Homosexuality and Abuse
El director de First Things, quizá la publicación periódica intelectual más prestigiosa de los EE. UU., considera en este artículo la importancia de debatir la homosexualidad en sí mismo dentro de la Iglesia Católica más que entretenerse en debatir sus consecuencias, los casos de pederastia de algunos sacerdotes, por ejemplo. La vacuidad en lo primero ha llevado muchas veces a lo segundo.
A
reader in Princeton, New Jersey, says we are "pandering to anti-Catholic
hysteria" by even paying attention to priestly sexual scandals. "Remember
the maxim that the Church thinks in terms of centuries. Ignore it and it will
go away." No, I don't think it will go away anytime soon. And the
questions now raised should not go away anytime soon. But one may hope that
hysteria will, in time, give way to more careful deliberation. Such
deliberation is offered by Philip Jenkins, Distinguished Professor of History
and Religious Studies at Pennsylvania State University, who has been studying
issues such as child pornography and clergy abuse for many years. Jenkins, who
is not a Catholic, notes that there is nothing specifically Catholic about the
sexual abuse of children. Every denomination and religious group has its share
of abuse cases, "and some of the worst involve non-Catholics." For
many reasons, some of them related to anti-Catholicism, the Catholic Church
gets the public attention.
Nor, as many allege, is celibacy the problem. "My research of cases over
the past twenty years indicates no evidence whatever that Catholic or other
celibate clergy are any more likely to be involved in misconduct or abuse than
clergy of any other denomination-or indeed, than non-clergy. However
determined news media may be to see this affair as a crisis of celibacy, the
charge is just unsupported." But what is the incidence of abuse by
Catholic priests? Jenkins writes, "Just to find some solid numbers, how
many Catholic clergy are involved in misconduct? We actually have some good
information on this issue, since in the early 1990s the Catholic Archdiocese
of Chicago undertook a bold and thorough self-study. The survey examined every
priest who had served in the archdiocese over the previous forty years, some
2,200 individuals, and reopened every internal complaint ever made against
these men. The standard of evidence applied was not legal proof that would
stand up in a court of law, but just the consensus that a particular charge
was probably justified. By this low standard, the survey found that about
forty priests, about 1.8 percent of the whole, were probably guilty of
misconduct with minors at some point in their careers. Put another way, no
evidence existed against about 98 percent of parish clergy, the overwhelming
majority of the group. Since other organizations dealing with children have
not undertaken such comprehensive studies, we have no idea whether the
Catholic figure is better or worse than the rate for schoolteachers,
residential home counselors, social workers, or scout masters."
Jenkins cautions against the careless use of the word "pedophilia,"
which is a psychiatric term meaning sexual interest in children below the age
of puberty. "But the vast majority of clergy misconduct cases are nothing
like this. The vast majority of instances involve priests who have been
sexually active with a person below the age of sexual consent, often sixteen
or seventeen years old, or even older. An act of this sort is wrong on
multiple counts: it is probably criminal, and by common consent it is immoral
and sinful; yet it does not have the utterly ruthless, exploitative character
of child molestation. In almost all cases too, with the older teenagers, there
is an element of consent."
A man who desires to have sex with an eighteen-year-old boy is ordinarily
described as homosexual. The very mention of this obvious fact is condemned as
"homophobic" by some gay activists. The press keeps talking about
pedophilia when, in fact, that is not the chief problem. According to some
experts, real pedophiles are as frequently heterosexual. Of the many true or
alleged cases of abuse that have come to light, only a tiny fraction involve
pedophilia. The rest have to do with men having sex with teenage boys. But to
suggest that homosexuality is the problem is to go up against powerfully
influential gay advocacy that homosexuals are no threat to children and
therefore should be permitted to adopt, to be Boy Scout leaders, etc., etc. Of
course there are homosexuals in the priesthood, which is to say men with
dominantly same-sex desires. I don't know how many, nor, I expect, does anyone
else. I have read guesstimates of 50 percent, and others putting the figure at
10 percent. On the basis of years of interaction with hundreds of priests, I
wouldn't be surprised if the latter figure is about right.
If it is as high as 10 percent, it would seem that the great majority of those
are fine priests who are faithful to their vow of celibacy. There are gay
advocates urging that faithful priests with a same-sex orientation should
"come out of the closet," thus giving the lie to the claim that
homosexuals pose a threat to young people. That does not seem like a very good
idea. Should the overwhelming majority of priests who are heterosexual then
publicly declare their orientation? Catholics are not expected to declare
their temptations in public. And homosexual priests coming out of the closet
can only focus further attention on the minority that is, in fact, at the
heart of the current scandals. That is the bind in which the media and gay
advocates are caught. The more they press the sex-abuse scandals, the more
attention turns to homosexuality in the priesthood, and to behaviors
associated with homosexuality more generally. That is one reason why the
current level of public sensation about priestly scandals is not likely to be
sustained. What must be sustained, however, is the now powerfully reinforced
sense of urgency about the oversight of priests by bishops and heads of
religious orders. Priests of whatever orientation, temptations, or feelings
must be held to account. If it was not obvious to some before, it now should
be obvious to all that there is no alternative to violations of the vow of
celibacy except obedience to the vow of celibacy.
John
R Neuhaus en FT 123
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