Parting Glances: Pox Vobiscum $$$$

It was a year ago last week that Pope Benedict XVI resigned from Holy Office to spend his last days in prayer and contemplation. Some say not a moment too soon.
His Germanic reign as Christ's Vicar on Earth is overcast by clouds of Vatican Bank corruption, annoying whispers of a powerful high-level, homosexual internal cabal, and rampant sexual abuse cases involving priests, parish youth and acolytes, costing the Church billions of dollars. His Holiness defrocked 400 priests for such immoral improprieties..
Suffice it to say, Benedict's successor, Pope Francis – a man of refreshing humility and simple compassion, in contrast to previous papal hauteur and doctrinal rigidity – is having his hands full. No untoward pun intended.
How serious is the sexual abuse problem in the Catholic Church? According to http://Bishopaccountability.org, a blog that has been kept by former religion journalist/writer Kathy Shaw since 2002, the problem is worldwide, and in some large American cities involving as many as 300 priests, many of whom have been quietly – perhaps shamefully – yet rarely reported to law enforcement authorities – moved from parish to parish.
Ms. Shaw's blog presents newspaper reports, media commentary in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish. Among English-speaking countries dealing with major and alarming abuse revelations are England, Australia, and Ireland. (Sample American lawsuit tally: Alaska $50 million. Massachusetts $85 million. Oregon $53 million. California $660 million.)
In Ireland, mental and physical abuse dating back for several decades involves nuns and girls – young women deemed incorrigible because of unladylike attitudes or out-of-wedlock births – who have been sent sometimes for life to work in Church-sponsored, claustrophobic, unsanitary laundries. (Judi Dench's recent movie "Philomena" concerns this issue.)
Protestant faiths are also now focusing on abuse issues. Boz Tchividjian, a law professor, grandson of Evangelist Billy Graham, founder and executive director of GRACE (Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment), says "Christian mission field is a 'magnet' for sexual abusers. The Protestant culture is defined by independence."
The implication is that such Protestant ministerial independence shortcuts accountability on egregious, internal moral issues. Tchividjian himself was a child-abuse victim.
A report published in 2000 by the Baptist Convention of Texas notes, "The incidence of sexual abuse by clergy has reached 'horrific proportions'". Studies revealed that 40 percent of those interviewed had acknowledged "sexual inappropriate behavior." To what extent the problem has been addressed by the BCT is still not forthcoming 14 years later.
It is the nature of patriarchal, fundamentalist, evangelical religions to treat sexuality outside of a church-sanctioned marriage as sinful. Subliminally wicked at best. For many such faiths the sight of the undressed body is a visual embarrassment. Masturbation is ungodly. Naked women are an insurmountable temptation to be avoided. The celibate state is to be preferred.
Maybe it's spiritually axiomatic for these misguided true believers that "the less said about sex, the better." Little wonder then that with the predatory, importuning libidos of so many priests and clergy – given their unmonitored opportunities, ignorance, lack of positive understanding of healthy human sexuality – the vulnerable are preyed upon instead of lovingly prayed and cared for.
Litigation for sexual abuse keeps http://Bishopaccountability.org up and running. Dollar sign panic in the pews.