US therapist says Vatican very confused about nature of sex

MELBOURNE - A Boston-based therapist has claimed that the Vatican continues to remain confused about the issue of sex, and in particular adds that it is nonsensical for the Catholic Church to draw a link between paedophilia and homosexuality.

Boston-based Mike Lew, who is visiting Australia to counsel male survivors of child abuse, and is the author of the landmark 1988 book Victims No Longer: The Classic Guide for Men Recovering from Sexual Child Abuse, said the Vatican’s remarks blaming homosexuality, not celibacy among the clergy, for the scandal now gripping the Catholic Church were incorrect and should be renounced.

“If a man abuses a little boy, it is no more a homosexual relationship than a man abusing a little girl is a heterosexual relationship,” news.com.au quoted Dr. Lew as telling AAP.

“Healthy gay men have sex with other men, healthy heterosexual men have sex with women, neither have sex with children - that’s child abuse. And, anyone who can’t see that is massively, or perhaps wilfully, confused about the nature of sexuality,” he added.

Dr Lew said in the majority of cases of child sex abuse, the perpetrator was a heterosexual men.

There was another common factor, he said, as perpetrators were also often members of a church, boarding school or other type of “closed institution” that featured “hierarchy, patriarchy and secrecy”.

The abuse was particularly damaging when perpetrated by the clergy because the victim could be left feeling “abused by God”, he said.

The act was “always for the gratification of the adult”, he said. When a young person was developmentally ready for sex they would “experiment with their peers” first.

“So this is a distraction technique. The church would like to lay the blame onto gay men, but it is nonsense,” Dr Lew said.

His comments follow those made earlier this week by the Vatican’s secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who said “many” psychologists and psychiatrists believed there was a “link between homosexuality and paedophilia” and “no relationship between celibacy and paedophilia”.

The Vatican has since issued a statement saying church officials were not competent to speak about such issues in psychology. ANI)