"Inattentive Seductiveness" and Other Silliness

By David Clohessy
SNAP
October 21, 2013

http://www.snapnetwork.org/_inattentive_seductiveness_and_other_silliness

[CBS St. Louis]

[Star Tribune]

When allegedly celibate men use words and phrases about sex that you’ve never heard, that’s when you know something’s being hidden.

For example, do remember when you first heard the word ‘ephebophilia?’ Chances are it was around 2002. And chances are you heard it used by a Catholic official who was desperately trying to avoid having people think that a priest was a pedophile or a child molester.

(If you don’t know the word, don’t be embarrassed. I’m told it’s not even in the DSM 5. I’ve never heard it used by anyone but a Catholic official or Catholic therapist.)

Example two ---Springfield Illinois Bishop Thomas Paprocki used a phrase I’ve never heard before. It’s “non-sexual self-bondage.” He used it when he put a clearly sexually troubled priest, Fr. Thomas Donovan, back on the job in September 2013.

Example three --- On Friday, Minnesota Public Radio revealed new, long-secret church records involving Fr. Michael Keating of the Archdiocese of St. Paul/Minneapolis. In those records, here’ how s a high-ranking Catholic official, Fr. Kevin McDonough, called Fr. Keating’s actions: “inattentive seductiveness,” and “an ongoing pattern of irresponsible seductiveness (non-sexual)”

Huh?

If this kind of hair-splitting and word-parsing and phrase-inventing was being used to protect purse-snatchers or shop-lifters, it might be amusing. But it’s being used to protect “men of God” who are, in theory, celibate but are, in reality, sexually assaulting kids or sexually exploiting adults. So there’s nothing amusing about it. In fact, it’s disturbing because it’s one way Catholic officials deliberately minimize the horror inflicted by clerics on innocent kids and vulnerable adults and then justify keeping these dangerous clerics on the job.