How often have we seen this headline, or something depressingly similar?
Catholic Priests Abused 1,000 Children in Pennsylvania, Report Says
Bishops and other leaders of the Roman Catholic Church in Pennsylvania covered up child sexual abuse by more than 300 priests over a period of 70 years, persuading victims not to report the abuse and law enforcement not to investigate it, according to a searing report issued by a grand jury on Tuesday.
Church activists who are still believers, whether Catholic or Protestant, all seem to believe that the problem is procedural, that the way to eliminate the problem is to institute stronger protections for children, to end the celibacy requirement for priests, on and on.
No. The problem inheres in Christian teaching itself, in its innate degradation of man as man, its insistence that man in fundamentally evil and deserving of death and eternal punishment; you cannot — cannot — drum that into some defenseless kid’s head day after day, year after year, and expect him to grow up with a wholesome attitude toward sex when reproduction is the imperative life instinct.