This philosophy, born of the Enlightenment, said that the human power of science would solve all of the world’s problems. Before the hubris of this philosophy too over our way of thinking, bishops would have assumed the traditional understanding of human nature. According to this understanding sexual disorder is caused by a warped or twisted appetite. This twisted appetite is common to all human beings due to fallen human nature, though it affects each of us in different ways and to different degrees. Any sexuality that was not grounded in family love was considered disordered. While psychology and therapy can help us come to terms with our twisted desires and maybe even give us some tools to overcome them to some degree, the Church has always taught that only grace can truly bring healing to our disordered appetites. However, the Enlightenment-born philosophy of our culture at the time, promoted by the likes of Sigmund Freud and Carl Rogers, claimed that people with disordered sexuality can be healed through scientific methods.

Prior to the early 1990′s, most people in the Church and in the culture at large were unaware or only beginning to come to grips with the prevalence of this horror and the high rate of recidivism among abusers. Accordingly, many leaders- and not just in the Church- felt that sex offenders could be treated pharmacologically or therapeutically and then returned to their former lives and occupations. Many bishops throughout the 1970′s and 1980′s sent priest abusers to treatment centers and received reports from therapists recommending that priests could be safely returned to ministry.

— Robert Barron from Real Catholic TV

You can still see the error of this purely scientific view of humanity in the way we approach alcoholism and drug addiction and other such obsessions. We tend to speak of alcoholism as a disease. This philosophy correctly identifies a biological element to alcoholism and that a person is not able to heal himself without professional help, however it also connotes that the problem is purely biological and does not include elements of the sinful choice or disorder caused by original sin.

The problem with this opinion is that human conditions are much too complicated to be purely biological. Sin and choice and fallenness always come into play. Environment, biology, choice, habits all interact in human behavior and even in addiction. That is why medicine and therapy alone are never enough heal someone.

So the mistake made at the time of the sexual abuses was to put too much trust into human ability to heal pedophilia. This was the mistake of an entire culture, not just the Catholic bishops. The same actions were taken by heads of secular schools and other institutions.

The irony is that while our culture blames Catholic Bishops, it still holds to the mistaken attitude that human beings have the power to cure human disorder through science. This attitude of the Enlightenment has been combined in a schizophrenic way with modernism. So, our culture assumes that anything without a biological cause is a free choice and therefore acceptable.

While we have not yet come to consider pedophilia normal, there are signs we are headed in that direction. Take the case of the famous movie director and screenwriter Roman Polanski. He was accused of drugging and committing sexual acts with with a 13 year old girl. He is now being brought to justice and Hollywood is up in arms in his defense. Whoopi Goldberg said on The View “It wasn’t rape-rape.”

Watch the video of Whoopi Goldberg statements and see for yourself. Notice how Whoopi Goldberg seem to think that statutory rape is not a crime, or at least not the same level of crime as “violent rape.” What’s going on here? This is an example of the effects that the philosophy of modernism is having on our culture. Modernism is leading us to accept even pedophilia as just another lifestyle choice. What would have happened if the scandals that we face today. Had happened today in the age of our current schizophrenic blend of Enlightenment and modernism? Our schizophrenic philosophy would make it even more probable that this could happen. We should not be placing personal blame on the bishops or on the Pope. Rather, we should be analyzing the very thought processes that our culture is being led by now.

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