The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #128156 Message #2869165
Posted By: Peter K (Fionn)
22-Mar-10 - 07:58 AM
Thread Name: BS: Clerical child abuse Part 94....
Subject: RE: BS: Clerical child abuse Part 94....
Indefensible as it is, celibacy is a red herring. The real problem is the corrupting effect of power. As far as I know, the catholic herarchy's alleged gift of absolving sin exists nowhere else in Christianity, reformed or unreformed, and puts priests above and beyond the laity. A step nearer divinity.
Priestly power is now ebbing away by the day, as catholics increasingly challenge the myth. As their power fades - and already we see the cardinals, bishops and priests being pushed on to territory where they never intended to be - the child-abuse issue will recede too.
The problems are not always evident in the US - particularly on the east and west coasts - where there has long been a readiness to question church authority. In post-colonial Ireland, by comparison, it was a very different story, even in living memory - as evidenced by Peter Mullan's film "The Magdalene Sisters" (2003) set around 1964.
The institutional abuse seen in that film in homes run by the Sisters of Mercy might well have been found in similar non-church institutions at that time. What is far more shocking is the film's depiction of what happens when a whole society places itself in cowed subservience to a rotten hierarchy.
Only a few years earlier Dublin's Archbishop McQuade had required the dismissal of a public librarian on the basis that as a protestant she should not be in a position to influence young minds. In those days, the archishop could not return from overseas travel without being greeted at Dublin airport by the prime minister. (Hard to imagine in northern California, Joe?!)
Ireland's emergence from the dark ages has been faster than the speed of light, and many other countries will have taken note. The catholic hierarchy is being reduced to its proper place in society regardless of the Vatican's resistance.