Making Homosexuality a False Idol in the Fight Against Clerical Abuse

 

Image Credit: "priest" by filipe.garcia is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

There are certain sectors in the Catholic Church that address sexual abuse in the Church as if it is only a real problem when it comes to cases of homosexual abuse or pedophilia. 

Recently, Catholic Herald covered the case of a woman who suffers from severe PTSD as the result of sexual abuse at the hands of a priest. Said priest is now laicized, is of some prominence in the conservative Catholic world as Cardinal Vigano's translator, and has also written for One Peter Five and Church Militant. 

It's received less than minimal acknowledgement from conservative Catholic talking heads (perhaps to maintain the reputation of Vigano, who has become the de facto favored prelate of conservatives in the Church), but the comments on the coverage I have seen (most notably on a blog post on OnePeterFive, which seems to be the only outlet that the man contributed to that has seen fit to address their readers on the matter) are really upsetting to read as someone who has done a bit of research on this and has been on the receiving end of clerical abuse as a woman. 

Comments I've seen on this case include: 

- "Once, some years ago now, the old lady then running the bookstore.... told me that the pastor (who I really liked) had run off with a parishioner. When she said, after I asked, that the parishioner was female, I said, “well, it could have been worse.”

- "One small comfort, the alleged sin(s) did not involve young boys and fourteen year-old male teens. Not insignificant. Very difficult for an Edenic man to squash and deaden the attraction to be husband and father. The demand that a man must is near criminal against the Natural Law"

- "We are not supposed to judge people. That is God's role. We are all sinners and I accept this man's repentance and let him live his life...."

- "For many centuries, celibacy worked fine with healthy heterosexual men in the priesthood because society was religious and Catholic."

- ""At least his indiscretions were with a woman"

While I  back and support the teachings of the Catholic Church as regards human sexuality, I do think that some in the Church have idolized homosexuality as THE Problem With the Church Today (TM) to the point that cases of abuse in the Church that don't fit that description are minimized or neglected. 

I'm not entirely sure why this is. I do think that there is a fair amount of truth to the idea that many of our clergy struggle with this particular inclination (this based solely on my husband's stories of his days in seminary...there was one seminary within a day's drive to where he attended that was nicknamed "Notre Flame", and his own alma mater had a huge "house cleaning" after a professor found homosexual pornography in the parking lot the year before he arrived), but I am deeply frustrated at this strange idea that heterosexual priests struggle less with keeping their vows purely by virtue of being sexually attracted to the "right" gender. Sexual attraction is sexual attraction, no matter who the object of that attraction is, and can be manipulated by the evil one to tempt a priest to fall from grace. As a woman who lives in modern Western culture, I find the idea that a heterosexual man has less temptation to misuse his sexuality as utterly and completely baffling and grossly out of touch with reality. 

The reason that homosexual sin is wrong is because it is outside of marriage and the bounds of proper love, and because it ignores, disrespects, and subverts an integral part of the human person. This is the same reason that ALL sexual sin is wrong: masturbation, pornography, contraception, fornication, adultery, or even bestiality or necrophilia. There's no special "Hell Points" for fornicating or committing adultery with a man instead of a woman. (See the Catechism of the Catholic Church, especially paragraphs 2357- 2358)

BOTH are mortal sins. Period. You can go to Hell for both. 

Now, can there be additional sins that factor into a situation in addition to the bare basic sin of abusing your sexuality? You bet. Cases where there was pedophilia or rape of an adult involved in particular are more complex than "just" misusing or indulging your sexuality. In that case, you're committing additional sins of violence, manipulation, and loss of innocence in addition. There's a legitimate reason that these cases are treated more seriously than others. 

However, in the case of adults where the only difference is the gender of the person the offender had sex with the double standard makes no sense. It is deeply frustrating that the only cases involving adults that are treated seriously by certain groups are ones where homosexual behavior was involved. It's also deeply frustrating that a priest found guilty of homosexual behavior is immediately cast out and loses his reputation within certain groups, while a priest found to have been involved in sexual indiscretions with a woman is given a mere slap on the wrist and is more readily and easily forgiven, or at least given a greater benefit of the doubt. 

Though I would not readily describe myself as a feminist, I find myself wondering more and more if there is perhaps a little credence to the idea that women's' bodies, needs, and worth as human beings made in the image and likeness of God are seen as less valuable than those of men by certain people in positions of power in the Church. It is so much harder for us to get our cases of abuse taken seriously, we're more likely to be blamed for our abuse then men who suffer through similar situations, and, despite news coverage of several cases of abuse against lay women and a huge scandal involving the rape of nuns in the Vatican and in several dioceses in Africa, rape that had been a systematic and long term problem, the narrative that abuse is a primarily homosexual problem is maintained. 

The former priest mentioned in this article once wrote a piece vaguely admitting to "hurting people" and to breaking his vow of chastity (though he left out that whatever it was that he did was bad enough to give at least one woman severe PTSD, which is only something that enters the picture when there is severe emotional, mental, physical or sexual abuse and/or violation of consent...but I digress). 

His rationale for why he did what he did? Because his formator in seminary was homosexual, and winked at same sex immorality and excessive drinking on campus. He said, in effect, "it wasn't totally my fault. No one taught me how to keep it in my pants!"

And people have bought that bit, hook, line, and sinker, "This is what was around him. Who can be sure that they would do any better?" (actual quote from a comment thread discussing this man's behavior). 

Yes, abuse leads to further abuse. But it does not excuse further abuse. The person who commits the abuse still needs to face the consequences of their actions, and certain actions preclude people from being trustworthy sources for ministry or activity in the Church. 

In short, apparently even when a man decides to indulge his darker tendencies with a woman, it's still the fault of those pesky gays. If nothing else, they evidently make absolutely marvelous scapegoats. You can get away with anything, or at least minimize the fallout of it, so long as you make it fit the narrative.