So I Guess I'm Destined to be a Child Molestor Too, Eh? (long)

The BBQ Pit
1

I suspect my complaints here may result in a pit thread about me…but…fuck, I wanna vent.

So I went to Hershey Park with some friends and their acquantances yesterday. To set the stage, most of them are at least mildly evangelical Protestants; I’m the only Catholic there. These are good people, and I’ve known one of them since I was five years old. There’s always been a slight weirdness about me being Catholic, but it’s never been a barrier between us outside occassional discussions of specific tenets of our faiths. (Still, the occassional “are you saved” language slips out, and I sometimes suspect that it’s made louder in my presence.)

We’re at dinner after the park, and one guy on the group whom I’ve never met before the trip asks; “So what do you think of the scandal in your church? I ask every Catholic I meet.”

To be fair, this guy seemed to be severely lacking in social graces. Still, the flavoring of the question seemed to be “Doesn’t it suck being Catholic? Can I make you feel that way?”

Fuck. I decided to be charitable and answered the question fairly. I said that although I hold priests to a higher standard, nobody expects people to be perfect. It’s tragic when child molestation happens. It’s tragic that certain people have no self-control and take it out on little boys. I said that these guys should be given the boot. Still, this tragedy doesn’t impact my belief that I should be Catholic. It’s me, it’s my church, it’s my home. Short answer, without belittling the victims: let’s weed out the creeps and get on with our lives.

So somebody else raises the comment: “Y’know, if they just let priests marry, it’d solve a lot of problems.” And there’s a snide comment two tables back, something like “yeah, but that’s not all that needs fixing” or something like that. Lord knows what that meant (and it came from a girl who, although I don’t know well, I’ve been nice and complimentary to every time I’d seen her, and I even won her a stuffed animal earlier that day. Fuck.)

Pardon my frustration here: I am sick of being told that the priests in my church regularly need a good fuck in order to prevent them from molesting kids. They’re forgetting several things:

  1. Many priests are and have been celibate, and don’t molest.

  2. Non-Catholic ministers, and heck, married laypersons, have been known to molest. I don’t know the numbers. Do I need to supply a cite, or will everyone take this as given?

  3. If someone gets off on little boys, sex with a woman is probably not going to satisfy them. A child molestor has a sick sense of sexuality and I doubt any marriage he enters would be “healthy.”

  4. Catholic priests can marry depending on the rite they’re in. The Roman Catholic priests can’t, but Eastern Orthodox ones can without conflicting with Rome. It’s a theological practice, not a theological law. However, this says to me that…

  5. Roman Priests know what they’re getting into, meaning that they’re willing to give up the sex thing. The several seminarians I know can testify to this, and everyone’s fairly confident that they can keep their hormones in check.

But here’s my two biggest problems:
6) You’re telling me that marriage comes down to being a sexual outlet. That the first thing men should do every day is tell their wives, “I’m glad you married me so that I’m not a child molestor.” That women should marry priests so they can act as a sexual placebo for them. Gee, that’s a really fucking dignified for women and marriage everywhere. (And this is coming from a “traditional values” group of people too…maybe they’re going to tell me next that sex is evil and only for babymaking anyway.)
Sorry, the Catholic policy on celibacy CAN change, but you need a better reason than "cooling priests’ hormones.

  1. I’m single and, at this point in my life, I’m facing the realistic prospect that I may stay that way. Many of the people in this group are aware of how badly I want to get married. It’s worsened by the fact that two of them are getting married next month, and the groom was even pestering me about which cute female would be my date for the wedding. (Answer: nobody; I’m stagging it.) I haven’t found anyone. I’ve been looking, but either the women aren’t interested, are holding out for something better, or are nuts.
    Despite my strong desire to marry, I’m not willing to settle. It would be incredibly undignified for me to jump on the first interested party I come across, because I’d be using her as an outlet for my desires. (Read: bad.) What this means, and what I’ve made clear, is that this realistically means I might never marry. And it follows that I might never have sex.
    Guess what, my evangelical friend? I’m celibate by default. And I might be stuck that way. And that has nothing, I repeat, nothing to do with my religion. Sorry I don’t have a significant other like you do, but the prospect of sex isn’t even theoretically in my future.
    So what’s this mean, pal o’ mine? Am I destined to be a child molestor or rapist, because I don’t have a sexual outlet? Because sooner or later, I’m going to be around kids or women eventually? That someday I’ll just snap? That we’re all just sexual predators deep down, and marriage is nothing but a placebo for us all? I hope you enjoy that thought when you’re making love to your spouse someday. Hey, way to be supportive of my singleness. Maybe we should all just give free sex to each other in order to keep our hormones in check.

    Despite making all this clear, I think it bounced off most of them (except for one friend who’s pretty darn accepting of my faith). Money says I get a passage from Romans shoved under my nose next time I wear a miraculous medal outside of my shirt. Really, this thing came down to a “let’s convert the heathen Catholic” comment, whether they realized it or not.
    They’re my friends, they’ll stay that way. But…fuck. This pissed me off.

2

It might seem really inappropriate for an atheist to chime in here, but right now we have a huge shitfight happening here about the Anglican church’s handling of paedophilia within its ranks over the years (Anglican ministers can marry).

Anyone who thinks this issue is confined to the Roman Catholic Church should probably be examining the past behaviour and policies of their own church in respect of paedophilia.

3

Res, I sympathise with your sense of frustration. I mean, it’s outrageous that you, as a Catholic, are supposedly fair game for snide comments.

However, I wonder if the logic of the “priests should get married” argument is different than what you’re grasping at first blush. Perhaps they don’t mean that child-molesting priests, if married, would no longer do so. I can understand how offensive that is for the reasons you’ve said (it’s a too-simplistic view of pederasty, plus it cheapens marriage).

However, perhaps what they instead mean is that the priesthood would be more attractive to more men with “normal” sexual appetites. Perhaps there is a proportion of priests (who knows how many, I’m not implying it’s large) who find the priesthood appealing because (in addition to their strong faith in god) they don’t feel any interest in marriage. Or women. So the choice to enter the priesthood, no light undertaking for anyone, is a little less difficult for them from that standpoint. And among some of those priests, perhaps they later discover that this is because they have an attraction to children instead of grown women. Oops. And some of them cannot overcome the temptation and act upon it. Tragedy ensues such as what we are seeing.

Maybe that is equally ludicrous (or offensive) but it’s a different sort of logic than you first thought. It’s not saying that marital sex keeps predators from preying. It’s just saying that you might be able to lessen the proportion of clergy with those kinds of urges.

Now as for maybe never getting married, let me remind you that you’re still a young’un. My husband didn’t find me until he was 35. I’ve got hope for you yet.

And what did you get me from Hershey Land?

4

I can’t believe people think that marriage would prevent child molestation. I just don’t get it.

I hope there are no nasty undertones now, that may break up your friendships, as it seems as if at least one in the group is completely accepting of you.

5

You’re sure as heck not gonna get a Pit thread for this one, RIL. You’re completely justified in ranting.

6

I’m wondering how incest victims would feel about this theory about marriage preventing child molestation.

7

How long have you been a child molester? (Don’t let them get you down. Hopefully your patience in setting out fact from fiction will eventually help get your companions up to speed.)

8

Crankster, I think you’re half on the money here. Sounds like you’re hitting on the concept of a vocation, which Catholics understand as the lifestyle in which one works best because God gave them that inclination. I.e., I pretty much feel that I was made to be married, so it wouldn’t make sense for me to be a priest. This is why men do, or at least should, enter the priesthood.

If your hypothesis is correct, then I worry that the screening process at seminaries aren’t tight enough. (My chaplain back in MI basically said this was the case in his salad days.)

I largely suspect this wasn’t the basis of my friends’ comments, and I’m saying that based on experience. Most anti-Catholics I’ve dealt with have basically given me the sexual-outlet schpiel. Which is not to say that my friends have that view, so much as, because of the sex-driven culture we live in, that’s the view they have.

Well, there’s always that mass-Doper wedding they were plotting in MPSIMS… :smiley:

I was supposed to get you something? ::::d&r::::::

Hee. Next party at your place, I’ll get you the biggest Hershey bar I can get my hands on. Or a carbonite-Han Solo action figure…it LOOKS like a Hershey bar.

9

I must say this is pretty fucked-up. I’m an atheist, so I suppose I shouldn’t care, but I was raised Catholic, so I have a sort of soft spot for the Church, if you will.

Res, obviously a theological debate with your friends would be pointless, as well as tiresome and possibly damaging to the relationship, but maybe you could bring up what reprise said- child molestation, unfortunately, happens everywhere and within every segment of the population.

I agree with you and Cranky about the marriage issue- “sexual outlet” is, IMO, a completely bogus argument.

On a more personal note, I ran into a real-live Jesuit priest the other day, wearing full cassock (right word? long black ensemble) in public. I know many priests have stopped doing this due to being harassed, and the fact that this guy’s faith was so strong that he was braving anonymous public opprobium was actually touching and inspiring. Even to an atheist.

As an ex-Catholic, may Protestant friends still feel the need to bash the church to me, assuming that because I left it, I’ll join in and bash-along merrily. I’m happy and willing to discuss the historical and social problems of the church with anyone in an open, informed manner, but once you start with the goddamned altar boy jokes, I sorta go a little mad and start reminding them that of the sinful, blaspheming heretics they actually are. Martin Luther, indeed. :wink:

10

Eighteen years ago, while I was in a Kingdom Hall on Sunday, when the Jehovah’s Witness scandal with molesters was in full bloom, one of the overseers took time out to say that, a far as he is concerned, molestation ought not to be tolerated, and in fact, grounds for excommunication. Which is quite an unusual stance because, unfortunately, it really isn’t one in and Christian denomination.

11

I appreciate your putting it this way. Too often it is expressed as men who know their proclivity ahead of time and want access to kids. Discovery of one’s sexuality might happen over time, especially for the young men who entered years ago.

I have to believe that at least in recent years screening is rigorous. Sexuality is much more talked about and is a crucial element in the decision to follow this vocation. Vocations are also happening later in people’s lives, and they should have some sense of their sexual identity by then. The entrance process is long and intensive and I can only hope that people are honest to the best of their ability in self-analysis.

12

RIL, kudos to you for keeping your cool in the face of some flawed ideas about Catholic priesthood.

I’m not a Catholic myself (and of course I think that what’s happened to these kids is horrible), but I am equally opposed to “outsiders” throwing such simplistic and bass-ackwards theories into the ring about how to “fix” things.

I think, actually, that some such theories have as much to do with the fact that celibacy in general (whether by choice, by accident, or by religious doctrine) is not considered “normal” as they have to do with the Catholic faith.

Especially when the celibate person in question is a man. I mean, we all know that men are at the mercy of their knuckle-dragging, Tasmanian Devil libidos 24/7, so a man who doesn’t get any is bound to have a few screws (no pun intended) loose somewhere. (And truthfully, how often do we encounter the idea, whether express or implied, that marriage “civilizes” the man? How often do we encounter the idea that marriage transforms him into a nice, safe little gelding?) As gigi pointed out, many people truly believe that priests/ministers enter their professions to either escape or secretly indulge their sexual abnormalities.

So while your friends would probably never say it, and in fact probably never consciously think it about you, they may in fact harbor the idea somewhere down deep that if you don’t get you some soon, you might just go off the deep end and start trolling the playgrounds.

I say hang in there–they’re the idiots, and you may not be able to change that… but if you want to screw with them a little, start plastering photos of a young Gary Coleman all over your house before inviting them over for swimming.

13

If the non-Catholic Christian can add to this thread without being offensive -

I think another part of the idea that marriage would reduce the number of child molestors in the Roman Catholic church is that allowing married priests would increase the pool from which you could draw seminarians.

I expect that at least part of the pressure to move Fr. Handjob off to another parish after a brief bout of counseling and a really good confession came from the fact that there just aren’t all that many other priests to replace him. Thus Monsignor had to make the best of whoever was available, even if it meant keeping him around instead of booting his butt out the cathedral door.

Add to that the fact that in at least some instances, a celibate clergy is going to attract people who are trying to escape their sexuality because they know perfectly well it is sinful to lust after little boys. And the fact that celibacy is rare tends to put the priest on a pedestal, and make it easier for him to get away with it after he finds a vow to God doesn’t scratch the itch either.

Although I would agree that policy in the Catholic church does not have to be subject to majority rule.

FWIW - Lutheran clergy can get married, and there was a scandal in my sister’s church regarding sexual sin as well. It isn’t just priests. As should be obvious.

Regards,
Shodan

14

It really isn’t about religion of any one stripe or denomination, that I can see. It’s about power, and a power hierarchy that protects those whom abuse their power. You could plug any group (civic, religious, political, etc.) into the slot where ‘Catholic’ sits right now, and it’d be just as horrible, and just as unforgiable, and it’d still be about a limited number of persons abusing their position to take advantage of people in their care.