what represents a truly aberrant and dangerouis condition - the primary overriding consideration being to preserve the ascendancy of the Church’s ownership of “absolute truth” (and its resultant authority) in all its doings which as your post demonstrates August is apparently beyond all argument or reconsideration. Any attempt to question it makes one automatically “non-catholic” and therefore outside of the issue with no right to an opinion.

All the evidence suggests that paedophiliac abusers are very very hard pressed to control themselves even when the will to do so exists. As for the lack of compassion and willingness to deal honestly and properly with the victims one can only speculate as so little is known. Does the Church regard the children as the tempters I wonder?

It’s 6 am and I have a very long day’s work ahead of me but one final point. Homosexuality and paedophilia may coincide in the same way as heterosexuality and paedophilia (obviously) but they do not belong in the same category. There should not be so many homosexual priests and nuns because those people should have had the choice available to them to live openly as Catholic homosexuals just the same as their heterosexual brothers and sisters rather than being forced to either hide and lie in lay life, struggling to cope with psychologically unsound diktats about their situation or enter the church in the mistaken belief that this would enable them to suppress their sexuality most effectively.
Paedophilia is another more dangerous condition altogether and one for which solutions must be sought with the utmost diligence. Those solutions will not be found if the quest for them follows the same wrong road map corrupted by misunderstanding and distortion of our human sexual condition perpetrated by all the major religions, not just Catholicism.
Otherwize

By: pixie girl

pixie girl — Thu, 31 May 2007 22:47:25 +0000

[[And just to clarify that the overwhelming majority of the abuse cases where homosexual, not pedophile.]]

so f*cking a 8 year old boy is not as bad as f*cking an 8 year old girl?? get a grip mate !

You know, and ive thought thought about this a lot. I was abused as a child, bt thankfully through counselling and understanding I have come through it relatively unscathed.. But how awful it must be for a young hetrosexual boy to have a 1st sexual encounter FORCED upon you by another man.. That Sh*t must really f*ck you up !!

sorry thats the 1st ever comment I have sworn on, but that last comment really hacked me off !

By: August

August — Thu, 31 May 2007 20:34:05 +0000

I am in agreement with what Edie says. The problem with the world today is they have a problem with absolute truth (which is what the Church teaches).
Our society has redefined freedom from “free to do the right thing to free to do whatever I want”. I have an open question to the people who label themselves dissident Catholics, why are you so insistent that the Church must change its teaching on sexuality? Just because you think something is right does not mean it is right. That is called relativism.
It is very unfortunate about the sex scandal in the Church. And yes maybe you are right, it was not handled very well. But I think the Church has done the best they can under the circumstances. I think it is also important to note however that the incidents of abuse were no higher than in the lay population. And just to clarify that the overwhelming majority of the abuse cases where homosexual, not pedophile.

That is my 2 cents.

By:

Thu, 31 May 2007 11:49:44 +0000

I am an atheist so some might think me unqualified to contribute to this debate on the Catholic Church. In fact, I was/am the child of a mixed marriage - my father Protestant, my mother Catholic. In the early 1950’s in Scotland, it was expected (may still be the case?) that in instances of such ‘mixed’ marriages, the Protestant partner undertook that any children of the union would be brought up as Catholics. That I was not brought up as a Catholic was a deliberate act on the part of my mother and stemmed from the bullying/physical/and sexual abuse she and her brothers’s experienced at the hands of the nuns and priests at the Catholic schools they attended in the 1930/40’s.

It is now more readily accepted that the Catholic Church contains amongst its number lesbians, homosexuals, and paedophiles. Yet too often, it has seemed that the Church cares more for the perpetrators of these evil deeds than it does for the victims. Those who suffered abuse are disbelieved, left alone with no support/counseling while the ‘abusers’ are given the full protection of the church. The abused are left with emotional/psychological scars that last a lifetime. The abusers ‘confess’ - when they are caught out - ‘repent’, say a few ‘Hail Marys’ and everything is then hunky dory.

It was fear that I might experience the same abuse she and her brothers experienced at a ‘faith’ school that determined my mother that I would not be brought up as a Catholic. ‘Anonymous’ is right to say that the RC Church has a fundamental problem understanding/dealing with sexuality. It also needs to show more compassion to the victims of abuse from those amongst its own ranks than it has heretofore shown.

By: otherwize

otherwize — Thu, 31 May 2007 09:09:12 +0000

From my experience Alan, ironically the very reason the Church has not acted adequately on paedophiles is because of the misconception over it being “sin’ which can therefore be repented of and by God’s grace controlled. In a convent in the 60s the boys at the neighbouring Catholic boarding school were victim to a slightly pathetic old monk who patrolled the dormitories at night and abused little boys. When it was discovered the monk was sent off for a period to do whatever penance. He returned having repented and been forgiven - I’ve no doubt it was genuine too on both sides, the Abbots and his. But obviously he should never have been allowed near children again. That’s what I mean by a dangerous misconception of the facts of sexual pathology. I have a strong feeling this has been at root of much of the Catholic failure to address the problem (which probably arises in particular due to men taking the cloth in order to suppress their urges in the first place). Unless the Church can re-address it’s core understanding of sexuality (and that involves a big shift in doctrine hence their reluctance) church schools will continue to be dangerous places.

By: otherwize

otherwize — Thu, 31 May 2007 08:59:14 +0000

PS for some reason I can’t figure out I appear to be logged in here as “Anonymous” not “Otherwize”. Don’t think anyone’s bothered - that last is evidently no Troll!!

By: pixie girl

pixie girl — Thu, 31 May 2007 08:56:21 +0000

::APPLAUDS::

By: otherwize

otherwize — Thu, 31 May 2007 08:37:35 +0000

Well the Church needs criticising Edie. Of course I’m non-catholic technically. Question, criticise, disobey and it’s hellfire. The Pope is infallible. Nothing can change. No place for disagreement except for the Devil’s Dustbin. I accepted that for years and counted myself out but slowly but surely realised that my central relationship with Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary, St Francis, St Antony of Padua, Therese of Lisieux - what I mean is the actual personal experience through prayer and not encyclicals and Papal Bull - remained alive and true. A study of history made it not difficult to cleanly separate Christ and his Mystery from the doings of Rome and all the other pretender religious hierarchies which are no more than political control mechanisms. I’m not talking Borgias here. My father, as a young and fervent Catholic relief worker who at that time thought the Spanish Civil War was about protecting the faith against Communism, was in Guernica at dawn after the bombing and would never set foot in a Catholic Church again following not just what he saw but what he heard in justification.
John Paul was a great prayerbook pin up, wonderful at looking comforting and spiritual but his sweet fatherliness turned a blind eye to you if you did not fit the mould. No doubt you are a comfortable Catholic and not homosexual, nor poor and female and surrounded by men who don’t take no or an answer, not divorced at a young age from a violent alcoholic (for example), not pregnant and terrified for a myriad of reasons YOU cannot control. The gentle Pope cuts a different figure when the only answer the Church gives is to dismiss you as “non-catholic” with all that implies to a believer, especially one within a Catholic monoculture. The faith is not just there to comfort the middle-classes in affluent countries though God knows denial of service to practising homosexuals is pretty universally damaging.
And that brings me to the point of the piece (which was not an article originally but a post in response to others so is slightly out of context) - or what I believe is the point of it appearing here, and that is not Catholic bashing (frankly despite all I say here I still don’t think Catholicism has too high a ranking in the League Table of Bloody Stupid Religions).
The religious view on sexual activity is that it is a choice. I agree and believe we are and must strive to be personally responsible for our sexual activity with the knowledge that we can harm as well as give love and fun and joy. (and besides Personal Responsibility is Personal Freedom)
But Religions (I’m using the general term from now on) teach us that everything beyond the reproductive necessity, which is at the service of God’s Will (Man’s Social organisation), is sinful (though there is a little leeway for some comfort and pleasure with the lights out within a marriage and modern thinking even cuts the woman in on that). Beyond that, masturbation, homosexual love, extra-marital sex are all considered sins that we can choose not to indulge in. Religions do not accept homosexuals as natural occurrences just like heterosexuals and neither does the majority of secular society which, although mainly non-churchgoing in the UK for instance, still falls back on religious prejudice when it suits it to exclude those it wishes to be outsiders. The churches don’t so much deny the homosexual urge, they can just about accept you’ve got it but you are directed not to act on it, to pray for help to contain it. For generations homosexuals have therefore entered convents an d monasteries in the vast majority of cases in the belief that this was a good solution and that a life of prayer and self-denial would keep them from sin. But we as humans just don’t tick like that and religious fervour, prayer and clerical vows are actually no match for our sexual urges of whatever nature. The result is ultimately destructive in many cases. But the churches fail to address the blatantly obvious truth that they are wrong about sexuality and that the advice they give to those outside a very narrow band of accepted normality is false, inadequate, misery-making and potentially dangerous.
Nowadays as we contemplate the horror of what has probably happened to Madeleine we have to add another dimension to the way we are looking at sexuality. It is apparent that some peoples’ sexual urges are really really destructive at core - way way outside what the vast majority of us would consider normal. Even the most “normal” of us have been through puberty and experienced the birth of our own sexual feelings and know that they come as if from nowhere into a largely unsuspecting young person’s consciousness. My point is that paedophiles must BEGIN somewhere. There must at this moment be child rapists of the future out there who have so far done nothing wrong at all. Not all of them are sitting in dingy garrets communing with the Devil and rubbing their hands in glee at the thought of the horrors they will unleash. I believe Operation Ore found many men who were actually horrified at their own sexuality and struggling to contain it - completely alone. In fact as things are the “community” of paedophiles on the web probably appears to be the only source of friendship in a lonely, shameful existence. So I repeat my question to churches and tabloids and society as a whole. Where is a young man (or woman perhaps) who finds himself attracted to children, fantasising about violent sex or otherwise experiencing the early stages of a potentially dangerous sexual career to go for help and advice? Science needs to provide some real answers not based on psychological fads that addresses the real cause and origin of disastrous sexual aberration in the human psyche. Only then can the young man in that situation be given adequate advice and measures taken to help or even ensure he does no harm. Are we for instance looking at a form of autism affecting the sexual centres of the brain? Is there a definable chemical pattern or some such? These things need to be addressed because all the press hysteria, forum insults, parental vigilance (or vigilanteism in some cases), hatred and fear is not going to protect little children like Madeleine one iota.
Our religious conditioning from a whole range of faiths predisposes us to a certain kind of thinking about normality and aberrance. The concept of sin prevents us from looking at this thing practically. If the faiths cannot accept normal consenting sex between adults in the face of overwhelming human experience that there is nothing more essentially harmful about homosexuality than there is about heterosexuality, if they cannot care for their members as the humans they are rather than according to unrealistic encyclical diktats then they become irrelevant and the field is open for society to be governed by lurid, bullying, sniggering and distorted tabloidism. With this situation in place there is no hope at all that we can address REAL, dangerous aberrance and discover what the nature of this beast really is scientifically. We absolutely must make this jump and find some way of reaching out to these men before they harm or it’s going to continue to be yellow ribbons in the wind.
That’s going to be my last long post on the subject, I never intended more than getting into a quiet little forum discussion away from the general scrum on this and don’t have much spare time to give it. But this is a longstanding and heartfelt viewpoint I am grateful for the opportunity to throw into the arena.

By: Alan Ferris

Alan Ferris — Thu, 31 May 2007 07:27:51 +0000

It is a shame that the Pope and the Church haas not been so willing to meet the victims of its own child abuse but has always attempted to silence them and keep their suffering quiet.

I to am a dissident Catholic, how can I support a leadership that has done nothing to remove those who deliberately hid abuse of children. That is totaly against the churches and Jesus’s teachings.

The church is prepared to demand that those who support abortion be denied communion, but those who covered up child abuse and still deny it are given full support and are never denied communion, just as those who commited the crimes were never denied and given the churches full support.

It is time to change.

By: Edie

Edie — Wed, 30 May 2007 23:33:34 +0000

Otherwize:
This article was more about criticizing the Church than it was about Madeleine.

How arrogant of you to criticize a man who lived a life of self-sacrifice, but didn’t live up to YOUR personal standards of fixing the whole world and its problems. Perhaps you should consider what you’ve done today, completely outside of self-interest.

The fact that you are a dissident Catholic makes you a non-Catholic; sorry, you can’t pick and choose according to personal whims. It is a shame that so many who label themselves Catholic are truly ignorant of theology.

Challenge to you: read an encyclical or two! You’ll understand that the Church teaches FREEDOM through its view of sexuality, not slavery, which is the result of the modern - “un-ostrich” view of it, the latter with excellent results, of course: exploitation of women, high abortion rates, high divorce rates, confused children, and rampant pedophilia - inside and outside the church.

Ok - I’m done.

By: Gail

Gail — Wed, 30 May 2007 19:27:17 +0000

Anything at all that could help is good at the moment
It is now a very desperate situation that madeleine is in
If a 2.5 million pound reward doen’t bring her back as I feel that many people are driven by greed - Then I really don’t know hat will help
One thing i do think though is that Madeleine is still in Portuagal
I just have a gut feeling that who ever has her will still be lying low due to all the media hype and will not have passed onto wher ever or who ever she was planned to be taken to or be with
Please God let this be true meaning thyat Madedelien will still be safe well and unhurt
GOD BLESS YOU MADELEINE XXXXGOD BLESS SWEEYHEART XXX