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	Church Sex Abuse Scandal, 5 Years Later By Chuck Colbert In Newsweekly [Boston MA] February 8, 2007 http://www.innewsweekly.com/innews/print.php?article_code=3409 Five years ago, newspaper headlines exposed a scandal of unimaginable proportions in the Boston Archdiocese. It was the story of widespread abuse of children and vulnerable young adults, the sins of wayward Catholic priests, their sexual misconduct and a widespread cover-up by bishops and even the cardinal. Indeed, the local church's very own documents showed a deliberate pattern of protecting abusers, covering up crimes, and putting more children at risk. Sure enough, homosexuality and gay priests figured in the unfolding saga locally and worldwide, as prelates near and far sought an easy scapegoat for their own moral and spiritual failings. But survivors' tales told a much different story. Time after time, at rallies and in private conversations, I heard from women and men, gay and straight. They were courageous people who dared to break a silence demanded of them by their abusers and enablers. Sexual abuse is about power and perversion, not gay priests and homosexuality, they said. More than a few women made that point clear. Yet the bishops stateside and in Rome would have none of it. Worse yet, within the gay community, some male survivors met derision and disbelief. How could a 20-year-old young man be sexually abused? A few gay men even suggested: He asked for it. Not only survivors, but also other people tried to shed a truthful light from their professional work in self-help and recovery. Everyone from psychiatrists to social workers, lawyers to theologians, priests to members of the laity spoke out. Some pointed to celibacy as the culprit. Others blamed the clerical culture of secrecy, hierarchy, and absolute power. Yet others said an all-male clergy created an institutional blind spot. If parents, mothers and fathers, were in charge - or had oversight - they said, the abuse of children would not have been tolerated for so long. One noted psychiatrist told officials in the Vatican that homosexuality was a risk factor in clergy sex abuse, but in the same breath pointed to priestly ordination as risky. Still, one thing remained certain: Just as no credible evidence linked celibacy to sex abuse, no link between abuse and homosexuality could be established. From the Vatican on down, gays have not been the only ones conveniently scapegoated. As one survivor, a lesbian, put it recently: Church officials are equal opportunity blamers, with "victims, parents, Catholic bashing, and the '60s," among others offered on an altar of institutional respectability, all to deflect most bishops and cardinals from taking responsibility and many of the laity from demanding full accountability. For the most part, the scapegoat strategy has worked, with very few men from within the power structure confronting the inner sexual demons of the presbytery or the princes of the Church. What went wrong to allow perpetrators to sexually molest the young and vulnerable? What permitted a seemingly deliberate pattern of protecting abusers, covering up their crimes, and putting more children at risk? The best explanation that I've heard goes like this: The Catholic clergy is not as celibate as many among the faithful would like to believe. Just as some priests have sex and relationships with other men and fellow priests, so do some bishops and cardinals. Still, some others have sex and relationships with women. Within this close-knit band of brothers, both diocesan and religious order priests, somebody's bound to know something about any number of everybody else's sexual indiscretions. And nobody could risk exposure. Mum was the word in this "don't ask, don't tell" environment, ripe with the possibilities of sexual blackmail. That warlock's cauldron enabled sexual predators, embedded from within, to inflict a reign of terror. Yet I suspect there is more at play here. The Church's very own teaching on human sexuality holds the all-faithful hostage in a pernicious vise grip. On everything from masturbation to so-called artificial contraception, from rigidity about male/female gender roles and performance in "the nuptial act" to homosexuality, the official line from Augustine to Aquinas to Benedict XVI got it - not all, but mostly - wrong. Despite the best efforts of many psychologists and Catholic moral theologians, including feminists and out gays who offer corrective views of sexuality and the human body, Church leadership has refused even to enter a meaningfully honest dialogue. One would hope that raping and molesting the young and vulnerable would bring the whole Catholic Church to its senses. But it's clear from a near daily dose of newspaper headlines that the crisis of clergy abuse and the cover-up are far from over. If survivors speak truth to power, what holds others back? On matters of faith and morals, who would know more about love and sex, marriage and the family, than the laity? Catholic or not, for heaven's sake - yours and the children's - start confronting bad Church doctrine. It really is everybody's business. •
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