DISQUS

colkoch · 2 months ago

Bill, I kind of wonder if someone didn't appoint themselves to be that particular writer.

Jamie is certainly being piled on, and most of the piling is completely missing the point of her article.

I personally find it very interesting that the whole story of Welleborn is being glossed over. It is a story of blatant abuse by a priest of an adult woman who then subsequently left her and her child-- all with the blessings and money of the Franciscans. They essentially treated this guy like some sort of 15 year old teenager and acted like his daddy intervening to take care of his messes so said boy could continue with his life.

The very same folks then put Welleborne in charge of the sexual formation of their seminarians. This is in itself is mind blowing.

Maybe this illustrates the real sexual problem the clerical church has---it's stunning lack of maturity when it comes to sexual understanding. Maybe this is another reason gays threaten the clerical status quo. The gay marriage movement is in it's essense a request that gays be allowed to grow up sexually, to move beyond sneaky orgasm and into to true mature sexual expression.

The only clerics who seem to get this point is the 25,000 who left to engage in mature sexual relationships. The Anglicans won't come close to covering these numbers.

WDL · 2 months ago

Colleen, I wondered, too, if the posting signed by a leading American journalist was a posting by someone using his name. That's one reason I didn't name him.

But it also seems to me that NCR would have a vested interest in removing the posting, if it's not by that particular journalist. So I'm adopting a wait-and-see attitude here, before I engage that particular posting more overtly. If it continues to stand on the NCR website, then I'm inclined to think that the journalist in question did, in fact, place the comment there--and if that's true, it strikes me as interesting, to say the least, that a fledgling writer at the NCR site merits both the high-profile attention and the outright animosity shown to her, including questions about her professional preparation and veracity.

"Stunning lack of maturity" among many clerics in their sexual formation is absolutely right, and an understatement. Did you read that recent screed by some political commentator who argued that since 13-year old boys are notoriously homophobic, we can argue from that fact to the conclusion that being gay is shameful?

If you think seriously about what this man is proposing, it's that the pre-adolescent maturity level of 13-year old boys ought to govern adult male perceptions of sexual orientation.

That's an astonishing argument, to my way of thinking--but also an even more astonishing tacit admission that this is where many males' psychosexual development stops. And that may be true a fortiori for many clerics.

colkoch · 2 months ago

I hadn't read that particular screed and am probably glad I haven't. My question would be what does it benefit a culture to enshrine that level of sexual maturity in it's male population? The cynical psychologist in me says it's because a certain lack of understanding that one isn't immortal tends to go along with that sexual maturity level. Could it be that actually encouraging young males to mature might change their willingness to volunteer for old men's wars?

WDL · 2 months ago

Colleen, that's insightful. I hadn't thought of these taboos in the terms you propose, but it makes sense to me to argue that society allows many men to remain in stages of arrested development, psychologically speaking, because that permits men historically to continue thinking of themselves as invulnerable, and therefore feeds the military machine.

We have a lot of work to do, don't we, as a society--work to encourage people to develop fully as human beings?

colkoch · 2 months ago

We have a lot of work to do and it won't get done through Benedict's version of Roman Catholicism.

maryehunt · 2 months ago

Thanks, Bill. I hope Rome gets its own house in order some century soon.

WDL · 2 months ago

Mary, you're welcome. Outstanding article. I, too, hope Rome can find some way to get its house in order--looks like that house-cleaning will be a long time coming.