Estimated 216,000 children abused by French Catholic priests, report finds

As I understand it, the discipline in the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church forbidding priests to marry was a response to a epidemic of scandal in the medieval church of priests neglecting or misadministering their clerical duties for courtship and family issues. Church property isn't personal property and can't be inherited even if you have children.

From discussion with catholic priests, the argument they've advanced is that celibacy allows the priests to focus on their clerical duties without distractions from family duties.

Okay, now everything below is completely unrelated to the child abuse problem, just for clarity.

I'm generally pretty negative on the wealth and power of the Catholic Church, I think it's kind of gross that an organization setup for spirituality is so damned rich in this world, but I actually do see some sort of argument for a celibate clergy in the context where that norm was first created. Remember that the Catholic Church is effectively a product of the late Roman Empire. As the Western half of the empire fell, the Catholic Church stepped in and took the form of imperial civic functioning; a basilica was originally a Roman public building, not a religious one[0].

In this context, it was considered normal for the son to inherit the wealth and job title. After all, wasn't Constantine followed by his sons? The issue here wouldn't be priests inheriting their local church as private property, most early churches were private property given that they were clandestine rooms in the back of personal homes, but the real issue is the possibility of bishops and similar inheriting their seat and peeling their entire bishopric away from the church that they were working on centralizing. The early days of the church were very concerned about unity, see the Council of Nicaea, and similar issues were happening to the crumbling empire with frightening regularity at that point. When this norm was set in ~304 CE, everyone had just lived through the "Crisis of the Third Century"[1] a scant 20 years earlier, which was largely characterized by uncertain rules of succession and breakaway states (among other things). The risk of a son inheriting a title and then trying to turn it into a personal fiefdom was not an abstract concern for these men, they had just lived through it.

This first rule of celibacy was unevenly applied, and was a mixture of a requirement or a social norm depending on the exact diocese[2]. When it became a universally enforced rule in the 11th century, I think the church had a lot less to fear from bishops going rogue, and the whole thing looks a lot more greedy than anything else. Needless to say I think the entire practice is indefensible now, and probably actively harmful as the church sends out celibate priests to advise people on matters of marriage, family, and sexuality: issues that priests have no personal experience with. This is really obvious when you consider official Catholic policy against birth control and the American Catholic lay population that has a mere 0.1 more children per parent compared to their Protestant peers (2.3 vs. 2.2)[3].

0 - Obviously the Catholic Church took a bunch of holidays from the official cults of Rome, Christmas most famously. But the functioning of the Church is quite different, down to the architecture and organization. A Roman citizen from the Late Republic would probably think that a modern Church is a public building and not a religious one; Roman temples were basically places where religious artifacts were stored, and ceremonies were performed outside in the view of the gods, unlike the Church where ceremonies were performed indoors. Constantine's involvement in the early Church certainly was a factor here too; when he started giving stuff to the Church, including access to imperial infrastructure (roads, messengers) and buildings, they all took the form of civic structures because he was the head of state, and not a religious figure (the title of Pontifex Maximus having lost most of its religious meaning at the time, and was effectively just a title the emperor held).

This imperial connection helped the early church greatly. Not only did it help it form an effective bureaucracy, but it also endeared it to various ruling dynasties in the former Empire. It's now believed that the conversion of England to Christianity that started under Æthelbert of Kent was partially because as a Christian king he would gain access to the administrative capabilities of the Catholic Church, including the last remaining bits of Roman imperial authority that had long left England by this point. Obviously his Christian wife probably didn't hurt either.

1 - 49 years of military conflict, with 26 various men having claim to imperial title and the empire being temporarily split into 3. Plenty of emperors in that time had a time in office of days or months, not years. The men running the Church in 304-306 CE, when the Council of Elvira first enjoined priests to celibacy, would have lived through the latter parts of the Crisis (it ended in 285 CE).

2 - Another Roman civic term, specifically for portions of the empire. The early church just copied these from the empire directly, not just the word itself; the first church dioceses were the same as the civic ones. This would be a bit like if a new religion called its areas "counties" or "states".

3 - https://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/chapter-3-demographic-pr...

There are 2 groups of people who abuse this. First there's a number of people who take such jobs planning to abuse kids from the very beginning. These people exist across the spectrum: physical abuse, sexual abuse, financial abuse and psychological abuse cases. There are theoretical measures in place to prevent this (essentially demanding criminal history), that, to put it bluntly, don't work.

You should include people who have no choice and take a job in, say, child protection. Such people are incredibly destructive because of the number of kids they damage while filling in subsidy forms how they are helping them. The catch is that it doesn't provide them with much financial benefits, so people like to exclude this situation. But the reality is that the same people insisting on fairness when having a $20000 competition, tear others apart for a 20$ reward.

Likewise there's people taking a child protection job because of how much power it gives you over others, for example. There are incredibly bad examples of this. They may tell themselves they're in it to "help kids". Help them get something they lacked as a child, for example. So they throw kids into the foster care system because they have to go to school on foot in the rain, which, to put it very mildly, does not improve the lives of these children.

The second group is people who have no idea they are abusers. They suddenly discover a lack of self-control once they are put into a situation where abuse is very easy, and these people suddenly find they cannot resist when presented with the opportunity.

I think this is partly because people present an entirely evil view of abusers, when in fact abuse usually comes from 2 sides: sex for drugs arrangements for example, where both sides are guilty of inducing the other side to criminal acts. One is much worse than the other, and this should, of course, be reflected in punishments, but people don't expect "victims" in institutions to be looking for such arrangements. People don't expect to suddenly have both sympathy for abuse situations, see the "advantage" it provides both sides, for victims, and especially don't expect what they saw as pure innocent "victims" to not be nearly as pure. All this then happens in a VERY short timeframe, and of course this happens in jobs that are already very stressful, and often happens while the abuser is under pressure, which the victim may be trying to increase.

But then there's the problem with punishing such offenders. In reality the government is partly responsible for most/all child abuse. Why? They employ the offenders, and often the kid's choice was very limited, both when getting assigned to this offender (which was done by some government system and not the kid's choice) and, often, when the kid is trying to get away from the offender ("don't tell anyone or I'll refer you to closed youth care"), this was hindered or even made impossible by government-imposed systems. Even when it does come to light, institutions often choose to "protect their reputations".

https://www.bishop-accountability.org/2021/03/are-catholic-c...

I used to think, well, someone accuses a priest, who knows maybe that's right or not, churches err on the side of innocence without proper evidence, and the rare monsters slip through the net. With more light being shed on this in Poland, I now believe this is not the case. There were now dozens of cases where each individual one ought to bring prosecutions on the ground of organised criminal organisation exploiting children (or at least organised cover-up), with the CC's top hierarchs held responsible. Each individual one, never mind the dozens that made it to the news.

So whether it's really 216,000 children abused, or even just 1% of that, I think this is catastrophic. Unless these numbers are inflated by a factor of 100,000, I'll stick to my opinion.

The record is clear and damning. A decimal point or two on the percentages doesn't change the facts.

Even one story like this is one story too many. And the number of stories like these is much greater than one.

https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/school-of-s...

The outcomes today are vastly different than 15-20 years ago. Priests being shuffled around quietly while a bishop settles with the family was a frequent occurrence just a couple decades ago. Nowadays that is suicide.

Sadly, not all parts of the Church/world are there, but at least in most corners of the US/Europe, it is that way. Incidence of abuse has been extremely curtailed, and all these studies showing the opposite are reaching back into the 50s-80s, where abuse was rife.

I said "many of the men interested in the profession would be flawed," I purposely made sure I didn't say all, but it's undeniable there are many scumbags too. For example, the topic being discussed.

And the Catholic Church does also have to act as a business. People are going to be mad at the Church if there wasn't a priest available for their grandparent's last rites, or if their local church has to schedule mass at an inconvenient time.

Right, which immediately rules out like 95% of Catholic men from even considering the occupation. There aren't a lot of applicants to the job.

>Similarly I don't think the church is so worried about optimizing their training costs that it could be a plausible root cause.

Each priest has received 4-5 years of training that the Church paid for. Basically every other industry would also bend over backwards to save their ~$100,000 investment when they already have the hiring problem I mentioned.

I don't disagree with the rest of your post, Catholicism has a lot of problems. Even without those problems, they act like a lot of other companies that make similar choices of overlooking abuse because it's profitable to do so.