The sins of the fathers
By Pat Brewer
The Vatican isn't known for progressive views on sexuality, but one keeps hoping that it will, at last, get beyond a view which identifies sexuality with the snake in the garden of Eden and which allots it no role except procreation within marriage.
It hasn't happened yet. On July 24 the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith reasserted the traditional position that a homosexual orientation is a "disorder". This came in the context of opposing protection of homosexuals under anti-discrimination laws for fear of "promotion of homosexuality."
"Sexual orientation", said the congregation, "does not constitute a quality comparable to race, ethnic background, et cetera, in respect to non-discrimination. Unlike these homosexuality is an objective disorder ...
"There are areas in which it is not unjust to take sexual orientation into account, for example, in the placement of children for adoption or foster care, in employment of teachers or athletic coaches and in military recruitment."
This attempt to limit the rights of others on the basis of their sexuality sits rather poorly with the church's record.
An article in the July 18, 1992 issue of the Economist outlines some extraordinary facts about the Catholic Church in the USA. Since 1982, it is estimated, about 400 US priests have been reported for sexually abusing children. Over the past decade, archdioceses in nearly every state have been plagued with lawsuits which are estimated to have cost the church in damages, legal
legal and medical fees at least US$400 million.
This record might be taken to indicate that there is something amiss in the Vatican's view of sexuality, and in its imposition of celibacy on the priesthood. But the church hierarchy decrees that those who can't live up to its inhuman demands need to have their personalities reworked until they can.
And so, many erring priests in the US have found themselves sent off to a retreat run by the Servants of the Paraclete in New Mexico for treatment. Some 250 priests come there each year, a third of them for psychosexual problems. For these, treatment over a minimum of 18 months concentrates on stopping abusive behaviour by a mixture of "holistic medicine, Christian kindness and modern psychiatry". In difficult cases, they may be put on drugs such as Depo-Provera, which depress sexual drive.
Of course there is a much more simple and humane solution to this problem. The church could end its insistence on celibacy and its efforts to repress, distort and define human sexuality so narrowly.