Why do some Priests abuse?

Great Debates
1

I wonder if some of the Priests who abuse children originally chose their vocation as a result of a once-pressing need to find an alternative to ‘evil’. Not the evil they perceived in the outside world, however, but one that lay within themselves in the form of a severe ‘psychological disturbance’. The process of becoming a Priest might then be sufficently inspiring so that the ‘evil’ becomes even more repressed.

Continually receiving (and perhaps encouraging) conditioned deference to the position one holds, rather than evoking natural responses to the character one has, might eventually cause the inner restraints to start to slip: “Hmm, I notice that whenever I say/do ‘this’ then I’m given a satisfying amount of deference from everyone but when I unthinkingly just said/did something fractionally more extreme then I received the same degree of deference!”.

Conditioned deference is sometimes mistaken for (and actually can be) psychological subservience and anyone perceived to be in this category would be most at risk. Situations involving a momentary emotional dependence could go horribly wrong as repressed urges are given expression to - and probably with the perpetrator having little conscious awareness of having such a capability until the first offence occurs.

Another interesting point is that a child who needs to show their hurt, rather than articulate it, will have an instinctive aversion to appealing for help from anyone who shows conditioned deference to the author of their distress.

Much of the above is speculation of course but there is a reason for making it. Psychological violence can be expressed in many ways and in a Parish I know of the Priest has also elected to become the Chairman of an associated Social Club. Since this has happened the Club has been turned into a playground whereby a capacity for ‘prejudice’ that nobody is born with is exercised at the expense of those least able to defend themselves. In practice this means anyone to whom a ‘dislike’ is taken - whether they be other Committee Members, Ordinary Members, or Guests (often the reasons given for the dislike do not have to have any basis in reality, just as long as they’re logical!). The example set has also empowered others with similar personality characteristics and over the last year or so there has been a steady stream of emotional bodybags carried from the Club.

I am truly astonished - and outraged - at how little can be done about it. If these ‘minor crimes’ against the very nature of life arouse little interest (and they ought to be the easiest to prevent) then how can an effective preventitive policy against the major ones ever be found? I do feel that Parish Priests ought to have regular psychological assesssments.

Jorolat

2

Some priests abuse for the same reason that some people in any profession abuse. I don’t know that there’s anything specific about priests in that regard.

3

I would agree that the ‘reason’ may be the same but it is the huge discrepancy between the ‘Public Image’ of the Catholic Church, and the occasional ‘Private Reality’, that makes the crime stand out more than it might elsewhere.

I also feel that conditioned deference/psychological subservience is an important factor in creating the kind of emotional environment (anywhere) in which ‘badness’, irrespective of the form it takes, can occur.

On more than one occasion I have heard a parent say to their child (who is often being no more than mildly exuberant) “If you don’t come here/sit down/stop that then the Father will tell you off!”. I have seen the flash of fear and uncertainty in such a child’s eyes and it is not too difficult to imagine, particularly if the Priest has an abrupt and ‘authoritarian’ manner, how repeated similar experiences could teach a child to a) associate the Priest with fear, and b) in order to avoid the inner experience of a) it might be better to be what one is expected to be.

Couple this with a child’s perception that the parents are implicitly not questioning the Priest’s right to evoke fear should he want to (whether or not he has such a capability doesn’t matter - the apparent complicity makes the child feel alone) then the seeds of any future disaster may have already be being sown.

Thanks for replying!

Jorolat

4

This post is also being discussed on a New York Times discussion forum at:

http://www.abuzz.com/interaction/s.266267/discussion/

Jorolat

5

Well, priests are in a position of authority, and so it’s easy for them, (or teachers, or scout leaders, or parents) to abuse that authority. If someone is expected to listen to you and obey you, they’re going to be less likely to resist when you tell them to do something, even if it’s not appropriate.

6

As someone abused by a priest I can tell you why – because most (but not all) are dysfunctional, mostly alcoholic, pedeophiles who joined the priesthood as a conveinent “out” of explaining or dealing with their sexuality.

Of course, their problem does not go “away” once they are ordained – they just don’t have to explain to mom and dad any embarassing “sex” questions anymore. Being a priest allows you to be close to children, and it is ok to hang out with children. Many of the children are troubled – which is why they are seeing the priest in the first place.

Those are the pedophile priests. What about the rest? They are just as bad because they cover up the abuse and most are indignant to even discuss the issue. “How DARE you question mother church!”

Of course, there are some wonderful priests – unfortunately I did not come into contact with any of them. . .

7

[furnishesq - I had composed this reply offline and have only just seen your post. It has given food for thought and I would like to reply to it later when I have more time]

I agree, particularly when prerequisite control (irrespective of whatever the ultimate aim may be) is often achieved ‘bit by bit’.

Personally it will give some satisfaction to put descriptions on my web site of common ‘techniques’ used by one person to establish psychological control over another - particularly those used in everyday social settings.

From another perspective, and although my experiences/observations are largely limited to a single area of contact with the Catholic Church, I can’t help extrapolating and wondering if the entire organisation isn’t built on psychological control.

Jorolat

8

No more or no less than any hierarchical organization is based on psychological control. We’re a hierarchical species, and we fit easily into those roles.

9

Thankyou for your post, it contains a lot that I recognize and would agree with. Additionally the reference to “Mom and Dad” made me aware of “tunnel vision” in only seeing the hidden capability in its final form.

There are many aspects to this subject that are troublesome and I guess the one that bothers me the most is the difficulty in seeing how an effective preventive policy can ever be implemented. I believe psychological violence to have many forms of which sexual violence is but one, albeit the most important. It has also been my experience, however, that larger ‘evils’ can grow out of lesser ones.

My experience of the Roman Catholic Church is limited to a single area of contect but has extended to a high enough level within its hierarchy to see that the ‘mindset’ is condusive to many forms of psychological violence occurring at the “grass roots” level.

It is not unknown, for example, for a Priest to say, with ‘intensity’, that “People have to be controlled, otherwise they’ll walk all over you”. Such Priests have no self-awareness that the psychological pressures they apply in order to achieve ‘control’ can only be effective when advantage is taken of any previous ‘bruises’ an individual has accumulated from earlier in their life. Obviously these pressures (often applied with an appropriate degree of ‘righteousness’) inherently carry the potential to inflict new hurt.

It is also worth noting that the manipulation or exploitation of existing bruises forever prevents their resolution through responding to the demands of everyday life, or through therapy. It is quite possible that people used in this way unconsciously see the positive aspects of the Church as a ‘carrot’ continuously held out to compensate for the ‘stick’ of an internal hurt that some Priests take advantage of (and to varying degrees).

I totally agree, with respect to pedophile Priests, that “their problem doesn’t go away” but feel some surprise the potential for ‘bad behaviour’ isn’t identified during the process of becoming a Priest - even if it can’t be determined what form it might eventually be expressed in. It’s hardly rocket science but the greater capacity for psychological violence then the less room there is for natural responses (you can’t get two pints of beer into the same glass!).

A number of people have said that the Catholic Church will weather this storm, as they have done many others, but I don’t believe this to be the case. As long as the sexual abuse of children continues to make the headlines (and appear in forums!) then it is upto the Church to change, rather than the other way round where people are directed to conform. The clock can’t be turned back.

Taking a longer term point of view I see publicity as a way of attacking the larger evils before the lesser ones are addressed.

Jorolat

10

I tend to see Society as an artificial structure superimposed on the natural world. Something that we’re individually born into but had no part in the making thereof.

From my perspective the need to psychologically control someone usually, but not always, ultimately has its roots in some unresolved childhood crisis or other. On the other hand, being psychologically controlled (as opposed to rolling one’s eyes upwards and going along for the ride) always means advantage has been taken of a different internal orientation to a childhood hurt. You don’t find jobs, yet alone money, in the natural world and some people only have a relative experience of life - eg automatically smiling at ‘The Boss’ and equally automatically scowling at ‘The Cleaner’.

The original post concerns the sexual abuse of children specifically in the Catholic Church while, as everybody knows, it also happens elsewhere. I see the current furore as part of an ongoing process in which the ‘larger evils’ of Society are addressed, clearing the way, one hopes, for the eventual resolution of the ‘lesser’ ones.

The Human Beings who built the Great Pyramids weren’t volunteeers, but in the western world at least, whips are no longer used to establish psychological control over another. Except in the case of horses of course.

The “Droit du Seigneur”, in which a ‘Noble’ could sleep with a Serf’s bride-to-be, is no longer practised. The Spanish Inquisition has ended. Trade Unions exist and Women have the Vote. All these ‘advances’ have been made within the structure of Society and usually because the relevant subsets of the population grew too large for direct/inherited control (via ‘conditioned deference’, for example) to be maintained.

Underlying all these struggles for ‘civil liberties’ lies the natural need, the one most dominant when we’re young, to simply Be. It’s almost as if we’re going around in a circle…

I can’t help wondering, if the transition from the natural world to the artificial/psychological one of Society hadn’t been made, whether or not we would now be walking on the planets of distant Stars.

Jorolat

11

Nah, because there’d be no one to plan the trip. Whenever you get a group of people together, hierarchies are going to form. That’s happened since we were human, and probably before we were human. Society is part of the human condition.

12

I agree - I’m just suggesting that we could have had/can still (eventually) have a Society without the psychological element.

Just to pick an example off of the top of my head: Galileo spent the rest of his life under house arrest for suggesting a reality contrary to that which his contemporaries had been conditioned to believe.

Galileo had a natural right to life entirely equivalent to that of his peers, the need to ‘punish’ him was clearly psychological in origin. Sometimes progress can be so s-l-o-w.

Jorolat