Sunday, November 20, 2011

I Know Of A Jesuit Accused Of ?

Jesuit Fr. James Martin, author and culture editor for America magazine, to appear on a video about an aspect of the problem -- the "grandiose narcissist" -- that he learned about during a conference on the church's problems. It is an element of the problem that has been discussed at length by psychiatrists and psychologists at conferences and in papers, but it's not been included often enough in the wider, popular discussion. It needs to be emphasized -- as Martin does in the video -- that the inescapable bottom line is that sexual abuse of children is a crime, and the first reaction of any individual or group when learning of such behavior should be a call to police. But much still remains to be understood about how this happens.
In a recent phone conversation, Martin said the description of "grandiose narcissist" -- often the charismatic teacher or leader about whom it is extremely difficult to imagine behavior such as sexually abusing children -- helped to explain some of the institutional reaction to such charges. 
He's read about the phenomenon in secular institutions, but has at times seen it from the inside, as a priest and member of a religious community. "Frequently, the people charged with abuse are in the community, or in your family or in your school, and so teachers, students and community members see them all the time," while the victims often remains anonymous and at a distance. "Victims may not want to reveal themselves," Martin said. So within the community or family or school, often when charges are made, the accused becomes more easily seen as the victim, thanks to his proximity. Within the institution, the abuser may be known, familiar, around; the victim is often not. 
Thanks to the narcissist's focus on himself, and thanks to the grandiose person's tendency to magnify their suffering, it is difficult for those around him not to make the accuser's "suffering" the central event. In one instance Martin knows of, one priest reacted to an accusation against his confrere by citing all the good he had done and all the "suffering" he had undergone after being removed from ministry, and called him a saint.
A third priest responded: "Saints don't abuse children."
Link (here) to read the full article at NCR 

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Did someone say Donald McGuire? Chicago Province???

Anonymous said...

Comment # 2 in response to NCR article:

How about "grandiose homosexual narcissist?" Would that be redundant. Probably.

Let's just keep pretending "gay" "priests" had nothing to do with it.

Anonymous said...

"Let's just keep pretending "gay" "priests" had nothing to do with it."

Except that every piece of social scientific evidence indicates that they didn't.

Oh, right: let's not let facts get in the way. . .

Harvey in Greenwich Village said...

One more.....

Eugene Abel, whose research found that homosexuals "sexually molest young boys with an incidence that is occurring from five times greater than the molestation of girls. …"

Abel also found that non-incarcerated "child molesters admitted from 23.4 to 281.7 acts per offender … whose targets were males."

"The rate of homosexual versus heterosexual child sexual abuse is staggering," said Reisman, who was the principal investigator for an $800,000 Justice Department grant studying child pornography and violence. "Abel’s data of 150.2 boys abused per male homosexual offender finds no equal (yet) in heterosexual violations of 19.8 girls."

Read more: Report: Pedophilia more common among 'gays' http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=13722#ixzz1eICcE5IA

Anonymous said...

Why erase my comment to Harv from the Village?

Anonymous said...

It is pointless to discuss whether gays are pedophiles or not. The Church will never admit to the high number of gay priests in its ranks to begin with, for better or for worse, whichever side of the issue you're on.