The systemic problem reducing the Catholic superstition to ruins is not about the celibacy of priests, that is an easy and silly excuse. Men without sex are not monsters waiting to explode. The deeper cause is the doctrinal phobia of sexuality inflicted on generations of catholics. This self-disgust is what makes it possible for a priest to believe that a child requires torture in order to expel the demons which are causing the sexual attraction he feels. In his mind, the priest is battling the Devil himself, not torturing a child.
GIVE ME THE CHILD, AND I WILL MAKE IT SUFFER
Any doctrine which requires lifelong irrational commitment in the face of massive evidence to the contrary (like most organised religions) is going to naturally target children for indoctrination as early as possible. It is their only means of survival. In practice this means scaring the bejasus out of them. Terrifying children into obedience and even 'Love' with threats of infinite torture. This is a form of psychological abuse worthy of Orwell's Room 101, and a permanent distortion of one of the core social concepts we know - Love. In this construction, 'Love' can be demanded with threats. No wonder history is as blood-stained as it is.The systemic Irish abuse is not an aberration from the practice of organised religion, but a core element of it. And since, to a child, almost anything an adult does is moral and acceptable, even if unpleasant, it is not difficult to keep the vicious cycle of abuse spinning.
DON'T WORRY. THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT!
It is deeply diseased to derive involuntary sexual pleasure from torturing the vulnerable. It is, as the tabloids keep saying, SICK. Sickness is not healthy. But in spite of routinely labelling child abusers as sick, they refuse to accept that they are ill. Which is an abuse of the language worthy of Orwell's Room 101. To accept it as a disease would rob the media of the possibility of punishment, and of a topic for another profitable Two Minutes Hate. Which is pretty sick in itself.Sexual reactions are involuntary. You cannot control what you find attractive. So to be stimulated by inflicting pain on those too young to understand or consent is not a sexual reflex, but a cross-wiring, which (as in pornography) becomes a demand for power.
This is pathological, and socially intolerable. But the paedophile still persists in spite of social pressure. Not because this is their only way of achieving gratification, but because it is their only identity. Which is a severe disability. Guilt feeding obsessive behaviour in a vicious cycle. How many more definitions of sickness do the popular hate-press need?
Being subject to reflexes which deliver a reward for inflicting pain instead of the natural instinct which is to nurture and protect the vulnerable is sociopathic and diseased. The fact that the diseased mind knows it is despised is incedental, but significant. And even contributory.
Everyone accepts that it is a natural instinct to protect and defend children, I hope. That those who seek to harm them are the opposite, and that in this case, their sexual reflexes have become entangled with their need to harm. It doesn't take a vote to decide when someones neurology is damaged. The evidence is all too clear. And not much will improve until paedophilia is researched dispassionately, without the howlings of the tabloids for vengeance.
The word 'Evil' has been thrown around a lot lately. Only the problem is not real 'Evil', because there is no such thing, but our sloppy dependence on the word itself. We don't need a medieval concept to explain child abuse. It is perfectly explicable through real evidence. No need for metaphysical malevolent intervention. Whatever else it is, the Catholic Church is not the Whore of Babylon. Whatever that is, Dr Paisley. By pandering to medieval models of thought, we are perpetuating the catholic world-view which makes possible both child abuse, and the reduction of women to beasts of burden.
CATHOLIC SHARIA LAW
On the general point: Should any state-subsidised organisation be allowed to undermine the democratically determined ethics and laws of the society which feeds them?Should the tax-relieved Catholic Church be allowed to traumatise children with threats of eternal torture if they express their sexuality in a natural, healthy way?
If religions want independence, then they should be allowed it, and the relieve the burden on the taxpayer in the process. If the teaching of all religion were made illegal before the age of ten, most organised superstitions would shrivel back to an appropriate size, limping along on the bounty of a few rich eccentrics and the desperate scrapings of the gullible, ill, and old. But at least they would be sincere congregations, and only able to damage their own.
POPE ADOLF SLEEPS WITH THE FISHES
Each technological advance has had deep repercussions on the history of religion.The printing press meant that the delegated authority of the Catholic Church gave way to a personal interpretation and relationship with the godhead, and Protestantism (and the Enlightenment) was born. Today's explosion of personal communications can hardly be expected to defy this precedent.
And now it is entirely likely that the credibility of the Vatican has been fatally undermined. But the blame must not be allowed to rest with the 'rotten apples', or the slipshod selection procedures or even the full blooded corruption.
Child abuse in Catholicism begins in its doctrine that sexual feelings are the Devil at work, and must be bludgeoned out of existence, and any evidence of them mortified without delay. That's 'deadened' in my book. A doctrine of death and desensitisation and perversion. Fine for the Middle Ages, possibly, ludicrous and obscene now. Also, sexual instincts have to be perverted from the norm, or the child will go to Hell for playing with themselves. The historic effects of such insanity can only be guessed at.
IT'S SO UNFAIR!!
The real coverup at work here is the power-struggle between reality and illusion, Between God and Man. The very idea of mere elected governments interfering to protect children from ritual abuse? It's Political Correctness Gone Mad!The trouble with laws against torture and child abuse is not just that they discriminate against the torturers and child abusers. They also challenge the authority of the church, and its important Friend. So they must be discriminatory against Catholic priests and their beliefs, and therefore a denial of the freedom of worship, and therefore 'hypocritical'. Easy to appreciate if you're a sulky teenager. Not very becoming in a semi-divine 'ex'-Nazi leader of one of the world's leading superstitions.
What next? The Vatican demands its God-given right to burn heretic protestants at the stake? Why not? That was unshakeable orthodoxy once too.
CASTING THE LAST STONE
Now that Catholicism's 1500 year Reich appears to have collapsed, like the Walls of Jericho at the blast of the Information Era, where does that leave Islam? Which is hardly any less sexually repressive than Catholicism. The British taxpayer is due to pay for the pope's visit to London in September. The British taxpayer is not known for its Christian tolerance of paedophiles. Their red-eyed wrath can even spill over on to innocent paediatricians, just to make sure. So in practical terms, Rome has until September to do something meaningful. If it doesn't, the spectacle of mass anti-papal demonstrations in London could be as historic as the footage of the demolition of the Berlin Wall.The wider shame is that this country hates children as sytemically as the Catholic Church. It is institutionally paedophobic. How can it be anything else? It has destroyed play by building roads and sub-standard profiteering housing on anywhere children used to play.
The bloodtop media has terrified parents into believing that if they allow their children out of their sight they will never see them again, in spite of the figures, which show that such crimes are falling, as are the figures for child murder in general.
And so we now have more than one generation of adults who have grown up deprived of normal learning and socialisation, and seem doomed to repeat the same suppression with their children.
As if that were not bad enough, we also now see children as a status symbol. A commodity, with all the formal expectations of any other expensive product. And when they do not conform to these stereotypes or model specifications, we are outraged. And demonise them as hoodies, ferals, chavs, and other hate-words.
The nett effect is to dehumanise children, cripple the adults they become, create and intensify another layer of alienation in society (make even more people hate and fear each other) and help to create the ideal Consumerist society in which nobody talks to anyone except via some profitable media, and people become so deraged that only possessing sparkly objects can give their lives any purpose.
It isn't only the best minds of the C13th which have to change. Modern consumerism has to end its ritual abuse of children too.
