Many people think it is Christianity, particularly Catholicism, which created the prohibition against having sex freely and can point to the letters of St Paul to prove it. Part of this is true – Paul did worry about the debauchery of his gentile converts, which really ruffled his Jewish aesthetic feathers, but sex and spirit/religion have always been intertwined. We know of the worship of the phallic lingam of the Tantric Hindus, and of the bizarre sexual/religious practices of many of the tribes of New Guinea, but most sex/religious connections are of the prohibitory nature. For the majority of Hindus, sex for men is an expenditure of spiritual energy (women are another matter. In fact, not too much is written about female sexuality in religion, except that it should be reserved. Obviously, further study is needed there) and should be limited to occasional encounters with a duly married wife for reproductive purposes. It was the same for many American Indians, Aborigines, and, well, just about every group everywhere. Semen contained spiritual energy; it could be given at a cost to the giver, or retained to increase all sorts of personal power, both physical and spiritual. It is a belief that is held by most people to this day (including many American athletes).
Sex is also one of the most abused practices in religion. Jim Jones of the Guyana massacre had bizarre sexual obsessions which he played out on his followers; Indian gurus of the 1960’s and after played upon the naiveté of Europeans and American to have a sexual ball (watch Wild Wild Country on Netflix, about the sexual antics of Bhagwan Rajneesh in Oregon in the 1980’s); and we know of religious leaders of our local American churches who have betrayed the trust of both adults and grownups for their sexual desires. They are really too numerous to mention, and in my mind are rolled into one squirming mass, from the mega-church leader in Colorado who was snorting meth and having bisexual orgies to the numerous Catholic priests who have defied their vows before God to prey on children. The strong sexual desires of many religious leaders is and has long been well known. In one of his novels, John Steinbeck highlighted a minister disgraced by sexual misconduct, declaring that God and sex were so intimately entwined as to be inseparable.
It is true – sexual orgasm (again, at least of the male variety) is the one truly ecstatic experience that most (men) can have on this earth, and so is a natural link to the ecstasy – and the love (no matter how reduced) - of God. That it also has the potential to create human life also gives it an inseparable link to a creator god. But, like most natural gifts to humans (such as intelligence), it can and often is abused. In the Christian tradition, because sex parallels so many God-like characteristics, it can, just like God’s most favored angel Lucifer, become the tool that most disabuses the will of God. In the same way, those who are considered closest to God are the ones who most offend God by their sexual abuses.
And so it is. In our church, no one ever saw it coming, or going for that matter. Less than two weeks ago, a man who is now 25 and lives in California shocked our area with a long public pronouncement of his sexual antics with Fr. B when he (the boy) was between the ages of 12 and 17. He had gone to the same Catholic grammar/middle school as our son, and the same public high school, and our son had known him as a unique but inoffensive character. He had come out as gay after high school, and said in his statement that he had been a willing participant, but thought that he should expose the priest in case he (the priest) was forcing himself upon others. Of course, the trial has not yet taken place, and there is still room for doubt; but of course, a grown man may not have sex with a minor, especially one so young, regardless of that minor’s willingness.
One of the most vicious things about sexual abuse in cases like this is that priests, just like teachers and counselors, are given special trust for children (or were. What are we to become when we trust no one?). But that is not my point here; rather, what we see here is an irrational, even diabolical, sexual drive. This abuse allegedly took place in the early 2000’s, well past the well-publicized Catholic Church scandal of sexual abuse that was exposed in the later 1980’s. By the 2000’s, everyone was on edge about this, and the hierarchy was on the look-out, for apart from the moral travesty, the sex scandal seriously hurt the potential future of the church – and, to put it crassly, the dignity and offices themselves of the hierarchy. We who helped out with the school were even forced to take a painful course on sex abuse and how to notice its signs and bring an end to it. And yet this priest, who was very active, well known, and beloved of many of the congregation, had the stupidity and/or arrogance and/or spiritual and cultural blindness to have an affair with a 12 year old, expecting that nothing bad would come from it.
Many believe that it is the celibacy rule of the church that makes so many Catholic priests predators, but there are also married Protestant abusers, and many school teachers who also abuse. In the case of the later, it is not a spiritual propensity, but perhaps a Freudian - style perversion, an arrested development, that brings such teachers into teaching in the first place. But it is that spiritual connection that bothers us most, and certainly seems the more pervasive, perhaps because of its diabolical nature. If Fr B is guilty, he must understand as a priest his own guilt in the eyes of God, sins as deep in its own way as premeditated murder. How was he able to live even before he was exposed with such guilt? (We will assume here for the sake of argument that he is guilty.) The church might say that he allowed Satan to possess him, and in so doing, was convinced that it was OK – that the boy was gay and in need of a special love and understanding. Really, though, I believe the devil did not have to speak at all; instead, it was the voice of sexual desire increased by the spiritual longing that sex temporarily relieves – a desire for ecstasy in one-ness. That is the ultimate goal of the spiritual, and why it crosses paths with the sexual so often. Sex is the material path that shadows the spiritual path. For a spiritual person, it may be taken as an exemplar of spiritual ecstasy, but only as an expression, never the final goal. Once the confusion is made, however, the mind then makes excuses as to why, just this time and with just this person, it is OK to break the rules; no, even better than OK – rather, why this time there should be a special-case dispensation of the spirit, eliminating sin and guilt.
Jim Jones, Bhagwan Rajneesh, Mormon polygamists and certain Catholic priests – caught by the Holy Spirit, and then turned by sexual desire into gruesome caricatures of what they should have, and could have been. We will never see the end of it until the End Times – sex is just too close to our greatest desire, and too tempting for the forces of evil to abuse, either within or without. Its greatest harm is to those who are not quite certain of their spiritual path, or who might reject one or the other or all of them because of these terrible hypocrites. Which is just what evil would want, and just what we don’t need.
The real religions have known about the potentially disastrous power of sex forever, and this is why they have always kept this force under wraps. It may seem over the top to us moderns, but look at the mess and disillusionment that an abridgment of these religious laws often make. Best we understand what we are dealing with and not throw the baby – the core of spiritual morality - out with the bath water, the silly rules. Too bad that Fr B (and too bad for whoever his victims might be, if the allegations are true) became deaf to the truth about this eternal danger in the chorus of his own longings and the bellow of his self-conceit.
Sex is also one of the most abused practices in religion. Jim Jones of the Guyana massacre had bizarre sexual obsessions which he played out on his followers; Indian gurus of the 1960’s and after played upon the naiveté of Europeans and American to have a sexual ball (watch Wild Wild Country on Netflix, about the sexual antics of Bhagwan Rajneesh in Oregon in the 1980’s); and we know of religious leaders of our local American churches who have betrayed the trust of both adults and grownups for their sexual desires. They are really too numerous to mention, and in my mind are rolled into one squirming mass, from the mega-church leader in Colorado who was snorting meth and having bisexual orgies to the numerous Catholic priests who have defied their vows before God to prey on children. The strong sexual desires of many religious leaders is and has long been well known. In one of his novels, John Steinbeck highlighted a minister disgraced by sexual misconduct, declaring that God and sex were so intimately entwined as to be inseparable.
It is true – sexual orgasm (again, at least of the male variety) is the one truly ecstatic experience that most (men) can have on this earth, and so is a natural link to the ecstasy – and the love (no matter how reduced) - of God. That it also has the potential to create human life also gives it an inseparable link to a creator god. But, like most natural gifts to humans (such as intelligence), it can and often is abused. In the Christian tradition, because sex parallels so many God-like characteristics, it can, just like God’s most favored angel Lucifer, become the tool that most disabuses the will of God. In the same way, those who are considered closest to God are the ones who most offend God by their sexual abuses.
And so it is. In our church, no one ever saw it coming, or going for that matter. Less than two weeks ago, a man who is now 25 and lives in California shocked our area with a long public pronouncement of his sexual antics with Fr. B when he (the boy) was between the ages of 12 and 17. He had gone to the same Catholic grammar/middle school as our son, and the same public high school, and our son had known him as a unique but inoffensive character. He had come out as gay after high school, and said in his statement that he had been a willing participant, but thought that he should expose the priest in case he (the priest) was forcing himself upon others. Of course, the trial has not yet taken place, and there is still room for doubt; but of course, a grown man may not have sex with a minor, especially one so young, regardless of that minor’s willingness.
One of the most vicious things about sexual abuse in cases like this is that priests, just like teachers and counselors, are given special trust for children (or were. What are we to become when we trust no one?). But that is not my point here; rather, what we see here is an irrational, even diabolical, sexual drive. This abuse allegedly took place in the early 2000’s, well past the well-publicized Catholic Church scandal of sexual abuse that was exposed in the later 1980’s. By the 2000’s, everyone was on edge about this, and the hierarchy was on the look-out, for apart from the moral travesty, the sex scandal seriously hurt the potential future of the church – and, to put it crassly, the dignity and offices themselves of the hierarchy. We who helped out with the school were even forced to take a painful course on sex abuse and how to notice its signs and bring an end to it. And yet this priest, who was very active, well known, and beloved of many of the congregation, had the stupidity and/or arrogance and/or spiritual and cultural blindness to have an affair with a 12 year old, expecting that nothing bad would come from it.
Many believe that it is the celibacy rule of the church that makes so many Catholic priests predators, but there are also married Protestant abusers, and many school teachers who also abuse. In the case of the later, it is not a spiritual propensity, but perhaps a Freudian - style perversion, an arrested development, that brings such teachers into teaching in the first place. But it is that spiritual connection that bothers us most, and certainly seems the more pervasive, perhaps because of its diabolical nature. If Fr B is guilty, he must understand as a priest his own guilt in the eyes of God, sins as deep in its own way as premeditated murder. How was he able to live even before he was exposed with such guilt? (We will assume here for the sake of argument that he is guilty.) The church might say that he allowed Satan to possess him, and in so doing, was convinced that it was OK – that the boy was gay and in need of a special love and understanding. Really, though, I believe the devil did not have to speak at all; instead, it was the voice of sexual desire increased by the spiritual longing that sex temporarily relieves – a desire for ecstasy in one-ness. That is the ultimate goal of the spiritual, and why it crosses paths with the sexual so often. Sex is the material path that shadows the spiritual path. For a spiritual person, it may be taken as an exemplar of spiritual ecstasy, but only as an expression, never the final goal. Once the confusion is made, however, the mind then makes excuses as to why, just this time and with just this person, it is OK to break the rules; no, even better than OK – rather, why this time there should be a special-case dispensation of the spirit, eliminating sin and guilt.
Jim Jones, Bhagwan Rajneesh, Mormon polygamists and certain Catholic priests – caught by the Holy Spirit, and then turned by sexual desire into gruesome caricatures of what they should have, and could have been. We will never see the end of it until the End Times – sex is just too close to our greatest desire, and too tempting for the forces of evil to abuse, either within or without. Its greatest harm is to those who are not quite certain of their spiritual path, or who might reject one or the other or all of them because of these terrible hypocrites. Which is just what evil would want, and just what we don’t need.
The real religions have known about the potentially disastrous power of sex forever, and this is why they have always kept this force under wraps. It may seem over the top to us moderns, but look at the mess and disillusionment that an abridgment of these religious laws often make. Best we understand what we are dealing with and not throw the baby – the core of spiritual morality - out with the bath water, the silly rules. Too bad that Fr B (and too bad for whoever his victims might be, if the allegations are true) became deaf to the truth about this eternal danger in the chorus of his own longings and the bellow of his self-conceit.
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