December 03, 2005

Comment: Brenda Power: Pope’s instruction is perversion of truth

The Times

Imagine the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association announcing that, from now on, it would only be accepting members who didn’t drink wine. Those who didn’t drink spirits, on the other hand, would not be welcome. And those would-be pioneers who mostly didn’t drink wine but occasionally didn’t drink spirits would have to prove it had been three years since they’d even thought about not drinking a Bacardi Breezer.

This, in effect, is what the Vatican has said about homosexuals and the priesthood. All priests are required to be celibate. So why is the Pope issuing instructions about the precise nature of the intimate relations from which potential clergymen must undertake to abstain? Either they’re willing to pack it all in or they’re not, and if they are, then it shouldn’t matter what their practices or tendencies or preferences used to be. If they’re not, then their being homosexual is no greater threat to the integrity of the Catholic church than if they were perfectly mature heterosexual sadomasochists. In fact, it would probably be less so, since the evidence from several residential institutions suggests that the worst sex abusers appeared to take particular pleasure in inflicting pain and humiliation on their helpless victims.

All homosexuals are not paedophiles and all paedophiles are not homosexuals.

Posted by kshaw at December 3, 2005 08:15 PM