Catholic Sexual Pathology and the Western Mind
The Ancient Era, Vol. 1
Summary
Excerpt
Table Of Contents
- Cover
- Title
- Copyright
- About the Author
- About the Book
- This eBook can be cited
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Prologue
- 1 Catholic Sexual Pathology: An Undocumented Phenomenon
- Introduction
- Hypothesis
- Authoritarian System
- Sex Negative Culture
- Sex Positive Culture
- Research
- Notes
- 2 Christianity: A Sex Negative Religion
- Introduction
- The Hebrew Tradition
- The Greek Tradition
- Plato
- Aristotle
- The Roman Tradition
- Stoicism
- Neo-Platonism
- Epicureanism
- Gnosticism
- Greece and Rome Impact on Christian Sexual Anthropology
- The Persian Tradition
- Zoroastrianism
- Manichaeism
- Sex Negative Religion
- Sexual Dualisms
- Early Christianity
- The Role of Women in Early Christianity
- The Missionaries in Early Christianity
- The House Churches
- St. Paul
- The Church Fathers
- Monasticism
- Law of Sexual Purity
- Clerical Celibacy
- Augustine
- Impact of St. Augustine
- Eastern Orthodox Christianity
- Christian Sex Ethics: Early Centuries
- Notes
- 3 Catholic Sexual Orthodoxy in Medieval Europe
- Dark Ages
- Plagues
- Middle Ages: 500–1400
- Roman System
- Church Wealth
- Social Change
- Dissent
- Sexual Behavior
- Church Corruption
- Church Control
- Canon Law and Sex
- Impact of Church Law
- New Testament and Sex
- Natural Law
- Sins Against Nature
- Adultery
- Fornication
- Prostitution
- Common Sense
- Scholasticism
- St. Thomas Aquinas
- Penitentials
- Onanism
- Medieval Handbooks of Penance
- The Penitential of Cummean
- The Penitential of David
- The Book of Theodore
- The Penitential of Columban
- The Burgundian Penitential
- The Paris Penitential
- The Roman Penitential
- Regino’s Ecclesiastical Discipline
- Corrector of Burchard of Worms
- Early Welsh Law
- Iceland Penitentials
- Milan Penitentials
- Heresy
- Torture
- Medieval Methods of Torture
- Penances
- Signs of Infamy
- Confiscation
- Prison
- Burning at the Stake
- Hell
- Purgatory
- Demons
- Notes
Acknowledgments
Special thanks goes to the many people, who supported me in the writing of this opus. This would include numerous colleagues inside and outside the church, colleges, universities, theological, medical and psychiatric professionals. The list is numerous. I am grateful to the many physicians, scientists, intellectuals, humanists, theists, atheists, clergy, religious and laity, who shared their knowledge and experience and were more than eager to see this work completed. I am especially grateful to Richard Sipe, a pioneer in documenting clergy sex abuse and the author of several timely books and articles on clerical sex abuse in the Catholic Church. I am grateful to Jackie Holland and Susan Drushel, who helped type and retype the manuscript after necessary changes were made to the original text, and who showed humor, patience and common sense with the need for constant change in developing this opus. I am grateful to Carol Patton, my loving wife, who supported me through the many years of writing and editing this book. She has taught me a world about love as a wife, a mother of two children and six wonderful grandchildren. She deserves the credit. Thank-you academic audience and public audience for reading this important work on religion and sex pathology with an open mind and heart. I sincerely hope you learn from it and let it be a seedbed for future research.
Prologue
This source book, known as an Enchiridion, is a study in religion and sex pathology, which has been written for both the scholar and the general public to better understand the pathological link between religion and sex. The book attempts to historically and clinically document the phenomenon of Catholic sexual pathology (CSP) as a root cause of physical, mental, emotional, sexual, spiritual and social illness in both the Catholic Mind and the Western Mind.
While employing an interdisciplinary methodology – philosophical, theological, medical, psychological, legal, historical and anthropological – the author examines a taboo topic, which has been recognized in the general population by scholars and clinicians for centuries but has been withheld from the public forum by both church and state to prevent social awareness, social discourse and scientific documentation. Social scientists postulate1 that the Roman system, which governs the Catholic Church has imposed a repressive sex negative ethic on billions of human beings across twenty centuries of Christianity to cause apparent mental, physical, emotional, sexual, spiritual and social illness in both the Catholic Mind and the Western Mind. The author will call this phenomenon Catholic sexual pathology for the purpose of historical and clinical documentation.
As agents of the state psychiatrists have historically been the primary physicians, who treat the bizarre symptoms of Catholic sexual pathology. While receiving little or no formal training in religion and sex, these medical psychologists have been expected to heal people of all ages who come to them for individual and group psychotherapy to resolve the intrapsychic conflicts over religion and sex caused by Catholic sexual pathology. Based on years of clinical experience psychiatrists, who have worked extensively with the Catholic populace, report that many Catholics suffer permanent psychological damage from their traditional Catholic sex negative formation and that no amount of psychotherapy and/or psychopharmacology appears potent enough to undo the psychiatric damage.2
Most Catholics, who were shaped by a rigid sex negative formation in childhood and adolescence, may not be conscious that Catholic sexual pathology may in fact be causing their mental and emotional problems in adulthood. With no moral support from the Catholic Church to speak out, a high percentage of victims may remain in denial for their lifetime. Under the Roman system the ordinary Catholic man or woman does not dare allow their religious sex negative formation to raise social consciousness and mentally disturb them in the public forum regardless of how much personal suffering and damage it may have caused them as individual church members in the private forum.3
The assumption has been that most Catholics, who have survived their sex negative formation have been forced to repress the traumatic stress rooted in Catholic sex negative formation by psychologically denying and stuffing their painful human emotions and by chemically numbing their painful human emotions with alcohol, drugs and food. In psychology this process is known as dissociation. It is estimated that billions of Christian and non-Christian human beings may have been forced to suffer in silence across the centuries, because of the potent historical and cultural impact of Catholic sexual pathology on both the Catholic Mind and the Western Mind.4 While no one person has scientifically measured the cultural impact of a Catholic sex negative policy on human thought, human emotion, human behavior and human social systems, for two thousand years the Roman church system has escaped ethical and legal accountability for allegedly causing sexual pathology reinforced by institutional pathology in both the Catholic Mind and the Western Mind.
The Term Catholic
The term ‘Roman Catholic’ will be cited as ‘Catholic’ in the text with the assumption that the book addresses the Roman church system. Catholicism known as ‘universal Christianity’ is the largest religion in the world with an international membership of more than one billion people. The Catholic Church is the oldest monolithic institution in western civilization, which began two thousand years ago as a small Jewish Christian community. Christianity was based on Jewish monotheism rather than Roman and Greek polytheism. The Christian community was a Jewish community rather than a Hellenistic community. The Christian community witnessed the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, who claimed to be the Son of God and the Messiah who offered eternal salvation to all humanity.
During the Roman persecutions Christianity flourished and spread rapidly to all the cities of the Eastern and Western Roman Empire. After the reign of Constantine (280–337 A.D.), a Roman emperor who converted to Christianity, emperors tolerated or embraced Christianity. In 380 A.D. Emperor Theodosius I (347–395 A.D.) made Catholicism the official religion of the state and by the sixth century the Christian Church had become the most wealthy and powerful institution in Europe. During the fall of the Roman Empire in 476 A.D. the Catholic Church began to transform into a monolithic absolutist monarchy with a hierarchical infrastructure supported by a curial oligarchy and ruled by an autocratic pope. The Christian Church subsequently established a code of absolute moral authority over both the sexual and social behavior of all the men and women across Medieval Catholic Europe. During the papacy of Pope Gregory I (590–604 A.D.) the Catholic Church persuaded the many barbarian tribes of Europe to embrace Christianity by use of reason and coercion as it began to build the entire western civilization into a Christian Empire known as Christendom.
From the fall of the Roman Empire (27 B.C.–476 A.D.) until the French Revolution (1789–1799) the Catholic Church ruled Europe under the Roman system and built western civilization with the monastery system, the cathedral system, the university system, the manuscript system, the parish system, the convent system, the feudal system, the hospital system, the apothecary system, the penitentiary system, the capital punishment system, the legal system, the medical system, the mental asylum system, the orphanage system, the banking system, the land owner system, the employment system, the commerce system, the military system, the mortuary system, the tax system, the brothel system, the rehabilitation system, the social justice system and the charity system. The Catholic Church was the first institution in western civilization to consistently care for the poor, sick, suffering and outcasts of society and to work for human freedom, human rights and human dignity for all people, who suffered oppression. This was the essence and purpose of Christianity.
During the Middle Ages the Catholic Church began to build a great university system across western civilization to provide higher education in the liberal arts, philosophy, theology, law, medicine, ethics, mathematics, astronomy, biology, anatomy, alchemy, technology, classical languages, literature, romance languages, logic, rhetoric, cartography, history, commerce, economics, politics, architecture, art, sculpture, masonry, drama and music. The Catholic Church played a major role in the development of modern science, the scientific method and technology, which contrary to contemporary secular thinking remains one of the best guarded secrets in the history of science and technology. Ecclesiastical scholars must be credited with numerous significant contributions to medicine, law, education, science and technology.5
Medieval and renaissance scholars, contrary to the modern university system, enjoyed enormous academic freedom in the Catholic university system to zealously dialogue and discuss controversial questions about man, science, universe and God, which ultimately provided the philosophical framework for the scientific revolution in the seventeenth century.6
In 1054 the Catholic Church split between the Greek Christian Church Empire and the Roman Christian Church Empire over sex policy, which legally mandated that all future priests be celibate and all married priests immediately stop sex with their wives. In contradiction to the medieval canon law, which refused to ordain married men, Jesus chose apostles, who were all married men. Contrary to the Roman Christian Church Jesus did not demand celibacy for married priests and did not require married priests to abstain from sex with their wives to follow him. During the Avignon papacy (1309–1376) Christendom was split among three popes who each claimed to be the Vicar of Christ and who each allowed clergy to secure key political positions in the Catholic Church through the scurrilous abuse of money, power and sex. In 1517 the stage was set for a major veritable sexual revolution in renaissance Catholic Europe.
The Protestant Reformation (1517–1559) split Christendom between Catholics, who remained loyal to the Roman church system and Protestants, who vehemently dissented against the Roman church system because of the centuries old failure to correct institutional church corruption. While the common people had been conscious of the constant corruption of money, power and sex for centuries, the Roman system stubbornly refused to identify, own and correct the abuses, scandals, corruption and major theological errors, which permeated the hierarchical church system. At the time of the Protestant Reformation Catholic sexual pathology was 1500 years old and Catholic institutional pathology had consistently prevented the formal church from a radical restructure of the Roman system to fix it and repair the mass human suffering and damage.
During the renaissance various social, economic, political, cultural, scientific, philosophical and theological changes began to shake the impregnable papal theocracy, which had sternly ruled Catholic Europe since the fall of the Roman Empire in 476 A.D. While the Catholic university system with its liberal minded thinkers and scientists educated the masses to turn against the Roman church system, the printing press invented in 1445 by Johann Guttenberg (1400–1468) communicated the revolutionary ideas of Martin Luther (1483–1546) across a divided Christian Europe.7
Without the Catholic universities educating students to turn against the Roman system and without the printed word, there may not have been a Protestant Reformation, which was a sexual revolution. During the Protestant Reformation Martin Luther challenged the Roman system to identify, own and correct the widespread abuse of money, power and sex, which had resulted from centuries of concealed Catholic sexual pathology reinforced by Catholic institutional pathology.
The reformers, who had observed and experienced grotesque injustice from the Roman church system, charged that absolute papal authority had corrupted the Catholic Church and perverted the gospel message of Jesus Christ. The Roman system, while feeling threatened by the rapidly changing intellectual, social, economic and political climate of Europe, moved to have a large number of Protestant leaders assassinated. The number one target on the assassination list of the pope was the Augustinian monk Martin Luther.8
The irreconcilable schism between Catholics and Protestants in 1517 led to nearly five centuries of hate rather than love in which tens of millions of men, women and children died through senseless acts of violence, war and genocide. Baptized Christians – Catholics and Protestants – actually murdered one another in the name of Jesus Christ. Despite the fact that the body of Christ was severely divided by hate, the Council of Trent (1545–1563) came too little and too late. Trent did almost nothing to stop the power and sex abuse in the Catholic Church. Trent reformed the bishops but it did not stop the corruption in the papacy and it did not stop the corruption in the Roman Curia.
The Roman church system, which governs the Catholic Church, remained above reproach. Pope Paul III (1534–1549) condemned the clerical abuses of power and sex, reinforced mandatory clerical celibacy as the ‘crown jewel’ of the Catholic priesthood, while he himself paradoxically kept a mistress and fathered several children. Church abuses and the failure to identify, own and correct them led to a loss of respect for church authority and a loss of faith in God which expressed itself in secular humanism, agnosticism and atheism.9
The Society of Jesus (1534) was founded by Ignatius of Loyola (1491– 1556) to lead a counter-reformation, which would restore faith in the ancient Catholic Church. Through a system of rigorous academic discipline the Jesuits generated an intellectual renaissance across Europe. Trent excommunicated the Protestant reformers, who attempted to change the Roman church system as a threat to established orthodoxy. The Jesuits established over 800 new colleges and universities to educate Catholics, who were being exposed to radical doubt about the existence of God with the age of reason in the sixteenth century and the age of science in the seventeenth century.
The Catholic Church did little to change sexual pathology reinforced by institutional pathology in the post-Tridentine era other than reinforce papal authority, chastise bishops and priests to practice mandatory celibacy and establish seminaries to ensure that all future priests understood the need for mandatory clerical celibacy. The seminary system taught future male students for the Catholic priesthood to go against nature and repress all human sexual thoughts, human sexual emotions and human sexual behavior.10
Under the aegis of the seminary system begun at the Council of Trent (1545–1563) to educate future priests, Catholic sexual pathology – a cancer in both the Catholic Mind and the Western Mind – took on a new form, which was concealed under the Roman church system but perpetuated and reinforced by Catholic institutional pathology.
During the Enlightenment (1685–1730/1730–1780/1780–1815) known as both the age of reason and age of science, the Roman church system condemned rationalism and empiricism, while the Society of Jesus reconverted Europe from Protestantism back to Catholicism with an intense intellectual, scientific, humanistic, theological and spiritual revival. The Jesuit effort to promote liberal arts and scientific education during the enlightenment saw most of the intellectual elite of Europe return to the Catholic Church.
During the French Revolution, which scholars consider the turning point in western civilization, modern democracy began to spread across Europe and North America. The people of France revolted to overthrow the moral absolute religious authority of the Catholic Church as numerous church and state officials were put to death with the new guillotine developed by French physician Joseph Guillotin M.D. (1738–1814) after the common people had witnessed centuries of tyranny from the church-state theocracy.11
The French Revolution liberated philosophers, theologians, scientists and educators, who began to challenge the established church orthodoxy with new philosophical and scientific knowledge after being controlled for centuries by the Catholic Church. During the nineteenth century the Roman church government continued to operate as a fascist institution and remained extremely negative toward democracy, modernism, liberalism, science, humanism and atheism. The Roman system rebounded from the French Revolution to become a powerful morally disciplined authoritarian bureaucracy while in the pattern of the pre-French Revolution church tradition which had previously repressed all attempts to change it.12
The Dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary (1854), the Syllabus of Errors (1864) papal encyclical and the Dogma of Papal Infallibility (1870) gave renewed absolute power to Pope Pius IX (1846–1878), who proceeded to condemn modern civilization and social progress as evil.13
Details
- Pages
- LXVIII, 468
- Publication Year
- 2020
- ISBN (PDF)
- 9781433171475
- ISBN (ePUB)
- 9781433171482
- ISBN (MOBI)
- 9781433171499
- ISBN (Hardcover)
- 9781433171468
- DOI
- 10.3726/b15839
- Language
- English
- Publication date
- 2020 (December)
- Published
- New York, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Oxford, Wien, 2020. LXVIII, 468 pp.