Quote:
Originally Posted by Williamb
While this is all no doubt true, I have to respectfully disagree that the bishop didn't know that having sex with children was a crime. If this was the middle ages, your argument would be iron clad, but as this is the modern day, and priests aren't shut up the way they were in centuries past, I have to conclude that there is simply no way the man could not have known what the civil law was, regardless of whatever he may have thought about how much of a truer or more legitimate authority he believed the church held over him.
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I respect your opinion, and the reasoning behind it, based on your experience.
However, based on my experience, I still think it's entirely plausible for an asexual man of a certain age to have spent his upbringing in the protective bubble of Catholic schools and seminary, never dating and never engaging in crude discussions in which terms like "jailbait" for underage girls might have been bandied about, and never having paid much attention to certain sordid aspects of the local news. And thus I also think it's plausible for an asexual man--with nary a firsthand sexual thought or urge ever, and thus without even the slightest personal interest in sexual activity--to never have paid any attention to the civil laws relating to such activity. The Church teachings on sexual sins, yes. Civil laws, no.
I don't know that this particular bishop is asexual; but one would expect a fair percentage of men attracted to the celibate priesthood to be asexual, no? Of course, in the Church's view, innate sexual orientations--including asexuality--don't exist; same-sex attraction is a disorder; and lack of sexual attraction is simply self-control, virtue, purity, etc., and attainable by all if you pray hard enough.
I have tremendous respect for the priests affiliated with my current parish, who are smart and good-hearted and down-to-earth and have a good grounding in modern psychology and are actually interested in helping real people with real problems. But I've been a choir member, cantor, and catechist for three decades, and have had the displeasure of dealing with a number of shockingly--even appallingly--unworldly and naive and ivory-towerish priests. So I know that priests with this kind of cluelessness do exist, and are sometimes promoted.
Not that I'm in any way excusing this guy, or buying into the idea that ignorance is equivalent to innocence. Far from it.