Clerical child sex abuse was by human-beings not the devil

I am incensed

I got asked yesterday about the news that the Catholic Church in the Netherlands taking responsibility and acting proactively to deal with the issues of child sexual abuse in the church and institutions run by the church.

I responded saying I was incensed about the fact that the abuse happened at all recalling the many scandals and reports that highlighted how children were taken advantage of by so-called respected pillars of society.

A probe is being conducted headed by a Protestant to investigate claims, somehow, they expect the abused to come out and report the crimes against their persons like someone reporting the trivia of a penny falling through some grating on the street – some of us just want to get on with our lives not recount the dark times of our childhood. Thank you.

The West is hardly the whole

In the West, we might well have expended and exhausted ourselves with the news and happenings in the United States and Ireland; that it has come so close to the Vatican might well just show that this is really a problem.

I volunteered my conversant a few bits of information, that I was abused as a child by people in whose care I had been placed by my parents intimating him of the fact that whilst it might be “easier” to raise matters of abuse in the West, we cannot seem to countenance the fact that it happens in Nigeria and dare I say, even in Africa.

In fact, all the revelations we have heard of in the “enlightened” and “empowered” West might well be the tip of a humongous ice-berg of global child sexual abuse where societies are literally intimated by the awe of the church and its priesthood they are not to be able to challenge such heinous and sinful conduct.

The ones we so respect

Child sexual abuse is however not limited to faith-based organisations to which we entrust the care of our children, it happens in homes, amongst relations and with members of society to whom we pay respect and fear to dare when we see wrong.

This is not to castigate the many helplful and selfless organisations that have pitched tent in Africa, South America and Asia to help where our governments or welfare systems have failed, but to pretend the issue of child abuse has been fully exposed in the West and dealt with is to be naïve about the nature of humanity regardless of location.

The detail is not in the devil

I just read three news stories that I micro-blogged as tweets, then I realised there might well be a sinister ploy towards absolution that we cannot allow to stand.

Chief exorcist says Devil is in Vatican http://is.gd/adQHF New battle lines drawn or an atrocious distraction from Catholic sins?

Cardinal says celibacy partly to blame for clerical sex abuse http://is.gd/adSvT Sex is part of life, morality is the detail.

Catholic sex abuse scandals are 'evidence the Devil is in the Vatican http://is.gd/adZ9X Confused - celibacy & devil to blame now?

Having read in one place that the devil was in the Vatican and then another that partly blamed celibacy for clerical sex abuse the deduction that linked the sexual abuse to the devil was just too much for me.

People not phantoms at work

It is adults in positions of authority, responsibility and power that take advantage of innocent children to fulfil their perverted sexual lusts, to try and mask that very obvious earthly activity behind some supernatural or paranormal manifestation that excites religious passion and possible acquiescence is deplorable and contemptible at best.

I know the people who abuse me and I know the ones who abused others I knew, they had names, they had influence, they were respected and to everyone around us, they were beyond reproach – they were neither gods, nor were they devils, they were flesh and blood like you and me.

We must never lose sight of that clear fact and everything must to done to bring those nasty people to justice, no matter what façade they have been able to put up to mask their devilish acts.

A devilish act does not a devil make and I will not allow the Catholic Church to pass off those acts as if the people are not liable for their activities because they are under the influence of some devil – I will not buy that view and by God, we must all condemn that view before it gains any traction. Today!