After decades of scandals involving Catholic priests sexually preying on children and women, and the recent epidemic of similar revelations about US Protestant pastors (all lovers of Trump, obviously), we are now entering a new chapter in the discovery phase of how sex has always been every religion's means to control people. Think about the sins proscribed by the Catholic Church: They all involve acts "below the belt": No condoms, no masturbation, no sex before marriage, no adultery, no gay sex, vows of chastity, etc. The Church always knew that sex is a great liberator of ordinary people, and it erected wall after wall to contain and repress the faithfuls' libidos.
Yet, priests - the enforcers of the Church's teachings and moral code - appear to have constantly evaded their own rules by sexually preying on people around them. It is often assumed that gay men and women, as well as pedophiles and sexual predators, become priests as a way to hide themselves from social reprobation. And the vow of chastity that Catholic priests and nuns take is no excuse, because the clergy of other religions (e.g. Protestants and Eastern Catholic and Orthodox Churches) who are allowed to marry and thus defuse their libidos "doctrinally" have also engaged in sexual predation on children and women.
The spate of American Evangelical pastors who have been denounced in recent years is a case in point. Names like Paul Pressler and Robert Morris continue to flood the news:
[See: Paul Pressler, [ https://lebanoniznogood.blogspot.com/2024/06/sexual-abuse-by-christian-leaders-not.html ]
[https://lebanoniznogood.blogspot.com/2024/06/robert-morris-another-christian.html] and [https://lebanoniznogood.blogspot.com/2024/06/robert-morris-contd-evangelical-child.html].
Even Buddhist priests do it on children [https://lebanoniznogood.blogspot.com/2024/07/buddhists-high-priests-too-sexually.html].
Now the Jewish religion has no hierarchy per se, but the likes of Jeffrey Epstein (a friend of Donald Trump too), Harvey Weinstein, Robert Kraft, Roman Polanski et al. are august representatives of the Jewish religion's propensity to enhance its faithfuls' libidos in less-than-orthodox ways.
In Lebanon, the Maronite Church (an eastern Catholic Church which is autonomous but not independent of the Vatican) allows married men to become priests (when there is a dearth of priests) but umnarried men who become priests do take a vow of chastity. There is in all likelihood a huge omerta on Maronite priests' sexual misconduct since Lebanon cannot statistically be the only Catholic country around the world without priest-associated sex scandals, but the case of Fr. Mansour Labaki emerged several years ago.
Despite the Maronite Church's hellbent lies and efforts to defend Labaki (by for instance claiming that his family was defaming him because of an inheritance dispute), Labaki was found guilty by a French Court and the Vatican eventually defrocked him [https://www.thenationalnews.com/mena/lebanon/2022/09/27/vatican-defrocks-lebanese-priest-convicted-in-france-of-sexually-assaulting-girls/]. He now lives in hiding in Lebanon under the unlawful protection of the Maronite Church, instead of going to prison in France. The Labaki affair may be the tip of a silent iceberg.
Elsewhere, the leader of East Timor’s independence movement, Catholic Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo was accused by two men of sexually abusing them when they were boys in the 1990s. There are others who haven't come forward.
In Chile, Pope Francis vigorously defended Bishop Juan Barros, who witnessed and ignored the abuse of young parishioners by the Rev. Fernando Karadima. Not to forget Boston, Québec, Pennsylvania (https://patch.com/pennsylvania/newtown-pa/full-list-released-pa-catholic-clergy-accused-sex-assault)..... Hundreds of thousands of cases (330,000 only in France).... Someone should compile them into "The Encyclopedia of Religious Sex Abuse Cases".
The human species has been very successful in the history of life on earth, in part because the evolution of a huge cerebral cortex has been seconded by a high sexual libido that significantly increased the species' "reproductive success" by natural selection. By separating sex from reproduction, the human species engages in sex most of the time, independently of any "mating" season, and it does so strictly for pleasure, and only occasionally with the objective of making babies.
The religious conglomerates don't like it because they want to coercively increase the numbers of their followers by forcing innocent babies into their cults before they are mature enough to understand the implications of their forced recruitment, which is often accompanied by barbaric rituals like baptism and circumcision. This separation of sex from reproduction irks the religious conglomerates because it has liberated humans form the clutch of the religiously-ordained "natural order".
One more thing: In biology, it doesn't matter if you're rich or handsome or powerful.... all you need to do to succeed as a species is reproduce in large numbers. Now some human groups adopt this strategy to enhance their demorgaphic advantage over other groups, but the penalty applies to all of humanity: In a demographic race between two groups of humans, the net result is overpopulation, depletion of resources and eventually the death of both groups in the Malthusian process we should all be familiar with.
Hence, the conflict in human society these days between that sexual urge that has enabled the species to succeed on one hand, and the societal erosion of the norms that governed (e.g. the marriage contract) that urge over the past millennia or even millions of years, on the other hand. Before they are priests, clergy, pastors, nuns, .... these "predators" are human. And religion, despite is grandest claims, has failed by failing to make its adherents act according to its precepts. We are born by biology and we die by biology. Everything in between, i.e. "culture" (including religion) is a bunch of illusions that our brain invents to distract us from our inevitable mortality. No one dies by culture, everyone dies by biology, and yet all religions promise you immortality.
===================================================
Beloved priest Abbé Pierre was the conscience of France. Several women now accuse him of assault
VATICAN CITY (AP) — A legendary French priest and a lifelong advocate of the homeless has been accused of committing acts that would amount to “sexual assault or sexual harassment,” his foundation said Wednesday, in the latest instance of a Catholic spiritual leader facing allegations of abusing his power to harm women.
Abbé Pierre, who died in 2007, was one of France’s most beloved public figures. The founder of the international Emmaus Community for the poor, Abbé Pierre had served as part of France’s conscience since the 1950s, when he persuaded Parliament to pass a law — still on the books — forbidding landlords to evict tenants during winter.
Several women have accused the late priest of sexual assault or harassment between the end of the 1970s and 2005, his foundation said in a statement. It explained that it is making public the allegations of seven women, including one who was a minor at the time, after reviewing the report of an expert firm that specializes in violence prevention and was commissioned to listen to women's testimonies and analyze them.
The women reported unsolicited kissing and touching, as well as inappropriate sexual comments and propositions, according to the report from the Groupe Egaé firm.
"The Emmaus Community is making public the acts that may amount to sexual assault or sexual harassment, committed by Abbé Pierre," the statement said. It added that several other women had “suffered comparable acts” of sexual abuse but were unable to be heard. Some had died, some could not be contacted and others declined to be interviewed.
The alleged victims were employees, volunteers with the foundation or some of its member organizations, or young women in Abbé Pierre’s personal entourage, the statement said.
The foundation has set up a confidential system for other potential victims to come forward, for “collecting testimonies and providing support to people who were victims of or witnessed unacceptable behavior on the part of Abbé Pierre,” the statement said.
The Vatican doesn't usually comment on individual cases of alleged abuse and didn't immediately respond when asked about Abbé Pierre.
In 2021, an independent commission on sexual abuse in the Catholic Church estimated that some 330,000 children were sexually abused over 70 years by priests or other church-related figures in France.
The allegations against Abbé Pierre are the latest in a series of cases of Catholic spiritual giants accused of abusing their power and authority to take sexual advantage of the women under their spiritual sway.
France has recently had to contend with revelations about another beloved 20th century Catholic figure, Jean Vanier, who founded the L’Arche federation in the 1960s to care for people with intellectual disabilities. Recently, L’Arche commissioned investigations that found the late Vanier perverted Catholic doctrine about Jesus and Mary to justify his sexual compulsions to abuse women.
Prior to that were revelations of serial sexual abuse of adults in religious communities founded by two French brothers, the Rev. Thomas Philippe and Rev. Marie-Dominique Philippe, called L’Eau Vive and Community of Saint Jean, respectively. Thomas Philippe was a spiritual father to Vanier and allegedly initiated Vanier into his mystical-sexual practices at L’Eau Vive.
More recently, the Vatican and the Jesuit religious order have been contending with the scandal over the famous ex-Jesuit artist, Rev. Marko Rupnik, who has been accused by more than 20 women of spiritual, psychological and sexual abuse going back decades.
The Vatican reopened the Rupnik case after an international outcry that the priest, whose mosaics decorate basilicas and shrines around the world, received favorable treatment from the Jesuits including Pope Francis. Rupnik hasn’t responded to the allegations, but the Jesuits kicked him out of the order last year after finding the women’s claims were “very highly credible.”
“Allegation after allegation, secular investigation after another clearly shows that no institution knew more and no institution has done less to help victims,” said Mike McDonnell, communications director of the U.S.-based clergy abuse survivor group SNAP. “We can’t help but think about the victims who have yet to come forward.”
The Vatican has long refused to take action against charismatic spiritual leaders abusing their power to sexually harm women, making a clear distinction between abuse of minors and adults. The church has long insisted that any sexual activity between a priest and an adult woman is sinful but consensual, and has tended to blame the woman for seducing an otherwise holy priest.
The church has had to rethink that dynamic in the #MeToo era and acknowledge that free consent may not be possible given the imbalanced power differentials between priest and parishioner or nun.
No comments:
Post a Comment