Sick of blaming homosexuals for the scandals

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catholic1seeks

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As a same-sex attracted man in the Catholic Church who tries my best to live up to orthodox Catholic teaching on sexuality — among the rest of Catholic doctrine as well — I find it sick to see so many Catholics, especially on the online world, but even from clerics and cardinals, point fingers at gay people with NO NUANCE.

Here and there I will see a more fair approach that acknowledges homosexuals (people with SSA) are mostly good people, even in the clergy.

But it’s another thing to just blame homosexuals, even in a mocking way.

Like this piece highlighted on NewAdvent.com is subtle, but just as sickening:


If we aren’t careful in how we responsibly talk about the abuse scandals, we will be pushing even more people out of the church…
 
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This needed to be said. Thank you for doing so. Father James Martin has also been speaking to these issues on Twitter lately, and his tweets are certainly worth everyone’s time.
 
It’s just not fair.

You can be same-sex attracted and faithful.

You can also be heterosexual, rape women and children, and abuse church teaching as well.

As far as I can tell, most of this blame simply comes from the human desire to scapegoat.
 
As a queer woman, right there with you. It’s clear the vast majority of assaults were men preying on postpubescent males, being queer doesn’t particularly incline one to being a predator. Something in the Church allowed this type of rapist to fester and we need to figure out what it is.
 
jtavington said:
As a queer woman, right there with you. It’s clear the vast majority of assaults were men preying on postpubescent males, being queer doesn’t particularly incline one to being a predator. Something in the Church allowed this type of rapist to fester and we need to figure out what it is.
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Back when this problem because generally known to the world in the late 1990’s and early 2000-2001 it was discovered that several seminaries were ruled by what would be termed the “lavender mafia” Straight candidates were harassed and candidates with SSA were emboldened and encouraged. I believe a thorough investigation might prove that many of these priests who were abusers over this extended period came from those seminaries. Not an opinion, a fact if found true.
I sympathize with the above posts. As a straight male, I believe in what the church teaches about homosexuality. Yes it is outside of the natural order, and yes, the person with SSA tendencies must be treated with the dignity and respect all men and women are endowed with by the nature of the their creation.
But, if 80% of these 1000’s of abuse cases involved priests and young boys, then ignoring the homosexual nature of the problem is simply whistling past the graveyard. The horror of this situation isn’t as much as a “sexual” problem (though that is most serious in light of vows of chastity) but more the abuse of power and trust we put in these offenders.
 
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@Catholic1seeks there’s a distinction between scapegoating homosexuals as Bishop Robert Barron has discouraged us from doing, and acknowledging that homosexuality in the Church has been and still is a problem, as Bishop Robert Morlino’s letter yesterday does.
 
No, the answer is to ignore the problem and pretend like homosexuality among clergy isn’t a problem. :roll_eyes:

Forget Honduras, forget Chile, forget Maynooth, forget McCarrick. Nothing to see here, right?
 
There is no homosexual nature of the problem. If a “Lavender Mafia” of gay priests in seminaries were the real problem, so many sex-crazed gay priests & seminarians, then the only “scandal” would be all the gay seminarians & priests having sex with each other- plenty of gay men within the clergy all available looking for the same thing! …which would be a personal matter between said clergy & God- and internal matter of the Church to deal with.

Consenting adult men who happen to be priests having sex with each other may be sinful in the eyes of the Church, but it’s not rape nor any sort of crime against an innocent party that demands civil law enforcement involvement & stirs the sort of visceral societal disgust as sordid stories of pedophile priests abusing children. The nature of the clergy sex abuse scandals is that these priests chose to systematically target & abuse power over minors incapable of consenting to the sex acts they were coerced or manipulated into by predator priests. Power is what rape is fundamentally about, regardless of the victim’s sex. Abusing their power over defenseless children to get a sexual high off of is what the many accused clergy over the decades are guilty of.
 
I do not blame all homosexuals collectively for the abuse crisis. I blame the homosexual priests who committed the acts of abuse for the abuse crisis and the clerics in charge of them who either covered up their horrible acts or didn’t do anything/enough about them.
 
Well idk, the majority of the priests who abused the kids were gay and targeted victims who were the same sex. Just saying
 
LaetificetJuventutem said:
minors
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LaetificetJuventutem said:
defenseless children
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The only flaw in your logic is this. If the problem were only an abuse of power, and there was no homosexual “color” to this problem, the stories of abuses would involve predominantly mature male priests, and FEMALE minor or defenseless children. No, my friend, if 80% of these historical abuses involved mature male priests (and there aren’t any other kind) and young boys, there is a homosexual aspect to the problem. I’ve heard the term “chicken hawk” applied to mature men chasing young boys. Sure sounds like that to me.
Oh, and speaking as a straight male, I have never had 1/1000th of a % interest in my own sex, from a sexual aspect. That attraction is called SSA. Operative in these instances of abuse.
 
joeybaggz said:
The only flaw in your logic is this. If the problem were only an abuse of power, and there was no homosexual “color” to this problem, the stories of abuses would involve predominantly mature male priests, and FEMALE minor or defenseless children.
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And it would be just as bad. If the issue was purely homosexuality they could have found willing adult men.
 
Elf01 said:
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joeybaggz:
The only flaw in your logic is this. If the problem were only an abuse of power, and there was no homosexual “color” to this problem, the stories of abuses would involve predominantly mature male priests, and FEMALE minor or defenseless children.
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And it would be just as bad. If the issue was purely homosexuality they could have found willing adult men.
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And it wasn’t purely homosexual in nature. There were cases of predation of young girls. Certainly just as bad, maybe worse. The previous poster was right in his statement that sexual interaction between consenting adults is a private church matter. It is just the vast scope of male children who were molested and abused that brings to light the homosexual nature of the problem. Not exclusively, but certainly operative.
 
Thank you, OP, for this much needed message. It’s taking on the tone of a witch hunt, which is both unproductive and deeply hurtful to gay Catholics, as well as their families and friends.

The Church has a problem with an out of control culture of power and coercion. The abuse scandals center on PREDATORY behaviours and people enabled to act like PREDATORS.

Any step by the church to exclude gay people from the priesthood will elicit a (well deserved) backlash, as will flimsy attempts to self-protect and whitewash the very real and lasting suffering of abuse survivors. The real Church has endless room for men of both gay and straight orientations who lead morally upright, God-centred lives to discern religious vocations.

This is a critical moment for the church, and the world is watching closely.
 
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alphawoman said:
Any step by the church to exclude gay people from the priesthood will elicit a (well deserved) backlash
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Well the Church has been doing that for years, a policy put in place by Benedict XVI and just recently reaffirmed by Francis.
 
Pardon me, I think I accidentally replied to you instead of posting a general reply to the thread.

And, as a reply to your commentary, I say “right on!”
 
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Yup, and it’s been an increasingly exclusionary policy, to what effect?

Rhetorical question, not one directed at you specifically —> Do we honestly think that chaste gay men are somehow less capable of receiving grace than chaste straight men? Certainly, in a same-sex male environment, there are greater occasions for temptation and sin for gay inclined priests rather than straight inclined ones. However, to judge their character as somehow less…it offends.
 
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