AUSTRALIA
Catholica
The harsh reality
by Dr Gabe Lomas
Of late we’ve been confronted by a succession of horrendous tales about the perpetration and institutional mis-management of pædophilia in the Catholic church. We’ve sat through the revealing Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry into the handling of child abuse by Religious and other non-governmental organisations, and the equally confronting New South Wales Special Commission of Inquiry into matters relating to the police investigation of certain child sexual abuse allegations in the Catholic Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle. And we’re at the beginning of a probing Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Catholic institutions, along with other organisations, are certainly in the Public Eye.
An exposition of the horrifying experiences endured by victims of pædophilia, and the monstrous damage those experiences have wrecked on them, have jolted us into seeing more clearly the consequences of this perverted activity. The pædophile can injure the other person fatally, leaving nothing but bitterness and sourness where once there was innocence and trust, poisoning the other’s mind and life forever. The worst consequences of the whole loathsome process are lasting effects that cloy the abused persons’ existence, continually threatening to overwhelm them — and sometimes succeeding in doing so.
It’s doubtful if there can be an adequate recompense for such injuries, one that restores the balance and brings things back to where they were. This is the heinousness of pædophilia: certain human beings do things that can destroy the lives of others for ever. It’s at this point that our considerations should begin, long before any thought arises about the position of the pædophile or of the institution that’s involved. Only when we are earnestly and properly trying to remedy the effects on the abused can we turn to consider other factors.
How did this horrible state of affairs come about?
Virgin and Child
Image above of The Didache from the Early Christian Writings website which has a page with links to various translations and other scholarly resources on this doument: www.earlychristianwritings.com.
How did this horrible state of affairs come about? Well, slowly. With stealth. Pædophilia got a grip on the church as it developed and evolved. It’s been there from time out of mind, and crops up in some ancient prescriptions. Thus in about 10 CE one of our earliest documents, The Didcache,[2] tells Christians:
2.2 : you must not corrupt young boys
Greek text
And the Synod of Elvira[3] [c 300-309 CE] targeted pædophilia when it compiled its eighty-one canons, saying that:
12. Parents and other Christians who give up their children to sexual abuse are selling others’ bodies, and if they do so [ … ] they shall not receive communion even at death.
and,
Those who sexually abuse boys (stratoribus puerorum) may not commune even when death approaches.
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