Teaching Theology in high schools
I teach theology in a Catholic High School and have found it increasingly difficult to speak with any moral authority on issues due to the pedophile crisis in the Church. The Archdiocese has its head in the sand if it thinks that young people give any credence to most of the moral teachings of the Church post-pedophile crisis. I believe that the core of Christianity is inclusion and LOVE. We are losing many young people due to the lack of vision and inclusivity in the Church. What a tragedy....
"In response to your
"In response to your observations, I don't believe "deeply spiritual" and "suppressing" can go together in to the same sentance."
Sheila, I understand you point, but in a sense they do go together; in the sense that spirituality in regards to sex is misdirected from beginning learning by theology and culture. So, from a child's early indoctrination, "suppression" does occur. I spent two years in Novitiate and continued in celibate community life five years after Novitiate. What you say is true, but the distortion of sex in early upbringing plays a direct role, in my opinion, in clerical immaturity and sexual deviancy, for clerical culture continues to advance presumptive and erroneous understandings of male/ female equivalencies.
Schools can and need to change this deeply cultured bias.
In 2001, when all this broke
In 2001, when all this broke loose, I was teaching religion to middle schoolers. It was also the year of 9/11 so the priest scandal got bumped from the forefront of their minds. I did want to say, that I had no problem teaching what needed to be taught for a couple of reasons.
1. Sexual abuse has nothing to do with sex. I spoke with a social worker who had more than 20 years of experience working with sexual abuse survivors. She was blunt: If I beat you senseless with a rolling pin, would you be confused and call it cooking? Using a baseball bat, would you call it playing baseball? Just because the "instrument" of choice is sexual in nature DOES NOT mean it had a thing in the world to do with sex. I am not playing word games. The distinction is serious business. It is, in part, what allows surviviors of sexual abuse to heal.
It is possible to continue to catechize sexuality, because pedophilia is not sex, it is violence against children. Period.
2. The Church treated it as a spiritual issue of sin. The civil authorities treated it as a legal issue. The psychiatric community treated it as an illness. The reality is that it is all three and as far as I can tell (and I'm almost 50, too) Church, secular law, and psychology just don't come to a consensus on these things. Everybody had a piece of the pie and no one had the whole picture. The pastoral care community came the closest to acknowledging all three components.
I had no trouble telling my students these men were not just sinning, or breaking the law, they were also mentally ill and that did not in any way negate the moral teachings of the Church. We don't throw out drunk driving laws, or skip teach high school students about drinking and driving because some people still break those laws, do we?
3. One more thought. "Allowing" priests to have adult sexual relationships isn't going to cure pedophilia anymore than it can cure being bi-polar or schizophrenic. Sexually active men still break laws. Coming full circle, it's just not about sex.
Kids are smart. They can make distinctions when we help them.
Sheila
Sheila writes, "sexual abuse
Sheila writes, "sexual abuse has nothing to do with sex". You make some very good points and I would not wish to deny the real dimension of validity, but "sexual" abuse is about sex. Even as the healing process for the victims needs to incorporate the dimension of validity you address, the act of the abuser, the "weapon" used the vital "organ" of the victim damaged is their physical and psychological sex. To use your construction, whether one fires a bullet, arrow, or thrusts a knife into one's victim's heart, it is the heart that is damaged/abused.
Sheila, I do not think that
Sheila, I do not think that allowing priests to have sexual relationships will "cure" pedophilia. Pedophiles, just like your analogy of choice of weapon, are not thinking, "Why don't I give up my need to have a child meet my psychological needs and get married instead." Just exactly like your previous analogies, the choice of child as victim is not about sex, it's about power. I think a number of us are clear on that.
But when the church states that all priests must be celibate, you immediately pull from a pool of people who are a) deeply spiritual and ready to supress their sexuality and b) a pool of people who have an altered and perhaps immature sense of sexuality. These are a SEPARATE GROUP,--not gay--people who have a distorted sense of sexuality. That can manifest as pedophilia or priests who engage in sexual exploitation of women. There is probably at least c) a third group of young men with a vocation to the priesthood who may be gay or hetero but they are willing to try to supress their sexuality for the good of their priestly vocation and I would say that different individuals do that with varying levels of success.
Demanding the supression of sexual energy as a entre to the priesthood immediately changes the dynamic of who entertains the priesthood. And people who are struggling with their sexuality as unacceptable can be quite tormented and may look to the priesthood as a refuge. But the psychopathology of pedophilia has come out with terrible impacts to the church community and I think questioning the role of a celibate priesthood is a fair discussion.
It might be helpful to
It might be helpful to distinguish between two kinds of child sex abuse. One might be called situational, and this kind has to do with power. It is often seen in the family and usually happens after a crisis, such as a loss of a job or the hospitalization of the wife. It may happen repeatedly, but still serves a a vehicle for shoring up the perpetrator's sense of control.
The other may be called constitutional and this most definitely is grounded i n eroticism. Someone's yearnings are consistently directed toward prepubescent chlildren. I have a theory that what causes this is the prohibition against sexual fantasy.
Little kids love to play grown up. They dress in their parents' clothes, they play with dolls or trucks. All of this is healthy rehearsal play for the adult world. A person who denies himself the activity of imaginary sexual rehearsal play or fantasy grows up without a script for adult sexual activity. He remains an emotional child in an adult body. So his eroticism leads him to "other" children. This kind of perpetrator will rarely have intercourse with his victims because this is beyond the range of child sex play. Looking, touching, rubbing are much more likely to be the kinds of contact he has.
I do not know of any therapy which can extirpate this deep erotic motif.
Both of these should be distinguished from kinds of attacks on children committed by psychopaths whose actions do indeed have nothing to do with sex.
To Sheila: While I
To Sheila:
While I appreciate your analysis of pedophilia and agree with most of the distinctions you make, I would contend that the lack of moral authority that has Church has with young people has more to do with the evil nature of the cover-up by the Archdiocese rather than the actual pedophilia. This is not to downplay the horror of the actual abuse but the Cardinal's decision to play a "legal game" rather than speak moral truth and repent from the very beginning is truly what erroded the conscience of the Church in the eyes of so many people. Also, dealing with middle-schoolers is very different than having 17-18 year olds in front of you who have a much more sophisticated analysis of the situation. I agree with and support Church teachings on the dignity of the human person and the sacredness of sexuality.
Adults are even more
Adults are even more sophisticated than both middle schoolers, and 17-18 year olds, but their arguments and resentments are much the same. I know, I've been doing adult formation for 12+ years.
The extraordinarily bad behavior of a few does not legitimize ditching church teaching. I wish the Church had handled it all differently. Stand up, be a man, take your hits, be an honest-to-God role model in the face of the worst. There were individual Bishop's over recent decades that failed their parishioners miserably (and that's being charitable). Cardinal Law lost his credibility: moral theology and good catechesis did not.
I do not defend this scandal to anyone, man, woman, or child. Cardinal Law will have some explaining to do when the time comes, but you know what, if I walk away, hang my head in shame, and relinquishing morality to a society that raises up Paris and Britney and revels in their destruction - God's going to have a problem with me, too.
There have always been human beings who've choose evil, and there always will be. This scandal means we need to teach more, not less.
Sheila
What I find so interesting
What I find so interesting about your post, change45, is that it shows that it is time to move our thinking past the aging hippie/V2/(whatever) versus JPII generation/(whatever) discussion, to the next group of young people--the pedophilia crisis generation(?), forming in a time of such a horrendous problems in the church's history. They have watched their church perform poorly in the crisis, have suffered through youthful embarrassment with friends and associates. For many of us, we have watched rooms clear out with dismissing handwaves, etc., when the church is discussed for its moral authority. For them, this church crisis is largely the way they themselves are actually seen by others, and at such a sensitive time in their lives for embarrassment, bullying, dismissal, ostracization, etc. I've wondered (and prayed) that we pass this historically gross moment with contrition, reconciliation, and restitution--walking our talk--so that we can pass something more positive to our children/grandchildren. But revelations of parishes hiding money and all that shows that each level of the church will compromise itself in some way on the way to the future, and that's a powerfully sad thing to pass on. I'm not surprised at the problems you face in your work. If you were to reflect on what the church needs to do, what would suggest now?
I participated in a program
I participated in a program for youth that was supposed to teach them about sexuality and about the Catholic version of sexuality. I'm trying to remember it's name; it was proably at least a 15 year old program and I participated in the last 5 or 7 years. Ah yes, it was "Valuing your Sexuality".
But the idea is (always) to answer kids questions honestly and get them talking about sexuality with not just the facilitators but parents later.
I thought the whole thing was overshadowed by the fact that the kids mostly heard how the church doesn't sanction sex outside of marriage and if you did violate that rule, please don't violate the contraception rule, and if you keep that rule and get in to trouble, don't violate the morning after pill rule or the abortion rule. Eventually we sound more like a church that warns kids not to play close to the edge of the cliff but if they insits on it we tell them not to use a safety harness; if they fall anyhow, don't try to save yourself by any means. ANd then, in the midst of the charade, is the knowledge that many people elect to contracept and have sex outside of marriage.
So I sensed that the kids knew 1) lies were being told (Catholics don't have sex outside of marriage; Catholics don't contracept) and 2) they sensed even the adults don't agree on the rules. I'm sure this same impact operates when kids sense some priests can operate outside of society's rules and the law and be protected by the church (the pedophilia issue).
Now I do not think sexual practice and the church should be given over to "the majority rules" (or even the obvious or noisy minority). But I think with kids of a certain age that when there is a conflict between doing one thing and saying another, you have to acknowledge the reality gap, promote "doing the right thing" (because I think chastity and limiting your life-time sex partners DOES have its' own rewards) and acknowledge that if you are going to violate the rules then you should take some responsibility for your actions. Responsibility for your actions, a polite and hopefully Christian thing to do, includes contraception, condoms, daring to ask yourself where this behavior is getting me, acknowledging the emotional, spiritual and physical risks, etc.
So sometimes I think the Church's refusal to see the world in any light other than its' preferred light creates a surreal and inauthentic atmosphere. And the kids pick up on that.
MollyJ this was my
MollyJ this was my experience as well, that the 'preferred light' was way too shallow to deal with the legitimate experiential questions which were foremost in the minds of my teenage students. My solution was to give the 'preferred light' and then discuss sexuality in terms of spiritual and emotional relationships, explaining the importance of equality between partners. In this context they were able to discuss the sexual abuse crisis as a primary example of the powerful abusing the powerless in a sexual context. From there we were able to deal with the reality of teen sexual relationships in which the most sexually active boys were the boys with the most self assurance, and the most sexually active girls were the girls with the least self assurance. This statistical reality forced some serious thinking, as it also described an abuse dynamic. It was interesting to watch the body language as the message sank in. I could only hope it was a dose of reality which affected both their understanding of sexuality and their future behavior.
Colkoch, I've been pondering
Colkoch, I've been pondering these sentences: "From there we were able to deal with the reality of teen sexual relationships in which the most sexually active boys were the boys with the most self assurance, and the most sexually active girls were the girls with the least self assurance. This statistical reality forced some serious thinking, as it also described an abuse dynamic."
What you observed -- the differing ways male teens and female teens come to be sexually active -- strikes me as powerful and intuitively correct. And I think you're very right to conclude that the self assurance of the sexually active male teen, coupled with the lack of self assurance in the sexually active female teen, leads to an abuse dynamic.
I'm wondering if we might extrapolate from these observations about how male teens become sexually active to some conclusions about how males often enter into abusive relationships with female, no matter what the age bracket of the male. Here's what I'm getting at: it strikes me that the self assurance some teen males feel comes from not having to question what it means to be male. One can take everything for granted. One slips into the role very easily. All social signals tell you you're doing what's expected of you, and that you can stop thinking about what it means to be a man after that. And when those signals are accompanied with tremendous power and privilege -- in a kind of Pavlovian reward way -- then what young male in his right mind would choose any other role?
I suspect young women aren't afforded such ease at slipping into the "right" gender role. There's inbuilt questioning and confusion about what it means to grow up female, I would imagine. "The" role is not so self-apparent, so given, so attached to power, privilege, and rewards. Social roles for women have been fluid and shifting for some time, in a way far less apparent in social roles for men. This makes for questions about what it means to be "authentically" female in our society today.
If I'm on the right track in this analysis, then it may be that many men never really grow up, psychologically, emotionally, even spiritually, because their self-analysis and self-questioning simply stop in early adolescence. They know who they are. They don't have to think about that anymore.
And so they can go forth and exercise the power and privilege attached to their role.
To me, that's a recipe for potential abuse. It may well explain why so many relationships and families in which abuse occurs involve a preponderant number of cases of male abuse of females (or of children).
Something in how our society lets men be men without any questioning needs to change, it seems to me. Maybe those men who struggle with questions of fitting into the male slot assigned to them have something to offer other males, when it comes to understanding the definition of being a man. And I'm not referring only to gay males when I refer to those who struggle (in fact, there's a whole world of gay men who quickly appropriate the macho male self-image and use it to denigrate the feminine). I'm referring as well to men for whom becoming a male is a more complex process than simply settling for the definition imposed from outside -- and who, because they settle at such an early age, have no reason ever to question their self-confidence as males.
William D. Lindsey
To Dennis and Molly
To Dennis and Molly J:
Thanks for your insightful comments and questions. I believe deeply in the power of the Holy Spirit and I do have faith in the message of Jesus Christ. After many years of working for the Catholic Church, seeing its institutional need for survival outweighing the call of Christ to speak truth to power, I have become, perhaps, a bit cynical.
In response to Molly J's questions, I can only offer my own experience as a teacher and the discussions from some of my classes. Young people are desperate for spiritual values. My work often seems to be more of a call to save them from being devoured by materialism.
Many students cannot abide by Church teachings that prevent women from being priests (Who of us can truly justify that position any more?)More than anything I want to ask "Where is the JOY and LOVE in the Catholic Church anymore? The students hear the self-righteousness and the fear of scandal, the obsession with matters of sex/sexuality etc. Somehow, we need to communicate the message of courage and love. That may mean criticizing institutions that clearly care more about maintaining power and privilege than meeting the pastoral needs of those who are outcast. Part of what fueled my deep love for the field of Theology was my belief that VATICAN II really would usher in a new wind of inclusion..it was beginning to do just that...and then the powers and principalities stepped in to exert themselves. I still live with hope. I pray for my students every day and I pray for the conversion of the Catholic Hierarchy.
I am not sure of where you
I am not sure of where you attend mass or what kind of community you are a part of, but I find much joy in the Church. I have been energized more than ever in the past few years to really break open the teachings of the Church to the youth that I minister to in my parish. As far a teaching teens about sex, they are hungry for the truth which the Church has constantly taught. they and myself have lived the consequences of the sexual revolution. I find that with the real lived experience of divorce and infidelity the teens are looking for some solid thing to believe in so that they can break the cycle in their families. I find that when JP2's theology of the body is broken open for teens, the message really takes hold, JP2 speaks about the goodness of sex and why it is sacred. Teens then understand the goodness and right context for sexual activity will wait to participate in it. just my experience.
Would you consider showing
Would you consider showing movies like The Conspiracy of Hearts or The Assisi Underground? There are loads of models of folk who understood their Catholicism to be a call to heroism. And every kid wants to be a hero.
I am a youth minister at a
I am a youth minister at a Catholic Parish and I find the teens are very receptive to the teachings of the Church. The teens are pulled in so many directions by their peers, the media and many other distractions that they love to understand the Church's teaching as a firm foundation. They like the 2000 year consitancy of Church teaching
Dear "change45", succinct
Dear "change45", succinct and oh so valid. It is my belief that sexual abuse is taken more seriously by youth than by so-called adults. They are much closer to it themselves and sense its horror as they are dealing with intimacy, sex, sexuality, and its abuses it in many respects themselves.
I recall a conversation with my high-school daughter after seeing "Edward Scissorhands" years ago. I commented to her that my only criticism was the depiction of the young stud-student stereotype who had attempted to force himself on the naive co-ed. Her immediate response was, "Dad, that's the way it is". Regardless of how they are dealing with or exposed to sexual exploitation, young people do not dis-associate sex from the many emotions and conflicting drives of personal experience, evolving reason, 'environmental' pressures, taboo/guilt and yes hope. Their newness to the arena would seem to sense more vividly the abuse of trust, spoilation of person, susceptibility and vulnerability of the victims and the henousness of the cold calculating process of 'victim preparation' and reduction of and usurpation of a child or youth's most personal and sensitive place in body and soul to utterly selfish exploitation.
To use "Jesus" in any way as a tool in this process is unthinkable. Given the utter contradiction of the abuse with everything that Catholic Church, that 'priest' stands for one cannot but retain a smidgeon of doubt about the sanity of the perpetrator. What can one say however about the institution, about the actors without whom processes and acts do not happen, those not "afflicted" but who know/knew, the "pastors", the "shepherds", colleagues, bishops, cardinals who knew, who aided and abetted by act or silence, who tolerated and then denied, distanced, hid themselves and the abusers to abuse again and, worst of all, condemned the victims and not only turned their backs on them but denigrated them. Can we retain that smidgeon of doubt about their sanity, their culpability?
There is no proportionality between the nature of the crime, the extent of the crime, its penetration into the depth and breadth of the Church as institution, as Jesus in the world and with its response. The Church is so irrelevant to kids in so many other respects that they just walk away.
Is there an answer? I think so, Jesus is at work, He is coming at us and them from other directions, by other names, other faces. Let us just not get in His way.
Hey, Change45, I post
Hey, Change45, I post inauthentically at the "Young Catholics" table since I'm 50 but I have a son in a small Catholic high school but don't feel like I have my fingers on the pulse at all.
I would love to hear you say more about Catholic teens. I am sure they run the gamut from teens who embrace the traditionalist vision of faith that seems to be so popular to kids who are service oriented to those who are dis-engaged.
I recently asked my son, a sophomre, "what do you see as the role of faith in your life?" It's not an easy question to answer for any child or young adult or old person and he didn't have much to say. I see questions like this as questions that we all should ask and answer of ourselves periodically through life.
In my son's freshman religion class, they watched a movie about earth stewardship and global warming. One student stridently objected to being taught the "myth" of global warming. My son did comment on that.
But I have _never_ discussed with my son how the pedophilia crisis has altered his view of his church. OUr diocese does not seem to have had the issues of some others though I would be a fool to think that it has "never" been an issue. I personally did not see pedophilia by clergy to be the issue so much as simple disconnectedness. As a youth, I was surrounded by older priests who did not seem to have time or inclination to interact with youth. This was pretty damaging, too.
I would like to see you post more on the topic of pedophilia and other points of disengagement by youth. Give us some examples of what youth cite as disappointment with the institutional church's response. Also, do the youth differentiate between the institutional church and the local church and pastor? I think I do--do they?
First, just to clairfy, I
First, just to clairfy, I responded to the original post and specifically tried to address teaching sexuality to kids. I wasn't trying to address any other responses, nor was I addressing the subject of priestly celibacy.
But I opened the door, so here I am. I said what I said because an awful lot of Catholics do seem to hold the position that if we'd just have let priests get married, the whole pedophilia thing would never have happened. I'm sorry, I just don't think that has a toehold in reality. The vast majority of convicted pedophiles are married and/or have girlfriends, and/or use prostitutes and pornography. Pedophiles do not act out on children because they have no other outlet. And, on the flip side, there are a lot of people in this world who, for whatever reason, are not sexually active (widowhood, illness, fed up with the dating scene, etc.) who do not sexually abuse anyone. So, again, I have to hang on to the idea that there is something else going on besides the absence of physical sexuality.
In response to your observations, I don't believe "deeply spiritual" and "suppressing" can go together in to the same sentance. (Ron Rolheiser confirms my beliefs in his writings about sexuality.) Sexual energy is not supposed to be suppressed, it is supposed to be redirected, and that's exactly what is being taught in novitiates today. Unfortunately, many men and women still have to resort to suppressing, and combined with self-inflicted or externally-inflicted workaholism, it all just leads to exhaustion and loops back around to some sort of emotional rupture... This is still not pedophilia.
I understand what you are saying, I really do, I just don't agree with you on this one. I think linking pedophilia too closely to the legitimate issues surrounding celibacy is unfair to the men and women who are trying to live it. Sex is complicated, and frankly I don't think the secular world has anything to brag about, either.
Sheila