Skippy, good little ex-Catholic that he is, displays the usual irrationality and frustration common to those of an ex-Catholic bent in this blog post, itself a response to this podcast by RightGirl.

There’s very little in Skippy’s post worth remarking on. The usual attempts to paint all Religion, and all forms of faith, as being fundamentally unreasonable and illogical are of course present in his missive. But one expects to see those; they’re a dime a dozen, as predictable and standard as Barack Obama stammering when deprived of his TelePrompTer. Likewise, Skippy is bitter and then some…but then, a bitter ex-Catholic is about as surprising to find as is a B-grade Kirk Cameron movie. It’s part of the standard package, and unremarkable on that basis.

Skippy’s argument with Wendy (RightGirl) seems to be about the distinction and difference between child marriage in Islam (in the context of the Yemeni child bride who recently died from sexual injuries) and sexual abuse perpetrated by Catholic priests. Skippy likens this to “the difference between a common shoplifter and the Gambino crime family”, and then comments thusly:

There’s a significant difference between Yemeni kidfuckers and the more snappily-dressed variety at your local parish. We as a society can actually do something about the latter. I’m not so sure about the former.

…

…we can do something about it in our own back yard other than leaving it to individual victims and their surviving families to sue individual dioceses. We can do to the Church what we routinely do to other groups involved in precisely the same conduct. I would suggest to you that if we had the documentary evidence against NAMBLA that we do against Rome, everyone who has ever even told a joke about NAMBLA would be in fucking jail right now.

RightGirl’s podcast said that the allegations against the Church are from offenses that happened a long time ago. I also remember that being the defense when exactly the same kind of offenses came to light in 2001 and 2002. And that’s immaterial. Child sexual abuse is an indictable offense in Canada, for which there is no statute of limitations. Under American law, any act in furtherance of a conspiracy is a new crime in and of itself, making the underlying crime relevant.

As Wendy said, that’s never going to happen, if only because no one has the balls to make it happen. Catholics are about 50% of the population in Canada and are 40 million strong in the United States. That means that there’s no political will for us to do anything about it. And that means that we’re perfectly willing to tolerate it. Period.

It’s worth noting that neither the Canadian government not the American government has ever convincingly demonstrated that it gives even one iota of a rat’s ass about what Catholics think. Yeah, the votes are a concern and consideration, but in my experience most Catholics exercise their political options without thinking all that much about their faith. By which I mean: you could arrest every priest whoever so much as looked funny at a kid today, and you probably wouldn’t see more than a 2% swing in the polls, if that much.

And it’s also worth noting, as well, that the vast majority of cases of priest-perpetrated abuse aren’t actually pedophilic in nature. Which is not to say that they aren’t still abusive in nature, and gravely wrong.

So although it is, to some degree, splitting hairs to say as much, it is nevertheless worth noting that if Skippy is in fact bent out of shape about “kidfuckers”, he really shouldn’t be bent out of shape about Catholic priests, and really should be bent out of shape about real-live actual kidfuckers, like those who cling to the shining example of Muhammed and his very egregiously young bride, Aisha (who was, according to most sources, about the age of six at her marriage to the Prophet, and about the age of nine at the time the marriage was…ahem…consummated. Even the Blessed Virgin wasn’t that young.)

…we can change child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. The laws are there and so is the outrage. But we’re going to tolerate it, while making all the right noises about how egregious it is, just like we did in 2002. And we’ll do it the next time, and the time after that.

As previously noted, prosecuting most priests — even the actually guilty ones — for what Skippy calls “child fucking” (and which I take to mean pedophilia, specifically) would result in a lot of “not guilty” verdicts, because that is not the nature of the crime perpetrated in the vast majority of cases. Granted, there is some fluidity in the word “child” as Skippy uses it, but he seems to be focusing almost entirely on the issue of pedophilia, whereas the vast majority of the Scandal concerns ephebophilia, a separate disorder with different moral (and, to a degree, legal) implications.

The thing is, the Church itself is now — yes, belatedly — taking steps within itself to remedy the situation. This has been seen in a number of ways, though one need only point to how quickly that bishop from Canada’s East Coast was dismissed from his office once he was charged with possession of child porn…which was before abuse allegations were leveled against him. Similar punitive measures are being carried out elsewhere, and will continue to be carried out. The Irish letter — dismissed as lacking by some — was a scathing condemnation of the failures of the Catholic hierarchy in that country; expect more such documents to be issued over time.

Seminary enrollment is also being scrutinized, since it’s not exactly a secret that the abuses seen in the Church are inextricably linked with homosexuality; the overwhelmingly vast majority of abuse victims are male teens and young adults.

Indeed, the Church has, especially in the wake of Pope Benedict XVI‘s election, become what is probably the most proactive organization in terms of dealing with abuses in its own ranks, far outpacing the responses seen in other similarly scandalized organizations. Will Skippy begin to call for investigations into Baptist ministers (3 times more likely to offend than priests), Scout leaders, swim coaches, secular therapists (equally or slightly more likely to offend than priests), or schoolteachers (possibly as much as 100 times more likely to offend than priests)?

We’re always shocked to hear when e.g. teachers sexually abuse their students. “The laws are there and so is the outrage. But we’re going to tolerate it, while making all the right noises about how egregious it is, just like we did in [2009, and 2008, and 2007]. And we’ll do it the next time, and the time after that.” Moreover, what is the education system as a whole doing about it? If you want conspiracy and cover-up, yeah, you could look at the Church twenty years ago…or you could look at the education system today.

Skippy goes on to remark:

RightGirl suggests that Islamic culture “as a whole defends and promotes child fucking.” All I’m saying is that not utilizing the full power of the laws that we have on hand to prosecute it to the fullest extent possible is to do exactly the same thing to our own children in our own backyard. We know that individual priests aren’t the problem in the Catholic Church and we’ve known it for over twenty years. Yet we still refuse to do anything about it.

RightGirl is, generally speaking, entirely correct: Islam holds the example of Muhammed to be sacrosanct, and Muhammed took a very young girl as (one of) his bride(s). That’s an inescapable, historical, recorded fact…and because it is recorded, and because it was Muhammed that did it, Islam (more or less as a whole) supports the practice. Skippy raises an interesting point elsewhere in his article about life expectancies and how this drove and pressured society to accept a lower marriageable age; his point is well taken, but is also irrelevant. Even if human life expectancy the world over shot up as high as 150 years, or even higher, Islam would still preach the acceptability of child marriage, for no other reason than because Muhammed took a six year old girl as a wife.

In contrast, sexual abuse of anyone has never been a point of Catholic doctrine, and never will be. That’s not to say that individual Catholics, or groups of Catholics, have not failed to uphold the safety and sexual dignity of children, teens, and young adults at times. It is to say, however, that we cannot tar the entirety of the Church based on the actions of not more than 1.8% of its priests and groups of (predominantly progressive) bishops who enabled and sheltered them, anymore than we can tar all bloggers as racists based on the fact that a few bloggers are actually racist. That’s a principle a freespeecher like Skippy ought to be able to recognize and agree with.

But Skippy is an ex-Catholic, so I can’t reasonably expect him to be objective about this issue, which directly involves an institution he feels a very personal, very pre-rational hatred for.

Update: Welcome, RightGirl readers!

Moar updayt: Creative Minority Report provides the following chart:

The graphic dovetails quite nicely with what I said, both above and below, and also with what RightGirl notes below in the comments. The Scandal is recent, and is also intrinsically linked with homosexuality.

And as Patrick Archbold notes, in commenting on the above chart, “If you want to truly fix the problem, listen to Cardinal Bertone. For the rest, the New York Times.” I will thus commence hoping that Skippy will not cast his lot in with that of the NYT.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

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Posted by: Saint Angilbert
Posted in: Aberrant Sexuality - Catholicism - Crime and Punishment - Sex | Tags: Aisha, Barack Obama, Blessed Virgin, Catholicism, ephebophilia, faith, homosexuality, Islam, Kirk Cameron, logic, Muhammed, New York Times, NYT, pedophilia, Pope Benedict XVI, Religion, Sex, sexual abuse, Yemen