With Controversy Swirling

...around the new Vatican document that has finally been released, I have been ruminating about the use of language in these kind of public debates.

Actually, the dearth of real debates is what has concerned me most. And the use and misuse of language seems to be a major cause of the “talking past each other” type of rhetoric that’s going on.

Paedophile is a key word that prevents communication when the Scandal is being discussed. The Oxford definition that I’ve linked to is fairly generic in that it simply says children. With 80% or more of the sexual abuse cases involving adolescent or young men, it seems to me (and many others) that Pedophilia doesn’t cover that activity accurately. See for instance this source which says, in part: “pedophilia involves sexual activity by an adult with a prepubescent child.” (emphasis added) That’s sex with someone before adolescence. And that’s from the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition.

Is there an established word in English that accurately describes the behaviour in these 80+% cases of sexual abuse? How about Pederasty? The bulk of the problem is (hopefully was) with pederast-priests. But no one is talking about the Pederasty Crisis.

So my first point is that the misuse of the word pedophile has misdirected the attention of many as to the nature of the overwhelming majority of cases of sexual abuse by priests and religious. The problem is (or was) not so much pedophilia as pederasty.

My next point has to do with discussing pederasty meaningfully. It seems obvious enough that to be a pederast you must have Same Sex Attraction (SSA). Well, duh! And acting out SSA can reasonably be described as homosexuality or so it seems to me. So the pederast priests are or were homosexuals. And. finally, making the living out of SSA as a homosexual an indispensable part of your self-identity can then be called gay. It isn’t automatically true that all the offenders are or were gay. Being a founding member of the Man-Boy Love Association would qualify though, don’t you think? [Where was the Boston Archdiocese at that time?] Calling yourself gay in public, while not definitive (since the word is used so loosely) might well be evidence in that direction.

By making these distinctions we can say that the Vatican document forbids men who have been homosexual within the last three years from entering seminaries and, of course, bars entry to gays pure and simple. Men with SSA are, istm, a more difficult issue that would have to be dealt with on a case by case basis. The document doesn’t get into that much detail.

But gay is being used so loosely in public discourse about the Vatican document that it can effectively include all three categories (SSA, homosexual and gay) which, though not using my exact terminology, are clearly distinguished in the document itself. (See David Morrison’s Sed Contra entry for a more detailed discussion.) And whose interests does this confusion serve: the gay “Catholic” community? Isn’t that an oxymoron?

Anyway, all of this was inspired by various blog entries (here’s one for example) over the last three weeks or so, which got me thinking. One of the stories was about something to the effect that “The Church is trying to deceive people into thinking that all pedophiles are gay”. This conclusion fails to use one word accurately [pedophile instead of pederast] and uses another so generally [gay] that it includes very different things [SSA, homosexuality and gayness (?)]. In logic that’s called equivocation. You can’t build an effective argument against the Church’s policies without using clear, accurate and unequivocal terms.