Is the RCC trying to scapegoat gays for its priests' child molesting?

Great Debates
61

You keep drawing a distinction between “priests” (whom you believe deserve the blame) and “homosexuals” (whom you believe the Church is instead blaming). I think the fairest characterization of the “pro linkage” RCC position is that “homosexual priests” were the problem (or a part of the problem) – that they are blaming the individuals in question. As it’s not disputed that many men who fell into the Venn diagram category of being both homosexuals and priests were behind much of the abuse, I still question your use of the word “scapegoat,” which my dictionary tells me is “one that is made to bear the guilt of others.” If the RCC is indicting “homosexual priests” for homosexual abuse of kids, that seems not to fit the bill of scapegoating.

Catholics who believe in a linkage might conclude that the ratio of [homosexuals who can’t keep it in their pants, and should be condemned for that] to [heterosexuals who can’t keep it in their pants, and should be condemned for that] was kind of high. So concluding would not of course absolve or change the guilt of either set of people or conclusively answer the question of why the ratio was high.

I can agree with you that it “could have something to do” with it, yes. But you have not established that availability, or any other factor(s) having no relation to homosexual orientation, has everything to do with it. Without such a showing, which your OP essentially takes as established, talk of “scapegoating” or intentional “strategies” by the RC inevitably involves a degree of question-begging.

I think you are thoroughly convinced that no sane person could believe that the homosexuality of some priests was what impelled them to abuse. That is a viewpoint, and not a crazy or worthless one. The problem is that you assume that the contrary viewpoint could not ever be sincerely held by any sane person, so you search for other motives (scapegoating, “strategy”) for why someone would say this for tactical reasons. Sometimes people really, really believe what they say. The proponents of the gold standard were not engaged in a subtle strategy to scapegoat paper money. They really just thought a gold-based economy made sense.

62

It is amazing how so much of what you say and quote actually supports my position, Huerta.

I was especially interested by the quote in your above post that says: "It does not require a Ph.D. in psychology to recognize—although a Ph.D. in psychology might be helpful in denying—that men who want to have sex with boys are more likely to have sex with boys than men who do not want to have sex with boys."

May I add that it does not take a Ph.D. in psychology to believe that men who want to have sex with boys would be attracted to the celibate RCC priesthood where nobody wonders why they are not married or have no girlfriend, and where they often occupy positions of trust near children? Can we assume that they would especially have been attracted to the RCC when they realized over several decades that even when sexual abusers were caught, the Church would often as not protect them, cover up their crimes, silence the outraged parents, and “punish” the priest by reassigning him to a new area of the country with fresh meat?

Of course, none of this is the fault of the RCC, its fucked-up attitudes to sex and celibacy, its recruiting and screening procedures, etc? NAAAAAHH!

As the second quote in your posting makes clear, it is all the fault of that horrible homosexuality seeping into the seminaries and corrupting the Church. NOW will you people listen when your Church tells you that homosexuality is evil?

All I can say, Huerta, is that I, as a gay man, and my legally-married spouse that I have been with for 32 years, have never had a problem keeping our pants on around little boys. Nor have any of our hundreds of gay friends.

Too bad the same can’t be said for the people your Church recruits into its priesthood.

63

Oh, yeh, but that’s an old problem!*

*(In 19th-Century America there was an anti-Catholic propaganda industry that claimed priests took advantage of female penitents, that there were secret tunnels between monasteries and convents to facilitate fornication and burial of the resulting babies, etc. See Father Chiniquy, and the classic Jack Chick comic The Big Betrayal. Betcha didn’t know Lincoln’s assassination was a Catholic plot!)

64

I’ve already said the Church was woefully stupid and in some cases affirmatively complicit in coverups. I’ve suggested reasons why this may have been so, but none of that is an excuse for the actions and inactions of a Cardinal Law or his ilk.

You make the point that men who find themselves as predatory homosexuals may disproportionately find the priesthood attractive. I would suspect that this is true and am not assuming that the twink-seeking ratio of the priesthood is the same as that of the general populace, any more than I assume that the pyromaniac population of the fire department is exactly the same as in the general populace.

All I’ve really said is that the high correlation between the group “homosexual priests” and “guys who turned out to be abusers” is – not proof of causation; not, as you point out, the only factor; but is a phenomenon now out in the open, observed by many, which explains why a non-insane, non-ideologically-driven, non-disingenuous observer might (with no strategic motive) think something along the lines of “say, what’s up with these gay priest fellows?” They might be wrong in doing so – but the tenor of your post denies the very possibility that they could ever say this for anything other then deliberately nefarious strategic reasons, which I don’t think you’ve established.

65

You keep trotting out that point as if sincere belief negates the possibility that the RCC is trying to scapegoat gays for its priests’ child molesting.

Is it correct to say that the Nazis “scapegoated” the Jews for Germany’s problems? I am absolutely convinced that Hitler really believed all he said about the Jews. He was sincere as Hell! Does that make the word “scapegoating” inappropriate?

Indeed, were the original users of the scapegoat technique in the Bible not perfectly sincere in thinking they were transfering their guilt to the goat?

I never assumed that the RCC hierarchy got together like a bunch of Mafia dons and formally decided that those faggots would take the rap.

But I can easily see the natural desire of Catholics distressed by years of child-abuse scandals to “set the world right” in their own eyes by subtly shifting the blame to homosexuality.

66

A number of posters have been asking me for hard evidence that the RCC is subtly shifting blame for their sex abuse scandals onto the convenient scapegoat of gays.

I think we all know that I am not going to come up with a secret video or top secret Vatican report inwhich the Pope and his Cardinals decide to make gays take the rap in the yes of the public.

Then again, this is not a criminal trial and nobody is going to jail if my contention is accepted. I am not required to submit proof beyond all reasonable doubt.

A discussion is more like an investigation, so let us use one of the principles of investigation, cui bono. This is generally defined as: a principle that probable responsibility for an act or event lies with one having something to gain

Now what would the RCC have to gain from shifting blame from itself to the “intrinsic evil” that is homosexuality?

First of all, the Catholic Church has for decades been actively lobbying democratic (and many not-so-democratic) legislators to oppose extensions of gay civil rights, gay couples rights, gay marriage rights, etc. I can give you cites if you insist, but anyone not aware of this long-term strategy of theirs has possibly been living in a cave on the moon and has no internet hook-up.

As I point out in posting no. 57, above, a document put out around 1999 under the approval of John-Paul II (and likely written by Ratzinger) entitled “Some Considerations Concerning the Catholic Response to Legislative Proposals on the Non-Discrimination of Homosexual Persons” fundamentally attacks the idea that gay people should be legally protected from discrimination, and clearly endorses the idea that having homosexuals near children presents a danger.

“There are areas in which it is not unjust to take sexual orientation into account, for example, in the consignment of children to adoption or foster care, in employment of teachers or coaches, . . . . . .”

This document, published at the same time as charges of child sexual abuse by priests were exploding all over the world, clearly delivers the message that gays are dangerous to have around children.

Almost every pronouncment and lobbying effort attacking the legal rights of gays plays the “child protection” card.

But at the same time, the Church finds itself, irony of ironies, in a situation in which child sexual abuse scandals involving Catholic clergy keep springing up like weeds.

What would be more natural than for Catholics to conclude that the problem is that the “intrinsic evil” of homosexuality has invaded the Church. What could be more convenient than to be able to say to legislators “You see what homosexuality is capable of doing, even in the Catholic Church?”

An interesting comparison can be made with the cases in the middle ages when nuns and monks were found to be involved in widespread immorality. Then, it was because of demons and witches. Today, it is “homosexuality”.

67

An inexact analogy. Demons and witches don’t exist and demons and witches were not engaging in the immoral acts. Homosexual priests do exist and have (in some disproportionate degree) been the ones committing the acts causing concern.

Take other examples of scapegoating. “The Jews are poisoning the wells.” Except they weren’t, and there is nothing intrinsic to being a Jew by religion/ethnicity that would make one a well-poisoner (or, nothing intrinsic to being a well-poisoner that would induce one also to be Jewish). In short, the acts of “being a Jew” and “poisoning wells” have no logical link. The act of “being a homosexual” (the preexisting trait) and “having homosexual contact” (the act complained of in the Church scandals) are clearly linked fairly closely.

Further, the RCC is on record as believing that homosexual desires and actions are “intrinsically disordered” (the Catechism does not use your phrase “intrinsically evil.”). Catechism 2357-58. I take it as a given that you and many other people who are not stupid reject this premise, while others accept it.

But given that some people do not reject that premise, it requires no hypocrisy, blame-shifting, or “strategy” for a body that believes Inclination A (homosexuality) is Disordered to also believe that A could be part of a cluster also correlated with Disordered Inclinations B, C, and D, just as various medical/psychological ailments often come in groupings. I know you don’t agree that this is in fact true and would reject any characterization of homosexuality as a “disorder,” let alone its correlation with other “disorders,” and I certainly don’t essay to establish it as medically/psychologically true here. But I am seeing very different thought patterns at work than the ones you attribute or imagine for the RCC or its leadership (such as the leadership has proven to be – ugh).

In short, people who believe homosexuality is a disorder could reasonably believe it conduces to other disorders. You say that just because people earnestly believe something does not make it so, and of course that’s true. But your posts keep referring to “subtly shifting” or other characterizations that imply that someone in the RCC is actively conniving to shift the debate, when instead, this is just the way they see the world.

In explaining the high prevalence of homosexual priest involvement in crimes against children, I just cannot see that you have conclusively shown that the only explanation for this correlation is one in which their homosexuality is as irrelevant to their crime as a non-existent succubus would have been to assessing the guilt of a medieval monk, or as the possession of red hair, or being of Jewish heritage, would be to the act of poisoning a well.

Put differently, I think your OP could just as easily have been summarized as “I don’t agree with what the RCC teaches or what some RCC people may believe about homosexuality because I think there’s nothing disordered about homosexuals.” Okay, but I think we’ve all had that debate and I’m not seeing positions shifting on it today.

68

We seem to be arguing in circles here, Huerta. Let me just summarize it this way. If priests were being convicted of mainly going after a lot of little girls, you would not be fixating on the heterosexuality involved. You might be asking yourselves why your church attracts so many child molesters to its priesthood.

Perhaps that is what you should be doing now instead of making “homosexuality” the villain.

Finally, I am quite certain that the words “intrinsic moral evil” have been used by Pope Paul II in English versions of official documents.

You can answer me if you like, but I have no intention of answering you if you keep harping on the same ridiculous point, namely, that men and boys are members of the same sex (WOW! whoda thunk it). :dubious:

69

It has long been my WAG that the structured, celibate lifestyle offered by the priesthood, juxtaposed with the hostility against homosexuality in the general public, serves to lure a lot of gay men into the priesthood. A number posts in this thread appear to reinforce this suggestion.

It would also appear that “a life in Christ” is not as effective a cure for homosexuality as some folks have maintained.

70

What does this non sequitur have to do with your contention?
I have not claimed that you have not felt persecuted. I have not claimed that you have not perceived persecution. I have not even claimed that there is no persecution involved in the situation.

You began this thread with a claim that “the RCC” was trying to “scapegoat gays.” What you have provided is a lot of anecdotal evidence that there is a general hositility toward homosexuality in the RCC (a point I would never deny) and that there are a lot of separate events in which that hostility has manifested itself–again, a point I would never even consider challenging.
What you have not produced is a shred of evidence that there is an organized effort or an official policy in the RCC to carry out their nefarious scapegoating. In recent posts you have gone so far as to say that they are simply too smart to get caught (many of the bishops I know are simply not that smart) and appear to be one step away from asserting that the lack of evidence is clear proof of the conspiracy.

The evidence (such as it is) in this thread indicates that there is a general homophobic prejudice running through some (undefined but probably large) percentage of the Catholic population in America*–just as there is in several other denominations in the U.S. including “liberal” ones such as the Episcopalians.
This does not translate to “scapegoating” in any official capacity; it is simply the sad result of widespread homophobia running through many organizations.

= = =

saoirse, in 2000, or so, Cardinal Ratzinger was widely quoted as expressing the belief that the pedophile scandal was a deliberate attack on the RCC where the number of pedophiles was–as a percentage of ministers–no greater than that of other denominations.** It was much less widely reported (and is, therefore, more difficult to find) that when he began to personally review the records sent to the Vatican, he changed his opinion and declared that “we” (the RCC) have sinned against these children. At no point do I recall him linking homosexuality to pedophilia.

  • It is interesting, though, that in the widespread effort to outlaw Same Sex Marriage in 2004, Catholics (barring a tiny number of bishops) were not in the forefront of those movements and that the percentage of Catholics willing to accept SSM is higher than that in most other denominations.

** The accuracy of that observation has been both challenged and defended and I have never found a comparative study reaching either conclusion that was not seriously flawed, so I do not know whether Catholics really have a higher percentage of pedophiles in their ministerial ranks.

71

JEDI MASTER: Hey, if he didn’t want it, he shouldn’t have worn that sexy braid!

YODA: About it tell me! Get down do you?

72

“The stab wounds on the body indicate that the killer was left-handed, Chief.”

“Left-handedness, ay?” I should have known. Can’t trust them southpaws around knives."

We need to make sure to distinguish between “homosexuality” as it refers to a particular individual’s sexual orientation, and “homosexuality” as an issue or movement that can be contended with with certain politicians, activists organizations, and “liberalism” in general. And of course any given gay person is going to have a stake in the how this front in the Culture War plays out.

It’s one thing to argue that when a boy is sexually abused by another male, homosexuality is involve, but another thing to blame “public acceptance of homosexuality”, and by implication those that support it.

Still, I can sympathize when an organization has to worry about sex even when males are put in charge of other males, when normally it’s only a worry when the genders are mixed. I suppose the question comes down to, how many acts of discrimination are acceptable in order to prevent one act of child sexual abuse?

73

I agree with you that there is circularity. I just don’t know that I am the one who introduced it. I’ll try to put a period to it as you suggest.

As I read your OP, you were very upset at what you saw as RCC people discussing homosexuality as having anything to do with the scandal.

I said: well, homosexuals did commit a largish number of these crimes – so the Church was not inaccurate to state this self-evident fact.

The only thing the Church (or some of its exponents) has done beyond stating the tautological fact is to suggest that the sexual preferences of the offenders were not irrelevant to their offenses. I know that you believe they were and that it was in poor taste for their sexual preference to have been brought up at all. But when you knew the Church thought homosexuality was “disordered,” it was almost a foreordained conclusion that some of its members would necessarily make the linkage. That is why a few posts up I suggested that your OP really reduced to nothing more than “I disagree with the RCC stance on homosexuality” – a valid but not new viewpoint.

As to your other points, I’ve stipulated, I don’t know how many times, that Church management of this problem was horrid and in some cases unprincipled. But then we don’t blame banks for attracting so many bank robbers, do we? Predators go where the prey is.

On the “cultural acceptance” thing mentioned by sqweels, one of the reasons the RCC is cracking down on the seminaries is that in fact some of the abusers of young parishoners have been priests who (one doesn’t know how willingly or unwillingly) were part of a lavendar underground in the seminaries. Shanley, for instance, claimed (who knows if it’s true, he’s a sociopathic liar) to have himself been molested by a senior priest in his early seminary days, and appears to have somewhat effectively blackmailed Cardinal Law by threatening to disclose a pattern of widespread coercive sex in the Boston seminary. Father Maciel, of the Mexican Legionaries of Christ, was forced into retirement last year by Benedict based on evidence he’d had sexual contact with minors. Again, it was also found (or alleged) that he had also been been treating his young seminarians as his personal stable of catamites.

74

Probably not, but there’d be quite a few people wondering why men are always evil in positions of power over girls. (Just not on this board, because they know they’ll be called on it.)