Personal note: when I was a little boy, of around 10 or so, I used to walk past the church to school. One day, the chaplain happened to come out the door of the parish hall as I walked by, and he asked me if I wanted to be kissed. I managed to say “no” but I felt a deep sense of embarrassment; partly because of my refusal – to an adult of stature – to grant him his wishes.
I knew nothing of sexual abuse yet in those days. I was to be informed of that only later, during the sexual education lessons at the Catholic school I was attending at the time. Or better said: they were lessons in procreation. I don’t think that there was anything non-biological – or not instrumentally focused on the production of offspring – in that class. A Catholic school, so I had always thought since these interesting hours in class (NOT!), has nothing to do with having fun and most certainly not in the regions of the carnal pleasures.
However, since some time I know that I was very wrong about that. It has come to the public’s attention that priests, and especially the Catholic variety, have a sweet tooth for the hanky panky. I was also given a personal account of this by a man who studied to be a priest more than 70 years ago and who was his classmates being abused by their mentors. This is not only in total violation of the self committed vows taken by these priests. It is also in violation of the personal integrity of the little boys they have been abusing for their sexual play. It has been all over the press for quite a while and there is no doubt about it: there is a disproportionally large amount of perverts hanging out in places of high clerical concentration. For what it’s worth: they are perverts, because they misuse children. Not particularly because these children are of the same sex. This sex-similarity, I think, is a mere coincidence. I actually expect a priest who is working in a Zoo to have a preference for heavily hung donkeys.
I singled out Catholic priests, but it might be that all priests who claim to live their life in celibacy have this problem. No matter if they are Catholic or of any other denomination. After all, to my opinion, any man who voluntarily eliminates sex from his life must have a serious defect. And if on top of that, one inflicts this unfathomable deprivation on oneself in order “to be able to focus on the relationship with god” – an imaginary person for all we know – then I find it even harder to swallow.
Italian priests don’t find anything hard to swallow. That is what comes out today as a new chapter in the Sad Poopy Poking Priests story. Priests, bishops and lay brothers alike were tickling their tonsils with the genitals of their young pupils. Protected as these Italian perverts were, by the proverbial Italian Prudence and the high esteem held by the church in this country, the sexual atrocities were kept out of public sight for a long time. But nowadays, more and more victims are coming out, also in Italy. It turns out that the Italians are as perverted as anyone else. I keep wondering, if I should consider this a relief.
For me, another chapter in the ongoing saga of religion-resistance is taking shape. Somehow I must make sure that my children are protected against the delusion of god and his little loosely-handed helpers. I am well on my way by telling them that god is a fairy tale. And fairy tales were for grown-ups in the olden days. And so is this one.
I think I have a good shot at making thorough atheists of my offspring. They deserve it. And it’s a lot safer too.
