The acorn falls near the tree: on (un)learning abusive behavior

Today, the Catholic Church is, rightfully, having to acknowledge the fact that it has ignored, denied, and minimized the history of priests’ sexual abuse of children carried out, since it took no steps to prevent, with its tacit permission. Usually – because they carry out the abuse – individuals almost always bear full blame for the crime. A major and important change has attention focused on institutional complicity.

Raised Roman Catholic, over time I found myself completely at odds with the church’s standard attitudes and teachings related to sex. Divorce and remarriage, activity of couples dating, birth control, abortion, homosexuality, priestly celibacy – these escort humans into the “dangerous” arena of sexuality, something the church regards at best with suspicion and at worst with revulsion. Some earlier churchly teachings have been softened since the years of Vatican Council II, but softened has not, does not overcome centuries of harshly worded teachings.

Some theologians have been convinced that sex, rather than disobedience, was the original sin; sex is how Satan originally gained access to our souls and how sin is passed on to children. Catholic school children learned early on that sexual acts, even thoughts, feelings, unless strongly resisted, were almost always mortally sinful (worthy of an eternity in hell). Sex offered the added danger of involving pleasure – although Christianity did its best to separate the two. Some theology insisted that sexual intercourse, even by married couples, was a sin, albeit a necessary one. Sexual intercourse avoided damnation if it had as its specific intent the generation of children. (That thinking seems still to fuel the church’s fight-to-the-death against birth control.) Children produced by sex are born in sin, unworthy of heaven until they are washed clean of their unholy begetting and their mother’s blood. And there lies another stumbling block for the church. Woman, long suspected by the church of being Satan’s sexual tool to bring down the more godly Man, continues to be accorded a lower standing in the “order of creation.”

Years ago, I clearly recall visiting St. Francis Seminary in Milwaukee with my family. As we walked down the residency halls, I was surprised to see on either side pictures of fashionably dressed beautiful women. I was even more surprised, as I drew alongside them, to see the women’s faces turn into the leering face of Satan. Clearly, the young men were being warned against the dangers to their bodies and souls.

Those pictures may have long since been removed, just as the most egregious distortions of human sexuality may have been softened. But the messages persist with the tenacity assured by centuries of honoring the teachings of the “church fathers.” These negative images have been impressed into our conscious and subconscious minds, into our liturgies, into our ideas of morality and sin, into our beliefs of heaven and hell and into the essence of who God is.

I find it hard to imagine how anyone indoctrinated into those ways of thinking can have a healthy idea of self or of human sexuality. How much of the church’s teachings on sin, salvation, morality continue to flow from that twisted understanding of our human nature? Born in sin, born sinful, taught to mistrust (rather than develop) our own integrity, and fated to be drawn to the edge of hell by sex?

I wonder, how often do relationships fail because religion has imposed guilt about or fear of sex?

Other matters will certainly have precipitated the actions of sexual abusers; (the institutional church can’t be blamed for every evil). Yet, relating it to the case in point, how often does sexual acting out occur because of a guilty “sinner’s” sense of failure, of frustration, of anger, or giving-up the fight. “I’m so bad I may as well stop trying to be good.” How many people have been trying to live up to a Christian idea of human sexuality that is more twisted than true? Indeed we must stop those who abuse; but most are likely more in need of healing than hanging.

Perhaps a positive outcome of the ongoing outcry against sexual abuse of children by priests will be a parallel outcry against the sexual abuse that is rampant throughout our society. Even better, perhaps we will try to change the social and religious climate that allows it to flourish among us. “Institutional causes of individual crime” is a topic that needs to be explored. No one is an island, no one stands (or acts) alone. For better or ill, we are, more than we realize, the product of the lessons we learn about values and behavior from the ideals and messages within which religious and secular society envelops us.

My suggestion to the Catholic Church is this: Renounce your tragically dehumanizing teachings about human sexuality. Not just by word but by example (including a clergy of men and women married if and to whom they will) teach compassion; proclaim respect for self and all others; admit that everything and everyone on the planet is sacred; learn that human sexuality is a good and wholesome gift to us as individuals to be shared if we so choose; remind us every day that in ourselves and in our relationships we, clergy and laity alike, are meant to give wonderful, beautiful, and yes – playful human expression to the sacred.