Re: [xmca] Church Report Cites social and sexual turmoil of the 1960s and ’70s to blame in Priest Scandals

[Victor Friedlander <victor@kfar-hanassi.org.il>]

On 20 May 2011 05:32, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:

> A supplementary to what I said ... the real societal question is why did
> all this sexual exploitation stuff start coming out in the 70s and 80s?
> After generations of abuse, suddenly Ireland is full of horror stories about
> what the priests and nuns do with the children in their care? And ironcially
> one could answer : "Woodstock"! That is, the social movements of the 1960s
> did not create conditions for sexual abuse (that belongs to the mediaeval
> structures of the Church), but they created the conditions for people who
> were absued to come out in public and denounce their tormentors.
>
> Andy
>
> Andy Blunden wrote:
>
>> Yes, this was an astounding claim. The Church has studied all the sexual
>> abuse of children over the decades and decided that the cause was not
>> celebacy, or homosexuality but Woodstock (all their words). They claim that
>> the Church was simply a part of a social problem which affected the larger
>> social body, viz,. the 1960s Free Love movement. This is how the report has
>> been reported here in Australia.
>>
>> I don't accept this at all. It is crazy. Abuse of small children by adult
>> priests is nothing to do with free love, or love of any kind. Also nothing
>> to do with celebacy or homosexuality. I believe it is an issue to which
>> Activity Theory gives us an effective lens though because it was not only
>> the Catholic Church and its celebate priests who are implicated, but all
>> hierarchical organisations, especially those built around a doctrine and/or
>> demanding tight loyalty. It affects the even IMF actually. Where you have a
>> situation where one person has absolute power over another (a relation which
>> can be estabished by doctrine, but to an extent also by economic relations)
>> then this kind of sexual subordination and exploitation occurs. It occurs in
>> families, too. The question is the quality of the person to person relations
>> on which a large social formation is based.
>>
>> Andy
>>
>>
>
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> How ironic.  The Bishops' report manages to deflect criticism of the
> consequences of authoritarian relations between ecclesiastical officials and
> their clientele by reassertion of absolutist doctrinaire criticisms of the
> sexual practices of the public at large. A similar, and perhaps less
> well-publicized phenomenon can be found within the Orthodox Jewish
> community.
>

 By the way, several observations of the report suggest that the sexual
transgressions of the clergy resemble more the abuse characteristic of
prison sub-cultures than they do of those of gays and pedophiles.  There
too, sexual abuse has more to do about the exercise of unrestrained
authority than about strictly sexual mores.

-- 
Victor Friedlander
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