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Many years ago, I learned German and was eventually able to work in Germany over summer break. For the last 10 years I have spent 1-2 months working in Essen, Germany and except the first couple of years, when I was still struggling with properly understanding the language, there hasn’t been one year when I haven’t heard of a sexual scandal involving priests of the Catholic Church. I am not Catholic, but in Germany, I worked for a foster home and retirement home complex owned by a pro-catholic organization, where these cases were heavily debated by the employees.
I have heard many stories as I worked there, on TV, or told by my co-workers but I cannot testify to their authenticity. The story that I want to talk about is one told to me by a retired Catholic priest that would occasionally drop by for dinner and a chat. During our rare but lengthy conversations, we debated the problem of sexual abuse within the church and what he told me was shocking at the time. I come from an Orthodox background where such stories are mostly unheard-of because a sexual allegation against a priest would pretty much be the equivalent of him being crucified by the community. The relevant difference between Orthodox priests and Catholic priests is that Orthodox priests can marry, so that helps in reducing sexual tension and keeping these people on the righteous path.
Back to the Catholic priest, he said that as he was still active, one of his colleagues was under suspicion of having sexually abused a 12-year old “Messdiener,” which is an altar boy. He said that after the first allegation became public five more altar boys came forward accusing him of the same thing. Since the story was about to erupt into the press, the bishop quickly relocated the problem priest to another parish, one town away. After three months, he was accused of sexually abusing one boy and relocated again. At the third parish, after more allegations, he was finally put under an internal investigation, conducted by Catholic priests. He was found guilty of the charges and excommunicated. That is all that happened to him after abusing God knows how many boys. I asked my priest friend why the police didn’t handle the problem. He said that the higher-ups of the Catholic Church ordered the cover-up of the whole incident and since they hold considerable influence in the community, the priest got away with an internal investigation, probably by confessing his sin to another priest under The Sacrament of Penance. The priest hearing this confession is prohibited by church canon law to disclose such information to the authorities, because of the Seal of Confession which they apparently put above the law. Also, due to lack of evidence other than the testimonies of the boys, and the pressure exerted by the church, the police had to give up on their examination. I found his story far-fetched but then he told me that this was common in the practices of the Catholic Church. He told me about that particular case because he knew the perpetrator personally. He said that the pattern in the story he mentioned, is applied every time a priest is accused of sexually abusing the altar boys and that there were many more cases that the public never heard of because the church had dealt with them quietly.
I heard the story maybe four or five years ago. Since then, due to the public’s rising interest in the problem, many such cases have come to light and been dealt with in the same way that common pedophiles are prosecuted. This, of course, has weakened the position of the Catholic Church within the community, pushing the people further away from this particular religion, because nobody wants to send his child to a place where he might be raped. The idea sounds ludicrous to me even to this day and I find the attitude of the church to be very detrimental to their overall image, especially nowadays, when they are losing more followers than ever because of the lack of interest shown by young people with regard to the Catholic Church, or church in general.
Quickly browsing through the German news sites reveals a flurry of information regarding recent sex scandals in the Catholic Church, and priests being moved from one congregation to the next, because of sexual abuse allegations. This is not a problem strictly linked to lesser developed countries but a global issue that rears its ugly head in all countries, regardless of economic stability or social level. This is a problem linked to our nature and the struggle to maintain celibacy in a strict religious system, when faced with the inbuilt flaws of the human animal, whose innate need for sexuality is subconsciously distorted by the conscious choice to ignore it, as a requirement for entering the priesthood. There are deviants everywhere and through my travels, I have learned that regardless of the country, the percentages of good people with common sense to criminals of all kinds are about the same.

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