The Catholic Church and the media are bedfellows in hypocrisy

Hypocrisy in this country is currently being practiced at an all-time high (or is that an all-time low) in this country. While Gloria Allred seems hell-bent on proving the accusation that self-obsessed white feminists are as much racists as they are misandrists, she has been curiously reticent about upsetting Donald Trump; perhaps as Trump has a “handshake” deal with Vladimir Putin, Allred (who recently backed out of a case involving a client with a complaint against Trump), has an unspoken “agreement” to avoid a “tit-for-tat” twitter war with Trump. Or maybe she is just an ambulance-chasing media hound who is too cowardly to stand the “heat.” As for Mr. Hypocrisy himself, I received an uninvited guest in my inbox, mainly Trump’s 2020 campaign bullshit. It is clear that Trump hopes that fanning the flames of racism will be his winning ticket. Here is what passes for a “poll” question:

·  Which issue(s) concern you the most at our border? (Select as many as apply)

• Drug Trafficking
• Criminals
• MS-13 Gang Members
• Sex Trafficking
• Illegal Aliens
• Terrorists
• All of the Above

Notice there is no “none of the above.” You can tell that this is aimed at the Pat Buchanan and Ann Coulter types. This is ugly stereotyping of the worst kind. Michael Daly of the Daily Beast notes that the “El Chapo” trial has exposed the truck-sized holes in Trump’s claims of how drugs are getting into this country (much of it still “manufactured” in Colombia). As Trump manufactures a “crisis” on the southern border completely ignorant of the reality of life for the vast majority of would-be immigrants, Daly can’t help but note the hypocrisy of telling lies while reality lies dormant: “Homicides are up 40 per cent in Washington, D.C., where Trump gave his big speech about the supposed border crisis. Nobody is suggesting that undocumented aliens are a significant factor in our capital’s murder rate. Our president therefore has not mentioned the carnage even as it rages in the streets of the city where he now lives and works and addresses the nation.”

But hypocrisy gets a whole new meaning when it comes to the media’s treatment of the problem of pedophile priests and nuns. Discussions of gay priests is fraught with such hypocrisy, largely because the LGBT community is seen as “victims” of society and they don’t need any bad publicity. A Washington Post article recently opined that in regard to the Catholic Church’s priest problem, “The problem is abuse of power, an abuse that happens as a result of homophobia that keeps gay men in the closet.” Huh? Look, pedophilia is a crime no matter what the rationalization, consensual sexual activity with an adult is not.  The writer of this mendacious piece would have us believe that in this day and age when LGBT issues are generally treated at least in the media with righteous (or self-righteous) empathy, that some gay men, fearful of being “exposed” as gay, choose to join the priesthood because they have no other “choice.” Choice to do what? Have sex with young boys because having sex with grown men is too “risky”? 

And now we are finding out that the priesthood isn’t the only segment of the Church with “problems.” Joelle Casteix of Rewire News claims the Catholic Church doesn’t have a “gay priest” problem because, well, she doesn’t exactly say. Girls are usually not victims of priests, and that means what? Not sure, but apparently Casteix is not aware of the Scottish orphanage case where 11 nuns were arrested this past summer for abusing their charges, including sexually, nor is she aware of charges being made against American nuns. According to CBS News in the past month, one alleged victim claimed that a Sister Eileen Shaw “groomed” her for having sex with women (mainly with herself) since the age of five. Another former nun who claims to have been abused by her superior reported that 18 women have contacted her about being sexually abused by nuns. It is also wrong to assume that this is a “new” issue: in a 2006 edition of the William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice it was reported that the problem of pedophile nuns could be much worse than assumed, and that 

The danger of underreporting may only be increased when the abuser is female rather than male, and increased still further when the abuser is a nun. Nuns, as stated earlier, tend to take charge of children more often than priests, and their position of authority may intimidate children into silence. This position may even cause children to justify the abuse as a "normal" aspect of the clergy-women's authority.

Of course we could open up another can of worms concerning the under-reporting (or over-ignoring) of domestic violence in which women are the perpetrators. But getting back to the subject at hand, the study noted that sexual abuse committed by women has often been “explained” by their own alleged history of abuse as children, but it found very little evidence of a direct connection in the population as whole between being abused “naturally” leading to being abusive, even for females. 

To be fair, only a very small fraction of priests (and nuns) have been accused of same-sex pedophilia, but sweeping the issue under the rug and pretending that it is a different problem than what it actually is will not “solve” the problem of pedophilia in the Church, nor will clinging to “tradition.” Not only does the Church decline to even acknowledge the “gay” issue as a matter of “traditional” values, it still clings to the “tradition” that since Jesus was never married and was apparently celibate that priests must do the same because they are his “representative” on earth. In the absence a major policy shifts the only thing the Church can do is to engage in extensive psychological examinations of potential priests (and nuns). That this is apparently not done is of course due to the fact that in a country where religion is becoming less and less a factor people’s daily lives (let alone on Sunday) the priesthood is no longer considered to be a “plum” job. In the film Saturday Night Fever Tony comes home to a room full of family in a state of shock; their “good” son, the pride of the family for becoming a priest, was upstairs. Tony finds his brother and asks him what he said to them, it looks like someone died. His brother tells him that he quit the priesthood; he only became one to please their parents, but it just wasn’t for him. 

Has the Catholic Church, in desperation, just taken anyone who graduates from the seminary? For all the accusations that the Church is “anti-gay,” people do have choices, like joining another church or simply giving up religion altogether. Instead, some are choosing not just to remain in the Church, but bring the worst kind disrepute upon it to satisfy physical desires in “secret.” That the media and the Pope and his minions on down have not publicly confronted the embarrassing problem of not just priests but now nuns who have not foresworn their sexual appetites (whether for same-sex “partners” or not) and feel the Church is a “safe haven” for this behavior—is indeed ironic in the face of accusations that the Catholic Church is “anti-gay.”