There are some very good points coming from this Vatican expert in the article I link below. It gives much needed context. I happen to think that more is made about priest abusers compared to Protestant ministers or other kinds of religious ministers, because priests make a promise or vow to celibate chastity and thus in the case of the Church, especially the mismanagement by bishops, hypocrisy is as much an instigator towards magnifying the priesthood issue as is an animus against the Catholic Church and her role in the public square.
I think that celibacy isn’t the issue, because if a priest is celibate he isn’t having sex with anyone and certainly not abusing anyone. Thus priests who are sexually active in normal or deviant ways aren’t celibate.
Celibacy does cause more interest and preoccupation with the sexuality of the priest by the media and others to a greater extent not present with married clergy. Normally society allows spouses to supervise their partner’s peccadillos in this regard, not their work-place superiors.
However, the vow to marital fidelity is as important as the vow/promise to celibacy but there is more scrutiny about celibates and their promise/vow than married people and their vows.
What is no longer being discussed by Church officials are the two types of sexual abuse of minors. I find this rather suspicious and I wonder why this is the case. When I was vocation director, workshops on this kind of thing always made the distinction in psychological terms between pedophilia and ephebophilia. This doesn’t seem to be the case any more.
True pedophilia is rare in the Catholic priesthood, has to do with prepubescent children/toddlers and infants. One abuser could have hundreds of victims especially in a profession that cares for children. This mental disorder has nothing to do with one’s adult preferences in sexuality. In fact heterosexuals are more inclined to abuse small children of either sex.
What is more common in the priesthood and other religious traditions is the abuse of teenagers (ephebophilia) manipulated or taken advantage of by an adult man or woman. In this regard, it is the sexuality of the abuser who takes advantage of the teenage minor be it homosexual, heterosexual or bi-sexual. Thus the ones targeted are of the gender that the abuser has an attraction.
As it regards teenagers, though, there are cultural considerations to be taken into account. In the past and perhaps even today, some states allowed girls as young as 13 years old to marry much older men with parental permission. This presumes a dating scenario at a younger age and an awareness of sex and sexuality at that age.
Other countries and cultures have a great deal of latitude concerning the age of marriage and when a teenager can give consent to sex. Some teenagers, especially in our culture, are quite mature and active when it comes to sex.
Our American culture until rather recently glorified teenage boys having sex with older women in order to learn the ropes. Female teachers who have sex with minor teenager boys are not stigmatized as much as male teachers doing the same.
So the culture is quite all over the place when it comes to teenagers and the age that a teenager can give sexual consent.
My last observations has to do with Protestant ministers who are allowed to get married after ordination. It was/is quite common for these ministers to date members of their congregation to find a spouse. How do they determine what is consensual in this regard and/or the manipulation of a vulnerable parishioner who is of age, at least 18 years old in my state?
PRESS TITLE FOR CRUX ARTICLE:
Top Vatican official says celibacy, homosexuality not cause of abuse crisis
- Inés San MartínDec 14, 2019
5 comments:
“Female teachers who have sex with minor teenager boys are not stigmatized as much as male teachers doing the same.”
Not sure I agree with you, but we would both need to check our sources to validate this statement pro or con. Both scenarios show equally reprehensible behavior.
The media treats adult female with teenage boy deviancy differently than it does adult man with teenage boy or for that matter adult man with teenage girl.
In terms of female depictions of abuse of teenage boys, think about the coming of age movie, "Summer of 42". Also I think a tv movie depicted a true case of a beautiful young female teacher who entered into a relationship with one of her teenage boy students and then enlisted him to help her kill her husband. The movie went into the salacious facts of the "affair" first and similar to any affair a woman might have that is illicit but titillating.
Bee here:
Funny how Bishop Fulton Sheen knew not to reassign molesting priests during this era.
God bless.
Bee
Yes, fact checking is needed regarding how male and female offenders are treated.
https://slate.com/technology/2006/01/are-teachers-who-sleep-with-boys-getting-off.html
From the article: "Are women getting lighter sentences? It's not clear they ever did. In the 1991 study "Women and Men who Sexually Abuse Children: A Comparative Analysis" researcher Craig Allen studied 75 male and 65 female offenders in the Midwest. "Relatively similar proportions of female and male offenders had charges pressed against them (52% and 55% respectively)," Allen reported. "However, more female offenders (30%) were put in jail and male offenders (25%)." Five of the 65 women were in prison during the study, which inflated the female number, but at best the gender comparison in a wash."
In other words, the perception that women get less harsh treatment than men for sexual abuses, this seems, at least in this one study, not to be the case.
Of course you are speaking about a court of law and criminal charges. I am speaking about media treatment and that women aren't vilified in the media as much as men are.
and by media, I refer to news reporting and movies and television shows.
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