Sex, Sin, and Abortion Rights

By Steven Jonas

Over the last several years, the Roman Catholic Church has found itself confronted with a wide variety of scandal --- some of them have been described even by Catholics as horrors --- that involve sex and what Catholics describe as sins of one sort or another. First came the discoveries in Ireland of the Catholic orphanages/homes-for-unwed mothers and, at some of them, the widespread practice of forcibly taking babies away from their mothers in the homes and putting them up for adoption. This practice was denounced by the Pope himself. But of course, it occurred in the past. Occurring in the past, too, was the apparent practice of killing babies and dumping them in unmarked graves (one was a septic tank) along with fetuses aborted in the homes.

The current scandal revolves around the report of a grand jury in Pennsylvania of widespread sexual abuse by Catholic clergy, over a period of many years. The scandal here concerns the sexual assaults themselves, discovered on a scale not previously known of, and the cover-ups. The general public has recently learned of the latter on a broadening scale since the original reporting by The Boston Globe some years ago, which was made into a movie ("Spotlight"). Additionally, charges have been made against the Pope himself of covering-up reports of sexual abuse by a cardinal. There are also charges of the broad toleration of homosexuality within the Church, which may well be wide-spread. Interestingly enough, the latter charges are being used against a Pope intent on reforming the Church on a grand scale in how it deals with economic, political and social issues around the world, by a powerful reactionary wing with the Church hierarchy.

Interestingly enough, too, all of these scandals involve sex --- one of basic humans drives, both for procreation and for pleasure --- and sin, a concept that has driven Catholic theology since it was codified by St, Augustine in the 4th and 5th centuries. "Sin" is, of course, a concept unique to a certain set of religious beliefs, but not to others, and is totally alien to those of us who are humanists/reasonists/atheists. As is well known, there is a list of sins which, if committed by Catholics without confession and absolution, will lead upon death to eternal damnation in Hell.

In the list of sins are such matters as pre-marital sex, giving birth out-of-wedlock, using contraceptives (other than "Vatican Roulette"), and homosexuality. I must say that I don't know whether or not the commission of a crime such as sexual assault or a crime such as knowing of a sexual assault and not reporting it to law enforcement (the latter being the crime in Pennsylvania on which the former fabled Penn State football coach Joe Paterno --- a Catholic himself --- got hung up) are considered sins of the order of magnitude of the sex-related ones listed above. 

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Source: OpEdNews