You are then further arguing that the sexually devient then took their revenge for their suppression by society by "acting out" their anger against the young entrusted into their care. (Certainly Father Smyth appears to have been quite open about his paedophilia, arguing it was consensual and harmless and ignoring the religious and authoritarian context which made it possible).
If you are correct, then the liberalisation of societal attitudes to homosexuality is the greatest possible threat to the Church - as it removes all necessity for homosexuals to join the Church in order in order to attain respectability. "Vocations" will plummet if it is no longer necessary to join to in order to attain respectability for sexually deviant behaviour.
Removing the vow of celibacy within the Church would have a similar effect - as it threatens the dominance of homosexuality and homosexuals within its ranks. It also removes the need for the naturally celibate or disinterested to join the Church in order to rationalise and obtain sanction for their lack of reproductive behaviour - status in secular society often being linked to prolific fatherhood.
Of course the whole process depended on maintaining the fiction that no sexual activity took place within the Church at all - at great sacrifice by the professional joiners - and thus deserving of great admiration and reverence from those who knew they could never achieve a similar feat.
Hence the subterfuge, the secrecy, the denial, the moving on of suspects before they could be found out by secular society. There is a social science principle I am struggling to enunciate which goes something like this: Institutions set up in emulation of one set of principles end up becoming almost exactly the opposite, but they must deny the existence of any contrary tendencies in their ranks, and thus those contrary tendencies develop unchecked and indeed protected - as their discovery would destroy the raison d'etre of the whole institution in the first place.
It is something more than the law of unintended consequences: It is more like an eastern principle of yin and Yang: strive for Yin and Yang ends up taking you over! notes from no w here
There is a social science principle I am struggling to enunciate which goes something like this: Institutions set up in emulation of one set of principles end up becoming almost exactly the opposite, but they must deny the existence of any contrary tendencies in their ranks, and thus those contrary tendencies develop unchecked and indeed protected - as their discovery would destroy the raison d'etre of the whole institution in the first place.
spot on...any action has a counter reaction.
Frank Schnittger:
If you are correct, then the liberalisation of societal attitudes to homosexuality is the greatest possible threat to the Church - as it removes all necessity for homosexuals to join the Church in order in order to attain respectability.
yes, and this is why ratzi can condone and forgive what's going on inside his church, while decrying those same vices, full of pseudo moral indignation.
romans (applauded by pharisees) hacked jesus' body, the present church has hacked his message, completely inverting it.
the only things holding it together now are habit and sentiment, some will cling to anything, even a sinking raft... ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
