Abuse - endemic in the church?

I posted a comment on a discussion along the lines that "abuse - of power or position - is endemic in the church". The response was along the lines of "what a ridiculous assertion". I don't think it is ridiculous, because of what I have experienced, and what others have told me, but I want to explore this a little more here.

Firstly, I have just finished watching a documentary about the sex abuse allegations in the Catholic church. A number of things have become clear in this scandal - which has been rumbling for half a century or more. Firstly, when it was originally raised, the response was "priests would never do that" which enabled the abuse to remain hidden for many more years. Then, once the accusations were made to the hierarchy, the response there was to protect the priests involved, not consider the victims.

The response of the "system" was to protect the "system". The risk of people losing faith in the "system" was higher than the risk of letting abusers continue. And, I hate to say it, but I understand their position. They are wrong, but I understand - if the church is the representation of God on earth, then people who lose faith in this institution will lose faith in God.

The problem is that the church - the system - is not the representation of God on earth. It is a human institution, populated by humans who are fallible, but an institution which, at its best, seeks to enable people to engage with the Divine.

The TV documentary made a very significant point - that priests are considered by the church and the people to be a higher form of person. They are raised onto a pedestal, and treated as the embodiment of God, and so if we believe this is what they are, they have to be above criticism. It is unfair to everyone, and the system - the belief system under-girded by the structural system - requires priests to be what they are expected to be. Very few people can live up to that.

I predict that the sex abuse scandal in the Catholic church is not over yet. I suspect that it is far wider than has been discovered even yet - maybe not children, but abuse nonetheless.

The problem is that this problem is endemic in the Catholic church because of its ecclesiology. The concept of what the church is means that this problem will not go away until the church changes how it sees itself. That is what I mean by endemic.

But what of other churches? Surely the protestant churches don't suffer from the same problems? What of the Orthodox? Well, they don't have the same "system", the same core problem with their identity of church and God. However they do very often have the same problems of raising the clergy or ministers onto a pedestal, and it is that problem which tends to cause abuse.

If clergy are viewed as beyond reproach, they criticisms of them will be unacceptable. Even when they are not explicitly seen as "Gods messengers", they are very often treated preferentially, because they are "doing Gods work", and so can be forgiven for occasional lapses or failings.

All of which is crap, of course. Until we stop treating clergy or ministers - whatever we want to call them - as "special", they will be able to abuse their positions. Until we stop giving other people power over us, they will continue to abuse that power.

Endemic? Yes, because churches are organisations that make paternalistic power structures into something unchangeable, because they are "ordained by God". What is more, within most church structures, "the system" is present in some form, and the people who could make changes are very heavily invested in "the system", not least because they are paid by it.

So yes, abuse is endemic in the church. This does not mean that all clergy are abusive, wrong, dangerous or broken. There are many who work within the system to do good work. But the system itself is wrong, and it needs to be changed.

I just cannot see this happening without a revolution.