|
He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth
him chastiseth him betimes
Proverbs 12:24
In the past the Christian Church condoned all manner of evil done
to children. It tried and executed them for witchcraft, and for
other offences. It saw nothing wrong in beating them frequently
and severely for minor wrongdoing - even for other people's wrongdoing.
It terrified them with stories of Hell. It allowed them to contract
arranged marriages. It failed to speak out against child labour
because it saw nothing at all wrong in the practice. For many centuries
The Church opposed the education of poor children, except in the
few cases where boys could be drawn into its own service. Girls
were denied education altogether. In punishing children for sins
they had not committed there seems to have been almost no concept
of fairness or rights. Thus, the Church made much of the concept
of bastardy:
Bastardy, or illegitimacy, was a condition imposed upon a child
by the Canon Law as a punishment for the sin of the parents who
conceived it by illicit connection. By a legal fiction, a child
born out of wedlock was no one's child, filius nullius.
The idea of punishing children for the acts of their parents could
easily be justified on scriptural grounds:
...I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity
of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation
of them that hate me;
(Exodus 20:5, see also 24:7).
Also, as theological authorities pointed out, God had punished
the children of Sodom by death, for the sins of their fathers ,
so the punishment of innocent children was easily justified . Good
Christians were, as they pointed out, only following God's own precedent.
The stigma of illegitimacy has now virtually disappeared in secular
societies, and the civil law has been amended, but Canon law continues
to discriminate against the illegitimate. In the Church of England
they cannot for example become bishops. Other Churches stick to
traditional line that illegitimacy is a bar to ordination. In the
past the Church punished other children for the supposed sins of
their fathers, and grandchildren for the sins of their grandfathers
.
The Church has always been very strong on punishment, and has
only very recently adopted a cautious stand on corporal punishment
for children. As usual the worst excess could be justified on biblical
grounds:
He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth
him chastiseth him betimes Proverbs 13:24
The blueness of the wound cleanseth away evil... Proverbs
20:30
Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod
of correctionshall drive it far from him. Proverbs 22:15
Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest
him with the rod, he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the
rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell. Proverbs 23:13-14
The rod and reproof give wisdom; but a child left to himself
bringeth his mother to shame. Proverbs 29:15
At the time of writing there is still a steady flow of children
who die at the hands of Christian parents and guardians who interpret
these passages in the traditional way. Several are reported in national
newspapers each year. Under secular pressure corporal punishment
of children in schools was made illegal in many countries in the
late twentieth century. Church schools - and only church schools
- were still mounting legal challenges to this into the third millenium
. There arguments were based on the biblical passages cited above,
which, as the complainants pointed out, not only permit but require
corporal punishment.
Institutional abuse also continued well into the twentieth century,
physical, emotional and sexual. The abuse was widespread, and hardly
a secret within the Churches, yet no one seems to have though of
informing the secular authorities. Children without parents to look
after their welfare were particularly vulnerable. The "orphans"
who were taken from their parents and sent to British colonies were
routinely abused, along with real orphans. To take just one example
abuse continued for over 90 years at an orphanage run by the Sisters
of Mercy until it was exposed in 1976. Nuns had used a red hot poker
on one child to "exercise the Devil", and forced another
to put her leg in boiling water (causing permanent damage) as a
punishment for not washing in hot enough water. Another developed
a dangerous infection after her toenails were pulled out by a nun
using pliers. Injured children were hidden from visitors in an underground
cell without bedding, ventilation of light. Sexual abuse by priests
and other men was "routine". Professor Bruce Grundy, who
investigated the Order's activities referred to the "Madness,
ruthless and sadistic madness, on the part of at least some of the
nuns, and the depthless depravity on the part of some of the men
who inhabited the place" . These activities were far from unusual,
and similar behaviour has been exposed in numerous Christian orphanages
throughout the world. Not only is the behaviour widespread, but
the silence of even non-participating nuns and priests is entirely
typical.
The medieval Inquisition was permitted to torture witnesses, but
not if they were girls below the age of 12 or boys below the age
of 14. This of course did not stop its zealous officers, who believed
themselves to be doing God's work, and who needed to answer to no-one
when they ignored the rules. In England children over the age of
seven were liable to the death penalty, and few if any clergymen
seem to have found this at all questionable, at least until the
rise of secularism. A thirteen year old was hanged at Maidstone
as late as 1831 and a fourteen year old in 1833 . For years to come
younger children would be sentenced to death, but were invariably
reprieved, until the death penalty for those aged under sixteen
was abolished in 1908.
To listen to the Church's current views on the subject of sexual
abuse of children, one could easily form the opinion that the Church
has always been opposed to sexual activity below the age of 16,
or even older. In fact when the Church had control of these matters
the age of consent was 7 (though marriage contracts were voidable
up to the age of 12 for a girl and 14 for a boy). In practice a
marriage between a grown man and a little girl was as good as any
other in the eyes of the Church . In England the age of consent
was raised to 16 in 1929 , though many other states which have retained
Christian custom and practice have opted for the ages of 12 and
14. In the US, the state of Delaware retained 7 as the age of consent
well into the second half of the twentieth century.
The Christian record on Children's rights is no better than its
record on other matters. The Churches opposed the education of poor
boys, and all girls. European Churches were responsible for the
trial, torture, conviction, imprisonment and execution of children
as young as five or six, often contravening the civil law. In the
nineteenth century the Churches opposed the abolition of child labour,
and continued to be party to a wide range of abuse, mental, physical
and sexual well into the twentieth century. In short, the Church
has never supported the rights of children. Mainstream Churches
made no more effort to end child labour than they did to end slavery.
In England, Anglicans consistently opposed unbelievers like Jeremy
Bentham, J. S. Mill and Robert Owen, who championed the improvement
of social conditions for working children. Children's rights are
an invention of secular philosophers. Elsewhere, children's champions
included almost anyone except the Churches. For example, the first
law in Germany to prohibit the employment of children (under the
age of nine) in facories, past in 1839 at the behest of the military
authorities who were concerned at the poor physical condition of
their recruits. Nowhere did any mainstream Churches lead the move
to protect children.
As in every area of reform, the Churches have followed secular
opinion and very few Churches are now prepared to defend the opinions
that they held with absolute certainty in the nineteenth century.
|
