By Brian McNaught
Whether or not my good friend, Paul Shanley, dies in prison, the global sex scandal in the Catholic Church, and in other denominations, will never be over until the Church changes its sexual ethics and publicly apologizes for improperly molding the minds and hearts of its sexually abusive and abused priests, nuns, religious brothers and lay people. That means everyone raised Catholic. Indoctrinated since birth with the message that having sexual thoughts and feelings, and expressing yourself sexually with yourself or with another (before heterosexual marriage), are gravely sinful, and grounds for spending eternity in hell, Roman Catholics are transformed into molesters, deviants and repressed, immature, ignorant and sexually non-functioning individuals. The most damaged were people like me, who grew up in a sexually-repressed, Irish Catholic family, and who went to Catholic schools for 16 years. Priests, such as Shanley, entered the seminary and a life of celibacy after eighth grade, at age 14. Most nuns and brothers entered the religious life of chastity after high school, at age 18.
Was it nobody's fault that we became among the most sex-negative and sexually-obsessed people in the world? It was as if the Church took a litter of puppies and trained them to be afraid and aggressive. The adult dog bites a child and is put down. But no one looks at the trainer. The Catholic Church has been, and remains, the trainer of sexually damaged people. This atrocity will continue until the Church stops teaching its children that sexual thoughts are impure and need to be repressed; that masturbation kills potential babies; condoms and birth control pills interfere with God's plan; and that genital sex with another is only permitted with a person of the other sex to whom you are also married. Even then, certain sexual acts, such as anal sex, are forbidden. Those messages create sexually deformed people who are prone to do damage to themselves and to others. Until the Catholic Church, and other religious groups, change their sexual message, we will continue to have sex-related abuse of children and adults, sex-related alcoholism, drug abuse and suicide, and sex-related emotional breakdowns.
Shanley was one of those sexually damaged people, but he fought hard against the messages and training he received. He preached tolerance and acceptance of those condemned by the Church. He started a ministry to street kids, runaways, hustlers, drug addicts and gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender children. He successfully lobbied to get himself appointed as the first official minister of the Church to LGBT people. His message was that gay is good, bi is good and straight is good. He was frequently featured in the Boston Globe, and on radio and television. He was handsome, masculine, very intelligent and defiant of authority, be it Church or State. He dared to go where no other priest was willing to step, including a meeting of men who claimed to be lovers of boys. Having worked extensively with gay hustlers, Paul felt he had a relevant perspective to offer. Shanley is 85, and may never leave prison despite more than a decade of incarceration for a crime he couldn't have committed. He was no saint, but he's not a pedophile. Yet, with his poor health, and trembling hands, he is the Sacrificial Lamb of both the Catholic Church in Boston, which will oppose his release until his death, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, which wants to look tough on the crimes of the Catholic Church. He is in protective custody because of the witch hunt created by the Boston Globe's Spotlight team, canonized in the film "Spotlight." The hysteria created by the constant drum beat of the media resulted in the beating death of an old, feeble priest in prison, prior to Shanley's incarceration.
Shanley's former boss, Cardinal Bernard Law, instead of being in prison for shuffling abusive priests from parish to parish, fled to Rome where he has a cushy job in the Vatican at a prestigious parish. The current head of the flock in Boston has refused for 10 years to meet with Shanley in prison. Nor has any other diocesan priest, all former friends and classmates of Shanley, visited him. According to Shanley, the District Attorney, Martha Coakley, offered him a plea deal just prior to the trial. If he would plead guilty to a lesser charge than raping a 6-year-old every Sunday for several years, he wouldn't spend any time in jail. He said no, because he was innocent and didn't want to be listed as a child molester. There was no evidence he committed the crime, only the "recovered memory" of a very disturbed man, who after reading the The Boston Globe's Spotlight team's stories on big money paid to victims by the Church, claimed that he just remembered that 40 years ago he was molested by Fr. Shanley. But the jury wanted to find the priest, whom the Spotlight team repeatedly focused on prior to the trial, guilty of something. So, the man featured in People magazine as the hippie street priest was sent to prison, and everyone hoped that was the end of the story, and the bad press.
Why aren't Catholics taught that all feelings are natural? Why wasn't I told that being gay wasn't something to be ashamed of, or secretive about? Why weren't priests, nuns and brothers taught to be healthy role models of sexual maturity? Why isn't masturbation, or self-pleasuring, described as normal and a healthy way to relax and relieve sexual tensions? Why are condoms and birth control pills not seen as effective ways to prevent the birth of an unwanted child, and a way to allow sexual pleasure to be experienced without fear of consequences? Why are condoms different from pot holders? Is it God's will that we be burned?
The Catholic Church owes some apologies: to me for what it did to me, to the people who abused me and to the people I impacted negatively. The Church needs to take responsibility for how it trained us, and for the results of its training. Defrocking or excommunicating us doesn't end the problem. We're not the problem. The priests in prison are not the problem. The Church's nonsensical sexual theology, and its highly-destructive mind- and heart-molding methods, are the problem.
