Sins of lust are like no others

Sins of lust leave an impression on the mind of the person that acts as a constant source of temptation for the person trying to live chastely. The impression is usually one of graphic images of experiences, which can lure the person into doing these same acts again. These images often overpower the person, who loses self-control or sexual continence. This is different from other sins. A person does not normally lose self-control when he recalls missing Mass on Sunday, stealing a stereo, or disrespecting his parents. So there is something extraordinarily difficult about overcoming sexual sins and sexual habits.

One of the best illustrations of the spiritual wound due to the lust that continues to haunt the person’s psyche long after he has decided to reform his life is found in the classic Confessions of St. Augustine. Here the fifth-century Doctor of the Church says in reference to “concupiscence” and his own past sins of “concubinage” (fornication): “But there still live in my memory…the images of such things which habit has imprinted therein.”  And these imprinted images caused Augustine much grief as he tried to escape from them. He describes how the demon of lust overpowered him:  

The Enemy had control of the power of my will and from it he had fashioned a chain for me and had bound me in it. For, lust is the product of perverse will, and when one obeys lust habit is produced, and when one offers no resistance to habit necessity is produced.  By means, as it were, of these interconnected links—whence the chain I spoke of—I was held in the grip of a harsh bondage.

St. Thomas Aquinas says that the “unnatural vices” are the gravest of all sins. “After it comes incest” then “adultery” and “fornication.” These, however, are made more grievous by any kind of “violence.” For example the rape of a virgin is more grievous than the seduction of a virgin. Similarly, all of these are aggravated further when they involve a consecrated person, i.e., a priest or religious, or cause scandal to the young (Matt.18:6). The rape of a young person by a priest would possibly be the gravest sin of all.

But according to Thomas, even among unnatural vices, some are more grievous than others. Thomas says that among the sins against nature “the lowest place belongs to the sin of uncleanness (masturbation), which consists in the mere omission of copulation with another.” He says that the “most grievous is the sin of bestiality, because use of the due species is not observed.” Thomas then says: “After this comes the sin of sodomy, because use of the right sex is not observed.”  So “sodomy” or homosexuality is the second gravest unnatural vice. About this matter, Augustine says: “Thus, offenses against nature must everywhere and always be abominated and punished, as were those of the Sodomites.”
 
One way of dealing with clergy sexual abuse from the past

In order to get our bearings on this matter of treatment for priests and religious with the problem of sexual abuse, it would be good to take a peak back at the past. There is no better example of how the Church dealt with clergy sexual abuse in the past, especially homosexual pederasty, than St. Peter Damian’s letter to Pope Leo IX during the eleventh century. This letter was published in the form of a book called the Book of Gormorrah.   According to Dr. Pierre J. Payer, the philosopher and historian who first translated Peter Damian’s letter to Pope Leo and the Pope’s response from the original Latin, “[The Book of Gomorrah] is the only extended, serious treatment of the subject [of clergy sexual abuse] in the formative period of the Christian West, hinted at in isolated pieces of legislation or in occasional theological questions.”

A problem erupted among the clergy and religious of the eleventh century which was similar to the clergy sexual abuse which occurred in the Church today. Reports of rampant homosexual activity in churches and monasteries came to Peter Damian in his monastery at Fronte Avellana in the Diocese of Gubbio in central Italy. Peter Damian took pen in hand and wrote to Pope Leo IX warning that “a certain abominable and terribly shameful vice” has sprouted in the region and unless it is punished “there is certainly a danger that the sword of divine anger will be used savagely against it to the ruin of many.”

Next Peter Damian discusses the case of “clerics or monks who are seducers of males.”  He is concerned that superiors are being too soft on clerics or monks who are guilty in any way of a sin of impurity with “youths or young boys.” Peter Damian reminds the Pope of past Church practices under St. Basil:

A cleric or monk who seduces youths or young boys or is found kissing or in any other impure situation is to be publicly flogged and lose his tonsure. He is to be bound in iron chains. For six months he will languish in prison-like confinement and on three days of each week shall fast on barley bread in the evening. After this he will spend another six months under the custodial care of a spiritual elder, remaining in a segregated cell, and giving himself to manual work and prayer, subject to vigils and prayers. He may go for walks but always under the custodial care of two spiritual brethren, and he shall never again associate with youths in private conversation nor in counseling them.

These penances are “harsh in places, but it must be remembered that Peter Damian was writing in a harsh age which in many quarters had lost sight of the goal of Christian spirituality.”  A strict penance was necessary to get the fallen cleric or monk to change his behavior. The amazing fact here is that in many cases these harsh penances appear to have effectively turned the cleric or monk back to God. Peter Damian tells the Pope: “It is true that those liable to this ruin frequently come to their senses through the generosity of divine mercy, make satisfaction, and even piously receive the burden of penance no matter how heavy; but they are utterly terrified of losing their ecclesiastical status.”
 Now let’s look at the modern approach to treating priests and religious with the problem of sexual abuse.

Today’s treatment programs for pederasty

Catholic News Service reported that the National Review Board’s assessment of the clergy sexual abuse crisis concluded that “‘staffs of treatment centers must shoulder some of the blame’ for frequently recommending to bishops that a man be returned to a parish or other relatively unrestricted ministry after treatment—often leading to new opportunities for the priest to abuse other minors.”

There are several secular residential treatment centers which offer programs for sex offenders. Treatment programs for sex offenders commonly employ a combination of therapies. They often use several forms of psychotherapy, along with anti-androgen and hormone drug therapies. But not everything offered to the sex offender is moral. For example, some deeply misguided programs for sexual offenders regularly use masturbation as a “treatment” for sex offenders.  But, there is “evidence” from psychological studies “that practices such as masturbation actually increase, not decrease, the sex drive.”  Sex offenders go through these secular treatment programs with mixed results over the long term. There does seem to be some effectiveness when psychological and pharmacological agents that reduce sex drive are used together. But most law enforcement agencies consider the risks associated with the released sex offender as very high. Like so many, they have come to accept “the incurably predatory nature of sex offenders” who will sooner or later find other victims.  Thus state law enforcement agencies now require all sex offenders to register with the state. These offenders can then be tracked so that the state law officials can locate them at any time.

Since the clinicians who treat clergy sex offenders receive training and are credentialed in a manner indistinguishable from clinicians who treat the rest of the population, therapy programs for clergy sex offenders are probably no different than the ones for the rest of the population, except for the possibility of confession and prayer. No one knows the effectiveness of clergy treatment programs because these programs have not opened up their programming for an impartial review.

Catholic bishops in the United States have sent clergy sex offenders to similarly structured programs. But, as B.A. Robinson of the group Religious Tolerance says,

Perhaps because of the church’s tradition of forgiveness and perhaps out of an unrealistic belief in the effectiveness of therapy, the dioceses often routed abusive priests through residential treatment centers, and then reassigned them to another parish. Unfortunately, this often resulted in a whole new group of children being abused.

And there is no way of knowing the sexual continence of those clergy sex offenders who do not go to prison or who do not return to prison.

The Catholic Church in the United States has a couple of treatment centers of its own for priest and religious with sexual abuse problems. The Servants of the Paraclete, a religious order founded in 1947, operated a program for priests with sexual difficulties in Jemez Springs, New Mexico. Unfortunately, according to Tim Townsend of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, they were forced to close their program in 1993 when it was discovered that priests who passed through the program continued to sexually abuse minors when they returned to parish work.   The Servants still run Vianney Renewal Center, which they founded in 1990, in Ditmer, Missouri. Here they offer holistic therapeutic programs for priests and religious. According to the Servants’ website, they offer “the best in spirituality, psychiatry, psychology, theology, medicine, sexuality, social awareness and physiology.” Vianney Renewal Center, however, is not without its problems. Again, according to Towsend, resident sex offenders occasionally walk off only to return to a life of sexual abuse of minors.

The third treatment center where bishops can send priests and religious guilty of sexual abuse has been run by the Archdiocese of Philadelphia since 1946. This center is also named for St. John Vianney and is located in Donington, Pennsylvania, on a sprawling green campus a short distance from quaint cottages and two country clubs. According to the St. John Vianney Center’s website: “SJVC is located in a suburban area and provides residents with a safe, ideal haven where personal healing can begin within an atmosphere of peace, tranquility and hospitality.” Also according to their website, SJVC offers “programs which are spiritually based, holistic and sensitive to individual needs.”

When one examines the secular and Church treatment centers for sexually abusive clergy, one gets the impression that the philosophy of these treatment centers is to provide a comfortable environment for clergy abusers to recover from their sexual obsessions. Some even suggest that these treatment centers are pampering or coddling these sex offenders to some extent.  Recently, a St. John’s University priest who has been caught in a child porn sting was sent to SJVC to complete his rehabilitation. The New York Daily News article caption read: “St. John’s priest in cybersex video sting sent to cushy clergy retreat near golf courses.”  

Modern clergy and religious face a more difficult challenge

So what can be done today to help the priest or religious who is caught up in sexual abuse, especially pederasty? First we must understand what we are trying to do. Are we trying to help them change their sexual orientation? Christian doctors and psychologists who research homosexuality say that “profound change in sexual orientation occurs only infrequently.” But, “the basic issue, the authors insist, is not conversion to heterosexuality but rather to chastity, i.e., not engaging in homosexual actions.” 

Next one must understand the magnitude of the spiritual difficulty facing the priest or religious sex offender today who wants to change his behavior. The hurdles or spiritual difficulties come in the form of pornography, masturbation and former acquaintances. All of this is more difficult for the homosexual person who is trying to recover from sexual abuse and even greater if the male homosexual is not married. Let me explain.

One must understand the great temptation that the modern media brings to fallen priests and religious by way of “legal” pornography. The Internet has enabled men, in the privacy of their own room, to view real sexual acts performed by men and women in pornographic movies. There is also phone-sex, in which men can pay to become sexually aroused through steamy phone conversations. Pornography has made its way into popular movies and prime-time television. Even athletic events on television, and at the stadium or arena, flagrantly display burlesque acts done by seemingly harmless “cheerleaders.” Indeed, Jessica Bennett writes about how “a new book traces the migration of porn culture from adult theaters to the mainstream” in a Newsweek article titled “The Pornification of a Generation.”  

When trying to understand the difficulty facing priests and religious striving to overcome sexual abuse today, one must also consider the reality of masturbation. The fact that a sex offender does not  have to convince anyone else to have sex with him before he can engage in sexual pleasure makes relapsing into sexual abuse so very, very easy. No doubt, the majority of priests and religious who relapse into sexual abuse do so primarily through pornography and masturbation. It is the first major hurdle and often the person’s first failure when trying to overcome his sexual addiction. Because of the availability of cyber-pornography with its graphic virtual reality along with the temptation of masturbation, today’s priests and religious trying to overcome sexual abuse face a challenge hitherto unknown in history.

And if the priest or religious is a homosexual it is even more difficult. When it comes to recovery from lust, it is far more difficult for males to overcome the practice of homosexuality than it is for a man to overcome sins of impurity with a woman. Because of a difference in their psychological and hormonal make up most women are not aroused as easily as most men. Thus when a mutually attractive man and woman meet, he may be interested in having sex but she may not want to. Males, however, are always ready to have sex. When mutually attracted homosexual males meet, both will be ready to have sex. So there are far more chances to relapse for the homosexual.

The Linacre Institute study on sexually deviant priests concluded that “recidivism is higher among the homosexual offenders” compared to heterosexuals offenders. “In brief, complete sexual abstinence for the typical heterosexual male is a significant challenge; for the man with elevated sex drive, the challenge is far greater; and for the man with homosexual tendencies it is greater still.”  Once more, the possibilities of connecting with a former sexual contact are far greater today than centuries ago. The fact that modern communication is instant causes the difficulty index of recovery for the sexual abuser to grow exponentially.

Finally, there is yet one more point that makes it even more difficult for the priest or religious to recover from sexual abuse. The Linacre study points out that the reforming unmarried homosexual sex offender suffers from an “emotional handicap.” He does not have a wife and children to draw him to the role of fatherhood and healthy relations with heterosexual males, as the reforming married homosexual sex offender does. Thus, the reforming unmarried homosexual sex offender remains in the vulnerable position of being tempted to rekindle past abusive sexual relations. Continuing, the Linacre study states:

The homosexual priest who wishes to retain his chastity, his celibacy, and his acceptance of Church doctrine on sexual matters suffers from this emotional handicap. Successfully resisting the temptations of his sexual orientation will be difficult enough, and his ability to retain his chastity while clinging to this homosexual identity will have him skating perilously close to the thin ice of temptation to homosexual behavior. 

Jesus Christ is the only solution

So what kind of treatment could one possibly recommend to the priest or religious caught up in the horror of clergy sexual abuse in the midst of today’s sex-saturated society? The priest or religious—or any Christian for that matter—snared in the web of lust today must recall the words of Jesus to the parent who brought him his son possessed of a demon. The parent asked Jesus: “But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us. Jesus said to him, ‘If you can! Everything is possible to the one who has faith’” (Mark 9:22-23). When the apostles could not cast out the demon they asked Jesus why this was so. Jesus said: “This kind can only be cast out by prayer and fasting” (Mark 9:28-29).  

The demon of lust, named Asmodeus in the Old Testament, is surely one of those demons. Sarah “had been married to seven husbands, but the wicked demon Asmodeus killed them off before they could have intercourse with her, as is prescribed for wives” (Tobit 3:8, 8:7). As the demon of lust, Asmodeus hates marriage and chastity but promotes impurity, including homosexuality. So, the clergy sex offender must have faith in Jesus Christ and engage in much prayer and fasting, as Jesus directed. He must take up a life of penance and live an ascetical life in reparation for his sins. Only in this way will Asmodeus be driven out. But where do we find treatment programs for fallen priests and religious that recognize the value of faith in Jesus Christ, prayer and penance, or abstinence and asceticism?

While “abstinence-based” therapeutic programs for homosexual sex offenders are rare, doctors conducting one such therapeutic study claimed, “From their perspective abstinence-based programs are a promising approach to alter destructive patterns that might be set up by early sexual debut, including same-sex behavior.”  Similarly the Linicare study maintains about the single male homosexual that “radical asceticism may provide his only recourse to emotional wholeness.”  The problem is that this “radical asceticism” is totally absent from sex offender treatment programs. Even some religiously based studies of fallen clergy propose a “healing process” that presents a psychological solution that only “parallels” asceticism, without offering asceticism as part of the solution. 

The Fathers of the Church, however, have always treated the problem of lust by recommending trust in the mercy and power of Jesus Christ along with a life of abstinence and radical asceticism. This approach goes to the heart of the problem of lust through reparation for ones sins. Augustine says that when he was languishing in his state of sexual incontinence, he was not aware of this Christian approach to healing the addiction to lust. He says, “I was of the opinion that I should be very unhappy if I were deprived of feminine embraces. I did not think of the remedy of Thy mercy as a cure for this same weakness, for I had no experience with it.” Continuing, Augustine says, “I believed that continence is a result of one’s own powers, and I was not aware of having such power, since I was so stupid that I ignored the fact that, as has been written: No one can be continent unless Thou dost grant it” (my emphasis). Augustine says about God at the time of his misery: “Thou would surely have granted it, if I had knocked at Thy ears with interior groaning and if I had cast my care upon Thee with a firm faith.”  But at that time he did not beg the Lord for help. When Augustine finally did turn to God and break free from his chains of lust, he exclaimed: “Now, my mind was free from the biting cares of ambition, of acquisition, of rolling about and scratching the scab of lust. I spoke like a child to Thee, to my Brightness, my Wealth, and my Salvation, O Lord, my God.”

The thing that the modern treatment programs for sexual abuse leave out is faith in Jesus Christ and the notion of repentance for one’s sins. Only the sex offender who is truly sorry for his offence and offers spiritual reparation for his lust will change his behavior to ensure that he will not do it again. True sorrow for one’s offences involves a kind of reparation or restitution—a kind of making up for what you have done. True, a sex offender can never really make up for the harm that he has done to a person, especially to a young person. However, if the sex offender tries to make up for what he has done—well beyond psychotherapy—by some form of penance, Jesus Christ will accept his feeble attempt and complete the task with his own power. Jesus Christ will raise him up. He can even be healed.

The reformed sex offender, therefore, must try to make spiritual reparation by doing penance. He must take the common sense steps to avoid movies, TV, videos, magazines, the Internet, etc., which can lead him into temptation. But in addition he must silence his appetites. He must take the extra steps—the spiritual steps—to deny himself and give up many legitimate pleasures (e.g., types of food and drink, amusements and other legitimate delights) to completely master himself and to control his desires. This is called asceticism.

But must the fallen priest or religious go away for this treatment? This depends on whether the reformed sex offending priest or religious is remaining in an occasion of sin by remaining in population. If he is not a registered sex offender and if he no longer has an urge to have sexual relations with anyone, he could stay and continue his work as a priest or religious. However, if he has an urge for sexual relations, particularly with the young, he needs to move away from population. In today’s sex-saturated atmosphere the reforming sex offending priest or religious with an urge is a danger to society, especially the young, and society is a danger to him.

The recommendation here is that the dioceses in the United States combine their resources and purchase a number of acres of land away from population as a residence for fallen priests and religious. There the residents could live in single separate units and gather at a main building for community Mass, prayers, meals and meetings. There the residents would participate in agricultural or industrial programs to help pay for the up-keep of the place. They could pray for the Church and make things for the poor. The place would be neither a cushy country club nor a valley of tears. The residents would not be able leave the property except for serious reasons like a death in the family. There would be no use of the Internet, television, phone, or other forms of communication except for special occasions which would be monitored and supervised by staff. Healthy priests and religious could volunteer as supervisors for a period, e.g., two at a time for two years. 
 
A number of secular theorists will reject this proposal because they think that fallen priests and religious cannot change their behavior even if they want to. Yet, Jesus Christ teaches that “nothing will be impossible for God” and “this kind [of demon] can only be cast out by prayer and fasting” (Luke 1:37; Mark 9:28-29). If a fallen priest or religious believes in Jesus Christ and the Church’s teachings on human sexuality and is sorry for what he has done and wants to make reparation through prayer and penance, this program cannot fail.


Rev. Regis Scanlon, O.F.M.Cap. is presently director of Catholic prison ministry for the Archdiocese of Denver. He has published articles in HPR, New Oxford Review, The Catholic Faith, Pastoral Life and The Priest. His conferences are reproduced and distributed in audio form by St. Joseph Communications. EWTN airs his series Crucial Questions, Catholic Answers. He resides at St. Francis Assisi Friary in north Denver. This article appears in the October 2009 issue of HPR.