It is a documented fact that the Catholic Church has faced widespread scandals involving clerical sexual abuse, including cases of pedophilia, leading to scrutiny over how the profession may have been exploited by some individuals.
Furthermore, some argue that the best cover for viewing child pornography is to pose as an anti-child pornography campaigner or an NGO investigator on a mission to catch those involved in it.
Of a Catholic priest, one would normally assume that he concerns himself with what, according to his religion, is the most important aspect of life: the afterlife. Catholic doctrine assumes that what happens after death is more meaningful than what happens before. After death, a person either goes to heaven or to hell. Heaven is sweeter than anything a person can experience before death, and hell is worse suffering than anything a person could experience before death.
A considerable number of simple minds still take Catholic dogma for truth. But priests and bishops are not simple minds. Even just to comprehend Catholic dogma requires dialectical reasoning: mercy as an ideal for a human nature inclined to the opposite; agape instead of sex. To integrate oneself into such a system requires even more dialectical intelligence. To what extent priests and bishops believe what they preach, and to what extent they are just career-concerned pretenders, they will never tell us.
Priests enjoy plenty of privileges and a position of authority on matters of life and death. That must be flattering.
And when they involve themselves heavily in worldly matters, such as community projects or efforts to improve life (this life, not the afterlife), it feels as though they are priests not because they are exceptionally religious, but because they want to feel important.
It doesn’t make sense that while Catholic doctrine says that salvation after death is more important than whatever happens before, they nevertheless dedicate most of their efforts to worldly problems in their communities, and not to securing that their flock makes it to paradise as safely as possible.
But being a priest in order to be important (a community leader and an authority on morals) is only the first level of pretension.
The second level is reached when a priest who is on a "help the poor and the weak" ego trip is choosy about those whom he wants to help. Such a priest leaves the realm of moral proportionality.
For example, it may be a noble cause to campaign against alcohol and tobacco consumption by young people. Campaigning against alcohol and tobacco consumption may be a noble cause, even when those addressed are adults.
But how should one view such a campaign if it happened in Nazi Germany during World War II, when millions of innocent people were being murdered in concentration camps?
From a moral perspective, the anti-alcohol and anti-tobacco campaign would be out of proportion.
Proportionality is an important aspect of complex constructs of justice and morality. Moral concerns cannot be claimed as the motivation for ameliorating a bad situation if, by morality’s own standards, an even worse situation should be addressed first.
Millions of children die each year from malaria, diarrhea, and other easily preventable causes. Do moral priests also see children suffer and die from a plain lack of nutrition? Documentation is just a few clicks away.
In many regions of Africa, children are brutally murdered day by day, now, as they were 10 or 100 years ago: Northern Uganda, Eastern Congo, South Sudan. Monstrosities like Nazi Germany are not merely a matter of the past. They happen in the world today, in many parts of the world.
Ears cut off, people roasted alive, drowned for the fun of onlookers. Mutilated, dragged to death, stoned to death, suffocated in excrement. In some parts of the world, kids torture kids to death, just as they play video games.
Priests and other campaigners who want to address these moral problems personally will need a lot of courage. It’s dangerous out there. A priest or campaigner may be tortured and murdered. But if "helping children" is a priest’s or campaigner’s genuine concern, that is where he or she should go.
Somebody who picks social problems that he wants to deal with, while sidelining problems that are much worse, is displaying favoritism toward hobby issues and cannot claim to act morally per se.
Now, what do I make of a priest who, for decades, has been doing social work with child prostitutes? While child prostitution is a social problem, it is, by far, not the worst. Contrary to the impression created by some campaigners, a significant number of minors in the sex trade are street-connected youth who have run away from home and may perceive their situation as a means of survival or independence, though international human rights consensus maintains that any sexual activity with a minor is inherently exploitative and coercive.
Some argue that the outrage certain priests express when confronted with the sexual conduct of youths, especially with adults, is irrational. If anything, it may indicate a corresponding, deep-seated but suppressed affinity on their own part. They may not want to see others enjoy what they themselves deprive themselves of.
Child prostitution is a good topic for the profit-oriented media because it sells. Children dying of hunger or from minor diseases is not a topic people buy newspapers for. It’s not even a topic people want to read about.
And what is the rhetorical reply of Christian fanatics? They claim that death stares at them out of the eyes of child prostitutes. They claim that child prostitutes, because of their lost innocence, are deeply traumatized and empty inside. They seriously express the opinion that for a youth to engage in sex is more destructive than starving to death or dying from a preventable disease. Priests, however, do not starve to death; they only theorize from a distance.
What kicks do they get out of all of this? Being motivated by a desire to help can only be claimed if those who need help the most are helped first. If that isn’t done, then obviously, activism is a matter of personal preference.
Some Catholic priests have been working in Southeast Asian red-light districts for decades. Their focus was, and is, to rescue child prostitutes. They document cases in great detail and then involve the international media. They rise to fame and enjoy the respect expressed in traditional, politically correct media. They collect donations. They use the funds to build shelters for these youths, shelters of which Catholic priests are directors. They also continually interview young girls about their sexual abuse. If working with minors in the sex trade is such a pronounced personal focus for a Catholic priest, what does this suggest about his psyche?