'Culture of celibacy' to blame for Catholic Church child sex abuse - study

RT
Thu, 14 Sep 2017 18:19 UTC

A five-year study into sexual abuse within the Catholic Church has found that mandatory celibacy and a culture of secrecy within the entirely male-dominated clergy were "the major precipitating risk factor[s] for child sexual abuse."

Former Catholic priest, Des Cahill, and co-author, theologian Peter Wilkinson, compiled information from 26 royal commissions and inquiries from Australia, Ireland, the UK, Canada and the Netherlands since 1985 in their report.

Cahill, now married but still a practising Catholic, began the research after he discovered he had lived and worked with several pedophile priests throughout his career in the priesthood.

He told Guardian Australia: "After the issue of abuse first became public, around 1978, I began wondering: 'Why did this happen?' I knew some of the priest perpetrators and I studied with them and I lived with one of them. And yet I was never aware while I was in the church. You have to understand, a priest offender is very secretive and doesn't want to be found out."

One of the most staggering and sickening of the report's conclusions is that an estimated seven percent of the Catholic clergy abused children between 1950 and 2000.

While some nuns had abused children, the vast majority were male priests and bishops who maintained a culture of secrecy and non-disclosure, both as perpetrators and confidants aware of child sex abuse through the sacrament of confession.

Australia's royal commission recently called for the prosecution of Catholic priests who fail to disclose child abuse reported to them in confession.

The report cites Pope Pius X's 1910 decision to lower the age of confession to seven indirectly put children in harm's way.

"Their contact with women in teacher training institutions would have been carefully proscribed and then they were appointed to male-only schools where they were in charge of young boys and adolescents," the report said.

"And they were living in all-male religious communities. They had to make do with a sacralised image of a sexless Virgin Mary. It was a recipe for a psycho-spiritual disaster."

The report also specifically highlighted the continuing risk faced by children at more 9,000 Catholic-run orphanages around the world.

The 384-page report was published Wednesday by the Center for Global Research at RMIT University.

Reader Comments

Eduardo · 2017-09-15T15:52:05Z

Hmmm.. it doesn't seem to me that celibacy leads to pedophilia. It appears more likely that pedophilia leads to "celibacy" in the sense that people who have always been sexually attracted to children will find in the church and in pseudo celibacy the perfect excuse and a mask to hide their true "sexuality".,.

Also, true celibacy must be voluntary, it cannot be "mandatory"... and that is a problem with the church. A lot of priests are there for reasons other than spirituality.

endescent · 2017-09-15T18:10:58Z

I've often touted the theory that repression creates pathology. The more you supress sexuality the more it festers

ClintWestwood · 2017-09-15T18:53:41Z

More like 70 per cent abusers than 7 per cent.

horse · 2017-09-15T19:28:26Z

Civil authorities must do more to stop that perverse organization since the Catholics themselves can't or won't.

Lugh · 2017-09-17T08:28:19Z

I don't think celibacy leads to pedophilia. Rather, pedophiles look for jobs where they can have access to children and abuse them easily without arousing other people's suspicions. Respectable professions like teacher, priest, instructor, monitor, orphanage director… That is why there are so many cases of pedophilia in these professions.

binra · 2017-09-17T11:11:34Z

Is religion to be replaced by religion of the state? Is the media used to mob -ilize your hate?

Does reverse psychology operate by giving power to fear?

Is the idea of sin protected by the wish persist in it under the guise of 'fighting it'?

Do we become that which we hate and make fears come true by

Is the idea of sin enacted in the fantasy of regaining innocence - acted out on innocents?

Is the breaking of tabboo a source of 'special' freedom and power - that forsook innocence of being in the intent to use it for self-gratification without moral constraint? And does such power enslave the hollow and powerless under its compulsion?

Is the association of child sex abuse and holding power over the powerful more than a mere coincidence?

Are ALL institutions institutionally corrupt? - that is - self-protecting at expense of true accountability?

Is sexual abuse of children historically and humanly pervasive? But so abhorrent and shameful as to be sought protection from and avoided? Does the use of guilted terror subjugate the population under mask of righteous vengeance?

Is there a baby in the bathwater of Catholicism? Does corruption (false framing) of any truth destroy truth or merely pass off as true until rejected along with its payload. That is destruction by association.