Scapegoat of recent scandal?

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I dont know why its an unheard of idea. I am 39 almost 40 years old, and I have been living chastely my entire life. Its not a brand new idea by any stretch of the imagination.

To clarify, I am a same sex attracted individual. I am not attracted to men at all. I remember being in college and having an intervention deliverance ministry where I was basically accosted and the demon of homosexuality cast from me or something by well meaning friends in the charasmatic movement. It didn’t work. I still am constantly tempted.

I wanted to be a nun more than anything. I was completely honest about everything. You really cannot hide something like this, and my vocation has been to live in the world as a witness to what someone with SSA should do, be chaste.
 
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You do realize that this current crisis involves a number of separate things, right? 1) The historic abuse cases and lack of Bishop’s response in Pennsylvania, 2) Cardinal McCarrick’s predatory sexual behavior towards seminarians and young men, and 3) The (reported) open and rampant homosexual sub-culture in some seminaries.

Now, to deny that homosexuality is not a factor here seems plainly absurd, and if you can’t see why that’s scandalous in the Roman Catholic Church then I don’t know what to say. I think you need to take the blinders off and be a little more objective about the current situation we’re dealing with.
 
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There are a witches brew of ingredients.

You have entrenched power that is accountable to virtually no one, and in a practical sense is in fact accountable to no one. Those in power are out of touch. They believe another round of the same half remedies will save their butts. No different than career politicians in that respect.

You have people in high places with access to privilege, money, worldly comforts, and authority over others.

They also have abusive access to the spiritual treasure of the Church. (If I were one of these abusers who used the faith, I would be terrified of standing before God. The fact that we see unrepentance is indicative of the deep seated problem…there is little fear of God here)

They also have access to the material treasures of the Church, which allows abuses to be perpetrated and covered up.

The culture is all male, and called to celibacy, and has access to young men.
There are virtually no women in these circles, and virtually no married men.
And so combined with the opportunity to abuse, this culture is

Homosexual in flavor, almost by default.

It’s not just a gay problem, it’s a bad stew of all these factors. But the primary thing here is the opportunity to abuse power. That has to be uprooted.
You will not eliminate homosexuality any more than pornography or adultery. Steps can be taken, but the abuse of power and position has to be stopped.
 
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Nichole said:
I dont know why its an unheard of idea. I am 39 almost 40 years old, and I have been living chastely my entire life. Its not a brand new idea by any stretch of the imagination.

To clarify, I am a same sex attracted individual. I am not attracted to men at all…
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I only meant that in the circles I grew up in (evangelical/Baptist), the concept that such a thing was possible seemed never to occur to anyone. I did not mean that it is unheard or impossible for a same-sex attracted person to live chastely–far from it! God bless you for your witness.
 
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KJW5551 said:
Now, to deny that homosexuality is not a factor here seems plainly absurd, and if you can’t see why that’s scandalous in the Roman Catholic Church then I don’t know what to say.
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If in all those cases that were in the news about powerful men sexually harassing women, someone had said that it’s absurd to deny that heterosexuality is a factor, no one would have taken that seriously because no one thinks that heterosexuality in itself is a bad thing. But the Catholic Church obviously thinks that homosexuality all by itself is a very bad thing, so that’s why it’s an issue. And even though some Catholics will say that it’s not a sin for someone to be a homosexual person and have same-sex attractions, only to act on those attractions, they would still consider those attractions to be unusually bad and evil. That’s why anyone who is known to have same-sex attractions will always arouse suspicions in some people.
 
There is a group of Catholics who believe there is a secret homosexual group within the Church that is actively having sex parties at the Vatican, and actively working to corrupt and molest as many young men as possible.

Knowing that… I’m not at all surprised those same people believe this is entirely a homosexual problem.
 
Rose; someone already asked that. My response to his question which is pretty much identical to your statement is in post 45 on this thread.
Peace.
 
Most everyone is doing it. Whether we’re blaming priestly celibacy or blaming homosexuality, we’re looking to peg the issue on a certain TYPE of person to exclude from our circle and make us return to a sense of safety.

This is artificial. As someone who has had to report a fellow Catechist for sexually harassing me (I was 25 but he kept confusing me as a teenager.), I can only say that my experience has taught me that the bishops are not special people who uniquely cover things up.

What I regret is going to the Director of Religious Ed for guidance and leadership instead of informing her of what was happening and that I was going to the police. I regret that I allowed her to gaslight me out of reporting his crime and to minimalize what had happened as merely a “Well, he sexually harassed you and his previous coteacher, but you’re both adult women. I’ll just put another male in the classroom to supervise him. Please give me all your evidence because I’ll take it for safe keeping if this issue does escalate to something more serious.”

No, she didn’t want it coming out that she wasn’t providing the safe environment training mandated of us. Instead, she made me feel like she wasn’t sure of anything that happened beyond what was in the letters. Heck, she made it a point to insist I give her the originals when I’d literally forwarded her his emails. “I need real evidence. I can’t prove you didn’t write them yourself without the originals.” “I forwarded his emails. These weren’t handwritten letters.” Yes, then give me “permission” to delete his emails and make it seem like you suspect I demanded the safe environment training to come up with a list of accusations so that I could usurp the class from him.

She collected my evidence. It’s gone. The teacher she put in there to supervise was arrested the following semester for being a part of a child pornography ring.

He got away. I have no evidence. It’s just my word and I get to deal with the creepiness of knowing he’s been a professional Santa for the last decade. I get to be haunted by the day he confided some “terrible sexual sin” that had forced him to move to another State. “I won’t say what I did, but there’s a man, if he ever saw me again, he’d kill me for what I did to her.” I get to live haunted with how he told me he’d had to look for a special parish because other parishes . . . well, he just had to be careful. They wouldn’t understand." I have to deal with him using setting modesty guidelines as an excuse to leer at the teenage girls. I get to deal with imagining what would have happened had I been a teenager, had I eaten up some of his praise of me, had he gotten me alone and sexually violated me. I get to deal with imagining me blaming myself for the adult and guarding the girl’s modesty to his standards out of a sense of self-blame. I get to remember that he wanted reassurance that I’d back him up if any girls got the wrong impression and accused him of anything.
 
I hope I say this right but it does seem like the large portion of abuses are male on male. Yes, there were some on younger children and some on women. I am aware of a priest in our diocese who had been accused of sexually harrassing one of his female co-workers. Not sure what is becoming of that.

I do not believe the blame is at homosexuals but on homosexuality in the priesthood. I see this as different. Sure there are those who can live a chaste life in the priesthood and be strong but it would be extremely difficult. It would be a great place of temptation. The same as putting a heterosexual man in an environment with women. The temptations would be difficult to withstand.

In our act of contrition, do we not ask God to help us avoid the “near occasion of sin”, meaning places that are tempting to us.
 
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Similar story could be told by me, and the part that bothers me the most is the parish staff handled it by mistreating my oldest nephew. My nephew was basically banned from all extra activities and was even prevented from picking up his own siblings from youth group. The creepy man (who actually had his wife as a co teacher and she would cover for him and make excuses) kept right on teaching. Apparently my nephew was the problem instead of the victim. I keep going back to this and it kills me inside. No longer live in that area, but I often wonder why it was handled the way it was. It was not sexual abuse, but was verbal and physical in the name of teaching “self defense” and “discipline.”
 
Tbrightson said:
No because there is nothing disorderd about heterosexuality.
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I have read that when the word was first invented, it actually did imply a sexual disorder. The terms homosexual and heterosexual were initially applied to sexual tendencies opposed to normal conjugal procreative sex. Homosexual was a disorder relating to attraction to the wrong gender, and heterosexual was a disorder relating to a general attraction to non-conjugal, non-marital sex with the opposite gender, what we would call fornication or adultery or hooking up.

I also think that seminaries would be reluctant to ordain those who are overly attached to illicit sex with either gender.
 
Can you imagine ordaining a priest who struggled with sex addiction (in ANY form)? Yikes.
 
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