A German priest is on trial for numerous cases of child rape. The one thing that is truly remarkable about the case is how unaware the priest is of simple human morality.
A German Catholic priest has admitted 280 counts of sexual abuse involving three boys in the past decade, saying he did not think he was doing harm.
The priest said it had not been his intention to get close to the boy sexually, and that it had never occurred to him that he was doing harm.
“It was never my impression that the children did not consent,” the priest was quoted as saying at the trial.
When asked in court if he was a paedophile, he replied, according to local newspaper Braunschweiger Zeitung: “It would be wrong to say No but to say Yes would also fall short of the truth.”
He was molesting 9 year old boys. He had pornographic pictures of them on his computer. But he had no idea that what he was doing was wrong.
What exactly do they teach in Catholic seminaries? How can anyone grow up in European society and be unaware that raping children was wrong?
The Vatican must have a special program to seek out ethically blinkered sociopaths and make them priests.
“How can anyone grow up in European society and be unaware that raping children was wrong?”
Easy. Learn morality from catholics.
Well, they said it was wrong, but they didn’t say it wasn’t right.
At least, the community did not come together and force the rape victims to marry the priest. That would be gay marriage and that would be wrong.
Yet he hid it.
No idea it was wrong, though.
Glen Davidson
I think it may be unfair to blame Catholicism for this particular priest’s sociopathy (there’s plenty to blame the Vatican for, anyway; see below). This kind of true sociopathy can’t be taught, you just kind of have it or you don’t. It may be possible that the priesthood somehow selects for these kinds of sociopaths, but that’s a strong accusation to make without strong evidence.
It’s the Vatican’s habit of not actually dealing with sociopaths once they are outed that is the problem.
The most shocking thing about this is that I am not, in the slightest, shocked.
It’s the Vatican’s habit of not actually dealing with sociopaths once they are outed that is the problem
True, but would that not be a reason for sociopaths to choose the priesthood? A fringe benefit?
Not even a little bit.
It’s simple — the Catholic Church has very little use for the notion of “consent” in general. How could any organisation as authoritarian as the Catholic Church, who teach that their very existence and directions are the living instrumentality of the presumed creator and ruler of the universe, give any truck at all to the concept of “consent”?
Devout and orthodox Christians may talk a good game about “free will,” but they don’t actually mean “free will” in any rational sense that a sane person would understand.
Or of allowing them to become priests in the first place. The RCC claims that it carefully checks the psychological background of those who want to train for the priesthood. Clearly they are not doing a good job.
Or maybe they are. It does depend on what they mean by “good”, doesn’t it?
Psychopaths are born, sociopaths are trained.
The question should be is if the Catholic training for priests is training sociopathy.
I agree that their recruitment program is pretty simple. One guy does it; the church backs him up, he tells all his friends what a great deal it is. The fact that they’ve got even the parents telling the nine year-olds to unconditionally obey doesn’t help either.
Either this guy is lying through his teeth in order to plead diminished responsibility, or he’s the kind of paedophile who got very good at rationalising anything and everything that might deter him from following his urges.
Does it matter that he’s a Catholic priest? Well… Spending years to learn sophisticated rationalisations of a huge, cumbersome edifice of doctrine should certainly hone someone’s ability to twist their thinking and even their perceptions around the need to protect an irrational core belief.
Huh, you’re still talking about abuse victims? Don’t you know that Bill Donohue has declared that the “victims’ lobby” is a “pitiful bunch of malcontents”? It’s time to stop “wallowing in negativity”, apparently.
and;
I know that remote diagnosis by unqualified people like myself is generally frowned upon, but these really do sound like the words of a sociopath. How on earth can anyone think that child rape isn’t harmful?
This again? It is simple; children are incapable of providing consent to sexual congress, no matter what they say or do. This stuff is hardly rocket science.
He rapes children, but calling him a paedophile would ‘fall shirt of the truth’? What makes this man think that he gets to define words? If you rape underage children, then you satisfy the definition of a paedophile as most people understand the term. Claiming otherwise is no more than self-delusion, deep seated denial, or a cyncical attempt to rationalise the indefensible.
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platyhelminthe @ 6;
Sadly, I know what you mean. A priest raping children is hardly surprising. It has been common knowledge for years that an epidemic of child rape has afflicted the catholic church, and such clerical abuse has doubtless being going on for centuries (if not millennia if you consider religions beyond christianity).
As odd as it may seem, it is not the actual child rapes themselves that I find the most shocking (horrifying crimes though they undeniably are); it is the fact that we now know, beyond any shadow of doubt, that the vatican was involved in a systemic cover up of child rape that undoubtably left paedophiles free to abuse more children with impunity. We know that Ratzinger himself was involved in threatening those who were thinking of going to the police to stop the abuse with excommunication. We know all this, yet precious little has been done.
The church has thrown out a few compensation payments here and there and made the odd insincere apology, but for the most part it has attempted to shift the blame onto anyone and anything but itself.
It has blamed a frankly ludicrous conspiracy theory of homosexual ‘infiltration’ of the clergy aimed at discrediting catholicism.
It has blamed the free love movement and the ‘permissiveness’ of the 1960s as if consensual sex between adults outside marriage is equivalent to child rape.
It has blamed an alleged smear campaign supposedly launched by the ‘liberal media’ and our own godless, baby-eating selves.
It has even attempted to blame ‘sexy’ children for deliberately ‘seducing’ priests.
The catholic church (among other churches and religious groups) has shown itself to be utterly corrupt and untrustworthy, resorting to the worst kind of toxic lies and bigotry in order to try to weasel out of taking responsibility for the complete ethical failure of its organisation and creed, and yet it retains its privileged status as if nothing has happened; it is still tax exempt, Ratzinger remains at large and subject to no legal sanction despite the clear evidence that at the very least he conspired to pervert the course of justice in several countries, the church remains obscenely wealthy and growing more so every year, and worst of all – the church maintains its claim to be the ultimate moral authority on earth, and the better part of a billion catholics worldwide continue to support it in that claim. And all the while the vatican has pointed to the people who are trying to hold it to account for its abhorant actions as evidence of a campoaign to persecute catholics.
It seems that even today the papal mafia can get away with almost anything.
That’s gotta be right up there with “That depends on what your definition of ‘is’ is.”
Moggie @ 15;
Donohue really does make me sick. Everytime I think he has wallowed as low down as possible in his personal pit of sanctimonious bigotry, he finds a new way to prove that he is still very much in contention for the prize of most obnoxious human being alive.
But mocking the victims of child rape? That is low, even for him.
He is a pedophile in accidental properties, but not in essential substance.
It’s sophisticated.
Ummmmmm…. Come on guys. It’s clearly the fault of secularists and homosexuals! After all, Bill Donahue wouldn’t lie to me! Moral decay seeps INTO the Church, not out of it. Duh. Geez, one would think you guys here on Pharyngula have access to absolute truth. It disgusts me!
@ jamessweet #5:
Perhaps it’s the fact that there are so many priests exhibiting similar behavior that leads one to ask what the heck the RCC is doing in it’s seminaries.
The question doesn’t imply that they are teaching sociopathy in seminaries. However, we might expect seminaries to teach ethics and discuss moral behavior, and that such studies might lead priests to the observation that raping children is “doing harm.”
Perhaps sociopathy can’t be “taught” but in the complex web of nature/nurture, environments can support, encourage, and promote it. Again, the evidence for such an accusation against the RCC isn’t a single priest but a slew of them engaged in a range of immoral and unethical behavior from philandering with their parishioners to stealing parish money to raping children. That history of abuse by the priesthood is reasonably strong evidence to level accusations at the institution itself.
That certainly is a problem but not the problem. The RCC has proactively covered up the crimes and sought to protect these men by hiding them, threatening victims, and resisting public investigations. That suggests that the leadership of the RCC is aiding and abetting such criminal behavior.
Disgusting as the whole mess is, I wonder where these priests find the time to do anything else…280 counts? 3 kids? Ugh.
And I don’t buy the whole “oh, I didn’t know it was wrong” line. Please learn a better lie, that one’s getting too old. Or just, well, stop raping/aiding and abetting the rape of kids. Just a thought.
I bet it fucking occurred to the 9-year old boys. If there’s any justice in the world, this piece of shit won’t see another child for the rest of his life. And if there were a reasonable amount of justice in the world, Ratpope would be tried for crimes against humanity and every gilded brick in Vatican City would be auctioned off to benefit Catholic abuse victims.
The Vatican must have a special program to seek out ethically blinkered sociopaths and make them priests.
I don’t think you need a special program for it. All you need is to widely advertise that you’re going to put “not embarrassing the Church” ahead of “protecting the innocent” in your list of ways to handle a crisis.
Once you’ve done that you don’t need to run seminars or advertise – the sociopaths will find YOU.
I’m perplexed as to why there isn’t a world-wide movement to prosecute the catholic church itself as enablers of systematic and pervasive sexual and physical abuse of children, by following policies and engendering an environment where abusers are not reported to the secular authorities, are not prevented from having access to children, and discouraging anybody from doing the same. Surely, there must be grounds for class-action or equivalent lawsuits by victims and victims’ families? It’s not like there is a lack of evidence.
I’m not saying that the catholic church is alone either in having paedophiles in its membership or in having protected them. It just seems bizarre to me that any prosecutions have tended to be piece-meal against individual priests when it is so well documented that there is a functioning conspiracy with the effect of enabling these priests to abuse.
There is:
http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/141273/hague-is-asked-to-investigate-vatican-and-the-pope-for-crimes-against-humanity/
A similar strategy works if you want to attract potential war criminals to your military or covert ops organization.
I wonder if Steve Harvey would approve of the priest’s actions.
http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/9hTnmZkHnTE?rel=0
tl;dr “If you don’t believe in god, then where’s your moral barometer?”
Never heard that. Citation?
@ love moderately
I looked it up once, but my source might be wrong because this
http://www.onlineschools.org/what-is/what-is-the-difference-between-a-psychopath-and-a-sociopath/
Says otherwise.
I must have misunderstood something like this where it says that sociopathy is attitudes and behaviors while Psychopathy are traits. I must have read attitudes+behaviors==learned while traits==inate
Thanks for the challenge, now I know better>
They never said “Simon says ‘Don’t fuck me in the arse’,” so it doesn’t really count as rape-rape
@28
Probably not as to him Catlicks aren’t True Christians
Ah wait!
Found it!
Not definitive but this must be where I got the idea.
Loqui writes:
If there’s any justice in the world, this piece of shit won’t see another child for the rest of his life.
If there were any justice in the world this piece of shit would be left tied up, naked and hamstrung in a room with the families of his victims for a few hours. But I don’t see that happening. After all, he didn’t do anything really bad like embarrassing the Holy Mother Church.
Well if we want to get technical on actual justice we would be able to transfer the negative memories suffered from victims and put them into the abuser and reduce years off of his life span and add them on to the victims to compensate for time lost.
But it doesn’t exist so anything else is less than equal and fair justice.
Given that the priesthood is admonished to be like Jesus, why don’t we bring back crucifixion?
It’s win-win.
The terms psychopath and sociopath conjour up these powerful sexy authoritarian figures, Hannibal Lecter, Patrick Bateman etc. but when we see them in real life to me they most often seem to be pathetically delusional pieces of shit.
I’m reminded of Jeffery Dahmer killing because he was lonely and unable to form relationships with real breathing people. This guy, although he didn’t take the next step to murder seems to fall into that category, what you might call socially retarded just not having the first clue how people interact, and genuinely unaware of the harm he was doing. This isn’t to excuse him at all but I suppose I’m trying to say I see pathetic overgrown child rather that suave successful polymath.
My wife used to get students coming into her high school Latin class expecting to learn about Latin America. Perhaps would be priests think they’ll learn about insemination at the seminary? Maybe they need to change the name, something that infers celibate for life.
I’ve heard that many people with pedophile urges enter the priesthood because they believe either God will help them control themselves, or they will behave because they won’t dare break their religious vows. It doesn’t work. The Catholic Church needs to make surgical neutering an option for those who feel they can’t control themselves.
I disagree, because murdering children is much harder to hide than “merely” raping them repeatedly. Leaving them alive doesn’t necessarily mean a predator’s less depraved, instead of just better at keeping up appearances.
@39 Pteryxx
I suppose I’m trying to rape and murder is worse than just rape, i wasn’t trying to imply that this man is any less of a scumbag. As you suggest he may simply have left his victims alive from convenience, not because he was more moral than a murderer.
I would put him in the same category, a wilful destroyer of other people’s lives. The only difference is that this POS doesn’t end people’s lives permanently.
@34 anuran:
Oooh! Like Sympathy for Lady Vengeance!
“Psychopathy is a clinical personality disorder where a person is classified by certain personality traits and behaviors.”
“Sociopathy is not a psychiatric condition, but is a set of attitudes and behaviors that are considered antisocial within the norms of society.”
Sociopathy can therefore be a result of Psychopathy apparently.
It follows that the RCC is composed of individuals suffering Psychopathy which when considered as a whole cult renders onto the rest of society a sociopathic demeanour.
Certainly explains how else it is remotely possible to get a bunch of young deluded dipshits together in a seminary…preach absolute twisted and poorly assembled ‘fistkated ‘feelology as reality …deprive them of sexual outlet and demand obedience to the cult rather then display humanity to a child?
Of course these fuckers are batshit fucking insane…they had to be to sign up to that cretinous affiliation in the first place.
Although some in the past were probably forced into it by a doting but rabidly katolik’ sycophantic family members and possibly a pompous community.
Some by being thicker then pig shite in concrete and others by a non-existent cognitive process and dumb awe inspiring ignorance.
But it seems a majority are just flat out sexually dysfunctional looney tunes.
And the ones signing on the dotted line right now are probably the real die hard psychopaths…because who in their right mind would want to get within spitting distance of an organisation that is so obviously rotten and gangrenous to the core?
andrewbrown @40, fair enough… then I misinterpreted your point. I just meant to point out that rape -> killing isn’t a valid progression for some types of predator, though that’s probably academic now. (That’s what I get for reading about serial pedophiles over lunch, natch.)
More armchair diagnosis? Of course he *knows* it’s wrong. First, because criminals don’t break laws because they’re unaware of them, but because they feel they need to (passion, desperation, desire, etc). If he was so delusional as to not know it was wrong, he would have been found out long ago. Whether he feels guilty about it is another matter. But clearly he’s trying to maintain some semblance of innocence for himself, as well as for the Church. It’s trying the “oh, have pity on my poor confused brain” track. Can’t Mr. Infallible just say that God told him that child rape is immoral only when atheists and Muslims do it? I mean, it technically is within his power…
“First, because criminals don’t break laws because they’re unaware of them, but because they feel they need to (passion, desperation, desire, etc).”
That is a horrifically wrong blanket statement.
The Catholic Church has gone out of its way to support and protect child rapists.
To quote the Bard:
@synapse
I always grant that there are exceptions, but how is my statement fundamentally wrong? A person who is starving and steals food does so because he needs to eat, not because he’s unaware that it’s illegal. A person who is a kleptomaniac steals because of some innate compulsion, but is probably aware that it is illegal to do so. On and on, etc. I am merely speaking of awareness of the law, to which I sincerely doubt this particular individual was completely oblivious to.
@47
Oh he no doubt knew about the law, he just wasn’t sure it was a natural moral law. Had it been one of those he would have followed it no question, but seeing as the law against child rape was one of those fallible human laws which are open to interpretation.
tgriehl
I read this as the criminals feel a need to break the law not as the criminals feel the need to steal or rape or whatever.
If you can learn the history of how the Bible was cobbled together (as I assume happens in seminary) and still believe it’s Divine Truth, then I’m not surprised that you can rape children but still convince yourself that you’re not really a pedophile. The ability to delude yourself is a job requirement for priests.
Others have said it before and I will repeat the point again, the pope and other members of the Vatican must be arrested for crimes against humanity. Too bad the ICC won’t issue the arrest.
If it was merely a flaw in how I said it, then I apologize for not being clear in my meaning.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this guy rationalises to himself that peadophiles rape children but in his case they all consented, ergo he hasn’t done anything wrong.
Why am I reminded of MRAs all of a sudden?
@ 51 ibyea
‘Too bad the ICC won’t issue the arrest.’
This is a Telegraph article from 13th Jan…(Today)
Seems they are sussing out whether they can prosecute…interesting times…
Would think it takes a while to work out court jurisdiction in this.
Vatican is not a signatory..but the crimes were committed in countries that are!
Ratty…Levada…Sodano…Bertone in the dock…what a world of slow motion car crash viewing lies there?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/the-pope/8760103/Pope-accused-of-crimes-against-humanity.html
I suppose the concept of “age of consent” didn’t occur to this creep?
Does it ever?
They don’t know consent, at all . Its not like nuns are safe from them either.
I hate that I’m not even shocked anymore. It just get more disgusting as more and more is revealed.
C’mon. Can’t you see Donahue’s secret? He wears it out there on his sleeve.
“Its not like nuns are safe from them either.” Isn’t that a bit sexist? It’s kind of assuming there aren’t some nuns and monks/priests out there who engage in consentual sex, that nuns don’t have sexualities or are sexually passive or unable to consent – or at best sounds like a comparison of nuns with abused children. I mean they’re *supposed* to be celibate, but the idea of a healthy, consentual nun-priest relationship is quite the breath of fresh air with all the child rape that’s being discussed.
No. Even women who are in consensual relationships with priests are at risk of being raped by priests.
Nope. Even women who are in consensual relationships with priests are at risk of being raped by priests.
Looking to the RCC for morality is like trying to develop one’s swimming technique by watching a chicken. I wonder what that fatuous pile of shit WLC has to say about this
well, that hits unpleasantly close to home :-/
maybe though it will finally convince my mom to stop giving that vile organization money, to realize that my brother could have easily been one of those boys.