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whatistrue
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I am sad that we need people to do this, glad that we have them, and tremendously thankful that I was never called upon to do it myself.
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Sarcelle
Guest
How do you pick them out?
These healthy married men?
The most skilled of predators often hide beneath a veneer of respectability. If being married with children is considered more respectable then predators will be married with children.
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goout
Guest
You vet. You change the culture.goout:
How do you pick them out?
These healthy married men?
The most skilled of predators often hide beneath a veneer of respectability. If being married with children is considered more respectable then predators will be married with children.
We think we can vet pedophiles and those inclined to homosexual behavior. Why can’t we vet married couples? Vetting will not eliminate those who are intent on deception all the time.
We are not talking about easy panaceas. We are talking about doing something to interrupt a broken culture. And allowing married men may interrupt that broken culture.
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jack63
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None of this is easy.
It seems like what St. Paul is saying is look at how the married man manages his own household and children. Look for significant problems with his children. Make sure the man is not in a rocky marriage where the husband and wife are constantly separating and getting back together. Look for a long-term marriage and not a new marriage. Yes a predator hides in a veneer of respectability, but holding a marriage together successfully with children for years is not easy.
As @commenter said, sometimes these men have children of their own, but often they just in some type of cohabitation rather than a genuinely successful marriage.
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Sarcelle
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How does allowing marriage innoculate against clerical culture?
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PetraG
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Take a picture of yourself. Smile for the camera!
Bring to mind the worst thing you have ever done and the worst thing you have ever thought about doing…the stuff you are truly ashamed of even thinking, let alone doing.
Now, look at that picture. Does your worst show on your face? Do you think the people who have worked with you every day for the past three or four years know it by looking at you?
Now, ask yourself: do you think of the worst you are capable of doing as the “real you”? Do you not think that people with inclinations they can hardly admit even to themselves don’t hope that they can just resist doing what they are thinking of doing and instead be the better people they feel they really are? Don’t we all hope for that? Does a person who doesn’t think that terrible thing is so terrible not still understand the consequences of admitting what their inclinations are to those who “wouldn’t understand”?
A typical person does not show the worst thing they are capable of doing on his or her face. The truth is, most typical people will probably say that they weren’t even aware of the worst they were capable of doing before they thought to do it. Someone with a manipulative personality, however, can be masterful at hiding their true intentions and acting in the way he or she thinks will build trust with others. They know how it is done, or else they become very isolated people. That is why we think of manipulators as charming. People are manipulative and not charming are seen as creepy. Their attempts at manipulation don’t work. The ones who get it to work get practice at seeming very trustworthy and safe, even though they slip some violations of trust in when they think they can be forgiven or won’t be caught.
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Theo520
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They have no “test” that will flag evil people
Recently had my training update on abuse and it made clear
- background checks don’t really help since most abusers don’t have a record
- they are trusted people, most have spent their lives working with kids
- they don’t trip alarm bells, until after they are caught and everyone has hindsight
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PetraG
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Well, they do trip alarm bells when there actually are some to trip. The problem in that past was that there were so many opportunities to arrange for predatory behavior because we thought it was more charitable to trust everyone as if no one could ever hide this kind of intention behind a charming front and lots of praiseworthy conduct.
Manipulative people highly value two things: trust and pity. That’s what gets people to abandon their common sense when they ought to be protecting the vulnerable from harm. It is what sexual predators need, it is what embezzlers need, it is what Ponzi scheme operators need: freedom to operate without suspicion.
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jack63
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Actually, during my training I recently learned that sometimes abusers actually will sign to allow a criminal background check assuming nobody will bother to look. People with criminal backgrounds actually have been caught trying to gain access to children by simply doing a criminal background check.
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goout
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I didn’t say that.
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Maximus1
Guest
How did so many get ordained in the last half century?
If you want an answer to your question, a real answer, step back and allow yourself to appreciate the truth.
The truth is horrible. Now, what do Catholics do?
In my opinion honest Catholics have to come to the reality something precious has been taken away. Some Catholics will assent to short memory and placation. We can all understand that impulse. We must understand that impulse makes you an instrument of harm to Christ’s church. So we are cornered.
Personally, I have to remind myself it is my church also. Not some Curia guy, or high clergy. They opperate in Trust for the benefit of others. They are fiduciaries not owners.
Then we remember our faith. Honest confession and sincere requests for forgiveness. A commitment to never do it again. With we who care monitoring the progress.
If you want an answer to your question, a real answer, step back and allow yourself to appreciate the truth.
The truth is horrible. Now, what do Catholics do?
In my opinion honest Catholics have to come to the reality something precious has been taken away. Some Catholics will assent to short memory and placation. We can all understand that impulse. We must understand that impulse makes you an instrument of harm to Christ’s church. So we are cornered.
Personally, I have to remind myself it is my church also. Not some Curia guy, or high clergy. They opperate in Trust for the benefit of others. They are fiduciaries not owners.
Then we remember our faith. Honest confession and sincere requests for forgiveness. A commitment to never do it again. With we who care monitoring the progress.
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PetraG
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I have a different take on this, since the family of someone I know left the Church in about 1910 or so and went to the Protestant church in their town because the parents felt the parish priest couldn’t be trusted around children but no one believed them. That’s why I don’t believe that this kind of thing never happened in the past: that is, because we know that unspeakable things were covered up in order to put on a good front. That is just what was done at all levels of society with all kinds of things. Little people who had unflattering truths to tell about people who had positions of honor weren’t usually listened to. If they were listened to, the matter was handled “quietly,” as if it never happened and would never happen again. It is the way it was done with families, it was the way it was done in churches, it was the way it was done among the nobility and the upper classes, because people were so protective of reputations, even to the point of protecting the reputations of actual wrong-doers from those who really did have a legitimate reason to know what had been done. The group that the wrong-doer belonged to protected the wrong-doer because the groups wanted to have the reputation of 100% upstanding members, even at the price of denying justice to members of their groups who had been victimized.
I do think, however, that there truly are more and more influences over the course of the last century that normalized behaviors that are objectively depraved–that is, opposed to sanctity and opposed to the blooming of a truly normal person, a person imbued with the grace our Maker intended. I mean that we deny that there is a difference between typical or common and normal. There was a time when people realized that we all have a truly warped side that will only be redeemed by consistent cooperation with grace, that most of us are not close to deserving canonization. I think now that the idea that we all have some warped things to deal with is seen as evidence that the warped bits aren’t “that bad,” that they are merely expressions of a broad spectrum of normal and healthy humanity, that we’re all mostly ready to go straight to Heaven when we die, just as we are, and that the great saints are anomolies that people cannot really hope to emulate any more than they can hope to have the gifts of a great athlete or musician or thinker.
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Maximus1
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What struck me was how it felt like my sanctuary was taken away.
I know the horrible truth. The insidious practices of making families pariah for coming forward in conservative Catholic neighborhoods. How it was!
Last week someone on this cite continued to mock claims I raised like your 1910 story. Where is the evidence? They think they are acting righteously but that is their illusion and way to cope. The passage of a few years has already created whatever happens that gets people willing to scapegoat the OTHER. Whoever that might be. It is insideous.
I know the horrible truth. The insidious practices of making families pariah for coming forward in conservative Catholic neighborhoods. How it was!
Last week someone on this cite continued to mock claims I raised like your 1910 story. Where is the evidence? They think they are acting righteously but that is their illusion and way to cope. The passage of a few years has already created whatever happens that gets people willing to scapegoat the OTHER. Whoever that might be. It is insideous.
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Sarcelle
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But didn’t you say that celibacy had a part to play in clerical culture and that ordaining married men would correct that?
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Maximus1
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Yes I did.
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goout
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Yes. I made a distinction between defensive strategies that are like attempts to innoculate, and leavening, which may bring fresh and full perspective to the vocation.
In any case, do you admit there is any goodness possible whatsoever from considering the discipline? Not talking about specific yes it would help or no it would not…Are you even open to thoroughly looking at the issue?
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PetraG
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This is not what the problems that denominations with married clergy indicates. Whatever the argument is for ordaining married men, bringing about more faithful behavior in the sexual realm is not it. The evidence does not support that. Putting clergy (or anybody else) above suspicion and not requiring them to follow the same rules as everyone else who has contact with children, on the other hand, is associated with more opportunities for abuse of that trust. Requiring even the clergy to follow the protocols meant to protect children and other vulnerable people from predators does protect the clergy from attracting people who want to use that position of trust to operate without suspicion or serious questions.
In other words, if the clerical state makes it harder for a sexual predator to operate, then it will attract fewer who intend to abuse that position of trust. That does not mean that it won’t attract anyone who knows he has that inclination but secretly hopes that the clerical state will “cure” him. I think that does happen. It isn’t as if no one both does this kind of thing and yet also feels disgusted by it.
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BT3241
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Celibacy does not cause a person to become a child molester or become a homosexual its already in the person.
These people go where-ever children can be accessed - schools , daycare , Protestant churches , Catholic Churches , Police departments (2 in my city) anywhere there are children. Its not just a Catholic problem its everywhere.
These people go where-ever children can be accessed - schools , daycare , Protestant churches , Catholic Churches , Police departments (2 in my city) anywhere there are children. Its not just a Catholic problem its everywhere.
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Sarcelle
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It’s just a discipline.
If they do away with celibacy as a requirement it doesn’t bother me.
What bothers me is the idea that doing away with celibacy will solve the problem.
Too many people still consider celibacy as the cause of these sex abuse scandals. Are married people immune to sexual sin?
I know you don’t hold that idea but I think too many people do.
If they do away with celibacy as a requirement it doesn’t bother me.
What bothers me is the idea that doing away with celibacy will solve the problem.
Too many people still consider celibacy as the cause of these sex abuse scandals. Are married people immune to sexual sin?
I know you don’t hold that idea but I think too many people do.
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goout
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It’s one component of a culture. Celibacy is a good thing per se. Other factors mixed together form the stew. All the factors that it is possible to change should be looked at.
Some you can’t. Priests are men. That is an ontological factor.
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