Child Molestation and the Catholic Church

Let me come out first: I am a card carrying, church going Catholic. I sing in my church's choir, my son goes to the children's liturgy readings. I joined the church after the first U.S. wave of accusations about child sexual abuse came to light and the church had to grapple with that. I entered into this institution with my eyes wide open. And now another wave of accusations about child sexual abuse is coursing through the church in Wisconsin, USA, Ireland, and in Germany under the current Pontiff's watch no less.



Like anyone else, I am sickened that a priest would use his position of authority and power to force young people to have sex with them. For me, this issue is not about chastity. It is about how young people are taken advantage of when they are with a person of power and how they cannot protect themselves and their will is overcome by someone simply because they are a child. It is about the underbelly of how young people are consistently and systematically mistreated because they are young people.

The sexual abuse scandal is also about other forms of oppression too - the oppression of gay people in our societies and sexism (you knew I would have to discuss sexism, didn't you?). Let's start with gay oppression. The response of the Vatican to these scandals was to screen people interested in becoming priests for whether they are gay and make sure that they did not serve in the priesthood. I think, for many, the horror of gay sex in the midst of child abuse was more than they could stand. However, isn't gay sex the red herring? Ultimately, what the Vatican's response suggests is that gay people are perverts who would rather, dare I say prefer, to sleep with young people. And no other myth could be further from the truth. The problem isn't gay people, but people who take undue advantage of children. Some heterosexual men do the same thing, namely take undue advantage of young females.

Which brings me to the issue of sexism and child sexual abuse. Every once in a while, amongst the reports of adults who had been molested at the hands of priests, a woman discusses her abuse. Never is much attention paid to it, it just becomes another narrative, but understand that what is more important are the boys, now men, who were targeted by priests. This is unfortunate because it suggests that it would be less traumatic for girls to be the victims of sexual predation from grown men, particularly men with this level of authority.

One component of sexism is that the experiences of girls and women are trivialized and so our experiences do not matter in the scheme of larger narratives. Hence, the abuse that many endured as young girls and some women is not significant. However, more troubling is the assumption, under sexism, that girls and women are supposed to be the target of men's sexual predilections, no matter their age. Girls, and then women, live with the assumption that they will be the targets of men in a sexual manner for their entire lives. Boys are not socialized with the same presumption. Boys, and then men, are not supposed to be the targeted, but the ones who target. Here lies the revulsion about priests who abuse boys. It is that these priests violate the norms of sexism. Hence, the issue of all young people who have been targeted by sexual abuse initiated by priests is overlooked.

The societies in which the Catholic Church is ensconced must check their revulsions to gay sex if real progress is going to be made against priests molesting children. Sexist assumptions that any child, particularly females, are supposed to put up with men's sexual needs in brutal ways must be dismantled. Sexism, as an organizing construct for any society must be dismantled. Otherwise, at some point, what is good for the goose becomes good for the gander. If girls are to be targeted for sex abuse as a norm, at some point, that norm also ends up being a norm for boys. Both boys and girls have their lives significantly altered in a myriad of ways when adults cannot resist using them as sexual playthings. The Church must stand against all sorts sexism and molestation and make sure their incoming priests are able to stay away from young children in manners that are sexually compromising - perhaps the real check priests should endure is an examination of their willingness to uphold sexism. Dismantling sexism in the Catholic Church would have real large repercussions; however, if doing so would protect young people, wouldn't it be worth it?

There is a lesson for other faiths as well - the Catholic Church gets caught in this because it is the only religious organization that has such a prolific and central bureaucracy and governance structure. Its record keeping is vast and spans many centuries. Perhaps this is the only reason why other faiths have not been ensnared with issues concerning child sexual abuse (except for extremist Mormons). I know I have seen, let me say, odd behaviors in a Protestant church. I know there must be tales of girls and boys molested in other faiths. It will not do to suggest that Catholic priests have a lock on perversion. This also functions as a red herring for the real issue - how to we as a society make sure that young people are safe in front of all adults they come in contact with. Making sure sexism is not an organizing structure in societies would keep all young people safe. Just sayin'.