02-12-2009, 09:08 AM
http://vijayvaani.com/FrmPublicDisplayAr...spx?id=376
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Searching for âGodâ in the Catholic Church</b>
Krishen Kak
08 Feb 2009
In the book âThe Imperial Animal,â anthropologists Lionel Tiger and Robin Fox explain that a breeding system is one that operates to survive, defend and perpetuate itself, and that a political system is a form of breeding system. They point out the applicability of âlustâ to both sex and political power.
In a curious way, we find lust conjoining the sexual and the political in a 2000-year-old breeding system; curious, because this breeding system is presented to us simple-minded pagans as a theological system, a system that reveals the true âGodâ and is for the salvation of our souls, in a way that we simple-mindedly think that sex and temporal power are irrelevant to it.
We simple-minded pagans couldnât be more wrong.
That, both in theory and in practice, the Catholic Church is about sex has been examined in two earlier essays ( http://www.vijayvaani.com/FrmPublicDisplay...le.aspx?id=221; http://www.vijayvaani.com/FrmPublicDisplay...cle.aspx?id=231 ). That it is about political power is a matter of observation and its history.
An extraordinary book â a revelation, really â documents the lust that permeates this absolute monarchy that (simple-minded pagans, please note) actually has little to do with âGodâ and saving us for the next world, and everything to do with sex, wealth and power in this world.
<b>The book is: âSex, Priests, and Secret Codes: The Catholic Churchâs 2000-year Paper Trail of Sexual Abuseâ by Thomas Doyle, AW Richard Sipe & Patrick Wall (LA: Volt Press, 2006). It is pertinent that the authors are all Catholics; the first a Dominican priest and the other two former Benedictine monks. Thus the book is an authoritative first-hand inside view of the Catholic Church.</b>
Sex, Priests, and Secret Codes (henceforth SPSC) emphasizes that celibacy â defined by the Church as the not engaging in of any kind of sexual activity - is a mandate of the Catholic priesthood. In fact, it is âessential to the continuation of the clerical subculture, the home of the elite minority who rule the Catholic Church⦠To abandon celibacy would be to risk the demise of the fortified clerical world and the consequent loss of power and influence.â At least till the Protestant Reformation (1517-1648), the Catholic Church âwas the most powerful element of society and also the most influential.â Though its âfundamental and ultimate mission is the âsalvation of souls,â the Catholic Church in a very real sense ruled the temporal Christian world (SPSC 8-9, 62, 287).
At the same time, sex with minors has been a feature of the Catholic Church since its inception, with the complicity of Church fathers, from the pope downwards. Sexual abuse by priests is inherent in the system itself and the widespread sexual activity of its priests is no secret to the Vatican - âthe rape and sodomy of children is woven into the tradition of clerical historyâ (SPSC 212, 215, 295).
Though preached as Church doctrine by the current pope as well, celibacy is not practiced by the majority of Catholic clergymen. It flourishes in the breach â sex as fornication, adultery, and pederasty was already a major concern for the Council of Elvira as early as 309 AD. Especially from the 4th century onwards, sex as masturbation, concubinage, homosexuality, either-sex (adult-adolescent) pederasty and (adult-prepubescent) pedophilia, bestiality, rape, and sexual solicitation (âintercourse, oral and manual sex, verbal sex, and sadomasochistic sexâ) during the sacramental confession, has been rampant in the Church. Church celibacy theory made âsexâ a dirty word, even in marriage, but Church theory was never a bar to lustful practice. By the mid-11th century, confessional solicitation had become common; and by the mid-12th century, sex between priests and nuns was a serious concern.
Certainly the Church hierarchy has always been aware of the lustiness of its clergy â but whether fulmination or canonical legislation or toleration, nothing has succeeded in curbing clerical concupiscence. Indeed, bishops too gratify themselves, and âmuch of the history of the Roman Catholic Church reads like a cheap paperback novel. Popes have been lechers, murderers, and pedophilesâ¦â In the early 1970s, it was estimated that three-quarters, if not more, of American Catholic priests were psychosexually immature, and this immaturity manifested itself in heterosexual and homosexual activity (not unrelated, in the 1960s, about a quarter of American Catholic priests were estimated to be alcoholics).
At least a third of American Catholic priests are estimated to be homosexually-oriented and âit seems by all accounts that priests molest a larger percentage of minor boys than do abusers in the general population.â The number of non-celibate priests has to be in the thousands given that, of the total American Catholic clergy, 125,000 of them are estimated to have left the Church between 1965 and 1990. The post-1985 number of civil and criminal court actions against lustful priests are in the thousands (SPSC 60, 206; 276; 58; 67; 211; 59; 90, 178).
Relatively recently, in 1922, the Vatican decided this subject merited the deepest in-house secrecy with, from 1962, automatic excommunication of any church person violating this secrecy. From the relative openness with which the Church displayed its sex-stained linen in the early centuries, the 20th century saw it veiling harshly its handling of sex abuse.
SPSC speculates that this defensiveness âreflects a long-standing attitude at the highest level of church authority: denial and blame-shifting,â including blaming the victims of its abuse. More likely, however, in consequence of lawsuits and âthe aggressive expose by the secular press,â it is a reflection of the Churchâs desire to conceal and protect its vast temporal wealth from public scrutiny, in the manner of âjust another corporation obsessed with its own financial securityâ - âItâs one thing to neglect to protect the faithful from sexual predators, itâs quite another thing altogether to neglect to protect the churchâs assets from lawsuits. Action to protect church assets has never faltered or been neglected. Money speaks loudlyâ (SPSC 52, 63; 53; 257, 261, 280; xi).
Much of âSex, Priests, and Secret Codesâ focuses on the American picture, and SPSC shows this is representative of the entire Church album (SPSC 278-9). American bishops are subject to the Pope of Rome and it is clear that Rome knows of the sex abuse, not just in America but throughout its domain, and Rome decrees it be kept pardey ke peechhey (behind the curtain).
Detailed in SPSC is the control of the Church over civil authorities and the media, its scandalous blame-the-victim game, its propagation of misinformation, its cunning cover-ups and conspiracies to conceal the crimes of its clergy, and its co-operating with civil authority as strategy only when cornered by public exposure.
What matters to the Church hierarchy is âimage, money, and controlâ â and SPSC proves beyond the shadow of a doubt âthe fact and the awareness within the secret system of the Catholic Church of the ongoing presence of sexually abusing priests and the lengths powerful men within that system are willing to go to protect abusers and themselves from exposure.â
The pressing concern is âthe possible cost to the Catholic Church of many millions of dollars and the potential devastating injury to its image.â âSpiritual considerationsâ concern the loosening of the Churchâs hold over its faithful (implied is the consequent loss of revenue, since 92% of the money spent on Catholic charities comes from public funds). âPublic relations considerationsâ centre round âthe credibility of the churchâ with âpositive programs utilizing imaginative and creative thinking that converts adversity to advantage.âÂ
The evidence all âprojects a portrait of churchmen mired in conspiracy and neglectâ so that the Church hierarchy prefers pre-trial settlements to court trials as being âgenerally more economicalâ! By the mid-1990s, the American laity realized âthe Catholic Church could not be trustedâ and, even in the mid-2000s, the Church still âconspired to hide abusersâ and engaged in âprevarication under oathâ in âa pattern of arrogance, evasion, and mendacityâ (SPSC 88; 98; 106; 162, 258, 281; 164; 177; 178; 203).Â
âClergy exist and perpetuate a cult of secrecy. Lay Catholics are reared in a culture of the unimaginable and unspeakable sexuality of all Catholic clergy. And victims of clergy sexual abuse are cowed into silent submission by religious duress.â SPSC shows the Churchâs conscious and pernicious exploitation of the blind faith in it as a breeding system that it commands of its followers - âsex and obedience are intimately connected at the core of the Catholic Churchâ - âcorruption of the priesthood is generated and perpetuated within the clerical system. Corruption does not seep up from the bottom. Corruption is raining down from the topâ (SPSC 204; 229, 288; 277; 278).
Catholic priests, by decree, are âcharged with representing Christ.â They are âGodâs interpreters and ambassadors;â god-like themselves, they are superior to angels; they are âthe messengers of God,â a divinely-ordained fraternity â and SPSC shows that devout Catholics actually believe âthat priests take the place of Christ⦠[the priest is] the earthly representative of God himselfâ.Â
The goal of this Church artifice, called âclericalism,â is âthe retention of the power, prestige, and image of the members of the elite, especially the bishopsâ who are presented as apostolic successors but are really âbureaucrats in medieval garbâ - and so âdenial, dissimulation and deception⦠flow, quite naturally, from an understanding of the church as a society made up of unequals.â The Church consciously cultivates hierarchy and âreverential fearâ among its members, and there are but very fine lines between âreverential fear,â âfearful subservienceâ and âreligious duress.â To the Church, âimage â bella figura â is more important than the spiritual and emotional welfare of the tens of thousands of clergy abuse victimsâ (SPSC 180, 236-8; 243; 289; 283; 248-9, 288-9).
SPSC reports that, even as victims who speak out are âre-victimizedâ by the bishops and the church lawyers, church officials âfrequently requested victims and their families to avoid scandal and not to make an issue of their plight âfor the good of the church.ââ SPSC suggests that âthe true good of the church is best served by holding accountable clerics and office holders who abuse the laity in any wayâ (but that would make the buck stop with the pope himself!), and even goes to the extent of proposing legislation to protect lay-people from the sexual depredations of the Church (SPSC 187-8).
What are we simple-minded pagans to make of all this?
The Catholic Church professes the business of saving souls. SPSC establishes conclusively and rivettingly that it actually murders them. It is guilty of âsoul murderâ (SPSC 244, 265).
Read SPSC through. The attitudinal parallels â perhaps even connections â of the Roman Catholic Church are remarkable with another institution of Italian origin â the Mafia (see, for example, Paul Williams, âThe Vatican Exposed: Money, Murder, and the Mafia,â NY: Prometheus Books, 2003).
In earlier essays, I showed sexual lust is central to Christian creation mythology. SPSC distinguishes between what I call âProfessional Christianityâ (i.e., Christianity as a proselytizing imperium) and what it calls the âChristian Community and People of Godâ (SPSC 66). It is optimistic that with the Churchâs obsession with sexual abuse of minors now in the open â and especially because of courts awarding enormous sums to victims â such abuse will end. Given news reports subsequent to the publication of this book of the Churchâs unchanged handling of sex abuse cases, and given that there is no indication from the Vatican of any diminution in clericalism, this is a vain hope.
For us simple-minded pagans in India, the essential lessons to be learned from âSex, Priests, and Secret Codesâ are at least three:
1] The Catholic Church is emphatically not about âGod,â true or not, and the salvation of our souls. Headed by the Pope of Rome, it is an imperial, missionary-colonial breeding system cloaking itself as a âreligion.â Hence, its Popeâs 1999 clarion call in populous India for harvesting us simple-minded pagans.Â
It follows that, of the five kinds of visas India issues to foreigners, Church proselytizers should be allowed in only on Business Visas.
2] There is no evidence within the Church of all that sanctimonious virtue it preaches to us pagans as being inherent in its own belief system, over the vice that it propagates is ours. On the contrary, it itself reeks of dishonesty and depravity; it is âa sewer of iniquityâ (SPSC 34).
It follows that its evangelical activity in our country should be banned.
3] Christian theory has it that itâs God created man in His own image and Catholic theory has it that its clergymen are avatar-s of this God.
Given the practices SPSC details so irrefutably of the avatar-s, it follows that the âGodâ they incarnate has to be in the same image.
Professional Christians vilify and abuse our divinities as obscene. They vilify and abuse us pagans as sinners. Yet, reading SPSC, there can be no doubt at all that Professional Christianity in the form of the Roman Catholic Church is the very personification of at least three of its own Seven Deadly Sins â pride, avarice, and lust.
Where in all this do we find âGodâ and the salvation of our souls?
<b>âSex, Priests, and Secret Codes: The Catholic Churchâs 2000-year Paper Trail of Sexual Abuseâ needs to be in every public library in our country, and sections from it need to be required reading for all pagans concerned in any way with Articles 25 to 30 of the Constitution of India.</b>
The author is a retired civil servant and co-editor of âNGOs, Activists & Foreign Funds: Anti-Nation Industryâ (Chennai: Vigil Public Opinion Forum, 2007)<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Searching for âGodâ in the Catholic Church</b>
Krishen Kak
08 Feb 2009
In the book âThe Imperial Animal,â anthropologists Lionel Tiger and Robin Fox explain that a breeding system is one that operates to survive, defend and perpetuate itself, and that a political system is a form of breeding system. They point out the applicability of âlustâ to both sex and political power.
In a curious way, we find lust conjoining the sexual and the political in a 2000-year-old breeding system; curious, because this breeding system is presented to us simple-minded pagans as a theological system, a system that reveals the true âGodâ and is for the salvation of our souls, in a way that we simple-mindedly think that sex and temporal power are irrelevant to it.
We simple-minded pagans couldnât be more wrong.
That, both in theory and in practice, the Catholic Church is about sex has been examined in two earlier essays ( http://www.vijayvaani.com/FrmPublicDisplay...le.aspx?id=221; http://www.vijayvaani.com/FrmPublicDisplay...cle.aspx?id=231 ). That it is about political power is a matter of observation and its history.
An extraordinary book â a revelation, really â documents the lust that permeates this absolute monarchy that (simple-minded pagans, please note) actually has little to do with âGodâ and saving us for the next world, and everything to do with sex, wealth and power in this world.
<b>The book is: âSex, Priests, and Secret Codes: The Catholic Churchâs 2000-year Paper Trail of Sexual Abuseâ by Thomas Doyle, AW Richard Sipe & Patrick Wall (LA: Volt Press, 2006). It is pertinent that the authors are all Catholics; the first a Dominican priest and the other two former Benedictine monks. Thus the book is an authoritative first-hand inside view of the Catholic Church.</b>
Sex, Priests, and Secret Codes (henceforth SPSC) emphasizes that celibacy â defined by the Church as the not engaging in of any kind of sexual activity - is a mandate of the Catholic priesthood. In fact, it is âessential to the continuation of the clerical subculture, the home of the elite minority who rule the Catholic Church⦠To abandon celibacy would be to risk the demise of the fortified clerical world and the consequent loss of power and influence.â At least till the Protestant Reformation (1517-1648), the Catholic Church âwas the most powerful element of society and also the most influential.â Though its âfundamental and ultimate mission is the âsalvation of souls,â the Catholic Church in a very real sense ruled the temporal Christian world (SPSC 8-9, 62, 287).
At the same time, sex with minors has been a feature of the Catholic Church since its inception, with the complicity of Church fathers, from the pope downwards. Sexual abuse by priests is inherent in the system itself and the widespread sexual activity of its priests is no secret to the Vatican - âthe rape and sodomy of children is woven into the tradition of clerical historyâ (SPSC 212, 215, 295).
Though preached as Church doctrine by the current pope as well, celibacy is not practiced by the majority of Catholic clergymen. It flourishes in the breach â sex as fornication, adultery, and pederasty was already a major concern for the Council of Elvira as early as 309 AD. Especially from the 4th century onwards, sex as masturbation, concubinage, homosexuality, either-sex (adult-adolescent) pederasty and (adult-prepubescent) pedophilia, bestiality, rape, and sexual solicitation (âintercourse, oral and manual sex, verbal sex, and sadomasochistic sexâ) during the sacramental confession, has been rampant in the Church. Church celibacy theory made âsexâ a dirty word, even in marriage, but Church theory was never a bar to lustful practice. By the mid-11th century, confessional solicitation had become common; and by the mid-12th century, sex between priests and nuns was a serious concern.
Certainly the Church hierarchy has always been aware of the lustiness of its clergy â but whether fulmination or canonical legislation or toleration, nothing has succeeded in curbing clerical concupiscence. Indeed, bishops too gratify themselves, and âmuch of the history of the Roman Catholic Church reads like a cheap paperback novel. Popes have been lechers, murderers, and pedophilesâ¦â In the early 1970s, it was estimated that three-quarters, if not more, of American Catholic priests were psychosexually immature, and this immaturity manifested itself in heterosexual and homosexual activity (not unrelated, in the 1960s, about a quarter of American Catholic priests were estimated to be alcoholics).
At least a third of American Catholic priests are estimated to be homosexually-oriented and âit seems by all accounts that priests molest a larger percentage of minor boys than do abusers in the general population.â The number of non-celibate priests has to be in the thousands given that, of the total American Catholic clergy, 125,000 of them are estimated to have left the Church between 1965 and 1990. The post-1985 number of civil and criminal court actions against lustful priests are in the thousands (SPSC 60, 206; 276; 58; 67; 211; 59; 90, 178).
Relatively recently, in 1922, the Vatican decided this subject merited the deepest in-house secrecy with, from 1962, automatic excommunication of any church person violating this secrecy. From the relative openness with which the Church displayed its sex-stained linen in the early centuries, the 20th century saw it veiling harshly its handling of sex abuse.
SPSC speculates that this defensiveness âreflects a long-standing attitude at the highest level of church authority: denial and blame-shifting,â including blaming the victims of its abuse. More likely, however, in consequence of lawsuits and âthe aggressive expose by the secular press,â it is a reflection of the Churchâs desire to conceal and protect its vast temporal wealth from public scrutiny, in the manner of âjust another corporation obsessed with its own financial securityâ - âItâs one thing to neglect to protect the faithful from sexual predators, itâs quite another thing altogether to neglect to protect the churchâs assets from lawsuits. Action to protect church assets has never faltered or been neglected. Money speaks loudlyâ (SPSC 52, 63; 53; 257, 261, 280; xi).
Much of âSex, Priests, and Secret Codesâ focuses on the American picture, and SPSC shows this is representative of the entire Church album (SPSC 278-9). American bishops are subject to the Pope of Rome and it is clear that Rome knows of the sex abuse, not just in America but throughout its domain, and Rome decrees it be kept pardey ke peechhey (behind the curtain).
Detailed in SPSC is the control of the Church over civil authorities and the media, its scandalous blame-the-victim game, its propagation of misinformation, its cunning cover-ups and conspiracies to conceal the crimes of its clergy, and its co-operating with civil authority as strategy only when cornered by public exposure.
What matters to the Church hierarchy is âimage, money, and controlâ â and SPSC proves beyond the shadow of a doubt âthe fact and the awareness within the secret system of the Catholic Church of the ongoing presence of sexually abusing priests and the lengths powerful men within that system are willing to go to protect abusers and themselves from exposure.â
The pressing concern is âthe possible cost to the Catholic Church of many millions of dollars and the potential devastating injury to its image.â âSpiritual considerationsâ concern the loosening of the Churchâs hold over its faithful (implied is the consequent loss of revenue, since 92% of the money spent on Catholic charities comes from public funds). âPublic relations considerationsâ centre round âthe credibility of the churchâ with âpositive programs utilizing imaginative and creative thinking that converts adversity to advantage.âÂ
The evidence all âprojects a portrait of churchmen mired in conspiracy and neglectâ so that the Church hierarchy prefers pre-trial settlements to court trials as being âgenerally more economicalâ! By the mid-1990s, the American laity realized âthe Catholic Church could not be trustedâ and, even in the mid-2000s, the Church still âconspired to hide abusersâ and engaged in âprevarication under oathâ in âa pattern of arrogance, evasion, and mendacityâ (SPSC 88; 98; 106; 162, 258, 281; 164; 177; 178; 203).Â
âClergy exist and perpetuate a cult of secrecy. Lay Catholics are reared in a culture of the unimaginable and unspeakable sexuality of all Catholic clergy. And victims of clergy sexual abuse are cowed into silent submission by religious duress.â SPSC shows the Churchâs conscious and pernicious exploitation of the blind faith in it as a breeding system that it commands of its followers - âsex and obedience are intimately connected at the core of the Catholic Churchâ - âcorruption of the priesthood is generated and perpetuated within the clerical system. Corruption does not seep up from the bottom. Corruption is raining down from the topâ (SPSC 204; 229, 288; 277; 278).
Catholic priests, by decree, are âcharged with representing Christ.â They are âGodâs interpreters and ambassadors;â god-like themselves, they are superior to angels; they are âthe messengers of God,â a divinely-ordained fraternity â and SPSC shows that devout Catholics actually believe âthat priests take the place of Christ⦠[the priest is] the earthly representative of God himselfâ.Â
The goal of this Church artifice, called âclericalism,â is âthe retention of the power, prestige, and image of the members of the elite, especially the bishopsâ who are presented as apostolic successors but are really âbureaucrats in medieval garbâ - and so âdenial, dissimulation and deception⦠flow, quite naturally, from an understanding of the church as a society made up of unequals.â The Church consciously cultivates hierarchy and âreverential fearâ among its members, and there are but very fine lines between âreverential fear,â âfearful subservienceâ and âreligious duress.â To the Church, âimage â bella figura â is more important than the spiritual and emotional welfare of the tens of thousands of clergy abuse victimsâ (SPSC 180, 236-8; 243; 289; 283; 248-9, 288-9).
SPSC reports that, even as victims who speak out are âre-victimizedâ by the bishops and the church lawyers, church officials âfrequently requested victims and their families to avoid scandal and not to make an issue of their plight âfor the good of the church.ââ SPSC suggests that âthe true good of the church is best served by holding accountable clerics and office holders who abuse the laity in any wayâ (but that would make the buck stop with the pope himself!), and even goes to the extent of proposing legislation to protect lay-people from the sexual depredations of the Church (SPSC 187-8).
What are we simple-minded pagans to make of all this?
The Catholic Church professes the business of saving souls. SPSC establishes conclusively and rivettingly that it actually murders them. It is guilty of âsoul murderâ (SPSC 244, 265).
Read SPSC through. The attitudinal parallels â perhaps even connections â of the Roman Catholic Church are remarkable with another institution of Italian origin â the Mafia (see, for example, Paul Williams, âThe Vatican Exposed: Money, Murder, and the Mafia,â NY: Prometheus Books, 2003).
In earlier essays, I showed sexual lust is central to Christian creation mythology. SPSC distinguishes between what I call âProfessional Christianityâ (i.e., Christianity as a proselytizing imperium) and what it calls the âChristian Community and People of Godâ (SPSC 66). It is optimistic that with the Churchâs obsession with sexual abuse of minors now in the open â and especially because of courts awarding enormous sums to victims â such abuse will end. Given news reports subsequent to the publication of this book of the Churchâs unchanged handling of sex abuse cases, and given that there is no indication from the Vatican of any diminution in clericalism, this is a vain hope.
For us simple-minded pagans in India, the essential lessons to be learned from âSex, Priests, and Secret Codesâ are at least three:
1] The Catholic Church is emphatically not about âGod,â true or not, and the salvation of our souls. Headed by the Pope of Rome, it is an imperial, missionary-colonial breeding system cloaking itself as a âreligion.â Hence, its Popeâs 1999 clarion call in populous India for harvesting us simple-minded pagans.Â
It follows that, of the five kinds of visas India issues to foreigners, Church proselytizers should be allowed in only on Business Visas.
2] There is no evidence within the Church of all that sanctimonious virtue it preaches to us pagans as being inherent in its own belief system, over the vice that it propagates is ours. On the contrary, it itself reeks of dishonesty and depravity; it is âa sewer of iniquityâ (SPSC 34).
It follows that its evangelical activity in our country should be banned.
3] Christian theory has it that itâs God created man in His own image and Catholic theory has it that its clergymen are avatar-s of this God.
Given the practices SPSC details so irrefutably of the avatar-s, it follows that the âGodâ they incarnate has to be in the same image.
Professional Christians vilify and abuse our divinities as obscene. They vilify and abuse us pagans as sinners. Yet, reading SPSC, there can be no doubt at all that Professional Christianity in the form of the Roman Catholic Church is the very personification of at least three of its own Seven Deadly Sins â pride, avarice, and lust.
Where in all this do we find âGodâ and the salvation of our souls?
<b>âSex, Priests, and Secret Codes: The Catholic Churchâs 2000-year Paper Trail of Sexual Abuseâ needs to be in every public library in our country, and sections from it need to be required reading for all pagans concerned in any way with Articles 25 to 30 of the Constitution of India.</b>
The author is a retired civil servant and co-editor of âNGOs, Activists & Foreign Funds: Anti-Nation Industryâ (Chennai: Vigil Public Opinion Forum, 2007)<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->