Welcome
to my Diary
Ruminations, Occasional thoughts & happenings - as they arise
To go to an entry
click on one of the file names below - arranged in date order - the
first item being the most recent. email
me if you wish to be added to or removed from my Family & Friends
emailing list.
Troglodyte?
25 May 2009 (Updated Nov/Dec 2009)
Sigmund Freud thought of sex as mankind’s main driving force.
Alfred Adler believed it to be a desire for power.
Had our cave-dwelling ancestors of 150,000 years
ago thought about it they would have had little doubt that it was a combination
of both, plus the need for food and personal safety in a dangerous world.
Then, about 2,000 years ago, Jesus confirmed the
Judaic teaching that love of God and neighbour is the most basic need - and for
the next two millennia leaders of the Catholic Church strove to establish
mandatory celibacy as the highest expression of this love – promoting it as a
desirable norm and an absolute requirement for dedicated service, despite the
fact that the norm established by the Creator is the creation of life through
the sexual union of male and female.
This heady mix of power and sex, the basic need
for love, plus an imposed celibacy (as distinct from the God-given gift) seems
to have contributed much to widespread sexual abuse by Catholic priests, and in
the light of this, plus horrific outrages against children in Catholic Church
institutions, I suggest that leaders of the Catholic Church should realise the
limits of their Christ given authority, reject imperial attitudes acquired
through history, and become more passionately and compassionately loving.
© Michael O'Shea
Michael O’Shea is a
parishioner 0f St. Nicholas’ Catholic Church in the County Down fishing
‘Troglodyte?’
- approx.
1,700 words.
© Michael O'Shea,
Tel: 44 (0)2844841436
from
Email: mike@o2c.org
Troglodyte?
In
the cavern of the mind,
entombed in dark bone dome
- afraid of love and reason, blind to light,
men dwell - forever troglodyte
- especially in
Am I unfair to
men, especially to the men in
I think
not.
For
centuries men have regarded women as inferior in all things but child bearing.
It is
irrational, and it is an insult to women and to the loving God who creates all
people in His image and likeness. "Even
women?" do I hear you ask? Then you are a troglodytic, misogynist
male!
The men who
fail to recognise the value and worth of women - in the church or outside it -
reflect a caveman mentality, a throwback to cave dwelling ancestors of 150,000
years ago where women were regarded as objects of sexual pleasure, useful for
gathering kindle and tending a cooking pot, and necessary for the care of the
infants that emerged as a result of sex. Well,
you know how it is classified even today - women’s work!
It
would appear that in those days, as far as men were concerned, children were
only really valued if they were male. Female infants were regarded as extraneous
baggage, unless they grew into attractive physical
specimens, in which case they might be worth fighting over, in order to
establish ownership of a desirable property.
Things have
not changed much in the minds of many, despite the fact that within the past
hundred years or so women have begun to be recognised as human beings with
character, wit and ability, as a result of education, emerging democracy and
continual campaign for gender equality.
Residually
in the minds of many males, however, is the assumption that men are the real
power, the only people born to command, to rule – and in the minds of those
who have embraced Christianity the highest aim now presented is to become
permanently celibate, the greatest manly challenge for the sake of Christ - even
if it is in opposition to His reminder that all are not capable of existing
without sex, that voluntary celibacy is the direct gift of God: “It is not everyone who
can accept what I have said, but only to those whom it is granted.” (Matt.19)
Despite
this Catholic church leaders – all male of course - have gone on to enforce
celibacy as a condition of being ordained priest, so that females during the
past few hundred years have had to overcome the additional hurdle of being
viewed as sexual temptresses, possible occasions of sin - to those of normal
sexual orientation of course: Church leaders prefer to ignore the probability of
creating a pressure keg of homosexuality and paedophilia.
What
dreadful treatment of one half of humankind!
All because of failure to recognise the wonder and beauty of the normal,
God created male-female relationship and a gross attempt to impose
celibacy as the norm, rather weirdly refusing to listen to Jesus, and ignoring
St. Paul – a strong advocate of celibacy - when he advises the people of his
time that
"A bishop …. must be blameless, the
husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospitality,
apt to teach. . . . Let the deacons be the husbands of one wife, ruling their
children and their own houses well."
1 Timothy 3:2,
12
So it all boils
down to this:
Sex and power (or gender and authority).
Gender? Males regard
themselves as superior. Authority and Power?
Men have it and will not give it up without a fight, even in civil life
– or ever, in the Catholic Church!
Catholics are forbidden by papal decree to even think
of it! An unbelievable arrogance!
It is this heady mix of power and sex - harking back to
thoughtless, troglodyte days, when physical power and domination was the
hallmark of leadership and survival– that has contributed to recent
horrific outrages of systematic violence, sexual abuse and rape of children
in Catholic Church institutions – as exposed in
The Ryan Report, published on 21 May
2009, and now The Dublin Diocese
Report, both undeniably truthful, detail an abomination that lasted
for decades, under Catholic Church leadership.
If we
believe what Jesus says it is certain that such offences will be punished.
“Obstacles are sure to come,” he
says, “but alas for the one who provides
them! It would be better for him to
be thrown into the sea with a millstone put around his neck than he should lead
astray a single one of these little ones. Watch yourselves!” – Luke 17.1-3
“Alas for the one who provides
them!” So punishment is
not reserved for those who perpetrated abuse but also awaits those who created
and maintained the institutions that enabled it, and servile government
ministers that failed to put a stop to it.
We may be
sickened by the whole thing, wish to bury acknowledgement of abominable actions
and how they have come about, retreat to a comfort zone of an imagined
‘faith’. We may be reluctant to
accept that while there is great good in the church it is the arrogant attitude
of Catholic Church leaders, in conjunction with a silent, seemingly subservient
lay membership, that has caused such abominations - for arrogance is what it is
- in Rome and elsewhere within the worldwide episcopate – a world view of
power inherited from the early days of Imperial Rome (from Emperors Constantine
and Theodosius
throughout the 4th Century)
and maintained through centuries of Catholic mediaeval grandeur and power,
distorting the teaching authority given by Christ and subverting it from a
deeply loving spiritual and saving force to a worldly imperialism.
There’s
not much of the imperial power remaining, except in the 110 acre
Such
appointments seem to involve an abdication of personal thought, or at least a
subjugation of judgement to the overall requirement of obedience to
It's a distortion of the authority given by Christ, changing it from a
loving, educational mission of salvation, affecting mind, heart and belief, into
a powerful, vigilantly prohibitive organisation with a tendency to destroy
creative discussion and discovery. Control is the aim. The exterior social
and political standing of the Church becomes a top priority. Loving
pastoral care assumes a lesser degree of importance, as illustrated by
recent occurrences - and free discussion of certain subjects is actually
forbidden, as I have already observed; in much the same way that prohibition of
discussion about Copernican theories of the relative position of earth and sun
resulted in permanent house arrest until death for the priest-scientist Galileo
in 1633.
It is a power that has become so disruptive that it tends to create
anxiety among priests and bishops that they may possibly espouse an attitude
contrary to a perceived church norm. It’s a sad reflection upon the
freedom promised by Jesus to those who seek truth and wish to discuss their
understanding of it.
Some fellow Catholics will suspect me of heresy because I criticise the
thoughts and actions of popes and bishops, as though criticism is a sin, and -
woe upon woe - I am probably also regarded by many traditional believers as a
disobedient rebel – though distinctly unimportant and certainly not worthy of
note: an attitude commonly adopted by those who refuse to examine the validity
of an argument, failing to follow the advice of Thomas Aquinas: to consider what
is said rather than the person who says it.
In
fact I am a Catholic, a daily participant in the Mass for more than 50
years, and I have found much that is good in the church - dedicated, loving care
by many, many priests – sometimes an astounding holiness.
I love the
church, truly Christ’s Body, and in obedience to the request of Jesus I share
in the Eucharistic feast that he established at the Last Supper, believing that
as I consume His Body and Blood, in an act of faith, He consumes me in Love,
brings me into His eternal reality. I
do not understand it fully of course. No
one still in the body does. But
Jesus assures us that it is His everlasting invitation to eternal life.
Because of
this I go to Mass in the company of my brothers and sisters, and no doubt this
belief about the Eucharist is central to the motivation of the great majority of
priests, though their dedication and education is contaminated by the power
needs and structures of the church, all of which desperately need to be
discussed and revised by church members, especially among those who receive
Christ’s mandate to teach and enlighten and turn it into a ruling and
controlling power.
A revision
of present concepts and intentions, moving towards a renewal of the real
apostolic mandate – plus a decent humility and repentance - is essential to
the welfare of the church.
I
have attempted to outline the reality of some attitudes and problems in a
section of a book that I have recently written: ‘Brother Barney O.P.’
The first part of the book is
simply an autobiographical novel, of relative importance.
The second part I have labelled an ‘Addendum’, in which I attempt to
deal with the organisation and structure of the Catholic Church, and point to
failings, particularly in a chapter headed ‘Sex, Love, Marriage, Nullity
& a
It’s worth reading, I believe,
especially by priests and prelates, for the ideas that I present are not simply
my own. I know this by talking to
many people. How else are prelates within my church to understand what is going
on in the minds of fellow Christians? Is
this not important to them?
However inadequately expressed
my thoughts confront problems that have a permanent urgency within the Catholic
Church - and because of current events must be of great concern to society in
general.
Those who believe in the divinity of Christ will pray that Wisdom, the
spirit of truth, will be our guide - in sublime love and light -
helping men to move beyond that which is troglodyte.
****************
I should perhaps add that the verse
at the top of this Diary page began to form in my mind as I thought of a
sentence I wrote in my book, about women:
- Paperback & eBook versions of Michael O’Shea’s autobiographical novel can be purchased through his website.
The
paperback can also be bought through
amazon.co.uk.
and
amazon.com - or
ordered through bookshops and libraries quoting ISBN 9780955887802.