Denver
As a therapist, there’s no one I have more respect for than a client who understands a problem, deals with it and takes responsibility.
Sadly, it seems the Catholic Church doesn’t have the same strength of character. In a weak attempt to address the problem of child sexual abuse by the clergy, the Vatican last week issued a dictum. Was it a call to action against sexual abuse of children?
No. The church has decided to blame someone else for its problem, namely gay men. The truth is the Catholic Church does not have a problem with gay men. It has a problem with sex – in particular, with pedophilia and chastity.
Sadly, sex has been a delicate subject in Catholicism, no matter that it is essential to mankind. Sex is love and excitement, soul- searching and soul-defining. It is love, literally embodied. If God is love, then sex is a conduit to the Supreme, a joining of two souls. It is as natural as breathing, as innate as a child seeking its mother’s milk, and as essential to our well-being as food and water. God created sex, and saw that it was good.
The church’s current model of human sexuality is flawed. It demands priests and nuns to be sexless. It issues dictates prohibiting birth control and masturbation. The Catholic Church allows sex only within the confines of heterosexual marriage, with divorce frowned upon but begrudgingly allowed, in a modern nod to reality. And currently, there is a complete denial of the scientific basis for homosexuality.
Could there be a better formula for human failure where sex is concerned? Asking any human to be sexless, as the church asks of the clergy, is a huge request. In the United States alone, more than 20,000 priests have left active ministry since 1970, most to marry.
According to Thomas G. Leder, a writer for The New York Times and a graduate of the Seminary of the Immaculate Conception in Lloyd Harbor, N.Y., said, “It is estimated that 2 percent of all priests are completely true to their vows of celibacy during their lives as priests.” As St. Paul said, the flesh is weak.
In 2003, the Vatican invited experts on human sexuality to address the issue of child sexual abuse by the clergy. Among them was Martin P. Kafka, a psychiatrist at Harvard’s McLean Hospital. Kafka and the others were all of one mind: Homosexuality was an irrelevant factor in the scandal.
They stressed to the Vatican that it would be more effective to screen out problem priests by checking for personality traits known to be linked to sexual abuse, using already familiar methods.
The experts spelled out factors that increase the risk of pedophilia, including a history of being sexually abused during childhood; a lack of adult friends and lovers; signs of antisocial behavior or trouble with impulse control; and indications that a man is conflicted and uncomfortable about his own sexuality.
Yet, ignoring the opinions of the experts, the church instead chose to issue a dictum banning gay men from the priesthood.
What the Vatican seems to have missed is this: Healthy, mature men and women, both gay and straight, do not have sex with children.
The church must address a bigger issue: sex and the Catholic Church.
It is time to accept that homosexuality is biologically based and not a development problem. It is time to allow male (and female) priests to marry. It is time to allow the faithful to have healthy, adult sex lives. It is time for the church to open its mind to a better understanding of the sexuality God created.
Above all, it is time for the church to accept that its problems are self-created.
Keith W. Swain (drkswain@hotmail.com) is a psychologist, a professor at Front Range Community College and a former Denver Post Colorado Voices columnist.
