No sooner had I written my piece for 11/10/22 than a German Bishop gratifyingly provided me with a precise exemplum of exactly the point I was making.
I am therefore repeating my post for 11/10/22, in red.
But first I will give you, in black, the observation of the German bishop, updated by me in just one word so as to clarify why I disagree so strongly with the bishop.
It is followed by my original article in red.
"We cannot give paedophile people the answer that their feelings are unnatural and that therefore they must live celibate lives. As a Church, we have to answer these questions in a new way", said Bishop Helmut Dieser.
One can never turn on one's computer without reading a load of Stuff composed by skilled Stuff-manufacturers about our necessary openness to all sorts of minorities, especially sexual ... L ... B ... G ... + ... + ... and all the rest.
In these apparently, graciously, exhaustive lists, which seem to grow ever longer, I never see the paedophile or epheberast communities sympathetically listed as minorities deserving our enthusiastic understanding and acceptance.
Why not?
Are they not human Beings? Are they not Loved by God? Are they not "Made the way they are" by God?
I do, admittedly, reject logically the idea that their lifestyle is acceptable, because I personally accept the radical Catholic assertions directing and limiting the use of sexuality. Accordingly, I believe that Adultery, Sapphism, Sodomy, Bestiality, Fornication, Masturbation, Polyamorism, Dendrophilia, Ichthyerastia, and a lot of other things are inevitably excluded by the Christian imperative of Chastity.
But I am prepared to deal humanly, and courteously to speak with, those who subscribe to those and to all other such lifestyles; and to treat them lovingly as Children of the Almighty, protecting them, as far as in me lies, against aggression in thought, word, and deed. Even German 'remarried divorcees' ... as long as they obediently pay their Church Tax ... need not fear so much as a rough word from me. I share Sir Max Beerbohm's evident sympathy for bulldogs like Corker, although, possibly, I might have advised that catholic animal to mitigate his Growl. Meden agan.
Now will somebody explain to me ...
... why those Catholics ... including priests, bishops, cardinals and popes ... who appear to entertain tolerant sentiments with regard to Adulterers, Sapphists, Sodomites, Fornicators, and the rest, seem so much more shy about explicitly including paederasts and ephebophiles among the exemplary groups whom they accept and uphold? Whom they ecclesially and socially validate ... to whom they say "Who am I to judge you?"
They seem just the weeniest bit nervous about praising and encouraging paedophilia (for example) publicly and robustly. Why?
Is there some elephant in this (rather crowded) room that, with my moral myopia, I haven't noticed?
Should I try to get out-and-about a bit more?
16 comments:
There are three explanations as to why paedophiles and ephebophiles are not on the officially approved list of acceptable minorities. None of them has a theological basis.
1. Sex with minors is illegal.
You will go to prison.
2. Sex with minors will cost you huge sums of money and unlimited media vilification.
3. Sex with minors will reduce your congregation and cost you even more money.
There is no coherent reason to favour one perversion over another, apart from the dubious idea that children cannot legally consent to sex. No wonder that various pressure groups have pushed for abolition of the age of consent. Carson Holloway and Mary Eberstadt have published grim warnings years ago about this movement and the total incoherence of many respectable Christians in defending sexual morality.
My fear would be that they intend to add those groups you have highlighted in red, but they haven't softened us up enough, yet. The way things are going, with abortion, infanticide, mutilation, chemical alteration and enforced vaccination of children, it won't be very long before they start harping on about the rights of the latter to the pleasures adults deny them. The first skirmishes have already begun with the issue of the age of consent.
Dear Fr. John Hunwicke,
I suppose ichtherastia means sex with fish. Is there any instance of ichtherastia?
Dear Reverend Fr. Hunwicke.
Thank You, as always, for your pertinent, pithy, and pertinacious, observations and Comments.
May I, respectfully, enquire as to whether you are, in fact, “walking together” with the "right sort of people" ?
Surely, those "sort of people", who often support those causes and traits that you mention, are obviously "walking together" with each other ?
Surely, the answer is that we should all pitch in and "walk together" !!!
Hey ho !!!
Here we go !!!
Francis, just until the point he became Pope, expended extraordinary effort in supporting the appeal of convicted orphan abuser priest Grassi to the Argentine Supreme Court, with a multi volume work commissioned under his authority as head as the Argentine bishops' conference, attacking both victims and evidence. Grassi was fulsome about the support he got from Ap Bergoglio. Grassi fortunately was afterwards imprisoned for a long, long time. Then as Pope priestly faculties restored to Inzoli, whom Pope Benedict had dismissed, resulting in more abuse. Honestly the words on gays and others have an interest, words are always interesting, perhaps shocking but judging the actions above are more meaningful. I see the public words are something to keep Catholics off balance, but all any poor sinner can do is pray, watch carefully, and not give the Francis Vatican a red cent.
I fear your terminology is somewhat dated, Father. The approved nomenclature is now "a minor attracted person" or MAP. I wonder what other snappy TLAs (three letter abbreviations) or FLAs (four letter abbreviations) we could come up with. Perhaps INCE could be next? Initiator of Non Consensual Encounters. How does one accompany a person forces carnal intimacy upon another? Other than to a richly deserved term of penal servitude, that is. Perhaps I am being a little too rigid and judgmental, though.
The currently marginalized preferences you indicate might, unsurprisingly, find inclusion if/when the age of consent is modified to permit them.
Rapists of adults are not on the list, either. The law treats sexual activity of adults with children or young people as statutory rape because they are deemed too young to give consent. The lack of consent distinguishes rape from consensual sexual acts such as those on the list.
Well, the usual thing from The Chief Mourner of Marne:
'“There is a limit to human charity,” said Lady Outram, trembling all over.
“There is,” said Father Brown dryly; “and that is the real difference between human charity and Christian charity. You must forgive me if I was not altogether crushed by your contempt for my uncharitableness to-day, or by the lectures you read me about pardon for every sinner. For it seems to me that you only pardon the sins that you don't really think sinful. You only forgive criminals when they commit what you don't regard as crimes, but rather as conventions. So you tolerate a conventional duel, just as you tolerate a conventional divorce. You forgive because there isn't anything to be forgiven.”
“But, hang it all,” cried Mallow, “you don't expect us to be able to pardon a vile thing like this?”
“No,” said the priest; “but we have to be able to pardon it.”'
- That said, while the World is not right when she says that all is okay that happens between consenting adults, it does even in reality make some difference that at least pedophilia in the strict sense of the word desires, by definition, the abuse of people who cannot possibly consent. That does make some difference, even in reality, and even if the person burdened with such a desire keeps it virtuously in check.
Dear Father. You are talking about MAPs
https://tinyurl.com/3krjr4ws
MAPs are gaining "respectability" because they are "victims" not perps.
In America, Catholics lost the Culture Wars when such organizations as the USCCB came out in favor of religious liberty with its concomitant tolerance of error and evil and the refusal to identify and condemn because to do that is to reestablish The Inquisition.
It is not too hard to imagine some local catholic community (that's what they call themselves in America, not a Church) can specialise in being a sexualised-alphabet-friendly community with a sign that reads entrance in the rear by way of the mincing gate. because the martins are coming home to roost
Indeed, in the 1960s 1970s these things were openly touted by the 'progressive' forces as the next phase of the sexual revolution. This inconvenient truth has mostly been swept under the carpet, although at least in the UK Harriet Harman has had to make a grovelling apology for supporting it and the BBC has made a half-hearted apology for its facilitation of Jimmy Savile.
The revolutionaries have, of course, recanted nothing. They sensed an opportunity to discredit Christian ethics by focusing on abuse in the Church, to the exclusion of nearly all else. But that was only ever a tactical feint. When enough time has passed, the MAPs will become fashionable again.
Q. (see above) 'Is there an instance of ictherastia?'
A. 'The little Mermaid' (Hans Christian Andersen) - itself based on countless folktales that circulated for centuries on all coastal regions. I've even come across a Greek variant.
Another small point is that many bishops and a very high portion of secular and religious priests are sexually active, usually homosexuals, celibate only in the sense of not being married, and formed in seminaries which degraded as almost anyone was accepted in post V2 desperation. People tend to like people like them and so a bishop (this is not in reference to the German bishop who maybe suffers a surfeit of human charity) or priest will be happy to endorse the LGBTQ+ (I think) as he would be one of them or most of his friends are.
I think that the Zeitgeist was ready to push ephebophilia, if not pedophilia, back in the early 1990s, but then the left discovered that these sins were useful tools with which to beat the Church. I recall reading a book review in the Washington Post about that time (published on Father's Day, which was also the day of the big Pride parades that year) that favorably commented on a coming of age story of a boy who was mentored by the male teacher at his school. But once the scandals erupted in the Catholic Church, such sentiments disappeared from the popular media so that the left could join in denouncing the accused priests, and by extension, the entire Church. But now, after 30 years, with the Church's reputation having been severely damaged worldwide thanks to the sex scandals, the left is willing once again to openly endorse exactly that behavior which for the last 30 years they piously claimed to find so reprehensible among the clergy.
Steven, how perceptive is your analysis above! It is an X-ray of the Left's cunning malevolence and hypocrisy---a malice pointedly directed against Christ and His Church. This destructive malice makes the widespread complicity of our clergy with their very enemies (unless they are complicit, which I believe in many cases they are) all the more heart-rending for faithful Catholics. There are few human behaviors more appalling and immoral than betrayal. As the superb theologian/poet that he was, it is no wonder that Dante places traitors in the lower circles of Hell in his "Divine Comedy."
"Fury as Police Scotland describes paedophiles as ‘minor-attracted people’
Campaigners see the contentious term, used in a force report, as an attempt to rebrand offence as a harmless sexual preference"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/12/30/scottish-police-call-paedophiles-minor-attracted-people-major/?li_source=LI&li_medium=liftigniter-rhr
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