Here we go again. The Vatican is in denial. No, worse than that, it is in the blame game. Except it is pointing the finger in entirely the wrong direction. Away from itself.
You can take it that the pronouncement made by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone last week on the subject of paedophilia had been approved by the Pope himself. Effectively the Vatican’s second-in-command, Cardinal Bertone claimed that paedophilia was linked not to celibacy but to homosexuality. “Many psychologists and psychiatrists have demonstrated that there is no relation between celibacy and paedophilia,” he told a press conference in Chile (you can imagine the jaws dropping as he pontificated). “But many others have demonstrated, I have been told recently, that there is a relation between homosexuality and paedophilia. That is true. That is the problem.”
So there you go. He has been told recently, so it must be true. The noxious Fr. Brendan Smyth, and others like him, preyed on all those young girls because he was homosexual. That makes a lot of sense. This is what Cardinal Bertone believes. Ergo, it is what the Pope believes. And of course it is despicable nonsense.
There is, in fact, not a shred of evidence to suggest that homosexuality is the ‘cause’ of paedophilia. The vast majority of those whose sexual affiliation is primarily to members of their own gender have no interest whatsoever in having sex with anyone under the age of consent. In fact most of them would be thoroughly repulsed by the idea. The same is true of heterosexuals. There may be differences of shade in the history of gay, as against straight, eroticism, but not of light.
It requires a particular form of arrested development, to take a sexual interest in someone
before they have reached an age at which they can credibly be said to have knowingly consented to sexual activity. It just happens that rather a lot of people suffering from this syndrome ended up being priests in the Roman Catholic Church. Figures quoted in an Irish Times report suggest that less than 1% of the population have paedophile tendencies, but that 4% of priests in the US have been accused of molesting minors. While these figures are far from conclusive, they do tally unnervingly with our experience in these grim matters here in Ireland.
In his pronouncements in Chile, Cardinal Bertone attempted to give a twisted legitimacy to his claims by suggesting the 80% of all paedophile acts had boys rather than girls as their target. This figure may come from the same rumour mongers who “told” the Cardinal that paedophilia was caused by homosexuality. In fact, the available research suggests that ‘heterosexuals’ are as likely to be sexually aroused by images of children as ‘homosexuals’. But even if Bertone’s figures are based on actual events reported in the Church, how reliable are they?
If a man forces himself on a thirteen year-old girl, in many cultures a blind eye will be turned. Indeed, in many places east of Europe, where women are routinely treated like shit as part of the cultural dominance exerted by men, it is almost acceptable. And if the girl becomes pregnant, then a shotgun marriage may be the order of the day (unless, of course, the perpetrator is a priest). But a man forcing himself on a thirteen year old boy is a different matter entirely, and one towards which no sympathy will be extended, because Christians, Muslims, Jews and Hindus alike do not generally accept homosexuality.
Besides, priests have far easier access to boys rather than girls, in schools, as altar boys, in sports clubs and so on – and therefore they use and abuse them more commonly. If it were the other way around, then so too, almost certainly, would the stats. What we do know, and what experts confirm, is that for a lot of paedophiles – priests or otherwise – the sex of the victim is not relevant. What matters is that those on whom they prey are children, and therefore more easily victimised – more easily raped and abused that is – than adults. Paedophilia, like rape in a wider context, is about power. It is about control. It is about a twisted and distorted version of sexuality that is, in the case of priests, often tied in to their sense of themselves as special and is
frequently represented, according to victims’ own accounts, in a religious guise.
As it happens, sufficient research has not been carried out to offer a conclusive judgement regarding the role celibacy plays in paedophilia. But what we can say is that sexual abuse of children was rampant in the Catholic Church. Does this mean that there is something in the way in which Catholic priests are recruited and trained, something in the cocktail of simultaneous special status, sexual self-denial and the tremendous weight of guilt associated with eroticism and desire that makes paedophilia more likely among priests? Or does it mean that people who are locked into a phase of sexual immaturity, confusion and guilt are more likely to be drawn to a caste that tries to deal with the endless complexities of sex by denying them?
At the heart of it all, without a shadow of doubt, is denial. This is what the Catholic Church has always preached in relation to sexuality. It is a source of sin: so quell it. It should only be used for procreation, not for pleasure: so quell it. If desire comes calling outside the most limited, hidebound circumstances of a straight, monogamous marriage, repress it. And among priests, sex with a man is wrong; sex with a woman is wrong; sex with a child is wrong. So what is the essential difference, apart from the fact that children are easier targets? History tells us that for
those of whom celibacy is required, there is none.
As we know here in Ireland, denial was the Catholic Church’s only policy in relation to the abuse of children. And our experience has been mirrored elsewhere. The church authorities deliberately hid the reality of the hundreds of thousands of crimes committed globally by their footsoldiers against the most vulnerable people in their ‘flock’. And it is what they are doing again now, in the current round of public statements emanating from senior members of the hierarchy, including the Pope himself. What we are seeing is a classic exercise in spin-doctoring, designed to shore up the position of the Roman Catholic Church, and to minimise collateral damage from the litany of abuse cases. The strategy is three pronged: blame homosexuals; blame the media and blame ‘modernity’, characterised by the Pope and his lieutenants as the drift away from the traditional ‘values’ espoused by the Church and represented by the authority of the Pope himself.
The only grain of truth to be found in all of this spinning is that the media has played a part in the Church’s grand embarrassment, by facilitating the widespread exposure of a problem that was
endemic in the Roman Catholic Church, probably for hundreds of years. In this, the Pope is right: without the attentions of the media, the abuse would still be successfully swept under the Vatican carpet, and the children would go on suffering.
Meanwhile, the evidence increasingly points the finger of blame at the Pope himself as an author and enforcer of the culture of Omerta in the Catholic Church. Observing the testimonies as they unfold, it seems that no amount of special pleading is going to minimise this successfully. The problem for those ordinary decent people clinging to the last remnants of credibility they still vest in a Church that has been so thoroughly and deeply discredited, is that Pope Benedict is the perfect representative, the ideal head, the ultimate symbol of the institution.
That inescapable conclusion is worth thinking about, long and hard...