Stay Classy, Vatican
Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, considered to be the “deputy pope”:
Many psychologists and psychiatrists have shown that there is no link between celibacy and pedophilia but many others have shown, I have recently been told, that there is a relationship between homosexuality and pedophilia. That is true. That is the problem.
Um, nope. There is no demonstrable relationship between homosexuality and pedophilia. The few studies that make such a claim are so flawed as to be meaningless. Pedophiles, in fact, are considered to have no adult sexual orientation at all–being a pedophile is their orientation. The whole thing about blaming gays for pedophilia is either a bigoted, homophobic lie intended to deflect criticism onto a persecuted minority, or sheer ignorance and a blind dependency on said sources.
Besides which, the remark on celibacy is a red herring–the question is not whether celibacy is “linked” to pedophilia (“link” is an extremely vague term which could mean many things), but rather whether pedophiles enter the priesthood in greater numbers because they believe the training and celibate life will help them repress their urges. It apparently does not do much in that respect, but it does place them in a highly trusted position with easy access to many young children–not a good place for a pedophile to be.
The cardinal did not address that issue. Apparently, it’s just easier to blame gays.
Your post sparks many questions/comments in my mind.
The Cardinal is exploiting heterosexuals confusion concerning alternative sexual orientations.
Even your post indicates that homosexuality AND pedophilia are sexual orientation. Since sexual orientation is not a choice, we shouldn’t persecute homosexuals.
But where does this leave pedophiles?
If they don’t choose their sexual orientation, what should our response to them be? I don’t mean this in a rhetorical sense. If someone is born with a pedophile sexual orientation does that necessarily make them evil? I’m sure a pedophile will bring man/boy relationships in ancient Greece as some kind of argument for their normalization into society – implying that our culture is at fault, not necessarily them. Regardless as to that point, what should be done for and about them and how should we react? I don’t know.
For the average heterosexual, it might be hard to distinguish the difference between homosexual and pedophile, because both sexual orientations are foreign to them. If a pedophile doesn’t choose their orientation then how should we react to them. Since most people’s natural reaction is disgust and wanting to separate pedophiles from their family and since they may not be able to intuitively understand alternative sexual orientations, they are likely to lump the two together – at least emotionally (as in fear) if not intellectually. This is the aspect that the Cardinal seeks to exploit. (But even he would seem to be saying that pedophiles and pedophile activity are evil).
This brings up a second point: his linking homosexuality with pedophilia, taken at face value, is not good salesmanship on his part. Maybe most American Catholics don’t know any homosexuals socially or have personal/family/close relationship with one. So, they can be confused as to the relationship of pedophilia to homosexual.
However, celibacy rules has attracted many people whom Maureen Dowd has suggest to be ‘confused about their sexuality.’ Almost ALL American Catholics know (or suspect) that the Roman Catholic Clergy is dominated by homosexuality (except for the willfully ignorant). I’ve heard some stories about what life is like in the seminaries. The assumption then, is that any Priest one meets, is likely to be gay. And the closer you are to the catholic religion and clergy the more you realize this.
Since most Americans assume that most priest are likely to be gay, saying there’s a link between homosexuality and pedophilia is damning the entire catholic edifice in America. Taken at face value, Catholics with children should run, not walk, to the nearest exit.
The fact that the clergy is dominated by homosexuals is not necessarily a bad thing, because I think many Catholics have developed tolerance towards gays as a result of their interaction with clergy. Hopefully this has caused them to make distinctions between homosexuals and pedophiles as well. But still, I wonder, what to do about pedophiles? Is it natural sexual orientation? Are they evil? Were they born evil?
A couple things wrong with the setup and the question. First, your question assumes that homosexual acts are worthy of persecution, were it a choice. Why? A homosexual act, just like a heterosexual act, regards two grown, consenting adults doing what they wish in privacy, in an expression of pleasure and/or love.
The debate about the nature of homosexuality is not over whether homosexuals should be excused for something that everyone agrees is a wrongful act; it is over the question of whether it is a wrongful act at all. Some Christians will say that homosexuality itself is a choice and therefore acts of homosexuality are an artificial deviance, and a sin. If homosexuality is natural, that removes the the “unnatural” element of the sin.
When it comes to pedophilia, the orientation itself is not criminal; the act, however, is. The reason it is criminal is rooted not in the nature of the desire but instead in the nature of the act. Pedophilia cannot be acted out without a child being raped. Since we consider children to be incapable of giving consent to a sexual act, there is no way around that.
More “progressive” Christians say that the sexual orientation is not a sin but giving into it is. While they apply this to both homosexuality and to pedophilia, they do so because they see homosexual acts to be sinful just as they see the acts of pedophiles–though the sense of sin is more based on scripture in the case of homosexuality. This confuses the situation in a secular discussion.
The key is consent. If a man tears off a woman’s clothes, forces her down, and against her protests forces himself on her sexually, we call this rape, one of the worst of crimes. But if the woman consents and the force and protests are an act which can be dismissed through a “safe” word, then there is nothing wrong with it, and can even be a positive intimate act (that it would play on darker innate desires is mitigated by the consent). Rape, like child sex, is illegal because it is non-consensual, and therefore an act of violation in a terribly harmful manner.
Consensual homosexuality, like consensual heterosexuality, is an agreed-upon act, is not a violation at all, and is therefore perfectly moral.
The difference between that and what we assume is the natural sexual orientation of pedophiles is that a pedophile cannot consummate his desire without committing a horrific violation upon someone too young to understand what is happening and therefore cannot consent. Sex with a child of either gender is rape. That this is a natural sexual orientation is not an excuse; one may have a natural psychological orientation that makes one wish to injure or kill others; that it is a naturally occurring urge does not make it acceptable or excusable.
In fact, if pedophiles joined the clergy because they felt it would help them quash their impulses, then this demonstrates that they understand the wrongness of the act. What would you say of someone who has a natural urge to cut open other people, demonstrates that they know this is wrong, and yet still does it?
Having a natural urge does not excuse an immoral act. If a rape (a man raping a woman) stems from natural urges (predisposition to violence among other things), does that excuse the rapist? No. Almost all crimes stem from “natural” impulses; they are crimes because they infringe on the rights of others. We all want money, but we know it’s wrong to steal it from others. The evil comes from knowing it’s wrong and doing it anyway.
It also does not help that society has such a skewed view of religion that it sees it as a source of cures for such things, on top of people respecting it and trusting it with society’s most vulnerable members. Not a good combination.
Well broken down. I hadn’t thought it through.
The problem is, unlike heterosexuals and homosexuals, a pedophile cannot act out his natural sexual impulse without committing rape and without committing a most harmful act of abuse upon very innocent victims. If this is an inherited trait, like heterosexual or homosexual orientation, than I would have to say that pedophiles are born damned – regardless as to whether they are born good, or evil, or neither.
I tried to read the length of the article you linked to get an understanding of whether psychologists thought pedophilia was an inherited natural impulse, but the article proved to be too long and too complex for me given the time I had. And after all, it is quite an unpleasant subject.
As a heterosexual, I’ve pretty much controlled my impulses as most people do. Furthermore I benefit from the fact that women usually have complementary impulses and that it is socially expectable.
I wonder what percent of pedophiles, of the total population of pedophiles, are unable to control their impulses. If the number of pedaphiles unable to control their impulse is equivalent to that of other sexual orientations, then there might be quite a few people out there who might be a latent danger to children. I’m not sure what ought to be done about that. In the end, taking advantage of others, no matter who they might be, for an internal impulse, is, in a sense, the definition between good and evil, no matter what the sexual orientation.