I don't write much about it, but the ritual nature of pederasty (a better term than pedophilia) is something that plays a big role in how I understand religion. Maybe it's time for a THREAD https://twitter.com/s_r_tarnmoor/status/1273242027250061312

My stylized picture of pre-Christian sex: it was a tool of violent domination. Procreative sex with women created new victims. Ritual sex both victimized male adolescents and initiated them into the next generation of perpetrators. This is because they worshipped demons.

Of course it's a stylized picture. I'm sure there's tons of apparent counterexamples; cultures that didn't have infanticide, or not much, or that didn't have ritual pederasty, or not much. Fine, whatever. It's not an empirical generalization, it's a hermeneutic.

It doesn't deny that some cultures were better than others. In some tribes every child was sacrificed or raped. In ancient Rome, exposure was forbidden, and only slaves were raped. This is the difference Girard talks about between cultures of violence and cultures of justice.

In primitive societies violence is undisguised demon-worship. In advanced societies demon-worship is marginalized in favor of abstract justice: people aren't victimized (killed, raped) to placate the demon, but because they Deserve It (by being guilty, by being slaves).

Sidebar: Girard doesn't talk much about demons because he wants secular anthropologists to take him seriously; he talks about the "scapegoat mechanism" instead. But he pretty clearly understands that the mechanism is wielded by Powers and Principalities.

So then Christianity comes along, tells people to stop the buggery and child-murder. This is central, not peripheral, to the Christian message, because those things were central to humanity's enslavement to demonic powers.

But wait! The Catholic Church is, infamously, Pederasty HQ!

There's two ways to respond to this charge. 1) Point out that the Church isn't actually any more of an offender than other large groups, it just keeps better records. 2) Blame modern culture's malign influence.

I don't think either of those is quite right. I'd say something more like this:

Demons infest corporate bodies. B.C., did so openly, or under the name Justice. A.D., justice has been cleansed with mercy, the demons driven into hiding. Where better to hide than the Church itself?

Recently, cf. this post https://twitter.com/s_r_tarnmoor/status/1270363954007736325, the demons have adopted the name of individual Freedom (which is convincing b/c it points out that Restraint/Law/Justice has demonic roots). This has emboldened the pederasty cult hidden within the Church, but it didn't create it.

It's led, too, to legalized abortion and alphabet-soup "rights." Note these are done openly, as in pre-Justice times. Hence I'm skeptical that there's also a resurgence of secret satanic ritual pederasty a la Pizzagate. Such theories misunderstand the historic dynamics in play.

Insofar as satanic sex parties a la Epstein's temple / Eyes Wide Shut / True Detective Season 2 are real, the satanism is a kind of LARPing, no different in kind from "Church of Satan" atheist individualism. They don't worship demons, they worship freedom, ie Antichrist.

In this they differ from the pederasty of the Catholic Church, Boy Scouts, public schools, etc. Those ARE demonic, not antichristic. But they're not part of any world-wide conspiracy (except, maybe, within the Church, cf. Vigano's "Deep Church", https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/archbishop-viganos-powerful-letter-to-president-trump-eternal-struggle-between-good-and-evil-playing-out-right-now).

They're just what "naturally" (demonically) happens whenever evil men find places of power over adolescents within corporate bodies. In a sense, they're what the antichristic ideology of Freedom claims it will liberate us from.

The above will maybe maybe clear why I'm deeply suspicious of people who /too/ stridently condemn pedophilia. Pederasty is demonic, yes. But the antichristic ideology of Freedom that fetishes autonomy & consent, and so gives cover for infanticide and sodomy, is even worse.

When someone like @Logo_Daedalus says "I can forgive anything except child abuse," what I hear is the antichristic motto: "I can forgive anything except the entirety of pre-modern culture."