Posted on 06/06/2002 8:51:14 PM PDT by topher
Part 1: The Real Issue Behind the Scandals in U.S.
According to Gladys Sweeney of Institute for the Psychological Sciences
ARLINGTON, Virginia, JUNE 6, 2002 (Zenit.org).- The key problem involving scandals with priests in the United States isn't what the media generally lead us to believe, says a Catholic psychologist.
Dr. Gladys Sweeney, president and dean of the Institute for the Psychological Sciences, gave her insights into what lies behind the scandals that have rocked the Church in America.
Sweeney formerly held a faculty appointment at the Division of Child Psychiatry and Department of Pediatrics at Johns Hopkins Medical School. The second part of this interview will be published next Thursday, June 13.
ZENIT: From a psychological standpoint, what is the nature of most of the sex abuse scandals involving priests in the United States? Is it pedophilia? or something else?
Sweeney: The major thrust in the reporting of the scandal has focused on cases of pedophilia, that is, attraction of adults to pre-pubescent children. However, upon careful study of the reports, it is clear that the major problem of the current scandal is homosexual ephebophilia -- the attraction of adults to same-sex adolescents.
We are talking in this case about a great problem with homosexual behavior. There is some reluctance on the part of the media to emphasize this fact.
Tolerance for homosexual behavior across all levels of society is highly encouraged as a principle to be promoted and valued. It is easier to focus on the cases of pedophilia, which elicit strong emotional reaction, rather than on the problem of homosexual behavior. Homosexuality, however, is at the root of this problem.
Professor John Haldane, a philosophy professor at the University of St. Andrews who is holding the Royden Davis Chair for Humanities at Georgetown University, distinguishes between homosexual orientation, disposition, and habitual action. Haldane states: "If one has a certain orientation this need not lead to active sexual practice, and whether it does or not depends on the development of inhibition of dispositions."
According to Father Richard John Neuhaus, there have been priests, later canonized as saints, who would meet today's criteria as having a homosexual orientation. According to Neuhaus, the issue then is not the "nature of the temptations resisted, but the fidelity of the resistance."
Psychologically speaking then, the issue is to help establish a barrier so as to inhibit the occurrence of the activity, a barrier that follows the orientation, because by the time the dispositions are developed, there is a high likelihood that the activity will be expressed.
An 18-year-old candidate for the seminary experiencing homosexual temptations and who is not sure how to handle them is quite different from a 25-year-old that has had homosexual experiences.
Even in the case of homosexual orientation in the absence of past experiences, it is important for a formation director to discern whether the individual in question can handle the environment. Prudence is of utmost importance. Let me explain.
If someone were struggling with heterosexual temptation, it would not be wise to place him in a situation where he would be in daily close contact with women, eating together, praying together, having recreation together, doing apostolate together, without carefully following the stress engendered by that situation. The same is true for someone with a homosexual orientation.
The implications are profound. They include seminaries dedicating great effort to cultivate sexual asceticism; taking an active role in guiding seminarians to discipline their dispositions, whether homosexual or heterosexual; and paying particular attention to the spiritual formation of the candidates with an emphasis on fidelity and on the sacramental life.
Q: What are the psychological factors at work behind the scandals? What would prompt a man to commit such acts?
Sweeney: In the cases of pedophilia, it is a sexual addiction problem -- a disordered inclination and aberrant behavior that carries with it an addictive and obsessional quality.
The causes of pedophilia are not completely understood; however, early sexual trauma, aggravated by compulsive masturbatory behavior accompanied by fantasy later in life, have been associated with the disorder.
H.S. Kaplan noted in a 1996 work that early sexually arousing experiences have a tremendous influence in shaping subsequent sexual desires and fantasies. D.R. Laws and W.L. Marshall believe that the effect of early imprinting are then maintained and reinforced by fantasy arousal during masturbation.
Pedophilia has been associated with high rates of concomitant psychopathology, particularly mood, anxiety and substance-abuse disorders. M.P. Kafka and R.A. Prentky found that approximately two-thirds of pedophilic patients were diagnosed with mood disorders, about 50% with anxiety disorders, and about 50% with alcohol or substance-abuse problems.
The recidivism for this disorder is high. Father Thomas Nelson, executive director of the Institute on Religious Life and professor of philosophy at the Norbertine seminary in Orange, California, states that fewer than 2% of priests have been involved in pedophilia, as compared to 4% of married people and 7% of the general lay population. The statistics show that the problem of pedophilia is no greater among priests than among the general population.
At the root of the present scandal is not pedophilia, but homosexuality.
Homosexuality as a psychiatric diagnosis has been removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, and is now considered as an alternative lifestyle.
The genetic nature of homosexuality has been emphasized by the media as an immutable and deterministic fact of nature, which people have no control over. However, a review of the research literature on homosexuality indicates that the genetic etiology of homosexuality has not been confirmed.
Many of the earlier studies -- Billings and Beckwith, 1993; Bailey and Pillard, 1995; LeVay, 1991 -- after being evaluated, revealed problematic methodologies. There were confounding factors in the research and clear bias even before the data was collected.
For the sake of argument, let's assume that there is a genetic component -- it does not need to be deterministic. One cannot deny that there is some degree of genetic influence in nearly all human behavior. Alcoholism is known to have genetic basis, yet some people with this predisposition can learn to cope with their weakness by avoiding alcohol dependence.
On the other hand, there is a robust body of literature that shows that environmental factors have a great influence over homosexual behavior. D.M. Fergusson, L.J. Horwood and A.L. Beautrais noted in their 1999 study on mental health and sexual orientation, that youth classified as gay, lesbian or bisexual differed from other youth in having had more frequent parental changes, such as divorce, parental death, separation, remarriage, etc.
W.C. Holmes and G.P. Slap noted in 1998 that the sexually abused man, when compared with the non-abused man, experiences more gender-role confusion and fear about intimate relationships with both men and women. All of this seems to support the role of psychosocial factors in the development of homosexuality.
Research in the last past years has shown that there seems to be a strong relationship between homosexuality and other major psychiatric disorders, suicidal thoughts and suicide attempts, indicating increased risk factors associated specifically with homosexual behavior.
Some researchers have come to believe that the "homophobic" explanation alone is not sufficient to explain the relationship between homosexual behavior and major dysfunctions. If anything, the media and the culture have exerted a great influence on increasing people's tolerance toward homosexual behavior, with no seeming effect in its connection to risk factors.
Summarizing, I believe that at the core of the Church's scandal today is a problem of homosexuality, which although not any longer considered a psychiatric diagnosis by the American Psychiatric and Psychological Association has been linked to other major diagnoses. It may be the end product of influential psychosocial events, in some cases interacting with genetic predispositions.
ZE02060622
"At the root of the present scandal is not pedophilia, but homosexuality."
The very biased media should wake up and leave their same sex partners long enough to know the sham they are committing on the American people and how they are abusing the American people just as they accuse Catholic priests of abusing the American people.
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Christ forgives; Christ changes. They act in His Name.
The same can be said of teachers or parents who do the same thing. I remember hearing the story of a step-father who raped his 13 year old daughter with several other men many, many times.
To say it just happens in the Catholic Church, is a lie. Many much smaller churches have many more incidents than the Catholic Church.
The Catholic Church in America is the single largest denomination. The next largest denomination is "fallen away Catholics".
Plan B is to Defrock the priests. Some of the priests involved have done as Jesus has said -- "it is better to be thrown into sea with a weight around your neck than to cause scandal among the innocents".
Than have been a number of suicides by these priests.
One of the problems is that Christians base their lives on "forgiveness". I guess Christians need to remember that Jesus said to the woman caught in the act of adultery "go and sin no more".
Clearly, the Catholic Church made severe errors of judgement to allow the priests to continue as priests (or even the bishops), and even worse, to allow them access to children.
Peter denied Jesus three times, yet he walked on water and was the foundation of the church. Another apostle, Judas, betrayed Jesus.
Clearly Jesus forgave Peter. And Jesus would have forgiven Judas if Judas would have asked for forgiveness (instead he made matters worse by killing himself).
Jesus himself said to Peter, in particular, and his followers that you should forgive your brother "seventy times seven", which is meant to signify a large number at that time.
But that does not mean the church should allow people who are known offenders to have access to innocent children.
Father Thomas Nelson, executive director of the Institute on Religious Life and professor of philosophy at the Norbertine seminary in Orange, California, states that fewer than 2% of priests have been involved in pedophilia, as compared to 4% of married people and 7% of the general lay population. The statistics show that the problem of pedophilia is no greater among priests than among the general population.
How many teachers, policemen, fathers, firemen, and others are involved in such problems?
Breaking news yesterday was that a R & B singer had filmed sex with a 13 year old. These things are getting to be common occurrances.
Our society is very, very sick.
How does one forgive that?
But that requires true repentance. There is very little evidence of such among the perpetrators and enablers of these crimes against children.
In the Catholic Church "forgiveness" is the result of a 4-part process (at least it was before the “reforms” of Vatican II). It goes like this:
1) examination of conscience;
2) confession of sins;
3) do the assigned penance (punishment or restitution); and
4) sincerely resolve to avoid the sins in the future.
Contrary to popular misconceptions, “Forgiveness” is not such a free and easy thing.
To imply that people are saying that, "it just happens in the Catholic Church" is a lie. To claim that "MANY" much smaller churches have "MANY" more incidents than the Catholic Church is very suspicious.
Hmm… after a brief Google search I found this stating that the pedophilia rate of the Catholic Church is 4% compared to 1% in the general population. Here's a quote from what's probably a more balanced analysis putting the levels all over the place for priest and the population.:
"One of the first efforts to study the rate of child abuse in the church came in a 1992 Canadian survey by John Allan Loftus and Robert Camargo. They studied 1,300 Catholic priests and brothers at one treatment center. They found that 2.7 percent had sex with children up to age 13 and another 8.4 percent with teen-agers up to age 19. However, the study subjects were not representative of the whole priesthood.I think the key sentence from the article is that," There is no definitive research on the frequency of such abuse in either the church or society. Few abusers will talk."Other researchers, including those within the church, have offered lower estimates. A study by the Chicago Archdiocese looked back at personnel records of 2,252 priests over 40 years. Only 40 of them -- about 2 percent -- were reported as offenders, according to Philip Jenkins, a Pennsylvania State University historian who has studied sexual abuse in the priesthood. "
I think the 7% pedophilia rate among the general population that you quote is garbage. That's just not who we are. Just like the Catholic Church, America has its problems and constantly needs renovation. Still this is the absolute best society in the world, and we prove it every day. Despite the crime and corruption, we feed the world, we defend the world and we have more happy, healthy and long lived people than has ever existed in all of recorded history.
I generally respect the Catholic Church. Sometimes it's unfairly treated, but in this case it deserves most of what its getting. Even if the Church's pedophilia attack rate on its young members is no higher than that of their parents, that doesn’t excuse them for allowing those attacks to take place. Like any other very large and very old organization, they're slow to make reforms. They're never had to operate in such an open and litigious society. I'm not surprised that it takes perhaps a billion dollars in lawsuits to get their attention. I don't expect its clergy to be saints, but I do expect them to quickly correct this tendency to blame their own problems on us. Just like I resent your puny accusation that, " Our society is very, very sick." Don't blame your personal problems or problems of another on America! That's weak.
I've stated on Free Republic before that because of the Catholic Church's size and diversity, what people read into it says more about themselves than the Church. Perhaps the same thing can be said about what we read into America …
Most of the editorial staff at the NYT is proudly gay, so every mixed up teen seduced to the gay death style by a priest or anyone else is a potential date for them.
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