Thank you for your efforts in helping people go beyond the accusations of "dirty old pervert" to looking at some of the socio-historical factors that lead to child abuse by the clergy. There needs to be a body of research developed to draw upon when talking about these more unsavoury, yet very real, aspects of humanity. To be drawn into a culture such as described here in the middle of the transition to adulthood, with all the biological changes going on must indeed play havoc with the social development of those youth. We are all a product of the past and we can't simply assume that the sexual prohibitions will disappear any time soon, therefore we need a far greater understanding of what leads to this behaviour. Surely the people guilty of these abuses could be directed to participate in research of this kind?

Thanks for a well balanced piece, though you probably didn't need to be so apologetic.

I am a victim of child sexual abuse for which has carried on into my adulthood, i am struggling to get answers or have someone be accountable, my mother was able to manipulate everyone in the family and the government, the government helped mother hand my daughter over to the same person who sexually abused me and i am punished for it. Please

Thanks for an interesting insight in what must be a difficult and confronting thing to have to deal with; and your candour is appreciated.

I think the idea of psychological testing begs the question somewhat. The Christian religion would have to be one of the most, if not the most sex-negative belief systems in the world. All the psychology won’t be able to comb out the tangles that follow if people are operating on the basis of a belief system that is factually wrong. Thus the original sin here is not a moral one; it is the intellectual sin of treating something as true that people know, or should know, is false, or probably false. From this all the moral sins follows.

For example, in Genesis, God surveys everything he has made and ‘behold it was very good’. Yet the first mention of sex – Adam and Eve perceive their nakedness – and behold, it was very bad. The perception of nakedness, and of their original sin, were one and the same, it seems.

Although Genesis identifies the sin with eating forbidden fruit, the Christian church has for centuries identified the sin with sexuality. It caused a moral stain so bad that it not only runs in generations unborn, but requires them to be punished for something they never did. It was so bad, that the only way to atone for it, was human sacrifice, but the human to be sacrificed was also a god. Not only that, but he came into being in such a way that no sex was involved. And since he was without sin, we may suppose that he never had a sexual act, thought or feeling either.

Now to me, this just does not make sense. It is not a virtuous belief system. It is sexually perverted. Goatherds in the middle eastern deserts of 4,000 years ago had an excuse for believing it. We don’t. The Christian brothers are highly educated men. The first intellectual duty is to seek truth and reject falsehood. Scientific research has since demonstrated the Christian belief system to have been as mistaken as to human sexuality, as it was on the motions of the planets, or the origin of languages, or the origin of species.

If we had sought, we may have found, that sexuality deserves a much more honoured and healthy place in our lives than the Christian religion has ever been prepared to concede it. No amount of psychologising can or will fix such a fundamental error about our true nature. Those cases in Ireland are just the smallest sample of the oppression and misery that have been worked throughout two millenia by the Church’s utterly misguided and perverted beliefs about human sexuality.

You mention the training you never received. I respectfully recommend a very interesting theory on human sexuality from the standpoint of evolutionary psychology, called ‘Anatomy of Love: the natural history of marriage, adultery and divorce’ by Helen Fisher.’ To be really contrite, you should be prepared to seek new understanding of the errors underlying the sins.

Wing Ah Ling

As someone who has been a Christian for 25 years I have never once heard that the sin in the garden was sex. Your perceived theology is wrong. If sex was bad God would not have made us sexual beings. You seem to totally misrepresnt the Scriptures and then suggest studying the secular garbage that has done more to promote child sexual then any religous teachings. The adamic nature that you so readily condemn is obvious in every human including yourself.No doubt your support of perverse behaviour such as homosexuality shows this fact.

Runner,

I believe this article and the discourse surrounding it is positive in nature and comments such as "perverse homosexuality" is in no way relevant here. Your unfortunate post adds nothing positive or relevant, and merely steers the discussion towards tired old views.