CATHOLIC CHURCH'S HIERARCHY ENABLES SEX ABUSE
Professor Gene Kennedy |
Professor Gene Kennedy was born in 1928. He was ordained a priest with the American Maryknoll Fathers in 1955. He became a professor of psychology at The Loyola University in Chicago and is the author of many books. He left the priesthood and in 1977 he married the Maryknoll nun Sandra C Charles who was also a qualified psychiatrist.
In February of this year Prof Kennedy wrote an article for the National Catholic Reporter in which he said that the Catholic approach to hierarchy - as defended in the Church's Council of Trent - enables sex abuse by priests in the Catholic Church.
Professor Kennedy's thesis is as follows:
1. The hierarchial structures of the Catholic Church are the same structures that you see in a football stadium:
The owners (the bishops) sit in the top in the skyboxes. the priests and religious in reserved seats below them. And in the standing room below them, with an impaired vision of the game - the ordinary men and women - who in fact are the Church!
2. The sex abuse scandal is a function of hierarchy, that is, of a system that places all power in the hands of those at the very top of the steppe like structure.
3. The hierarchial model granted unusual privileges to those who lived on the top and to whom respect was to be paid at all times.
4. The hierarchial model made the abuse of children by priests possible because it cloaked its priests in special privilege on a level above lay people.
5. This culture conferred automatic deference to anybody who wore a clerical collar.
6. The demand for celibacy in the ranks and courtiers and priests served the hierarchs as well because it made the lesser acolytes - the priests - sign on for a life of servitude to the system and to superiors on whom they were emotionally and financially dependent.
7. Control a persons sexuality and you control them completely and there is no need to worry about the suppression, confusion and stunted psychosexual growth problems that were the side effects of such hierarchial dominance - the hierarchs told them: "This is God's will for you".
8. In this system clerical sex abusers were dealt with internally as they were priviled members of the clerical and hierarchial court.
9. For priests celibacy and chastity was the dynamite packed into their official endorsement as conditions for the privileges of accepting lot as God's will and serving, much like the butlers and maids of Downton Abbey, in the secondhand glory of the great hierarchial palace. As Philip 11 told the pope at the Council of Trent: "If the pope was to give ground on celibacy, there would go the whole hierarchial neighbourhood".
10. It is possible to speculate that the refusal to consider women priests and optional celibacy is rooted in the fear that yielding even an inch on these subjects would threaten the entire hierarchial structure. This reflexive assertion of the intrinsic superiority of forsaking sex for the Kingdom thus emerges as a political rather than a theological conviction.
11. Through several centuries, in order to maintain a hierarchial structure, church officials have insisted on celibacy for priests and exhalted virginity over marriage.
12. Thus the Church defends itself and its hierarchial structure rather than the children entrusted to its care.
I think that there is a great deal in Professor Kennedy's thesis. When faced with scandals bishop after bishop has put the "good name and reputation" of the Church before the interests of the abused.
They have a saying in Rome:
"Do what you want with women. Do what you want with men. Do what you want with children. But leave the POWER alone"
That is why the Roman Catholic Church reserves its greatest punishments not for paedophile priests and bishops - but for those who challenge its centuries old hierarchial power.
Dominus Flavit - Jesus wept!
+Pat Buckley
30.5.2014.
11. Through several centuries, in order to maintain a hierarchial structure, church officials have insisted on celibacy for priests and exhalted virginity over marriage.
12. Thus the Church defends itself and its hierarchial structure rather than the children entrusted to its care.
I think that there is a great deal in Professor Kennedy's thesis. When faced with scandals bishop after bishop has put the "good name and reputation" of the Church before the interests of the abused.
They have a saying in Rome:
"Do what you want with women. Do what you want with men. Do what you want with children. But leave the POWER alone"
Dominus Flavit - Jesus wept!
+Pat Buckley
30.5.2014.