Can pedophiles be "cured?"

[Will]

RE: Can pedophiles be

 

Chaz, for me that's a nice way of putting it, "like the church but hate the politics." And I take your point about the unfairness of singling out priests and not the clergy of other churches as well. I also take Al's point regarding celibacy as an unlikely "cause" of sexual child abuse.

 

However, it seems clear to me that the American public as a whole is not prepared in this instance to be swayed either by fairness (as in the case of finger-pointing at priests) or by psychological theories, however well-founded and rational, that dissociate sexual misbehavior and celibacy. I myself don't think that celibacy is the issue at all; in two posts I've bent over backwards to try to say that the fault is with an organizational culture that will not face facts. When you reassign priests who you know have been accused of sexual misconduct but you haven't investigated the conduct; when you do it again and don't tell the congregation involved; when you stonewall, deny, and strongarm laypeople: that is a vicious set of administrative principles almost guaranteed to perpetuate misdeed of all kinds -- not just pederasty.

 

Even so, we don't need a scandal about pederasty to signal the concern that thousands of Catholics have about the enforced vow of celibacy for the regular clergy. (I'm not talking about men and women in religious vows as monks, brothers, nuns, and sisters: that's a different thing altogether.) Therefore, I was saying that IF this mess about child-molestation causes the church (a) to clean up its administrative act and (b) to re-examine the issue of celibacy, then I think it's a great thing.

 

I think it's an even greater thing when what is supposed to be a benign institution is forced to admit its own transgressions. Owning up to one's own mistakes and taking responsibility for them is a good way to lead a moral life. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. All the way up to the Head Gander in the Vatican.

 

More germane to the readers of these posts is the possibility that such honesty might also have the effect of meliorating (if not actually stopping) the institutional hypocrisy about homosexuality. As things stand, the church's behavior simply supports the superstitious belief that child-molestation and homosexuality go as it were hand in hand.