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Richard Dawkins, "Religion's real child abuse" (2002)
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Richard Dawkins, "Religion's real child abuse" (2002)
"Free Inquiry" Buffalo: Fall 2002. Vol. 22, Iss. 4, p. 9-12 (2 pp.) --- Abstract (Document Summary) --- Odious as the physical abuse of children by priests undoubtedly is, Dawkins suspects that it may do them less lasting damage than the mental abuse of having been brought up Catholic in the first place. The threat of eternal hell is an extreme example of mental abuse, just as violent sodomy is an extreme example of physical abuse.
In the wake of the current scandal over child abuse by priests, [1] I received a letter from an American woman in her mid-forties who was brought up Roman Catholic. She has two strong recollections from when she was seven. She was sexually abused by her parish priest in his car. And around the same time, a little school friend of hers, who had tragically died, went to hell because she was a Protestant. Or so my correspondent was led to believe by the then-prevalent doctrine in her church. Her view now is that, of these two examples of Roman Catholic child abuse, the one physical and the other mental, the second was by far the worst. She writes:
> <br> Being fondled by the priest simply left the impression (from the mind of a 7 year old) as "yucky," while the memory of my friend going to hell was one of cold, immeasurable fear. I never lost sleep because of the priest-but I spent many a night being terrified that the people I loved would go to Hell. It gave me nightmares.
> <br> I am sure her experience is far from unique. And what if we assume a less altruistic child, worried about her own eternity rather than a friend's? Odious as the physical abuse of children by priests undoubtedly is, I suspect that it may do them less lasting damage than the mental abuse of having been brought up Catholic in the first place.
> <br> Happily I was spared the misfortune of a Roman Catholic upbringing (Anglicanism is a significantly less noxious strain of the virus). Being fondled by the Latin master in the squash court was a disagreeable sensation for a nineyear-old, a mixture of embarrassment and skin-crawling revulsion, but it was certainly not in the same league as being led to believe that I, or someone I knew, might go to everlasting fire. As soon as I could wriggle off his knee, I ran to tell my friends and we had a good laugh, our fellowship enhanced by the shared experience of the same sad pedophile. I do not believe that I, or they, suffered lasting or even temporary damage from this disagreeable physical abuse of power. Given the Latin master's eventual suicide, maybe the damage was all on his side. Of course I accept that his misdemeanors, although by today's standards enough to earn imprisonment followed by a life sentence of persecution by vigilantes, were mild compared to those committed by some priests now in the news. I am in no position to make light of the horrific experiences of their altar-- boy victims. But reports of child abuse cover a multitude of sins, from mild fondling to violent buggery, and I am sure many of those cases now embarrassing the church fall at the mild end of the spectrum! Doubtless, too, some fall at the violent end, which is terrible; but I would make two points about it. First, just because some assaults by pedophiles are violent and painful, it doesn't mean that all are. A child too young to notice what is happening at the hands of a gentle pedophile will have no difficulty at all in noticing the pain inflicted by a violent one. Phrases like 11 predatory monster" are not discriminating enough, and are framed in the light of adult hang-ups. Second (and this is the point with which I began) the mental abuse constituted by an unsubstantiated threat of violence and terrible pain, if sincerely believed by the child, could easily be more damaging than the physical actuality of sexual abuse. An extreme threat of violence and pain is precisely what the doctrine of hell is. And there is no doubt at all that many children sincerely believe it, often continuing right through adulthood and old age until death finally releases them.
> <br> It will be said that the Catholic Church no longer preaches hellfire in its full horror. That depends on how upmarket is your area and how progressive your priest.3 But eternal punishment certainly was the normal doctrine dished out to congregations, including terrified children, back in the time when many of the priests now facing expulsion or prosecution committed their physical abuses. Most of the victims bringing or supporting lawsuits are now in their middle years. Therefore they, along with many others who were never physically abused, probably experienced mental terrorism of the hellfire type. The long retrospect of the law entitles middle-aged victims to lucrative redress, decades after they suffered physically. Nobody thinks the physical injuries of sexual abuse could possibly last decades,4 so the damages now being claimed have to be for mental consequences of the original physical abuse. A typical claimant, now fifty-four, said that his "life was marred by inexplicable confusions, anger, depression and lost faith." (Parenthetically one can't help marvelling at the idea of a life being marred by lost faith. Perhaps it would get the sympathy of a jury.) But the point is this. If you can sue for the long-term mental damage caused by physical child abuse, why should you not sue for the long-term mental damage caused by mental child abuse? Only a minority of priests abuse the bodies of the children in their care. But how many priests abuse their minds? Why aren't Catholics and ex-Catholics lining up to sue the Church into the ground for a lifetime of psychological damage?
> <br> I am not advocating this course of action. Much as I would like to see the Roman Catholic Church ruined, I hate opportunistically retrospective litigation even more. Lawyers who grow fat by digging up dirt on long-forgotten wrongs and hounding their aged perpetrators are no friends of mine. All I am doing is calling attention to an anomaly. By all means, let's kick a nasty institution when it is down, but there are better ways than litigation. And an obsessive concentration on sexual abuse by priests is in danger of blinding us to all their other forms of ecclesiastical child abuse.
> <br> The threat of eternal hell is an extreme example of mental abuse, just as violent sodomy is an extreme example of physical abuse. Most physical abuse is milder, and so is most of the mental abuse inherent in a typical religious education. The priest who urged a fourteen-year-old altar boy to give him oral sex, "blessing it as a way to receive Holy Communion,"' wasn't only abusing the trust normally enjoyed by any teacher, youth leader, or scoutmaster. He was cashing in on the years of religious brainwashing that the child had endured as a cradle Catholic. Holy Communion: nice one! But again, only an extreme example of what churches-and also mosques and synagogues-- do to child minds in their care, in the normal course of events.
> <br> "What Shall We Tell the Children?" by the distinguished psychologist Nicholas Humphrey is a superb polemic on how religions abuse the minds of children. It was originally delivered as a lecture in aid of Amnesty International, and has now been republished in book forms The lecture is also available in text form on the Web, and I strongly recommend it.7 Humphrey argues that, in the same way as Amnesty works tirelessly to free political prisoners the world over, we should work to free the children of the world from the religions that, with parental approval, damage minds too young to understand what is happening to them. He is right, and the same lesson should inform our discussions of the current pedophile brouhaha. Priestly groping of child bodies is disgusting. But it may be less harmful in the long run than priestly subversion of child minds.
> <br> Notes
> <br> 1. http//www.time.com/time/covers/1101020401/story.html.
> 2. As, for example, in 'The Confession of Father X," http;/www.time.con/time/covers/1101020401/fallen.html.
> 3. A prominent modern Catholic, Frank McCourt, author of the bestseller Angela's Ashes, is quoted as saying, in support of allowing priests to marry: "I think it was St. Paul who said 'It is better to marry than to burn.' All those pedophile priests are going to burn."<br> http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101020401/forum.html.
> 4. The obvious exception, and the main example I can think of where religiously inspired physical damage does last throughout life, is circumcision. Far from being condemned by society, the practice of male infant circumcision has spread from religion to secular medicine. It is very common to this day in the United States, and was so in Britain when I was a child. Though it must be hideously traumatic at the time, it is not clear whether it does more than temporary mental harm. Occasional "hang-ups" about it exist, of course, but, depending on the surrounding culture, are experienced by the uncircumcised as well as the circumcised. Of course I am speaking here only of male circumcision. Clitoridectomy and the other forms of female genital mutilation are not only hideously painful. They also-as they are designed to do-severely curtail a woman's capacity for sexual pleasure and presumably have a lifelong impact on mental contentment. This unspeakable barbarity is the best example I know to point up the absurdity of uncritical "respect" for religious and cultural traditions.<br> 5. http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101020401/story.html.
> 6. In the U.S.: Nicholas Humphrey (1998), "What Shall We Tell the Children?" in Wes Williams, ed.: The Values of Science: Oxford Amnesty Lectures 1997 (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1999), pp. 58-79. Also available in the U.K. in Nicholas Humphrey, The Mind Made Flesh (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).<br> 7. http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/hum phrey/amnesty.html.
> <br> [Author Affiliation]<br/> Richard Dawkins is the Charles Simonyi Professor of Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. An evolutionary biologist and prolific author and lecturer, his most recent book is Unweaving the Rainbow.
> <br> Being fondled by the priest simply left the impression (from the mind of a 7 year old) as "yucky," while the memory of my friend going to hell was one of cold, immeasurable fear. I never lost sleep because of the priest-but I spent many a night being terrified that the people I loved would go to Hell. It gave me nightmares.
> <br> I am sure her experience is far from unique. And what if we assume a less altruistic child, worried about her own eternity rather than a friend's? Odious as the physical abuse of children by priests undoubtedly is, I suspect that it may do them less lasting damage than the mental abuse of having been brought up Catholic in the first place.
> <br> Happily I was spared the misfortune of a Roman Catholic upbringing (Anglicanism is a significantly less noxious strain of the virus). Being fondled by the Latin master in the squash court was a disagreeable sensation for a nineyear-old, a mixture of embarrassment and skin-crawling revulsion, but it was certainly not in the same league as being led to believe that I, or someone I knew, might go to everlasting fire. As soon as I could wriggle off his knee, I ran to tell my friends and we had a good laugh, our fellowship enhanced by the shared experience of the same sad pedophile. I do not believe that I, or they, suffered lasting or even temporary damage from this disagreeable physical abuse of power. Given the Latin master's eventual suicide, maybe the damage was all on his side. Of course I accept that his misdemeanors, although by today's standards enough to earn imprisonment followed by a life sentence of persecution by vigilantes, were mild compared to those committed by some priests now in the news. I am in no position to make light of the horrific experiences of their altar-- boy victims. But reports of child abuse cover a multitude of sins, from mild fondling to violent buggery, and I am sure many of those cases now embarrassing the church fall at the mild end of the spectrum! Doubtless, too, some fall at the violent end, which is terrible; but I would make two points about it. First, just because some assaults by pedophiles are violent and painful, it doesn't mean that all are. A child too young to notice what is happening at the hands of a gentle pedophile will have no difficulty at all in noticing the pain inflicted by a violent one. Phrases like 11 predatory monster" are not discriminating enough, and are framed in the light of adult hang-ups. Second (and this is the point with which I began) the mental abuse constituted by an unsubstantiated threat of violence and terrible pain, if sincerely believed by the child, could easily be more damaging than the physical actuality of sexual abuse. An extreme threat of violence and pain is precisely what the doctrine of hell is. And there is no doubt at all that many children sincerely believe it, often continuing right through adulthood and old age until death finally releases them.
> <br> It will be said that the Catholic Church no longer preaches hellfire in its full horror. That depends on how upmarket is your area and how progressive your priest.3 But eternal punishment certainly was the normal doctrine dished out to congregations, including terrified children, back in the time when many of the priests now facing expulsion or prosecution committed their physical abuses. Most of the victims bringing or supporting lawsuits are now in their middle years. Therefore they, along with many others who were never physically abused, probably experienced mental terrorism of the hellfire type. The long retrospect of the law entitles middle-aged victims to lucrative redress, decades after they suffered physically. Nobody thinks the physical injuries of sexual abuse could possibly last decades,4 so the damages now being claimed have to be for mental consequences of the original physical abuse. A typical claimant, now fifty-four, said that his "life was marred by inexplicable confusions, anger, depression and lost faith." (Parenthetically one can't help marvelling at the idea of a life being marred by lost faith. Perhaps it would get the sympathy of a jury.) But the point is this. If you can sue for the long-term mental damage caused by physical child abuse, why should you not sue for the long-term mental damage caused by mental child abuse? Only a minority of priests abuse the bodies of the children in their care. But how many priests abuse their minds? Why aren't Catholics and ex-Catholics lining up to sue the Church into the ground for a lifetime of psychological damage?
> <br> I am not advocating this course of action. Much as I would like to see the Roman Catholic Church ruined, I hate opportunistically retrospective litigation even more. Lawyers who grow fat by digging up dirt on long-forgotten wrongs and hounding their aged perpetrators are no friends of mine. All I am doing is calling attention to an anomaly. By all means, let's kick a nasty institution when it is down, but there are better ways than litigation. And an obsessive concentration on sexual abuse by priests is in danger of blinding us to all their other forms of ecclesiastical child abuse.
> <br> The threat of eternal hell is an extreme example of mental abuse, just as violent sodomy is an extreme example of physical abuse. Most physical abuse is milder, and so is most of the mental abuse inherent in a typical religious education. The priest who urged a fourteen-year-old altar boy to give him oral sex, "blessing it as a way to receive Holy Communion,"' wasn't only abusing the trust normally enjoyed by any teacher, youth leader, or scoutmaster. He was cashing in on the years of religious brainwashing that the child had endured as a cradle Catholic. Holy Communion: nice one! But again, only an extreme example of what churches-and also mosques and synagogues-- do to child minds in their care, in the normal course of events.
> <br> "What Shall We Tell the Children?" by the distinguished psychologist Nicholas Humphrey is a superb polemic on how religions abuse the minds of children. It was originally delivered as a lecture in aid of Amnesty International, and has now been republished in book forms The lecture is also available in text form on the Web, and I strongly recommend it.7 Humphrey argues that, in the same way as Amnesty works tirelessly to free political prisoners the world over, we should work to free the children of the world from the religions that, with parental approval, damage minds too young to understand what is happening to them. He is right, and the same lesson should inform our discussions of the current pedophile brouhaha. Priestly groping of child bodies is disgusting. But it may be less harmful in the long run than priestly subversion of child minds.
> <br> Notes
> <br> 1. http//www.time.com/time/covers/1101020401/story.html.
> 2. As, for example, in 'The Confession of Father X," http;/www.time.con/time/covers/1101020401/fallen.html.
> 3. A prominent modern Catholic, Frank McCourt, author of the bestseller Angela's Ashes, is quoted as saying, in support of allowing priests to marry: "I think it was St. Paul who said 'It is better to marry than to burn.' All those pedophile priests are going to burn."<br> http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101020401/forum.html.
> 4. The obvious exception, and the main example I can think of where religiously inspired physical damage does last throughout life, is circumcision. Far from being condemned by society, the practice of male infant circumcision has spread from religion to secular medicine. It is very common to this day in the United States, and was so in Britain when I was a child. Though it must be hideously traumatic at the time, it is not clear whether it does more than temporary mental harm. Occasional "hang-ups" about it exist, of course, but, depending on the surrounding culture, are experienced by the uncircumcised as well as the circumcised. Of course I am speaking here only of male circumcision. Clitoridectomy and the other forms of female genital mutilation are not only hideously painful. They also-as they are designed to do-severely curtail a woman's capacity for sexual pleasure and presumably have a lifelong impact on mental contentment. This unspeakable barbarity is the best example I know to point up the absurdity of uncritical "respect" for religious and cultural traditions.<br> 5. http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101020401/story.html.
> 6. In the U.S.: Nicholas Humphrey (1998), "What Shall We Tell the Children?" in Wes Williams, ed.: The Values of Science: Oxford Amnesty Lectures 1997 (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1999), pp. 58-79. Also available in the U.K. in Nicholas Humphrey, The Mind Made Flesh (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).<br> 7. http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/hum phrey/amnesty.html.
> <br> [Author Affiliation]<br/> Richard Dawkins is the Charles Simonyi Professor of Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. An evolutionary biologist and prolific author and lecturer, his most recent book is Unweaving the Rainbow.
