The Corrupter of Boys

Read the complete review on Medium

https://medium.com/@peterseanEsq/is-catholicism-the-historical-cause-of-pedophilia-2582290f12d8

I liked this book as a work of historical research. I didn't like this book to the extent that it begins and concludes with tendentious but traditional polemics against the modern Catholic Church. The polemics are fortunately limited to the first and last chapters, where the author acknowledges that she well out beyond her skis:

It is impossible for me, as a medieval historian already chronologically stretched to my limits, to fill in the missing centuries on my own.

Elliott, Dyan. The Corrupter of Boys (The Middle Ages Series) (p. 234). University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

In case anyone thinks that I am projecting my perspective into this text, here is how Elliott explains the thesis of her book:

“NOTCHES: In a few sentences, what is your book about?

Dyan Elliot: It's really about the unintended consequences of clerical celibacy. The celibate ideal meant that the clergy's sexual lapses were considered especially damaging to the Church, and very soon the fear of a priest's public scandal trumped concern over hidden clerical vice. This led to the active persecution of clerical wives and concubines, relations which were generally out in the open, and the tacit toleration of clerical pederasty, which tended to be covert. As a result, countless boys and adolescents suffered clerical abuse.

(see Interview.)

It may be fair to say that the book is “about the unintended consequences of clerical celibacy” — this may be the best feature of the book — but the rest of her claims are largely unproven given the evidence that pederasty and abuse exist in non-celibate organizations at the same or higher rate as has been found in the American Catholic Church. Elliott doesn't simply assume that there is a difference, she never mentions the possibility of pederasty outside the celibate Catholic Church, as if Catholicism were sui generis, the only institution that has ever suffered a pederasty problem.

This is a problem for the thesis that Elliott thinks she's proving — although it is a goldmine for people who want to attack Catholicism by citing a book without actually reading it. Elliott's position is that the practice of celibacy caused the pedophilia that has scandalized the Catholic Church over the last thirty years and that this scandal was assisted, encouraged, and tolerated by the Catholic practice of confessional privacy.

The most tolerant kind of causation is “but for” causation, which establishes the “but for test” such that “but for A, X would not have happened.” However, if X happens without A being present, then the “but for” test permits us to ask whether the necessary causal connection is found in something else — perhaps, sinful human nature?

On the other hand, I think that Elliott's book provides an interesting overview of the development of Catholic practices over the Medieval period. She may also offer some insights into how sinful human nature expressed itself opportunistically through some Catholic doctrines. This is the best part of the book.

The introduction and conclusion are completely different from the rest of the book. In the Introduction, after handwaving about linking the 2021 Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report to Gregorian Reforms. In Chapter 1, Elliott moves to history proper. (Anti-Catholics can skip directly to the Conclusion to reinforce their prejudices without having to do the difficult part of reading about history.)

Elliott begins where Christianity did not begin, i.e, with public confession. (Christianity began and begins with Baptism and the Eucharist; Confession comes later.)

In the beginning, baptism was the easy way to absolve one's sins compared to confession. Confession was a fallback for those who had committed very bad sins after baptism. There were some who argued that Confession was a one-time thing like Baptism. Elliott mentions Tertullian as a proponent of this position. St. Thomas Aquinas notes that this was the position of a heretical group known as the Novatians. (Summa Theologica, Part III, Section 84, article 10.) Like the later Donatists, the Novatian heresy developed after a persecution — the Decian Persecution of the third century — and involved the question of how easily those who had apostatized should be allowed re-admission to the Church. The Catholic Encyclopedia notes “Novatian had refused absolution to idolaters; his followers extended this doctrine to all “mortal sins” (idolatry, murder, adultery, or fornication). Most of them forbade second marriage, and they made much use of Tertullian's works.” Novatian's heresy was that he denied the power of the Catholic Church to grant absolution for these specified sins, which denied God's power to absolve sins and the promise that God had made to the Church.

In the early Church, the Rite of Confession was public. Elliott observes that public penance was a spectacle in which “the performers were invariably people of rank.” Rules developed around Confession, which were codified in canons. Elliott advises that the Spanish Council of Elvira in the fourth century was the first convocation of bishops that articulated a series of canons, which included canons about clerical sins. Elvira mandated an excommunication from communion of “sexual offenders.”

Elliott argues that in Western Christianity, the clergy began to distinguish itself from the laity. She claims that clerical celibacy was one way of marking this distinction in social status. According to Elliott, preserving this increased social standing created exacerbated the church's concern about “scandal,” i.e., scandalous penances would undermine the reputation for holiness on which the Church's power was founded. Elliott argues that the concern over scandal led to the development of the practice of private confessions, which had the unintended consequence of permitting “sodomites” the ability to ply their avocation. Elliott argues:

“This new emphasis on the confessor as a direct conduit to God raised the prestige of the priesthood exponentially, simultaneously stoking the potential for sacerdotal scandal.

Elliott, Dyan. The Corrupter of Boys (The Middle Ages Series) (p. 121). University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

A Catholic would find this statement to be tone-deaf. It ignores the Catholic understanding that the priest “confects” the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of the Risen Savior in the elements of bread and wine. I don't know if Elliott is a practicing Catholic, but an overly tight focus on the writer's ideological narrative is a problem with polemics. Elliott has gone all in on confession as the engine for her narrative, which may have caused her to ignore other factors that might be even more important for prestige.[1]

Elliott does a good job of laying out evidence to support the transition from public confession to private confession during the period from the fourth century to the eleventh century. There can be no doubt that there was such a development. Aquinas in the Summa refers to “solemn penance” which is not repeated and seems to be different from the kind of penance which can be repeated. (Summa Theologica, III, 84.10.) Presumably, he was talking about some kind of public penance that was not the “auricular private penance” that his Dominicans provided.

I'm not sure about the rest of it. Elliott basically assumes the connection between celibacy as the Catholic sine qua non for holiness. I'm not sure that is correct since Eastern Catholic priests could always be married men. However, asceticism was a mainstay of both Christian and heretical holy men. St. Anthony of the Desert headed out to the wilderness, thereby starting the tradition of monasticism, in the middle of the third century. St. John's gospel mentions the virgins who accompanied Christ and were the “first fruits” at the beginning of the second century. Sexual asceticism was always wired into Christian religious practices.

Further, Elliott ignores the singular fact that EVERYONE was permitted to use private confession when it developed, not just the clergy. This fact would seem to kick out the causal connection between protecting the status of the priesthood and the development of private confession. Elliott might argue that the laity was the unintended beneficiary of something designed to benefit the clergy, but she does not offer any evidence for this conclusion.

Elliott leaves out the involvement of Irish monks in the development of confessional practices. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church summarizes:

“During the seventh-century Irish missionaries, inspired by the Eastern monastic tradition, took to continental Europe the ‘private' practice of penance, which does not require public and prolonged completion of penitential works before reconciliation with the Church. From that time on, the sacrament has been performed in secret between penitent and priest.” (Catechism, para. 1447.)

Elliott also ignores the more likely reason for the development of private confession, namely, the push to have people baptized as early as possible. It is a well-known historical fact that Christians in the early Church put off being baptized until they were dying so that they could take the easy route to the forgiveness of sins. Emperor Theodosius was baptized after a sickness when he was emperor and found himself in the inconvenient position of having to enforce Christianity on paganism. St. Augustine was not baptized until he was an adult.

This was the norm of the Church through at least the fourth century. As Christianity became identical with civil society, however, the Church's desire to have everyone to formally join the Christian community became a priority. This left more Christians after the fourth century in need of the fallback sacrament of Confession. Prior to the fourth or fifth centuries, the issue of Confession was mostly theoretical since most Christians would not be baptized until they faced death. After baptism, the Christians began to receive the Eucharist on a regular basis, which entailed a requirement that they act in a more holy fashion. The “Irish Way of Confession” dovetailed nicely with the concern about continuing individual sanctification and purity, something that was required to approach God in the Eucharist, since it permitted Christians to focus on less serious sins than murder and adultery.

In short, a lot of the assumptions that frame Elliott's narrative fall by the wayside when a larger frame is considered. I'm not saying she's wrong, but this book should have presented a broader picture rather than narrowly focusing on her narrative, particularly since she uses that narrative to make a polemical point about the contemporary Catholic Church.

I think Elliott's points about the later Middle Ages have a more secure foundation. Elliott argues that Gregorian Reforms communicated to Catholic clergy that sodomy was condoned or, at least, less serious. The Gregorian Reforms were aimed at ending the Church's subservience to secular rulers and abolishing clerical concubinage. The Catholic Church had preserved the classical tradition of “boy love” in literature. Elliott does a solid job of quoting a number of clergymen who wrote homoerotic poetry with a sick emphasis on boys. She also provides lurid details about accusations and rumors concerning pederasty among the clergy. In addition, she quotes extensively from canons and writings condemning relationships with women. From this evidence, Elliott argues that the Catholic Church downplayed the sin of sodomy in order to play up misogyny against marriage and relationships with women.

Elliott argues:

The cumulative message was that the eleventh-century clergy had no problem with same-sex relations — only with women. Apart from Leo IX's initial interdict against sodomy at Reims in 1049, where Damian's presence probably influenced the agenda, there was no legislation enacted against sodomy at any subsequent reform councils.

Elliott, Dyan. The Corrupter of Boys (The Middle Ages Series) (p. 82). University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

She further argues:

“The willingness to overlook the issue of clerical sodomy meant that the situation of the child oblate and his vulnerability to sodomitical predators, so poignantly evoked by Odo of Cluny, was never addressed in the reformers' abundant canonical collections.

Elliott, Dyan. The Corrupter of Boys (The Middle Ages Series) (p. 82). University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

This is a feast for anti-Catholics since it suggests that the Catholic priesthood was founded on same-sex relationships and that this orientation has a historical continuity to the present day. Similar arguments equating the celibate Catholic clergy with “unmanliness” have been made by Protestants and others throughout history. Chancellor Bismarck's Kulturkampf made Catholic celibacy an issue as did the Nazis. Celibacy has not only marked Catholic priests off from society, but it has also provoked a hostile reaction from society which perceives celibacy as a threat. (Ironically, I found this article today on Medium which plays on the same tropes as the Nazis — https://medium.com/belover/christians-love-child-drag-queens-they-call-them-altar-boys-cbd681d7df45. The “men wearing dresses” tope is an evergreen one.)

Elliott's argument is superficially attractive, particularly for people who find celibacy to be unnatural in the first place.

Celibacy has long been viewed as a political threat to the secular state. In a January 2014 First Things article, Grant Kaplan offers a different way of considering celibacy. Kaplan refers to an 1824 debate between Catholic laymen about ending celibacy. One layman argued that ending celibacy was vital to integrate Catholicism into the German state. Kaplan summarizes the counter-argument of the other layman, which I will quote extensively for the way it reframes the discussion:

“Although he did not agree with the Denkschrift's argument for abolition, he agreed with it that celibacy was incompatible with the state's ends. Celibacy is indeed useless to the state — which made it crucial for maintaining the Church's independence. Married life introduces responsibilities and inclines heads of household to become invested in the state's system of education and welfare, in addition to its economy. Celibacy disrupts this process of integrating men into the stream of family life and its responsibilities. As a result, unmarried priests remind Catholics of the “non-unity of Church and State,” as Möhler puts it.

Celibacy focuses on the heavenly city, and the practice of celibacy indicates an eschatological hope for life in the next world. It is “a living testimony of faith in a constant outpouring of higher powers in this world and of the omnipotent rule of truly infinite forces in the finite.” This focus and hope doesn't just differ from the concerns of the earthly city, it challenges their claims to be ultimate. “An institution like [celibacy] can never grow on the soil of earthly states and for that reason, as long as it flourishes in the Church, it will form a living protest against all attempts to make the Church lose herself in the state.”

It is a massive mistake, therefore, to view celibacy as an ecclesial practice borne of particular contingencies, like feudal laws of primogeniture. Clerical celibacy is an essential dimension of the Church's existence as a spiritual institution ordered toward ends beyond the competence and authority of temporal rulers. Celibacy does not automatically function this way, of course, just as the married life does not guarantee obeisance to the state. But when it is one expression of a larger vision of the Church as a foretaste of the kingdom of God, it can serve as a sign of contradiction in an age too focused on the present.”

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