A question has plagued me since the latest cluster of scandals emerged from the Catholic church.

The scandals are both about clergy who sexually abused young people and about the church hierarchy’s cover-ups. A grand jury, for instance,released a report this summerthat explained how over 300 priests in six Pennsylvania dioceses abused over 1,000 children. The report’s investigation goes back to 1947 and also details deliberate concealment by higher church officials. And Pennsylvania is hardly alone: a newly releasedstudy foundthat in Germany 1,670 church workers took part in abusing 3,677 children.

Concealment in many cases enables further abuse. As the 2002Boston GlobeSpotlight piece据透露，枢机主教劳知道神父约翰·盖根(见上图)的许多罪行。但他通过将他从一个教区转移到另一个教区的方式解决了这个问题，这减轻了教会面临的直接压力，但却使虐待行为继续存在。And Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò has recentlyallegedthat Pope Francis knew of many abuses of Cardinal McCarrick, whose victims were typically young adult seminarians (two of McCarrick’s victims were minors, though no one alleges that Francis knew of those cases).

我在这里的问题与施暴者本人有关，他们犯下了宾夕法尼亚大陪审团会用直率而令人震惊的措辞描述的那种行为:“牧师强奸了小男孩和小女孩。”

The question is this: do the priests who commit such abuses believe in God?

This is perplexing. There are reasons both to answernoand to answeryes. In favor of answeringno, it’s hard to fathom how someone who thought there was a perfectly moral,omniscient“存在”(无所不知的存在)会做一些可怕的事情，给青春期前的孩子造成创伤(通常是在那个无所不知的存在的家里)。我可以想象，一个认为上帝无所不知的人可能会在纳税申报单上偷工减料;很难想象，一个认为上帝无所不知的人，竟然会强奸一个10岁的孩子。也许那些强奸犯神父不信上帝。But in favor of answeringyes, it’s also hard to fathom how someone would go through with becoming a priest, given all the sacrifices, without having some belief in God’s existence.

Addressing this question admittedly involves heavy speculation, and even detailed reports likethis oneleave the question wide open for any given abuser. But even so, addressing this question is crucial for thinking about the role of religious “beliefs” in the moral lives of human beings, which is not so straightforward as is commonly thought.

I can think of three models of what’s going. It may be that different models apply to different cases, though I think the third is most usual.

The first model isthe faker. This type is someone who simply doesn’t believe there is a God but becomes a priest due to other motivations or pressures. The motivations could be various—to escape poverty, attraction to the lifestyle, friends were doing it, etc. But whatever his motivations, they lead him to fake a belief in God without having one. And if a faker sexually desires minors, he won’t have fear of God to prevent him from acting on those attractions. The faker, in this context, is an atheist pedophile dressed as a priest (and ordained as one).

The faker, however, seems the wrong model of what’s going on—at least for most cases. It’s true that, as Dan Dennett and Linda LaScolahave shown, clergies can harbor individuals who are closet atheists. But that’s the exception not the rule, and it’s hard to see how a large number of people intelligent enough to get through seminary (hence intelligent enough for more lucrative careers) would enter and stay in seminary without believing in God. And various evidence sits ill with this model. Geoghan, for example, entered the priesthood because his father died when he was young and he becamefascinated with the idea of heaven, which isn’t a description of a typical atheist. That takes us to the second model.

The second isthe akratic. Beingakratic意思是意志薄弱(通常或对特定的诱惑)。阿克拉蒂人会做一些事情，尽管他认为这是错误的。当然，大多数人对某些事情都很反感，比如垃圾食品、酒精、香烟或电视。但这类虐待的牧师在以下方面是akratic:他相信上帝的存在，并将恋童癖视为他会谴责的事情(因此这是错误的)，但诱惑是如此强烈，他屈服于欲望和猥亵未成年人——所有这些都相信上帝知道并谴责这些行为。

I suspect that the akratic model covers some cases, but not all.Akrasia通常是当人们屈服于眼前的诱惑时(酒在流动，所以…)Andakrasiais often followed by guilt. But Geoghan, at least, put much forethought into his abuses, actively seeking out boys who had lost their fathers so he could step in as a “father figure.” He wasn’t just succumbing to immediate temptations—he was planning ahead. And according to the reports of the man who ultimately murdered him in prison (Joseph Lee Druce), Geoghan felt no remorse for the things he’d done. So he doesn’t seem like theakratictype, and I suspect many others also aren’t.

This brings us to the third model:the rationalizer. Rationalizing involves mentally rehearsing justifications for why an action is permissible or even right, even though one’s other beliefsshouldlead to the conclusion that the action is wrong. The rationalizing abusive priest is one who devoutly believes in God and believes that God is perfectly moral, but he doesn’t draw the seemingly obvious conclusion that God would condemn child molestation. The rationalizer, rather, performs mental gymnastics to avoid this conclusion. He might reconstrue his actions as “just play” or “just helping the boys grow up.” He might tell himself that it was “fun for both” and that “a little fun is not such a big sin.” Or worse, he might tell himself thathe’s so important他对别人施加的任何惩罚都是无罪的。

后一条路线似乎就是盖根走的路线。When Druce, his murderer, confronted Geoghan in prison about how he ruined the lives of 150 to 200 hundred children, Geoghan, Druce reports, responded, “I’m worth 300 of them.”

So I think rationalizing the actions, while still in some sense “believing” in God, is the likely picture of the minds of many or most abusive priests. I hasten to add that I don’t intend any of these models as acomplete虐待背后的心理图景;这些模型针对的是一个特定的问题，“他们相信上帝吗?”More complete models might also reference the urge to preserve and exhibit institutional power, since abuses are often exercises in power and not just sexual desire (this seems especially likely for theabuse in Ireland). But even so, rationalization will be present much of the time. And as I’veargued before, religious “beliefs”—however devout—don’t typically work as ordinary factual beliefs would; in particular, they are compartmentalized and open toimaginative elaboration. That makes an ideal set-up for rationalization. And it also gives systematic grounds for doubting the power of religious “belief” toincrease moral behavior以任何持久的或普遍的方式