Ubi Caritas : Children and Religious Celibates

Abstract

Ubi CaritasChildren and Religious Celibates Hailey Haffey (bio) It is perhaps easy to fall prey to the pop-cultural assumption that religious celibacy necessarily indicates a type of peculiarity, or "queerness," that coincides with predatory homosexuality. In April 2011, New Hampshire Republican House Majority Leader D. J. Bettencourt disparaged a critic of his proposed budget—Roman Catholic Bishop John McCormack—by calling him a "pedophile pimp who should have been led away from the State House in handcuffs with a raincoat over his head in disgrace" (Love and Ramer, 1). Bettencourt's riposte came after Bishop McCormack had spoken against the budget to a crowd of protesters, arguing, in line with Catholic teachings on social justice, that the proposal would not do enough for the poor and that "the vulnerable should take priority in our society." According to Bettencourt, however, the bishop didn't have a right to speak for the "vulnerable" and "has absolutely no moral credibility to lecture anyone" (1). A Catholic himself, Bettencourt's response to McCormack's complaint referenced McCormack's previously self-acknowledged failure to use his office adequately to protect victims during infamous sex-abuse scandals that erupted largely under the tenure of Boston's Cardinal Law in 2002. During this period, McCormack allegedly facilitated the notorious practice of dealing with abuse allegations—at least in part—by transferring suspected priests to other parishes. The New Hampshire Diocese avoided legal charges at the time in exchange for its immediate promulgation of strict policies designed to protect children and prevent similar communal failures in the future (1). By his own admission, McCormack made mistakes in his role as a clerical official responsible for preventing child abuse. And yet ten years later, his adversary Bettencourt's style of recalling such mistakes also evokes important questions about the public's automatic associations [End Page 172] of celibacy, queerness, and adult–child relationships. As can be seen with the highly quotable (and oft-quoted) tag line "pedophile pimp," contemporary media unfailingly reiterate the idea that relationships between children and religious celibates are inherently unredeemable and sexually dangerous. These violations of children's physical and psychological well-being are undeniable failures in the Church, and such abuse is the Church's institutional responsibility to mitigate. Nonetheless, I will show, it is not possible to argue statistically that religious celibates pose any more threat to children than do other adults in positions of trust (teachers, coaches, family members, to name a few). Accordingly, we must ask what is being obfuscated by culturally typecasting priests and (sometimes) nuns as predatory above other members of society. We must also differentiate between violating and helpful interactions. In this discussion of age-stratified, religious intimacy, the levels, roles, and uses of sexual awareness, on the part of both adult and child, are key. We should also consider the peculiar commonality of adult religious and children both as, ideally, celibate—according to both church rules and legal standards. Such an analysis, I will argue, reveals that valuable lessons and emotions are overshadowed and displaced by the indiscriminate use of terms associated with child sexual abuse. The project of this essay is to use assumptions like those motivating Bettencourt's critique as a call for a deeper understanding of the presumed problems between religious celibates and children, and to use the moments in celibate–child interactions to help understand the rhetorical fields surrounding these characters. First, I will look at mass-media investigations into the assumption that a vow of marriage to God actually veils a twisted taste for children. As I will show how the rhetorical strategies of "sex panics" work as red herrings that merely repeat hackneyed and simplistic assumptions about childhood, about the priesthood, and about vocations of religious celibacy in general. This is not at all to say that those who perpetuate public traumas via the secretive policies of Church authority are innocent. Rather, I want to show how any of the clergy's (or other celibates') crimes garner disproportionate attention that distracts from what can become, at times, uncommonly enriching relationships between children and religious celibates. Most critical for this chapter are significant parallels between how heteronormative adult culture treats...