Nabi Sayeth: Bishops' Child Protection Programs are Smoke Screens!

SMOKE AND MIRRORS! VIRTUS
and other "safe touch" programs primarily
 protect Church assets rather than children.

Nabi Sayeth: The child sexual abuse education programs put forth by the bishops of the United States were for the most part smoke screens and CYA measures. Is it not interesting that the programs were approved by most bishops with the ultimate approval coming from the former cardinal Theodore McCarrick, a notorious predator and the most atrocious example of the scourge afflicting the Catholic Church?

In their rush to publicly demonstrate their competency and control of the sexual abuse crisis that erupted in 2002, they constructed an approach with the guidance of mental health, legal and public relations experts that was severely flawed and dishonest.

The flaw in their approach resulted from their reliance on a cognitive educational approach. In most dioceses clergy, paid workers, and volunteers were required to undergo a federal background check and watch a training film. In the film actual sexual predators talked about how they had groomed and seduced their victims. Towards the end of the film were a number of bullet points including one which read: THERE IS NO CONNECTION BETWEEN HOMOSEXUALITY AND CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE. This bullet point was fallacious and dishonest on two counts:

• Only a small number of sexual abuse cases involved actions against pre-pubescent children

• The vast majority of sexual abuse cases (86.6%) involved acts against post-pubescent boys/young men by HOMOSEXUAL clergymen

Now you may be thinking to yourself: “What’s so bad about a cognitive approach to education?....Don’t we need to use our intellect/brain to learn?” Of course we do. However, years of research on approaches to education has proven that an exclusively cognitive approach is grossly inadequate.

An example from the real world will help:

When you were 15-16 years old you were most likely preoccupied with the thought of obtaining your driver’s license….remember? So you went to the Department of Motor Vehicles to get the book that contained the information that would assist you with your preparation for the required “learner’s permit” test, and you studied and studied as never before.

You passed the test because you were well prepared. You then began to prepare for the driver’s exam. You spent hours learning how to parallel park and control the function of your car according to driving laws. With great anxiety you took your driving test and passed and you became a legal driver.

Fast forward ten years: You’re in a hurry to get to work because you overslept. You’re  driving a bit too fast to compensate. You whiz through a school zone with its yellow flashing lights and the signs marked “10 MPH when flashing”. No sooner than you pass the school zone you hear a siren and see flashing blue lights in your rear view mirror. You pull your car over to the side of the road and stop. An unhappy looking State Trooper walks up to the driver’s side of your car and announces, “I need to see your license and registration...you were traveling 45 MPH in a 10 MPH school zone!”

What happened? Did you not study over and over again as you were preparing for your learner’s permit test that SPEEDING IS NOT PERMITTED IN A SCHOOL ZONE? Did you not KNOW better than to speed that morning?

Of course you did! But you were in a hurry.

My Friends, if we could learn and practice proper human behavior exclusively through COGNITION/EDUCATION we would simply follow the rules that we had learned and everything would be just fine. Right? But something else is involved, something that cognitive education theorists completely ignore: The human WILL.

God created us not only with minds/brains, but also, with human will. The will is at the root of the choices we make. The will is that internal power which motivates us to live the virtues such as temperance, courage, prudence and justice. Conversely, a defective will results in a choice to live the much easier life of the vices/sins such as lust, sloth, anger, hatred, greed, gluttony, pride, vanity to name but a few. In other words, just because you KNOW what is right, true and good does not mean that you are always going to choose to follow the virtuous way of living.

How, then, does this apply to the bishop’s program for sexual abuse prevention?

With the cognitive approach those to be “trained” are classified as “priest personnel” RATHER THAN “pastors of souls.” They are required to become “trained” according to the Church’s “sexual abuse policy” RATHER THAN to ”grow in holiness” as the “Sacrament of Holy Orders” expects by living a virtuous life so as to “avoid the near occasion of mortal sin.” Yet no matter how much information clergymen have learned about the policy for the prevention of sexual abuse, the temptation to act in a sinful manner continues on for certain clergymen. Simply learning a policy with its rules does not guarantee that the clergyman will act properly when faced with temptation. He must CHOOSE to live what he has learned.

The bishops and their chancery priests must stop acting as though they are CEO’s and managers of large corporations and accept the fact that the Sacrament of Holy Orders expects them to behave as pastors of souls within the Body of Christ. They are entrusted with the care of the spiritual lives of all members of the Body, especially the most vulnerable. Words such as “holiness”, “mortal sin” and “grace” must be their primary concern rather than “criminal act”, “liability”, and “legal settlement”. 

Sexual abuse is a mortal sin, and therefore, a SPIRITUAL PROBLEM and not just a crime.

Watching training films and taking written tests will not stop the misdeeds of Catholic clergymen! In order to strive to live the Holy life, the clergyman must desire to avoid sin and make use of every means of Grace offered by the Catholic Church, especially the Sacrament of Penance. They must actively work to pray and work for holiness.

Finally, the bishop’s analysis of the sexual abuse problem was dishonest. PEDOPHILIA as they had held was not the real problem. The sexual abuse of young children represented but a small number of the cases (yes, 1 case is too many!). 86.6% of the cases involved clergymen who had sex with teen-aged boys and young adult men. In reality, the acts were MORTAL SINS RESULTING FROM HOMOSEXUAL SEXUAL ACTS!

Several popes have mandated that homosexuals have no place in the Roman Catholic priesthood. Why do so many bishops continue to admit homosexuals to the seminary? It is time that the bishops stop placing clergymen in the “near occasion of sin.” The salvation of their souls (priest and bishop) and the souls of their victims depends on it.