I was very much aware of this statement when it was first posted, but was not quite prepared to try to formulate a response to it. But, as an intial foray: There is plenty here that I agree with, and plenty to which I take quite strong exception, and I think that disentangling the two would take a fair bit of time. My impression of the pervy priest problem (PPP) is quite different from that of the OP. He seems to think it all boils down to sexual repression and self-loathing. I have a lot of time for sexual repression and self-loathing, but I do not think this is really the main issue here. It is a somewhat romantic misdiagnosis, in my opinion. It might have been true in a different century, and it might still be true in some parts of the world. But for the most part, the mental world of a Catholic seminarian is not as benighted at Crucifixus appears to believe. The dilemma of the paedophile priest is not really that different from that of the paedophile layman - they belong very much to the same world-picture (more's the pity). But - the Church is still a community that breeds a certain kind of eroticism. This was sort of the point of my (not-quite-totally-ignored) post in the same thread. A community of mutual love is going to have to have to acknowledge that love can be very messy, and has a tendency to get out of hand. And perhaps, yes, the Church constitutes certain erotic roles: the wise father, the innocent ingenu, the penitent sinner... But Crucifixus' explanation is too simple and too question-begging for me. And I'm certainly not attracted by glib explanations like: "Church's teachings are to blame. Sex is bad. Homosexuality is gross. Children are innocent and we must be like them." I'm not even going to get into a discussion of Peter Damian. The post annoyed me, actually, and re-reading it I am remembering just how annoyed by it I was. |