ROME
Zenit
By Ann Schneible
ROME, FEB. 14, 2012 (Zenit.org).- Though the Church still faces a long road to recovery in the clergy sex abuse scandal, one expert says there is reason for hope, because there is clearly a “movement forward,” and the Church will be, “even more so in the future, a powerful voice for victims.”
Last week’s conference at the Pontifical Gregorian University, Toward Healing and Renewal, confronted the crisis of clerical pedophilia with the objective of finding solutions whereby future child sex abuse would be prevented.
Monsignor Stephen Rossetti, associate dean for seminary and ministerial studies and a licensed psychologist, spoke with ZENIT last week during the conference about the concrete steps being taken to address the crisis, and offered some insights into the psychology of pedophilia.
Part 1 of this interview, on the effectiveness of prevention, was published Monday.
ZENIT: Regarding the culture as a whole, today’s society has a certain confused sense of sexuality that’s being promoted. Could this be a factor in the frequency of child molestation cases?
Monsignor Rossetti: I think maybe not directly, but certainly indirectly. Child abuse has always been going on, let me first say that. This is nothing new. Nevertheless, I think our culture’s morality around sexuality has degraded significantly. There’s a culture of voyeurism — I mean, the pictures you see these days, even of minors, some pictures which are inappropriate for children to be seeing, let alone dressed like that and doing those things. And so, it doesn’t help. I’m not suggesting we go back to some sort of prudishness, but there should be some respect for the human body, and some respect for human sexuality, and seeing it as a gift from God, and not as a commodity, not as something to entice people to buy something, not as something to sell movies. So, the messages that we’re giving our society about sexuality are becoming increasingly distorted, and [are] creating an environment which certainly does not deter sexual deviants, and in some ways, is too permissive.
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