Posted on 06/28/2004 12:57:06 PM PDT by Independentamerican
An intriguing - maybe even kinky - documentary-style film airing tonight is billed as a tour of the socio-religious roots of the practice of sexual abstinence.
In fact, it's an unsubtle knock on the Catholic Church spiced with a peep at some of the world's more peculiar self- abuse practices performed in the name of religion.
"Celibacy," at 8 p.m. on HBO, clearly takes a dim view of its subject.
Filmmaker Antony Thomas ("Death of a Princess") is a controversial, award-winning British writer-producer-director. Here, he makes his point by allowing therapists and scientists to warn that repressing the primal human sex drive can have dangerous consequences.
Not that we expected a how-to program. The goal here is not to encourage abstinence but to cite "enforced celibacy" as a root cause of pedophilia.
The full title is "Celibacy: Faith or Fallacy." More honestly it might have been called, "Celibacy: How Weird Is That?"
Airing as part of HBO's "America Undercover" series, the film indicts the Catholic Church hierarchy for the recent rash of revelations regarding pedophile priests, linking mandatory chastity with sexual abuse.
The film juxtaposes chilling interviews with former victims of pedophile priests with shots of church authorities staunchly denying any connection between celibacy and sexual misconduct.
More often, however, "Celibacy" is disjointed, roaming from one ancient and sadomasochistic rite to another.
The camera gawks at Hindu and Buddhist monks, nuns and other members of religious orders who renounce their sexuality, shave their heads, bind their breasts and forswear physical intimacy - except, that is, when it means monks scrubbing each other in the shower after a rigorous 3 a.m. workout.
But the Catholic Church, the only major religion that still demands celibacy of its priests and nuns, is the central target.
"Today the Catholic Church is in crisis. A sexual crisis," the narrator intones. "Since 1960, 200,000 priests have renounced their vows, and the intake of new priests is shrinking dramatically. Is sexual denial healthy, or can it sometimes become dangerous?"
(Excerpt) Read more at denverpost.com ...
This red herring never seems to go away.
Or not. Maybe they could have just renamed it "No Sex in the City"
Just part of the liberal agenda. The real cause of the sex abuse crisis was liberal theology and homosexuality. But they want to use the crisis to turn opinion against the Church, which is one of the last bastions of opposition to the agenda of abortion, perversion, and euthanasia that so enthralls these postmodern nihilists.
Statistics show that sex abuse is just as common among Protestant ministers as Catholic priests, and that public schools and dysfunctional families are far more likely to produce pederasty than the Church even during a period of crisis.
Hope the film shows more of an understanding of the tradition than the writer for the Denver paper. She obviously has no comprehension of it whatsoever.
I wouldn't call it a red herring. I think there are a lot of people who entered the priesthood because they were unable to cope with their urges and thought the vow of celibacy would somehow solve their problems for them. The result is that the church would find itself with a disproportionately large number of people who have a problem with sex.
I would, however, take issue with the notion that enforced celibacy actually causes pedophilia. Correlation is NOT causation.
This is the mantra of the "sex positive" agenda. They want to promote sexual activity at all ages. Not necessarily adult-minor (although they don't make moral decisions on such matters).
The only sexual activity frowned on by the sex positive agenda is rape although they do support "rape fantasies".
I would take issue with pedophilia even being the problem. Seems to be straight out homosexuality to me.
The same sort of investigation could be made into the sexual abuse cases of the United Nations and "celibacy" would not be the cause.
I agree that it is just another attack from the left. Thank you for explaining because I was starting to wonder if there was a higher count of sexual abuse cases involving Catholic priest in comparison to Protestant ministers.
I think you're right about that- a lot of closet gays become priests, and when they are unable to control themselves they choose victims who would be less likely to "out" them.
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