Thoughts on Deliver Us From Evil (Main Forum)

by MH, Australia, Friday, May 11, 2012, 12:21 (380 days ago)

Forty years ago, George Duncan was killed by South Australian police, drowned in the River Torrens near the heart of the city.
It revealed a hobby of assault of homosexuals by police, who would lure victims by dressing in a “gay” fashion.
In 40 years no one has been held legally accountable for that homicide. In 40 years one officer has publicly sought accountability for the crime. The rest of the police force closed ranks, even though the activity and the perpetrators were well known among the police and others.
The result of a pathological attitude delighting in unaccountable victimisation, today the needless and dreadful death of this man is remembered primarily as an impetus for homosexual law reform.

It must also be remembered for what has not changed: the unaccountability of South Australian police.
Complaints are automatically shunted into a token procedure where police investigate police - as if that were appropriate given this history. The body which “oversees” this gives complainants no clear process and no guide as to how evidence is treated. Complaining through this system is just further distress to the sincerely aggrieved, who are treated to peremptory demands, with the complaint itself minimised instantly and without evidence. The complainant is treated as a marginalised fool, an imprudent intruder, for bothering to complain.
Appeals on matters of morality, human rights and the law have made no difference. The pretence of accountability further entrenches contempt for public accountability and equality before the law. The complainant has no choice but to take relevant matters directly to prosecution.

Is this sounding familiar?
WHERE OPPORTUNITY AND POWER EXIST, MALPRACTICES OCCUR - AND WILL BE COVERED UP BY THE ORGANISATION PROVIDING THAT POWER AND OPPORTUNITY. The more important the organisation, and the worse the offence, the greater the trauma to trust.
The widespread sexual crime by priests and others of the Catholic Church is of course a cultural problem. It is worse for the community trust relied on by the perpetrators. And the Church deplores sexual transgression in particular. But then, rogue cops stand in court to perjure their office and duties in the name of the law and peacekeeping.
While the Church has special responsibilities to protect and uphold, so do police - and Governmental supervisors of Aged Care, Road Traffic and Public Transport authorities, Local Councils, and the ABC... In each of these areas whitewash and evasion are routine response to serious and sincere complaint, however clear the evidence.
IT HAPPENS EVERYWHERE.
Not too much should be made of the Church’s religious profession - but realism follows from understanding their defensiveness as the inherent nature of powerful organisations. THEY ALL ACT THIS WAY.
It gets us nowhere to keep appealing to the moral better tendencies of Church officers.
IT WILL MAKE NO DIFFERENCE. Better to treat the problem as the automatic defensiveness of a large organisation to rogue members. Better to look to the internal culture for how it protects its rogues and evades it obvious social responsibility.
Amongst the noble and intelligent, police forces attract psychopathic and morally obtuse personalities fit for malignant opportunism. The priesthood has been a refuge for the socially inept and sexually retarded.
Attending to this is the means of encouraging responsibility, and accountability.

Among the heartfelt complaints about the lack of a moral response from the Church over the crimes of a priest-paedophile, the documentary Deliver Us From Evil includes 2 very important observations on the tendencies of Church culture by the psychologist Mary Frawley-O’Dea.
(1) The Holy life claimed by celibacy renders all sex a Fallen activity. The predatory priest can rationalise that he is committing pretty much the same Sin as consensual adults do all the time: the crime and immorality is not so bad, and the perpetrator weirdly claims a superior perspective; as this fellow in this documentary seems to maintain.

(2) By celibacy, priests lack social development, and may thus seek gratification with those with whom they pathologically identify as psycho-sexual peers - i.e. children. Add to this the peculiar access to children, the trust once assumed by the community, and the power over children for extended hours. Serial rape sponsored by the internal dogmatic defences of the organisation is precisely geared to NOT responding to moral pleas.

The attention here is to Church dogma, and internal culture which flows from this. Wishful thinking about faith is holding back effective action, and serving the Church’s interest in filibuster and discouragement by degrees. Complaint should not get lost in a revivalist appeal to the Church. THE CHURCH AS AN ORGANISATION HAS NEVER HAD THE MORALITY TO REVIVE. Personal complaint needs to get legal from first contact, and demand due process straight off.
Emphasis in longterm reform needs to shift to the practical need for the overthrow of dogmatic insularity and the pathological culture of exploitation and coverup it cultivates. It is the practicality of dealing directly and without illusion with human nature, and its perversions in insular communities. Hoping on moral conversion is a waste of time and grief. It plays the Church’s line.