C’mon Popey! Get with the program and go in hard over the grope issue. Enough of this fannying about.
It now seems that every second priest has had a fiddle with the genitals of a young choirboy and the question has to be asked ‘why?’. What is so attractive about little children? Is it their innocence? Their vulnerability? As a dad who has changed approximately ten thousand diapers I’ve had intimate experience of the private parts of children and I fail to see anything remotely erotic in them. So what is it that attracts the priest? Is he just a lonely man brimming with repression who would jump anyone, man, woman or child who was within hands reach or does he specifially target his young charges as they don’t have a sexual personna as yet and thus provide no challenge to his own immature sexuality. Scared of sex with an equal, a priest will use his authority to abuse a child safe in the knowledge that only a child will have less experience than himself.

Is it fair though to only point the finger at priests when it seems that anywhere men are put in charge of kids is a potential abuse case in the making. In my experience teachers are just as prone to betray their positions of trust as are scout leaders, choir masters, actors, producers and so on.

Is it quite simply a ‘man’ thing and not a catholic borne illness brought about by choosing celibacy. Men everywhere are now quite rightly under suspicion. The male sex urge which on one level is the primary directive (populate or perish) appears more powerful than any attempt to respect human rights. Just as most men channel their sexual urges into companionship with equals, some commit ‘date rape’ and others choose a child victim. The urge is the same but the interpretation of the urge is vastly different. A sex issue becomes more about power than sex.

It’s too easy to say that a healthy sexlife, marriage and so on will ensure a pedophile free zone. It may provide some insulation but it’s clearly not the complete solution.

There are millions of good non abusive priests who are as completely shattered by the downfall of their good name as everyone else. To them falls the burden of putting things right, if indeed things can ever be put right.  The crime is one thing but the cover-up is by itself so cold blooded and criminal that the church is now seen as a mass of lies. How can anyone trust a priest again? Or indeed a pope who discounts complaints as gossip.The grandeur and arrogance of a papal procession is something so far removed from anything Jesus had in mind when he advocated a little humility and meekness. Then again many of Jesus’s thoughts have been hijacked by the church into meaning something a little darker. ‘Suffer the little children to come to me’. I think NOT.

All of this brings us to Easter and highlights the true meaning of Easter which is sex and rabbits. Long before Jesus, this time represented fertility. Sadly now the church represents sex in its most appalling form and no amount of hiding behind graven images of a messiah on the cross can cloak the evil that lies within arguably the most powerful organisation on earth.

~ Frank Scott