Here he is arguing for the lowering of the age of consent to 14. Presumably he was out at Westminster Cathedral yesterday protesting that The Church wasn’t defending the right of adult men to have sexual relationships with teenage boys. [added: "protesting about the fact that", not "protesting that", is what I meant.]
I can see what Madame E. is pissed off by, and I am with that Canadian chap whose blog I can’t recall when he said “what I don’t understand is how the Irish bishops came out of that meeting [the ad limina] alive”. But I don’t see much desire to get to the truth when someone publishes something that half an hour of attentive googling would have shown was crap. If someone in my family were found to have been molesting children, and the publicity around the fact was taken up mostly with malicious smears against another member of the family, my PR efforts would be concerned with defending the latter. My PR efforts. I can’t do much to find out the truth of the various cases involved – all I know is what I find on the internet, put together with my own experience. I can do something to check the veracity of the news reports (and therefore, the reporters could have done the same, since I don’ t believe they don’t have google). I can’t individually help people who were molested, traumatised and abused – I don’t know of any, and if I tracked some down I am not sure they would welcome contacts from random strangers saying “Hi, I’m sorry you were hurt by a Catholic and I’d like to make it up to you”. I can’t hunt down abusers or make informed complaints or rebukes to people who deliberately or not failed to do anything to prevent children being abused. I’ve got nothing profound to write about evil or ecclesial reform.
I can see inconsistencies and lies and smears in the press, and point them out. These smears and lies are just another example of worshiping some idol of our own rather than the Truth, are just another refusal to live by the truth, the same refusal that leads to the covering-up of child abuse.
March 29, 2010 at 4:12 pm
Well said, Berenike. There are people whose job it is to deal with child abusers. First and foremost among them are police officers. If a child is being abused, and an adult finds out about it, the adult’s job is to call the cops. The cops investigate and arrest the abuser. The abuser is given a trial and, if found guilty, punished.
I find it risible that retired Archb. Weakland, who did so much damage to the Catholics of his diocese, including paying hundreds of thousands of their dollars to his blackmailing same-sex lover, is pointing the finger at Benedict, who came down hard on sex abusers as soon as he was given the authority to do so.
[Incidentally, Church of England vicars, teachers, choir masters have been in the Sun and in the dock for decades for crimes against children. English public schools were NOTORIOUS for pederasty throughout the 20th century. And yet I have seen no savage attacks upon the Archbishop of Canterbury.]
What the press seems to glide over is that just about everyone hurt in the Catholic priest sex abuse scandals was or is Catholic. The abused children and young men were Catholics. This particular tragedy is a Catholic tragedy. It was not a big Catholic plot against non-Catholics.
However, the non-Catholic press coverage definitely looks like a fatwa against Catholics. And therefore we rank-and-file Catholic have a perfect right to defend ourselves and the vast majority of our priests, including Benedict XVI.
As far as I can discover, the most likely person to sexually abuse a minor is that minor’s mum’s live-in boyfriend. And the largest, most vociferous group suggesting that mum ought not have a revolving door of boyfriends is the Roman Catholics (with the supporting cries of Theodore Dalrymple).
March 29, 2010 at 6:17 pm
Berenike, I’m not defending lowering the age of consent, but I’m pretty sure someone once commented on my blog that the canonical age for marriage is 14, at least for girls. I think it was older for boys…
Also, you are eliding ‘relationship’ with ‘abuse’; the church doesn’t teach that teenagers shouldn’t get married to older people (as far as I know).
March 29, 2010 at 9:53 pm
about the eliding – see my answer below. It was deliberate
Have you noticed the argument is never for lowering the age for contracting marriage?
I don’t think there’s anything necessarily wrong absolutely speaking with marrying at 14, or perhaps even 12 – don’t go around saying I’m arguing for child brides, now! I’m not. I am sure that in most places at most times for most people it’s not a good idea, and in many places at many times for many people it would be tantamount to horrendous child abuse. But for example, if the Amazon Yanomamo (I pick a random google result) were to accept the gospel, the minimum age for girls to marry in canon law is already two to four years more than is usual in Yanomamo villages.
March 29, 2010 at 10:32 pm
Oh absolutely. One of the most pointless things that I sometimes ponder is how old Our Lady was at the annunciation (as young as 12 is one option). And I’ve often wondered if she were much younger than Joseph and if that was why she was a widow by the time Jesus was in ministry. Utterly unknowable; but the thought that their marriage may have been completely unacceptable by our standards is a little weird.
March 29, 2010 at 7:25 pm
[...] fancying younger boys 29 03 2010 I was reading this post on Laodicea, and remembered that the canonical age of marrige for girls is 14 (I think – am sure [...]
March 29, 2010 at 7:34 pm
The problem in our society is not teenage pregnancy it is unmarried teenage pregnancy. The church teaches that sexuality exists for procreation and justice requires that procreation occur in the context of a perpetual and excusive covenant between the biological parents of the offspring. Any other use of sexuality is an abuse. Particularly serious is the use of sexuality in a way which wholly excludes its purpose (e.g. same sex activity). Beauty and youth are closely associated in the perceptions of human beings but there is a cut off point because human beings are not naturally attracted to pre-pubescent members of the opposite sex. This is because such persons cannot have children and sexuality exists for the sake of procreation. If someone acquires (whether through sin or misadventure) an attraction to persons of the same sex the inherent restriction of puberty is breached because their sexuality has become unmoored from procreation and so from physical maturity. It is thus unsurprising that the vast majority of abuse is same sex. This is the elephant in the room of modern western society and the people are driven crazy by the church pointing it out. This causes them to want to smear the Pope by association with precisely this problem.
It is clear that the explosion in the sexualisation of society and homosexuality and chid abuse since the sixties found the church unprepared. Large numbers of clergy and bishops had just rebelled against the Pope precisely for upholding the necessary connection of sexuality and procreation. They had acquired a habit of disobedience to the canonical and doctrinal norms of the Holy See. Large numbers of clergy and bishops had lost the faith and stayed in post for reasons of personal comfort and social prestige. An atmosphere of clericalism which had built up in reaction to the reformation and in response to the very tight ship maintained by the Popes after 1870 facilitated the abuse of power by corrupt bishops. At the same time perfectly well intentioned bishops who did not know what to do about these offenses and did not understand the compulsive nature of homosexuality and pederasty failed to perceive the necessity to at the very least suspend and retire such clergy and if possible laicise and prosecute them. Contemporary psychology encouraged them to believe that such persons were curable. But these failures are isolated and highlighted by the secular media and the fallen away ‘within’ the Church because of their hostility to the Church’s teaching which ironically is directed against precisely the tendencies which give rise to this disordered behaviour. There is a particular fear among modernists ‘within’ the church that the Pope will deal with the roots of the problem i.e them. The modernists are desperately fighting for survival, they are trying to associate the Pope in popular opinion with their own sins in order to prevent him dealing with them. The lesson is that orthodox laity must keep a firm eye on the clergy and never again give in to the sloth of treating clericalism as an acceptable substitute for orthodoxy.
March 29, 2010 at 7:36 pm
As a matter of PR, it doesn’t quite work against Tatchell, since he’ll argue that he doesn’t oppose sex between men and teenagers; rather, he’s opposed to nonconsensual sex between men and teenagers. The attempt to reduce the age of consent is proof that he thinks children of fourteen are capable of consenting to sex. That’s absurd, but he can quite consistently oppose nonconsensual and abusive sex between teenagers and priests, especially when it happened, as we’re now discovering, in particularly ugly circumstances.
And it’s also bad PR because it makes us look as though our defence is simply that we’re not as bad as the others. (This problem extends to the now-popular defence that Catholic priests are less likely to be child molesters than stepfathers/psychologists/whatever.) None of these — and certainly not Peter Tatchell — claim to be in possession of the final salvific truth, the standards to which they’re held will necessarily be lower.
I feel that BXVI’s recent expression of contrition, followed as it was by a credible plan to make right the wrongs that have been done, is the beginning of both good PR and good policy.
March 29, 2010 at 9:38 pm
“it doesn’t quite work against Tatchell, since he’ll argue that he doesn’t oppose sex between men and teenagers”
Joy, I so hoped someone would fall for it. Does it bother Peter Tatchell that the pope didn’t order a cover-up of child abuse by clergy? It’s a complete lie. But he’s not fussed.
I was going to go into a long spiel about the creepiness of Tatchell (I found the creepiest website when I was looking for the Sherr article below, exactly the sort of thing Tatchell says), but I’ll save it for another time. Eugh!
I didn’t say anywhere, did I, that “well others are worse”? The post was an answer to something Madame Evangelista wrote, with the general sentiment of which I agreed (ha, prepositions at the end of sentences is an abomination up with which I will not put!), but on reflection thought her particular point needed contextualised.
March 29, 2010 at 11:18 pm
Just to get in before the Easter ban is applied.
I’m not so sure that it’s reasonable to think of him as lying. The crimen soicitationis thing looks — to the non-Catholic eye — very like an institutional attempt to the repudiate legal duty of reporting serious criminal activity to the police. Combine that with the fact, which there’s now no point in denying, that there have been, to put it as mildly as is consistent with truth, concerted effort on the part of people with authority in the Church to conceal enormities. It’s a reasonable inference from that that BXVI is at least complicit in the cover up. And we have lost the benefit of the doubt — in the earlier round of American scandals, Rod Dreher, who was an orthodox, indeed, conservative Catholic reporter, ended up leaving the Church after his investigations revealed horrible things. He’s been saying stuff that’s not too dissimilar to Tatchell. While it’s clear Tatchell is underinformed or misinformed, it’s hard to believe he had malicious ( or even mischievous) intent to mislead when he said what he did.
This confusion and lack of clear information is why I think it’s vital to build on BXVI’s approach in the Irish case. Some sort of Truth and Reconciliation thingy with representation from the clergy, the Pope, the victims and the secular authorities of the respective countries would be good — we could then make a clean breast of things, and do it on our own terms. As it is, the facts emerge in dribs and drabs, making us look very shifty indeed, demoralizing the faithful, and raising the risk of ruinous secular intervention — I think if these stories were being reported about almost any other organization, it would probably be looking at termination.
March 30, 2010 at 2:47 am
The government of the Universal Church is not a public relations exercise. The natural law is not an ideology or an academic construct it is the voice of God in the heart of everyman convicting everyman of sin. He who says he has no sin is liar and the truth is not in him. He who says sodomy is not an outrage and a blasphemy is liar and a blasphemer. We will not consider the hypothetical coherence of Tatchell’s position because it is not based on an error it is based on a lie. Every corruption of innocence is a crime crying out to heaven for vengeance. The ‘consent’ of a fourteen year old, deluded by the prince of this world and his minions in the secular media into believing that corruption to be a moment of self discovery, is worthless.
It is absolutely not a reasonable inference that Benedict XVI is at least complicit in any cover up. Benedict XVI before and after his election as Pope fought to strengthen the interventions of the Holy See against the failures of the episcopate. The church is not an international corporation it is a federation of autonomous churches subject to the Pope’s ordinary universal jurisdiction. The ordinary jurisdiction of the diocesan bishop means that, except where the Pope requires recourse to the Holy See under canon law, responsibility lies with the bishop. The bishop is answerable before God for how he teaches, sanctifies and governs his flock.
The impossibility of breaking the seal is very widely known and accepted by ordinary people. I have not found it difficult to explain to non-Catholics it is simply that the secular media (noticeably the BBC) have deliberately obscured the issue. For years since the Council modernist bishops have defied Rome’s attempts to restore order to the Church with the implied threat of schism and the disingenuous cry of collegiality. They must be removed and their seminaries closed and new seminaries founded. The illusion that the church contends with honest error must be rejected the church contends with a lie and smaller lies are used to defend that lie. That lie is that man is a beast motivated only by the sterile intoxication of the flesh. It is a self-fulfilling lie. Those in the church who have bought into that lie either in their doctrine or their actions must be rooted out. Those who have long ago left the church in spirit must be visibly driven from her precincts. Only if they are forced to face the reality of their condition will they have any hope of repentance. The church will not submit to the judgement of the world. It is because too many within her visible ranks have accepted the judgements of the world that these abominable crimes have occurred.
“Do not love the world or the things in the world. If any one loves the world, love for the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world passes away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides for ever.”
March 30, 2010 at 3:57 pm
Something I’ve been chewing over for the past couple of days. Why was Hullerman, the priest that was moved to Munich, not moved back to Essen? I’m not totally up on these things, but doesn’t a priest take an oath of obedience to his ordinary in that diocese and isn’t he meant to stay there? And why was he returned to pastoral ministry after only five days of therapy? Was someone in Essen ‘passing the trash’ and was the therapy thing an excuse to move him to Munich and then redeploy him? In other abuse cases, haven’t the priests in question been moved round their own diocese? Just thinking aloud..
March 30, 2010 at 4:53 pm
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/damianthompson/100032121/the-pope-the-judge-the-paedophile-priest-and-the-new-york-times/
April 2, 2010 at 12:19 am
In the Holy Week edition of Magnificat, on page 61, there is a quote from Pope Benedict XVI which shows that he is aware of our dilemna:
“We have grown accustomed to make a clear distinction between Peter the rock and Peter the denier of Christ–the denier of Christ: that is Peter as he was before Easter; the rock: that is Peter as he was after Pentecost, the Peter of whom we have constructed a singularly idealistic image. But, in reality, he was at both times both of these…Has it not been thus throughout the history of the Church that the Pope, the successor of Peter, has been at once Petra and Skandalon–both the rock of God and a stumbling-block? In fact, the faithful will always have to reckon with this paradox of the divine dispensation that shames their pride again and again.”
I urge all readers to pray for him and to go to the Cardinal Newman website to sign on to send him a spiritual bouquet of prayer offerings.
July 12, 2010 at 7:51 am
The law as it stands is plainly absurd. The age of criminal responsibility in the U.K is 10 and above, but if a 14 or 15 year old chooses to have sex then as far as the law is concerned they are not responsible for their actions, and have no control over themselves.
It’s also interesting that many countries across Europe have an age of consent lower than 15: France [15], Spain [13], Italy [14], Germany [15], Poland [15], Denmark [15], The Czech Republic [15], Bulgaria [14], Sweden [15],Portugal [14] e.t.c, e.t.c, so if a 20 year old has consensual sex with a 15 year old in France then it will cause no problem for those concerned, whereas if a 20 year old has consensual sex with a 15 year old in England then that 20 year old could be labelled a sexual predator, or a pedophile, be placed on the sex offenders register, and essentially have his life, and the lives of his family, ruined – not to mention the fact that he would no doubt be subjected to a lifetime of discrimination, abuse, or even physical violence.
I wonder how many people currently on the U.K sex offenders register were convicted on the basis of engaging in an act of consensual sex with a 14 or 15 year old, and who in fact pose no threat to anyone, and have never molested or abused anybody in their lives? I imagine that lowering the age of consent to a more reasonable age would halve the number of registred sex offenders and free up the police to focus their attentions on those people who actually pose some sort of risk, whilst at the same time allowing people who are no danger to anyone to get on with their lives and establish healthy relationships in the future.
I believe there should be a single standardized law applied across all of Europe, and that a reasonable age of consent – in light of all the current sociological and scientific research – should be 14.