Catholic Abuse

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In the wake of the current scandal over child abuse by priests, I received
a letter from an American woman in her mid-forties who was brought up
Roman Catholic. She has two strong recollections from when she was seven.
She was sexually abused by her parish priest in his car. And around the
same time, a little school friend of hers, who had tragically died, went
to hell because she was a Protestant. Or so my correspondent was led to
believe by the then-prevalent doctrine in her church. Her view now is
that, of these two examples of Roman Catholic child abuse, the one
physical and the other mental, the second was by far the worst. She
writes:
Being fondled by the priest simply left the impression (from the mind of a
7 year old) as "yucky," while the memory of my friend going to hell was
one of cold, immeasurable fear. I never lost sleep because of the
priest--but I spent many a night being terrified that the people I loved
would go to Hell. It gave me nightmares.
I am sure her experience is far from unique. And what if we assume a less
altruistic child, worried about her own eternity rather than a friend's?
Odious as the physical abuse of children by priests undoubtediy is, I
suspect that it may do them less lasting damage than the mental abuse of
having been brought up Catholic in the first place.
Happily I was spared the misfortune of a Roman Catholic upbringing
(Anglicanism is a significantly less noxious strain of the virus). Being
fondled by the Latin master in the squash court was a disagreeable
sensation for a nine-year-old, a mixture of embarrassment and
skin-crawling revulsion, but it was certainly not in the same league as
being led to believe that I, or someone I knew, might go to everlasting
fire. As soon as I could wriggl...