Thomas Disch has a radical, disconcerting
observation about the Catholic clergy.
So here's what I'd nail first on the church door: that pedophilia in the priesthood has long been an essential element of recruitment to the priesthood, and that seminaries and celibacy and all that jazz use the energies of repressed (and then expressed) homosexual desire as their basic fuel (just as Detroit et al uses the juice of dead dinosaurs).
Disch, without dismissing the obvious horrors of pedophilia, turns the focus somewhere else.
I was raised Catholic and from early days could not understand how priests (ahem celibate men) could counsel couples on marriage. I would not have heard of abuse (and didn't) since it would not have been spoken about in the 50's and 60's. But, I am certain, given the inherent stupidity of young men & women being required to sublimate their biological urges, there must have been some abuse hetero or homo sexual in nature. And it was abuse because the "celibates" would be in power positions vis a vis their victims. As for the nuns...My Catholic high school class had 200 and at least 10 women went to the convent post graduation. Three that I know of remain nuns; the rest left that life to marry and bear children. I think perhaps it was easier for them than for the boys/men who entered the priesthood. This is a very disturbing stance that the Catholic Church continues to take against the clergy marrying. I would say it was "medieval," but in the Middle Ages clergy did marry! I absolutely do not condone pedophilia but I can so understand it in this case......the sexual urge and the availabilty of prey. And such an easy "fix" if the Catholic Church were only enlightened.
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