There has been a profound silence on the part of Christians in the UK about the Savile scandal. There is little doubt that the Roman Catholic world, to which Savile belonged, finds it difficult to say anything. This is because it has been so seriously compromised by its own very many paedophile priests and the cover-ups by their bishops, many of whom themselves have been involved. A visit to the Vatican and a brief examination of its frescoes would suggest that the popes responsible for them were themselves paedophiles. Certainly, the homosexuality of many Renaissance painters, some of them clergy, is an established fact. Such have been the sad results of compulsory priestly celibacy, as imposed by popes from the end of the 11th century on.
Strangely enough, the Church of England, in which clergy can actually marry, also seems to have fallen silent. This is perhaps because parts of it have also been compromised by paedophile and other sexual scandals, especially in its High Church and public school wings. Public schools with their false Puritanism (there is nothing as hypocritical as Puritanism) have always been a stereotypical bastion for sexual perversion. And therefore the whole Establishment, of which the BBC is an integral part, is affected. Is this why the Savile affair was hushed up for so many decades?
What can we as Orthodox Christians, who appear to come from another planet, certainly from another civilisation, say?
Perhaps the first comment we can make is that the human reproductive instinct, the instinct for survival, is natural, it is God-given. However, outside the Church that instinct has always been perverted, as can be seen from the history of Hinduism and other Non-Christian religions. This can also be seen in all pagan societies, among barbarians, most notoriously among the pagan Romans and Greeks. A visit to Pompeii or a brief study of pagan Roman and Greek history will confirm this. Only in the Church has the sexual instinct been channelled into constructive family life. Church Tradition has been based on this.
With the rejection of the Church’s channelling of sexuality into family life from the 1960s on and the subsequent wave of neo-paganism that has virtually taken over Western societies as a result, those societies have become deregulated and disordered. Sexual licence and pornography, including homosexual practice, have become the norm in ‘the permissive society’. And so, consequently, have abortion, single parents and rape. For the last fifty years sex has been commercialised and sexual practice has been spread into all age groups. Most revoltingly, after the legalisation of homosexuality, paedophilia and other disgusting perversions became widespread, as children were sexualised. Sex ‘education’ in schools has become the norm. As one correspondent has put it:
‘Sex education in many schools promotes all kinds of sexual activity, even to primary school children. One lesson I overheard given to 12 year-old girls told them how to stimulate their sexual parts. Now no-one listens to protests that such programmes rob young children of their childhood. Many now tolerate child sexual activity. Even some senior police officers are reluctant to enforce the age of consent, because they no longer see 14 or 15-year-olds as children needing protection. Even much younger children are targeted by sexually explicit pop lyrics, magazine articles, cosmetics and tarty clothes. Treated as sexualised mini-adults, they behave accordingly’.
More hypocritically, many of the current critics of Savile themselves encouraged the liberalisation of sexual practice and even paedophilia. One of them, the feminist Blairite ex-Minister Harriet Harman, has recently said that Savile is ‘a stain on the BBC’. And yet ‘one or two of the most outspoken critics in Parliament were in 1978 prominent members of The National Council for Civil Liberties – known today as Liberty. The Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) affiliated itself to the NCCL; the former organisation- whose members were reportedly attracted to boys and girls and set out to make paedophilia respectable.
It campaigned to reduce the age of consent and resist controls on child pornography. Until it excluded PIE in 1983, the NCCL thus backed this agenda of child abuse.
Even before PIE was affiliated to it, the NCCL was campaigning to liberalise paedophilia and reduce the age of sexual consent to 14. In 1976, the NCCL argued ‘childhood sexual experiences, willingly engaged in with an adult, result in no identifiable damage’.
And in 1977 it said: ‘NCCL has no policy on [PIE’s] aims, other than the evidence that children are harmed if, after a mutual relationship with an adult, they are exposed to the attentions of the police, press and court’.
The great cover-up is now being uncovered. The activities of members of the Establishment, from narcissistic ‘media personalities’ to politicians, from ‘pop stars’ to businessmen, are now being uncovered. After the ‘feast’ comes the reckoning. Countless ‘personalities’ are now being exposed. The lesson is that we reject the 2,000 year experience of the Church at our peril. This is a forest fire. The human sexual instinct is a fire. If it is not contained, it causes untold destruction – whole forests are burned down. If it is contained, then it can be creatively sublimated and we can live a regulated, ordered life, with much artistic and family creativity. The 1960s played with fire; now society has to put out that fire. Very sadly, it is doubtful if it has the humility and courage to admit its mistakes and do so.