TodayI posted an entry in which I shared four essays in which four different people struggled to comprehend and explain the horrible abuse of Irish children detailed in the recently released Ryan Report.

That abuse occurred for decades in Catholic-run boarding schools in what’s long been considered one of the most Catholic countries in the world.

In reading these essays which try to pinpoint why and how such horrible abuse could arise and endure, I was particularly struck by this passage in the essay written by John Banville:

Ireland from 1930 to the late 1990s was a closed state, ruled – the word is not too strong – by an all-powerful Catholic Church with the connivance of politicians and, indeed, the populace as a whole, with some honorable exceptions. The doctrine of original sin was ingrained in us from our earliest years, and we borrowed from Protestantism the concepts of the elect and the unelect. If children were sent to orphanages, industrial schools and reformatories, it must be because they were destined for it, and must belong there. What happened to them within those unscalable walls was no concern of ours.

Is Banville right?

Are people who believe in original sin more likely to abuse children than those who do not?

Are predominantly Christian societies that embrace the doctrine of original sin more likely to look away when they discover that some of their members are abusing children because they believe that those children are in some faith-based, metaphysical sense merely “getting what they deserve”?

These seem to be two very important questions to ask and answer if we’re going to truly understand what happened in Ireland and try to prevent a recurrence.

How would you answer them?

As with most questions pertaining to religion, these would seem to require that a few others be asked and answered first.

Among those questions: What exactly do we mean by “original sin”? What did the Irish Catholics at the center of the Ryan Report understand the term to mean?

Wikipedia provides us with these answers:

Original sin is, according to a doctrine proposed in some Christian theology, humanity’s state of sin resulting from the Fall of Man. This condition has been characterized in many ways, ranging from something as insignificant as a slight deficiency, or a tendency toward sin yet without collective guilt, referred to as a “sin nature”, to something as drastic as total depravity or automatic guilt by all humans through collective guilt.

Those who uphold the doctrine look to the teaching of Paul the Apostle in Romans 5:12-21 and 1 Corinthians 15:22 for its scriptural base, and see it as perhaps implied in Old Testament passages such as Psalm 51:5 ["Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me"] and Psalm 58:3 ["The wicked are estranged from the womb: they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies"].

Some Christians do not accept the doctrine indicated by the terms “original sin” or “ancestral sin”, which are not found in the Bible. The doctrine is not found in other religions, such as Judaism, Hinduism and Islam.

Roman Catholic teaching regards original sin as the general condition of sinfulness (lack of holiness) into which human beings are born, distinct from the actual sins that a person commits….

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says: “By his sin Adam, as the first man, lost the original holiness and justice he had received from God, not only for himself but for all human beings. Adam and Eve transmitted to their descendants human nature wounded by their own first sin and hence deprived of original holiness and justice; this deprivation is called ‘original sin’. As a result of original sin, human nature is weakened in its powers, subject to ignorance, suffering and the domination of death, and inclined to sin (this inclination is called ‘concupiscence’).” Catechism of the Catholic Church, 416-418….

The Church has always held baptism to be ‘for the remission of sins’, and, as mentioned in Catechism of the Catholic Church, 403, infants too have traditionally been baptized, though not guilty of any actual personal sin. The sin that through baptism was remitted for them could only be original sin, with which they were connected by the very fact of being human beings. Based largely on this practice, Saint Augustine of Hippo articulated the teaching in reaction to Pelagianism, which insisted that human beings have of themselves, without the necessary help of God’s grace, the ability to lead a morally good life, and thus denied both the importance of baptism and the teaching that God is the giver of all that is good….

[T]he Church teaches that original sin comes to the soul simply from the new person taking his nature from one whose nature itself had original sin. In this way, the Church argues that original sin is not imputing the sin of the father to the son; rather, it is simply the inheritance of a wounded nature from the father, which is an unavoidable part of reproduction.

So, it would seem that the doctrine of “original sin” as embraced by Ireland’s overwhelming Catholic society is a doctrine which views even newborn children as intrinsically and unavoidably wounded or flawed. All human beings are apparently believed to be weak, ignorant, inclined to sin, and deserving of suffering and death by their very nature. Their only hope is to be rescued from this nature by supernatural intervention as taught and perhaps directed by the supreme being’s Christian/Catholic representatives on earth….

Is that point of view more or less likely to inspire (and/or excuse) the abuse of children than the point of view of the “heretical” Pelagians and others who seem to have a brighter, more optimistic opinion of human nature?

To what extent might the rejection of the doctrine of “original sin” be responsible for the fact that we are not now reading Ryan Reports about decades of systematic child abuse in Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Confucian, secular humanist, and other non-Christian cultures?

It seems to me that if we embrace a worldview that sees even the youngest children as essentially “fallen” and evil and more or less in need of constant, strict guidance and correction if they’re going to avoid an eternity in hellfire, the “abuse” of children is going to be much more likely to be seen as justified, understandable, and minor than if we embrace a worldview that sees children as basically good, innocent, and trustworthy creatures who deserve to be respected and protected.

What do you think?

Is John Banville in error? Merely grasping at straws? Full of shit?

Is there really no significant correlation or connection between belief in “original sin” and a tendency to smack kids?

Is it possible that the doctrine of “original sin” actually inclines Catholics and others to treat children *better* and more gently than the typical Buddhist or secular humanist or Jewish person treats them?

*Pondering*