On February 27, 2004, The Vatican released it's long overdue report on child abuse by priests in the Catholic Church. Much of the findings were sad and depressing such as these facts:

1. Children as young as eight were molested though most of the victims were from eleven to seventeen years old.

2. 4% of the clergy or 4.400 priests were guilty.

3. Most priests only ,molested one child but 149 priests molested as many as ten children each.

4. Roman Catholics Bishops knew what was going but did nothing to stop it or to protect the victims.

However, there was one bright light in this report: The Roman Catholic Church said catagorically, that homosexuality was in no way the cause of these molestations.

For too many decades, uncaring Christians, especially those from the Fundamentalist groups, have blamed homosexuals for much of the abuse and NOW we discover they were 100% wrong.

Gay men (and lesbians) are no different than you and I and we all hold the same high moral standard in sexual matters.

Thank god, the vindication of homosexual men comes from the Church this time.

MacTheWolf

Mac,

Yes, you are absolutely correct. All the gay people that I know are honorable and are not fighting with shame and guilt over their sexual feelings. Mentally, they are much better off than a lot of my str8 acquaintences.

That is why I claim that if Gay marriage were allowed, the divorce rates would be lower than that of their str8 counterparts.

The thing is that some pediophiles prefer young boys. That at least makes them bisexual.

Str8, Gay or bi, pediophiles are in a class apart from the rest of us. We cannot blame any gender preference for the Catholic debacle.

I am thankful that it was not larger than it was. (no pun intended) I mean the problem and the number of Priests...

The microphallic so and so's...amen...

A-1

Thanks for posting that, Mac. For those of us who have been around for many years and who have actually paid attention to our fellow man, this seems a natural and expected conclusion.

For those just sleepwalking through or making judgements on personal prejudices or not critically looking at the information being poured into their brains by others, rational discovery and discussion will not sway them. They are the classic "my mind's made up, don't confuse me with the facts" types.

I've been lucky in that I've known, worked with, worked for, hired and fired people of all sorts, and I've been an open enough manager (and person) that I actually found out how these various people were put together. Strangely enough for the past [almost 40] years it is normal that when I sit down in a bar, within 20 minutes someone is telling me their life story. I don't know why this is, I don't have [LISTENER] stenciled on my forehead (I've looked very carefully), so I guess it must be my honest face.

Even just the folks working for me have been interesting. Straight, gay, TV, CD, TS, Bi, well, you name it, I've probably run into it. When one of my engineers (Scott) decided to transition, on-the-job, to Kathleen, the entire workforce had some interesting times adjusting, but we did, and I'm very happy that I was one of the folks who supported Kathy and helped getting others to understand and relax.

Bottom line is that I'm not at all surprised that "Gay Priests" were not the cause of the child molestation problems within the Catholic Church. Off-hand I'd guess that maybe 10-12 % of the priests involved were gay - the same ratio of gays found in the general population (at last best estimate).

The findings do, however, point out a systemic illness within the Church, and that is the institutional ignoring and covering up of incidents. The paying of families to shut up, but not fixing the problem is the real wrongness here.

Yes, the priests who molested children need to be exposed and turned over to the judicial system. They also need to be removed from any position that allows them that sort of access to and control of children.

But, what does not appear to be happening, and probably will not, is the exposure and prosecution of those higher up in the heirarchy who made it possible for at least 4% of the priesthood to do this sort of thing, over and over, throughout the years. Yes, there may be 4,400 priests out there RIGHT NOW who are guilty of this, but how many have their been, say, over the past 100 years?

Mac, does the report give any indication how the Church plans to eliminate this problem that is so deep within their institutions? Strong action and serious changes are needed to prevent this from just continuing once things quiet down again and it can go back "underground."

Take care,

Tom

Just a clarification for A-1:

Pediophiles are sexually aroused by dolls - as in toys.

Pedophiles are sexually aroused by chidren.

I have to wonder how far back, in the 2000 year history of the Catholic church, the practice of covering up wrongdoing by clergy goes. It's understandable that some priests will go wrong, but the church's refusal to admit that some priests are criminals, and deal with the problem in the past, makes me wonder what the priorities of the church hierarchy are.

Paolo,

SO,

...is a pseudopodophile one who has sex with artificial legs?





A-1

Nothing new. During the Renaissance, the moral perfidy of priests and monks and nuns was a common scandal often recorded in literature (see Boccaccio, Aretino, and even Dante and Chaucer). The Reformation was in large part a reaction to this perceived immorality and hypocrisy (the Protestant and heretical movements all included a dose of the anti-clerical). The ridicule of clerical dereliction was inseparable from the Enlightenment (see Voltaire, de Sade, Diderot, and of course the leaders of the French Revolution). With Napoleon's fall, the official sanctity of the clergy reasserted itself, only to wither before the Paris Commune and the communist, anarchist, and other left movements of the nineteenth century. The Mexican Revolution was in good part about the removal of a morally corrupt church from affairs of state. The U.S. Constitution prohibits the government from creating an "establishment of religion" precisely to avoid the bloody persecutions worked by empowered clergy. The list of examples is almost endless - church authority was recognized as corrupt and individual clergy as vicious for centuries; liberating society from these moral charlatans has been a defining struggle of our civilization. Forgetting history, we're once again shocked by what we find under clerical robes. Too bad children have to suffer while we relearn this lesson.

As a Protestant, I must mention sexual exploitation by clergy flourishes in those traditions. Catholicism has nothing on us.James Garfield, the only ordained minister ever to become president of the United States, may have been sexually involved, when he was a college president, with a much younger student than he. Evenutally, he married her.