From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Fri Jul 26 2002 - 11:44:39 MDT
Apparently Walpurgis did not read the entire article, for, to quote its
conclusion,
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Bibliophilia means the excessive love of books. It does not mean
stealing books from libraries. Pedophilia means the excessive
(sexual) love of children. It does not mean having sex with them,
although that is what people generally have in mind when they use
the term. Because children cannot legally consent to anything, an
adult using a child as a sexual object is engaging in a wrongful
act. Such an act is wrongful because it entails the use of physical
coercion, the threat of such coercion, or (what comes to the same
thing in a relationship between an adult and a child) the abuse of
the adult™s status as a trusted authority. The outcome of the act --
whether it is beneficial or detrimental for the child -- is irrelevant
for judging its permissibility.
Saying that a priest who takes sexual advantage of a child
entrusted to his care "suffers from pedophilia" implies that there is
something wrong with his sexual functioning, just as saying that
he suffers from pernicious anemia implies that there something
wrong with the functioning of his hematopoietic system. If that
were the issue, it would be his problem, not ours. Our problem is
that there is something wrong with him as a moral agent. We
ought to focus on his immorality, and forget about his sexuality.
A priest who has sex with a child commits a grave moral wrong
and also violates the criminal law. He does not treat himself as if
he has a disease before he is apprehended, and we ought not to
treat him that way afterward.
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I fully agree with this conclusion.
All in all a closely reasoned article, which I heartily recommend;
it can be read in its entirety at:
http://reason.com/0208/fe.ts.sins.shtml
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