Posted on 02/16/2005 11:18:59 AM PST by Aquinasfan
Would you ping the Catholic list? Is there one anymore?
BTTT
How does one explain Shanley, Porter, Geoghan, and many other priests, all of whom were ordained in the 50s and 60s, and were serially abusing long before Eugene Kennedy undertook his study?
Why is it that the media only points out Catholic priest abuse? There are protestant ministers, evangelicals, rabbi's abusing young children, but all I hear in the news is Catholic abuse.
Save for later reading.
The problem has nothing to do with the seminary curriculum and everthing to do with the selection of seminarians.
Check out "Goodbye Good Men: How Catholic Seminaries Turned Away Two Generations of Vocations From the Priesthood" by Michael S. Rose
The major difference is that the American bishops, almost to a man, sought to suppress revelations of abuse, transferred abusers from parish to parish, and even threatened lawsuits against families of boys who brought forth the accusations.
Protestant and Jewish congregations tended to fire their abusers and turn them over to the cops.
The Catholic Church is doing that now, supposedly, but there are still revelations bubbling up to the surface of bishops who haven't come clean about some of the abusers in their dioceses.
Covering up crime is a crime itself.
Kennedy was my teacher at Loyola. He remains a great Christian. The stiff collars did not like what he had to say back then, nor are the smarmey bastards doing much about today.
I am a dutiful son of the Church but when some clown wants to exercise his pastoral perogatives on little boys - the gloves come off.
No, it's not facile. The author explicitly states that abuse preceded the use of this ridiculous psychology. But what he also asserts--and what cannot be denied--is that the incidence of abuse increased after seminaries began relying on a psycological model that was, in essence, atheistic and immoral. The notion that one cannot be "mature" unless one has had sex flies in the face of centuries of Christian thought and teaching, not to mention the examples of Our Lord, Our Lady, and numerous saints.
Did the author blame the entire crisis on Eugene Kennedy?
How could the replacement of Aristotelian psychology with a profound error like Freudianism not have resulted in priestly licentiousness? Licentiousness is precisely what Freud prescribes for those suffering from "repression."
Carl Rogers himself admitted and lamented the damage caused by his philosophy. Carl Rogers and the IHM Nuns: Sensitivity Training, Psychological Warfare and the "Catholic Problem"
True. But that's not an unrelated issue. The tool used to screen-out orthodox candidates for the seminary is psychological testing.
Ultimately, the bishops were responsible for both prongs of this disaster since they should have been able to identify false psychologies based on materialist philosophy.
It's a stupid accusation. Both Kennedy and Andrew Greeley, who conducted a similar sociological study of American priests at the same time, complained loudly that the bishops took their studies and threw them in the trash.
If that's what happened (and there is ample proof of it), then how are Kennedy's premises at the base of bishops transferring abusive priests?
THAT ABOUT SUMS IT UP.
There should be a lesson here and it appears it's being missed. The church abrogated it's duty. It put the laity and the clergy in the hands of secular "wisdom". And when it turns around and bites them, what is the answer, why of course, reintroduce the abrogation in another form.
I applaud the attempt of the Catholic religion to try and figure out the problem and put it aright. To the extent that Catholicism is looking for the right path in coming back to Christianity on this point or any other, It is a wise persuit.
But saving oneself from the snake pit only to turn around and leap back in does not pass the sniff test IMHO.
I guess I'm a heathen, but I believe that the requirement for priestly sexual abstinence is probably the basis of the whole brouhaha.
It wasn't always so. The requirement, if I'm not wrong, was instituted by one of the popes many centuries after Constantine made the Christian religion the state religion of the Roman Empire. Up until that time priests were like every layman, I've forgotten why the pope took such a step, but it seems to me that it is an unnatural state of affairs (no pun intended).
I also believe that sex is one of the greatest drives of humankind, that God made it feel good for reasons other than to simply propagate the species. It seems to me that if the Catholic Church would relax the rule of chasity on its priests, much of the trouble associated with pedophilia, etc, would go away.
BTW: I am a professing, practicing Christian who, for the life of me, cannot understand why the Catholic Church makes such unnatural demands on its clergy.
I'm not saying that priestly abstenance is immoral or incorrect, but that it's an unneccessary obstacle to the smoooth functioning of the Catholic Church.
Exactly right. And it's the bishops who allowed the infiltration of these ideas into Catholic institutions who are most responsible, since they occupy the Church's preeminent teaching office.
And when it turns around and bites them, what is the answer, why of course, reintroduce the abrogation in another form.
My fear. I see no evidence of secular ideologies having been definitively driven out of Catholic institutions, particularly colleges, most of which are hopelessly lost.
If that were true, 90% of the victims of sexual abuse would have been women. Instead, 90% of the victims were teenage boys.
Celibacy is recommended in Scripture by both St. Paul and Christ Himself.
1 Corinthians 7:7-9I wish that all men were as I am. But each man has his own gift from God; one has this gift, another has that. Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I am. But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.
Matthew 19:10-11
The disciples said to him, “If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry.” Jesus replied, “Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given. For some are eunuchs because they were born that way; others were made that way by men; and others have renounced marriage because of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it.”
Anyone practicing Freudianism (particularly anyone claiming to be a Catholic) is either ignorant, stupid, or a combination of both. His word can't be trusted.
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