What would Jesus say or do? Between 1950 and 2016, 6,721 priests were reported to US bishops for allegedly abusing children. These were only the ones reported. So what is going on? Why is this happening?
Well, on one level, we can see that sexual distortion and sexual abuse is rampant on many levels in our nation and world, so it is not confined to the Catholic Church. Women everywhere know this, and the statistics for sexual abuse of children—both boys and girls– reveal how rampant this is.
But obviously, something insidious is going on specific to the Catholic church, a place that is supposedly holding up an ideal of how to align with the divine, or perhaps more accurately to align with the church as the go between.
Dark behavior comes out of dark environments, and the Catholic church has been in the shadows for centuries. Part of what we are seeing is a top down filtering of abuse. What is corrupt at the top seeps down into all levels. There have been reports of cult like, hidden behavior behind the walls of the Vatican for as long as we can remember. And of course, we are talking about one of the most patriarchal and hierarchical institutions on Earth, where women are still not allowed to become priests.
And what happens when the natural human drive to express and be touched is suppressed within such an organization? Perhaps this combo of suppressed sexuality and hierarchy and patriarchy and secrecy gets really messy and creates fertile soil for abuse of power.
There may be another factor. Is it possible that many gay men, who do not feel comfortable or safe in their sexual orientation, enter the priesthood, where celibacy seems to offer an escape from all that messy sexual energy, where they can supposedly hide in celibacy. This could help clarify why so many of the abuse victims are boys.
The Catholic Church situation, not unlike the Metoo movement, is the tip of the iceberg. As I often say in these commentaries, nothing can remain hidden in the dark for long with the new energies bathing this planet. There is simply too much light to hide anything. Just look at the internet and see how quickly information flies around the world. But it goes way beyond that.
It is time to shine a light into every pocket of darkness, under every rock and into every cave and bring to light and justice any shadowy secrecy, behavior and abuse. We are moving into a whole new era, a new paradigm where we will no longer tolerate abuse and war and a gun happy culture, so look for the an intensification of squirming and trying to hide and deny and deflect attention, but ultimately full disclosure and revelation, and as Jesus said, the Truth will set us free.
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