Friday, July 16, 2010

Paedophiles and female priests supporters are one?

Many had feared this would happen when news first came to light that action would be taken to not allow the appointment of women as priests but to now equate their male paedophile counterparts to those who support the notion of accepting female priests is the bigger shocker, the gasps, oohs and aaahs could be heard worldwide as that part of the deal was totally unexpected. The idea to allow women priests was introduced to somehow help change the image of the church as a male dominated entity with sex crazed paedophiles. The photo below illustrates what many now think of the priesthood with every new case mentioned it demonises the position, most have been unresolved and are decades old in some instances.

(disclaimer: the sign is in no way intended to portray all priests as paedophiles but to show the image of the church now following the reported repeated cases of abuse to children worldwide) (Jamaica has no reported case as yet according to the local arm of the church)

Of course the usual inclusion of hebephiles in the peadophile category is here once again, a common mistake made even here in Jamaica whenever we hear of carnal abuse cases or some horrible abduction of a teen everyone runs screaming paedophile, this is not to discount the horror and psychological damage the victims and their families go through. I am not trained in such matters but I have been following this for some time as I have realised the error that is played out time and time again. The LGBTQ community has not in my estimation properly responded to this probably because of the lack of expertise in dealing with it and or the pre-occupation and rightly so with our already rapantly homophobic society (I call it that for now as ther are other factors that play a role in our homophobia in my estimation).

Please see the Ephebophilia Paedophilia Homosexuality labels tab below this post to review previous installments on the subject in examining the importance of the separation and also you may want to look at the proposed inclusion of hebephilia (men attracted to pubescent {as opposed to prepubescent} children form a recognizable sexual orientation group) in the DSM V.
meanings:
pedophile (plural pedophiles)
1.A person who is sexually attracted to children
2.A person who engages in sexual activity with children usually under some form of duress

ephebophile (plural ephebophiles)
1.An adult who is sexually attracted to adolescents
2.An adult who engages in sexual activity with adolescents

teleiophile 1.A person who is attracted primarily to mature adults

A study of offending priests commissioned by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and conducted by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice bears out the notion that many of the culprits in collars are in fact hebephiles. The study showed that "the largest group of alleged victims (50.9%) was between the ages of 11 and 14." (The quote is from page 9 of the Executive Summary. The age breakdowns of victims, available on p. 70 of section 4.3, also show that clear clustering in ages 11-14.) (Psychology Today)

Objections to the formal recognition of hebephilia as a sexual disorder come from the quarters you might guess: hebephile activists who want to convince all that pubescent children are really "mature," so that the hebephile is just a socially-oppressed niche teleiophile (A person who is attracted primarily to mature adults) who has a greater respect for the decision-making capability of your average 12-year-old than the rest of us; and defense attorneys and their alleged paid expert witnesses who hope to convince judges and juries that their hebephilic clients are just social-misfit teleiophiles who just haven't been able to get no satisfaction, because they're "really" closeted gay men, here in lies the misconception as the Vatican wants us to believe that a man having unwarranted sexual relations with a 12 year old is the same as a man doing so usually with consent with another adult.

I am in no way defending paedophiles and others who clearly have some sort of "philia" as designated by the experts but if the LGBTQ community is to win any arguments or overcome the misconceptions brought against it we must become cognisant of the differences in the orientations, philias and variants. We know all too well the mistake has been made here, for e.g. do we remember Beenieman's interview on the BBC some years ago where he basically defined "battyman" as a man who interferes with children, even at that level the misconception exists thus assisting in fuelling our chronic homophobic problems over the decades. Many people think all gay men want to do is to get into little boys pants. When another male entertainer for example was alleged to have fondled a 12 year old boy some years ago, the son of his then lady love interest that too sparked hostile reactions and he was labelled as a battyman by other entertainers publicly which has led to promoters blacklisting him, his career has since stalled.

Here are some of the articles on the development from Rome
Women priests 'as bad as' paedophiles The Periscope Post
Vatican: Female priests as bad as paedophiles

The Vatican has classified the "attempted ordination" of women as one of the most serious crimes a Catholic priest can commit, putting it on a par with paedophilia, heresy and desecrating the Sacrament.

Anyone found to be ordaining women will be automatically excommunicated under the new rules.

The Vatican also announced new laws to tackle paedophilia, doubling the church's statute of limitations to 20 years and allowing bishops to sack priests without having to resort to a full canonical trial.

So the holy inquisition in the modern world is close at hand.

I wonder what is going to be the stance locally on this new conjoined misplaced ideology?
I guess the homophobes including the christian right movement will hold on to the parts they can use which is the continued paedophile misconception to support their anti gay stance. The non acceptance of women as priests may not be of importance here at least for the abundance of many other faiths that exist here that welcome female leaders.

So if a woman feels called by God to do his work she has no place in as far as leadership is concerned in the Catholic Church, good thing there are other faiths that are more embracing. God in my view came for the outcasts and left the Church to act in his absence until his return but it seems the body is busy creating more and more "others" than itself so it can find reasons to castigate and punish them.

Interesting times friends.

Peace and tolerance.

H

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