Saturday, October 15, 2005

The Empire Strikes Back - Part I of VI

Reactionary Bigotry
Let me run a metaphor by you. You passionately want to go scuba diving for the first time. You know that although the sharks that frequent the area where your boat is rarely actually attack humans, you are conscious of their presence. As you are adjusting the straps on your flippers, you notice that the largest shark in the area is swimming quietly round, as if examining the boat, and you stare at its cold, unforgiving eye. Then, just as you are positioning the mask and checking your air regulator, the shark suddenly takes a dramatic lunge out of the water, as if attempting to snatch you out of the boat, as in the movie, its forward-projecting jaws missing you by a short distance, just grazing your wet suit. Then it backs off and apparently continues swimming round the boat in a relatively peaceful manner. Still want to get in the water?

That is effectively the position of gay men who have been thinking of becoming Catholic priests. A few weeks ago, authoritative sources from the Vatican suggested that new rules and procedures are being prepared to eliminate the prospect of gay priests being ordained – as if that would work. They seemed to think that this would solve the problem of sexual abuse of children by officials of the Catholic Church (overwhelmingly priests). As Cardinal Ratzinger, the new Pope’s opinions of gay people were well known, being party to a document that described gay people as being ‘intrinsically disordered’. At the time of Pope John Paul II’s death when the identity of the new pope was not yet known but was being hotly discussed, correspondence I received from a former Catholic seminarian said he had personal experience of Ratzinger’s direct involvement in decisions to generally find ways to oppress gay seminarians. This included, for example, stopping groups of gay seminarians using church property to hold meetings to discuss their issues among a number of other suppressive measure. Clearly his opinion hasn’t changed much since and despite a number of blatantly gay or bisexual popes in the past, the Catholic Church continues its demonisation of gay people.

We know it’s big….
To look at this issue from a very simplistic perspective for a moment, one can understand to a degree why the current concern about gay priests: The child abuse scandals that have come to light in the United States have cost the Catholic Church a monumental amount of money so far (significantly over half a billion US dollars) and some dioceses would have been easily bankrupted had it not been for handouts by the Vatican itself. And the majority of those abused have been boys, so there is a superficially reasonable, if slightly simplistic assumption that I’ll examine later, that the root cause of the problem was because the priests abusing them were specifically gay. Thereby, justifying church homophobia and supporting the notion that preventing gay men from becoming priests would simply solve the problem.

…But let’s pretend it’s not happening
Notice that I stress the ‘come to light’ bit, because now we all know that the church has known these abuses have been widespread for many years. It’s just that the Catholic Church was successful in suppressing wider public awareness of the issue for a very long time. Priests were moved from parish to parish, where they would abuse again and be moved on, so the church has been instrumental in causing a lot of children to be unnecessarily abused, which I think has been – justifiably in my opinion – largely the basis of their huge financial penalties.

Some sources say that western priests who were deemed to be too much of a danger were shipped off to Africa where there was more chance they could get away with it because of the generally less tolerant attitude to homosexuality (and thus children would be less likely to speak out) and greater authority of the church in society. Thus the problem could be removed to a safer part of the world. Safer for the Catholic Church, that is – not for the children they were ministering to of course, but obviously, poor African children don’t matter so much as rich western children whose parents have ready access to lawyers. At the same time the public relations effort could be maintained with the story of the priest leaving in an honourable fashion in order to be missionaries to the poor Africans. So Africa has become the dumping ground not only international industrial conglomerates, but an international religious conglomerate too. (Note: Since first posting this, I've been informed some Asian countries were also used as a dumping ground for abusive priests)

Why the disparity between industrialised countries and Africa?
As an aside, this does rather beg the question: Why hasn’t there been a public scandal in many places in Africa comparable to the extent of the situation in western industrialised countries, especially if that’s where the worst offenders are shipped off to? A correspondent from Cameroon, a predominantly Catholic country, explained to me recently the relationship between the population, the church and state. The authority of the church is such that anyone who openly criticises the church is generally looked down on by others for attempting to rock the boat, as if the church is above reproach. This awe of the church extends obviously to such a high proportion of the population that the influence of the church on the organs of state is so great that if you become a nuisance to the church, it is the government and the police that will come down on you.

Thus, the government is in effect the agents and enforcers of the church to a very large extent rather than protectors of the population from the monster in its midst. This is very reminiscent of the situation in most European countries only a short while ago, where the virtually impregnable church would condemn to death people who challenged its authority, such as reformers having the temerity to publish the Bible in English so that the population could see for themselves how the original Christian message was being distorted and corrupted by priests and bishops for their own ends. But of course, once the judgement was passed, the actual executions were performed by civil authorities, so the church itself didn’t have to get blood on its own hands in public. Torture sessions in order to extract confessions were, after all, usually performed behind closed doors so the screams and rivers of blood were hidden from public view.

Additionally, the rights of children don’t yet have the same priority that they do in many industrialised countries, and my correspondent was unaware of any organisation working specifically for children’s rights in Cameroon. He confirmed that if a child told his parents that a priest had molested him at Sunday school, for example, for the parents to protest to anyone about it would essentially be a futile exercise. But that widespread poverty meant that there was a likelihood that if it could become a threat, the family would most likely be paid off, and relatively cheaply. As it happens, a South African journalist visiting me a couple of years ago told me that Catholic missionaries are still paying children for sex.

So it isn’t that the widespread abuse of children isn’t happening in Africa, just that as power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, it is likely to be just as big – just not yet uncovered. The techniques of sweeping it under the carpet are almost certainly still working as well in Africa as they have until recently in wealthier countries.

In the next instalment: damage limitation and wilful obstruction of justice

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