The obscenities of the Catholic Church have everything to do with Religion
Addressing the elephant in the room.
Paedophilic priests have existed for long before this scandal erupted. People who claim that this has ‘nothing to do with Christianity’ are just as deluded as those who claim that ISIS has ‘nothing to do with Islam’.
It has become clear that the Church has been keeping the truth from the public for all of these years. We will never know the true numbers of children who have had their innocence robbed by child molesters they were taught to idolise. The Pope’s reaction has been to ‘beg the Lord’s forgiveness for these sins’. Now let us imagine for a moment that a Christian God does actually exist. He is likely to hear the Pope’s cry and respond by indeed forgiving him and the Church for the crimes they committed. After all, God is forgiving and loves those who pray and believe in him. This warped version of forgiveness is half of the problem; which brings me onto my first point.
God doesn’t seem to care
These priests are almost certainly God-fearing. This means that, at the very least they believe in, and are terrified by the notion of Hell, as well as the possibility of ending up there. These priests know their religion inside out, which is exactly how they know that they will not end up in Hell for the atrocities they have committed. Their next steps are hardly difficult, they simply beg for forgiveness and accept Christ as their saviour.
I was listening to LBC radio recently, host Maajid Nawaz was speaking to listeners about teaching religion to children. He asked Gloria, a Christian mother a question that I thought could only have one answer.
“Does a paedophile priest who accepts Christ into their lives eventually end up in heaven, but I, Maajid Nawaz, who’s never been a paedophile but doesn’t accept Christ as a son of God have no chance of going to heaven?” — Maajid Nawaz
To my horror, Gloria replied, ‘yes’.
Looking back, I’m not quite sure why I was surprised. Gloria takes the position of, ‘Child abuse is bad, but not as bad as being a disbeliever.’ She is hardly alone in this belief. After all, Gloria is basing her belief off of the scripture.
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. — John 1:9
Throughout the scripture there are countless utterances of how disbelievers are hell-bound, whereas believers are to expect heaven and forgiveness. It really isn’t difficult to see how Gloria and the Priest’s come to this conclusion. I am sure progressive Christians will disagree with me and claim that they know God better than Gloria and every other fundamentalist that thinks this way. To them I say, you can not blame someone for taking a literal interpretation of the scripture. It has only recently become acceptable for one to dilute their religion down to the point where it is barely recognisable as a religion. The early adopters of Christianity, and the subsequent 1900 year’s worth of followers, all took a literal interpretation of the scripture. The sheer number of child abuse cases related to the Catholic Church is enough to trigger a possibility that this trend might have something to do with the religion rather than just the perpetrators themselves.
Now that we have established how Priests may justify their actions, and avoid punishment for it, let us move on to why they do it in the first place.
Clerical Celibacy
Catholic priests have to swear celibacy. This means they make a promise to abstain from sex, this often extends to any form of sexual pleasure. In doing so, they are restricting one of the most basic and fundamental drives known to biologists, the libido. The founders of Religion didn’t know anything about Evolution. Now we know, thanks to Darwin, that the biological purpose for any living being is to survive and reproduce. These two functions are the basis for the software we call our DNA. It shouldn’t be a surprise that restricting this aspect of a mammal’s existence will lead to drastic consequences.
The Priest swears celibacy, he maybe goes one year refraining from any sexual activity. Halfway through the second year he begins to have doubts, these doubts eventually turn into desperation. This desperation boils up to a point where a release from its misery becomes more of a necessity than a desire. The Priest then proceeds to break his promise by raping a child. He rapes children not necessarily because that is his preferred choice, but because this is the only way he can get away with it. He picks children because they are too weak to defend themselves, too scared to tell their parents, and too young to understand the depth of the injustice of which they have become a part of.
The recent news has shown that they indeed have escaped punishment for too long. The Church regularly internalises these findings to avoid yet another controversy. Even with all of the Church’s secrets, there are still countless cases of child abuse by priests and nuns. The elephant in the room is that this is not a coincidence. This can be easily understood when you take a look at the ideological underpinning of the Catholic Church.
