Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: It's hard to imagine a deeper crisis for the Catholic hierarchy

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/03/sin-or-crime.html
What's fascinating in the steady onslaught of new incidences of previous
cover-ups of child rape and molestation in the Catholic hierarchy is the
notion that the hierarchs tended to see child rape as a sin rather than
a crime. Hence the emphasis on forgiveness, therapy, repentance - rather
than removal, prosecution and investigation. Obviously, there's one
reason for this: they were defending the reputation of the church by
hiding its darkest secrets, and they were using the authority of
religion to do so. But I suspect it's also true that this is how they
genuinely thought of child rape or abuse.
How could that be, one asks? Well: imagine you are a young gay Catholic
teen coming into his sexuality and utterly convinced that it's vile and
evil. What do you do? I can tell you from my own experience. You bury
it. But of course, you can't bury it. So you objectify sex; and
masturbate. You cannot have sexual or even emotional contact with a
teenage girl, because it is simply impossible, and you certainly cannot
have sex with another teenage boy or you will burn in hell for ever ...
so you have sex with images in your own head. Your sex life becomes
completely solitary. It can be empowered by pornography or simply
teenage imagination. Some shard of beauty, some aspect of sensuality,
some vision of desire will keep you sexually energized for days.
Now suppose your powers of suppression and attachment to religious
authority are also strong - perhaps stronger because you feel so adrift
you need something solid to cling onto in your psyche. And you know you
cannot marry a woman. But you want to have status and cover as a single
man. If this is the 1950s and 1960s, it's into the Church you go. You
think it will cure you. In fact, it only makes you sicker because your
denial is buttressed by their collective denial. And the whole thing
becomes one big and deepening spiral of lies and corruption.
Many of these tormented men have arrested sexual and emotional
development. They have never had a sexual or intimate relationship with
any other human being. Sex for them is an abstraction, a sin, not an
interaction with an equal. And their sexuality has been frozen at the
first real moment of internal terror: their early teens. So they tend to
be attracted still to those who are in their own stage of development:
teenage boys. And in their new positions, they are given total access to
these kids who revere them for their power.
So they use these children to express themselves sexually. They barely
see these children as young and vulnerable human beings, incapable of
true consent. Because they have never had a real sexual relationship,
have never had to deal with the core issue of human equality and dignity
in sex, they don't see the children as victims. Like the tortured gay
man, Michael Jackson, they see them as friends. They are even gifted at
interacting with them in non-sexual ways. One theme you find in many of
these stories is that until these screwed up priests' abuse and
molestation is revealed, they often have a great reputation as pastors.
As emotionally developed as your average fourteen year old wanting to be
loved, they sublimate a lot of their lives into clerical service. But
they also act out sexually all the time.
And they know that many around them have the same patterns, and so a
truly sick subculture perpetuates this. In the end, it is all about
themselves and their pathologies, how to express them and how to hide
them. As social sexual tolerance advances, and as fewer straight men are
prepared to give up sex for life to become priests, the proportion of
screwed up pastors increases. In this self-protective environment, these
priests do not even see the children as fellow humans. They remain like
those solitary abstract images in their heads. So they cannot fully
grasp the enormity of the crime they are committing and see it merely as
another part of the vortex of their sexual sin.
So they cover up for one another; they fear that if one of them falls,
they will all fall; even those who are not totally screwed up about sex
are eager to prevent the church's secret from being exposed. But the
more they cover up, the bigger the calamity when it all emerges. And
when it's clear that at the center of this kind of pathological secrecy
and shame is the current Pope, then it is clear that the entire
institution is corrupt from the top down.
These men are too objectively disordered to run a church. They bask in
self-denial, while they wage a culture war against gay men who have
actually dealt with their sexuality, who have owned it, and celebrated
it and even found ways to channel it into adult relationships and even
civil marriage.
We all know this game is now over. The current Pope is now found
directly responsible for two clear incidents of covering up or ignoring
child abuse and rape. As head of the organization that took
responsibility for investigating these cases for so long, his complicity
in this vast and twisted criminal conspiracy is not in dispute. If he
were the head of a secular organization, he would have already resigned
and be cooperating with the police.
But he is the Vicar of Christ on earth.
It's hard to imagine a deeper crisis for the Catholic hierarchy than
this. If the church is to survive - and it will because it is the vessel
of eternal truth - it will have to go through a wrenching transformation.
Beginning with the resignation of this Pope and an end to priestly
celibacy.


Un quadro agghiacciante ma, temo, vero.
Molto modestamente, avevo già scritto anch'io che almeno per una volta
l'inamovibilità del Papa, un Papa compromesso, rischia di essere un
grosso problema per la sua organizzazione. 
E' anche un Papa molto vecchio, fortunatamente per la CC. Ma non saranno
anni facili né di ricostruzione quelli che ci sono davanti.
-- 
Tb (bieco illuminista)