Julie Posey Blog

[ad#co-2]

There are, currently, certain popular religious organizations in the United States, which have been around for over a hundred years, such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses, that maintain huge male lay clergies and advertise, through the media and the printed word, their adherence to traditional family values. Many thousands of single men and women, as well as families, change their religious affiliations every year through contact with itinerant missionaries and representatives of these very wealthy sects. Many of these proselytiizing missionaries pay their own way to knock on the doors of potential converts. The Jehovah’s Witnesses Watchtower Society has a saying, they sometimes wish to deny, which goes, “publish or perish.” This means that convert Witnesses are intimidated into knocking on doors and publishing Jehovah’s Witness doctrine, disseminating that ubiquitous pamphlet, “Awake,” to everyone they see, by the threat levied by their leaders that they will spiritually perish if they don’t.

Believing such doctrines is okay, as personal beliefs, per se. But when the physical welfare of young children is advertantly placed into jeopardy, into the hands of sexual predators who have successfully lied their way into the fellowship of local congregations for the express purpose of satisfying their sexual cravings, as a result of such practices, the discernment doctrine, and its accompanying rituals, have to become immediately suspect. The old scenario of a murderer, rapist, or convicted criminal seeking refuge in a monastery, in order to purge himself from a world of sin, is melodramatic but unrealistic when dealing with a pedophile. In a monastery the aberrant person is, at least, cutoff from the rest of the world, and can’t do harm to others behind monastic walls. But a pedophile, convicted or unconvicted, cannot be contained, and will commit his vile crimes again and again if allowed his/her freedom to associate with, or be around, children. Even after decades of psychiatric therapy, it is almost impossible for pedophiles to change their spots. This fact, alone, makes me wonder why a leader of a sect would have the temerity to pronounce a convicted sex offender free of sin, as innocently clean as a new-born lamb, and free to interact with the children of parents unaware of the man’s criminal history.

Since it is going to be long time before American law will force ecclesiastical leaders of sects to perform criminal history checks on those many men, and women, they induct into their ranks and, after a year-or-more, ordain to lay clergies, I encourage all congregational parents to beware of single, or married men, who take an abnormal interest in their male and female children. You can recognize potential pedophiles as those men, and women, who regularly carry candy in their pockets and hand it out to the children, before, after, and in-between Church services. Pedophiles are frequently older men who regularly offer to freely transport children around to their after-school or summer activities. Beware if there are older men in your congregations seeking to associate with children by offering to give free computer/video game lessons. Sometimes these men will salivate for months, and years, before worming their way into your lives for deviantly ulterior purposes. This is why I seriously believe that the universal penalty for sexual child molestation should be chemical castration.

Unfortunately, in a libertarian religious society, such as what you have in the United States, the main burden of protection for young children, from pedophiles, is levied upon the shoulders of concerned parents. When I was a California peace officer, during the 1980s, I was shocked at the number of children placed under the care of San Diego County Child Protective Services, during a months time, as a result of physical, mental, and sexual abuse, just at home. And it really hasn’t changed that much. In, both, large cities and small communities, there are adult child molesters who regularly harm children, physically and sexually, as a result of uncalculated rage or premeditated design. More American fathers are now being charged with child rape than ever before. Perhaps it is high-time for laws to be changed to protect innocent children, who may become the victims of sexual predators in unchecked religious societies.

Norton R. Nowlin took M.A. and B.A. degrees in the social and behavioral sciences from the university of Texas at Tyler, studied law for one full year at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, in San Diego, California, and earned an ABA-approved advanced paralegal certification from Edmonds Community College, in Lynnwood, Washington. Mr. Nowlin as attended LaJolla, California’s National University and Malibu’s Pepperdine University to attain graduate credits in business management and economics. Mr. Nowlin also attained a Texas State Teaching Certification, in social studies and psychology, from the University of Texas at Tyler. A paralegal, published essayist, poet, and free-lance fiction writer, Mr. Nowlin resides in Northern Virginia with his wife, the renown math tutor, Diane C. Nowlin, and their two very intelligent cats.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Norton_Nowlin
http://EzineArticles.com/?Religious-Sects,-Lay-Male-Clergies,-and-Sex-Offenders&id=714117

Tags: clergy