Changing libido patterns in the Church ....?

In response to yesterday's post, a friend asked "does this mean that for 25 years everyone knew about this illness?"

 I think the answer is at three levels:

 Level one: When exactly the former Archbishop knew exactly the story about Vangheluwe is very difficult to know. The factor of 'don't want to know' may have played a large role here. It fits with what poeople closer to him have told we about Danneels. I have had it suggested to me that the story broke precisely because of the change of archbishop – that the victim thought that he would finally get himself heard.

 Level two: About pederasty in the R.C. Church, everyone knew that it was going on, if you like, everyone had a few bits of a big jigsaw. But this is probably the first time someone has put the jigsaw together.  Three comments here:

 - First that most of the cases which have come to light are 30 or more years old. It may just be that a 50-year old is more prepared to speak than a 30-year old. My own suspicion, and frankly it is a suspicion only, is that sexual misbehaviour has gone in waves: that in the 1960s it was pederasty, in the 1980s it was priests having mistresses (the present new archbishop made himself very unpopular as a new bishop 20 years ago by cleaning this out of his diocese). In the 2000s the scandal is probably the sexual mores of the black clergy from the former colonies who have come in the depleting numbers of native priests...

 - Importantly, the Vangheluwe scandal is untypical: this is a boy with his uncle: it is as much ‘family rape’ as the traditional priest-altarboy pattern.

 - It would be unfair to say that all pederasty in Belgium at the time happened in the Church. All the psychologists are telling us that the majority of abuse of minors of both sexes is in the family.

 Level three: Understanding the wider malaise. This is quite complex – I have spent two years trying to work it out. The malaise of the Church and the social and political malaise in Belgium are hopelessly intertwined. In the Flemish north of the country (where 90% of the cases the commission saw were reported) and which was solidly Catholic till the 1970s, there is an underlying ‘light Fascism’, which was acceptable in the Church till Hitler came and invaded the country (and would be perfectly tolerated in the Orthodox Church in Russia). Since then it has been pushed underground and is not accepted in polite circles. I suspect that this has created a big void and that space has to be made for it.

Gays, women priests and the Russian church .....

I have recently been reading a lot of material from the Russian Church in Russia, condemning western secular liberalism. In general, I agree, but allow me three questions:

 1) Is it possible to make the argument without this constant reference to homosexuality or women priests?  How would one have argued before 1960, when secular liberalism was solidly rooted, but homosexual acts were still illegal in most western countries and women priests existed only in Denmark.

 2) If I take the percentage of adult men having homosexual relations at least once a week in England or Germany, and compare it with the percentage of adult men getting seriously drunk at least once a week in Russia, which percentage is higher?

 3) If a young Christian man finds himself sexually attracted to other men, are there competent priests in the Russian church who can handle the situation properly. I will not accept the argument ‘This does not happen in our house’. It does.