The backbreaker

[athrock]

First, since the percentage of homosexual priests who have committed these aggressive crimes against young men is LOWER than the percentage of teachers, coaches and Protestant ministers who have done the same things, it's not actually a uniquely CATHOLIC problem.

This is an extremely disgusting thing to say and I expect you to apologize to the group of people you offended.

By that I mean that the standard of decency that I hold normal people would compel you to apologize, but I have no illusions that you will do so because you are so arrogant and you do not believe you can ever be wrong.

Because you see, I am very much into women and yet I have no desire to violate an 8 year old girl.  Yet you imply that it is the homosexual priests that are raping these boys, as if homosexuality and pedophilia are linked.  The reality is that they are just as linked as heterosexuality is linked to "heterosexual" pedophilia.  You are a bigot.  You seem to be unaware that many young girls were molested by priests also, and even if that wasn't the case, there is no reasonable connection between the sexual appreciation of a masculine, mature male body and the sexual appreciation of a pre-pubescent little boy.  You are sick.


Lastly you say coaches and teachers engage in this more often than priests?   SOURCE????

Just out of curiousity, I decided to do a bit of Googling myself, and I found some data from the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance. First, from their statement of beliefs:

OCRT Statement of Belief:

We are a multi-faith group. As of late-2012, we consist of one Atheist, Agnostic, Christian, Wiccan and Zen Buddhist. Thus, the OCRT staff lack agreement on almost all theological matters, such as belief in a supreme being, the nature of God, interpretation of the Bible and other holy texts, whether life after death exists, what form the afterlife may take, etc.

Clearly, this is not a Christian or Catholic group. Second, here are there findings on the homosexual aspect of the priest scandal:

Who are the victims of abusive priests?

The general consensus is that the vast majority of priests do not abuse young people. Among those who do abuse, most fall within the following definitions:

A small minority of abusive pedophiles who have a heterosexual orientation and are sexually attracted to pre-pubertal girls, less commonly to boys, and sometimes to both boys and girls. They often have sexual feelings to children of a particular age group -- e.g. 7 and 8 year olds.

A much larger percentage of abusive ephebophiles who are priests with a homosexual orientation. They are sexually attracted to post-pubertal young men, aged 14 to 17 years. 3 Most are also probably also attracted to adult males.

Nobody knows, with any degree of accuracy, what percentage of priests fall into each category. One can only guess from the cases that are seen in court.

Columnist Ann Coulter claimed, without citing references, that "It is a fact that the vast majority of the abuser priests – more than 90 percent – are accused of molesting teen-age boys." She criticizes The New York Times for intentionally suppressing the gender of the alleged victims by using gender-neutral terms such as the "teen-ager," the "former student," the "victim" and the "accuser." 4

Donald Cozzens, former vicar of priests at the Diocese of Cleveland, OH, wrote in the year 2000 about his experience in the Midwest:

"As a group, [child sexual] abusers tend to be married men who prey on girls, although many pedophiles abuse both girls and boys. Our respective diocesan experience revealed that roughly 90 percent of priest abusers targeted teenage boys as their victims. ... Relatively little attention has been paid to this phenomenon by church authorities. Perhaps it is feared that it will call attention to the disproportionate number of gay priests. While homosexually oriented people are no more likely to be drawn to misconduct with minors than straight people, our own experience was clear and, I believe, significant. Most priest offenders, we vicars agreed, acted out against teenage boys." 5,6 More recently, in 2002, he quoted other estimates that "90 percent to 95 percent, and some estimates say as high as 98 percent of the victims of clergy acting out [are] teenage boys." 5

Bill Blakemore of ABC NEWS.com stated in an online interview on an ABC message board: "The vast majority of cases that have come to light in this crisis, somewhere between 90-98 percent apparently, are not technically pedophilia because they are cases of homosexual abuse of teenage boys aged 13-17." 7 He probably picked up the data from Donald Cozzens' writing.

It is worth noting that if the age of consent for homosexual activity were lowered to the age of 16, as it is in many jurisdictions, then many -- if not most -- of the criminal acts by abusive priests would disappear. Most charges by the police against abusive priests would never materialize. Cases of ephebophilia would still represent an ethical quagmire, however. They would be a gross violation of the priest's ordination vows and would be an extremely harmful experience to most of the teens. For example, in Kingston, ON, Canada where our office is located, an Anglican church official was convicted of sexually abusing many dozens of young children and youths. Many people believe that two suicides resulted from these criminal acts.

And this regarding the relative frequency of abuse by Catholic priest relative to Protestant groups:

How do levels of abuse by Catholic and Protestant compare?

You guessed it! Nobody knows with any accuracy.

Alan Cooperman wrote in the Washington Post:

"Gary Schoener, a psychologist whose Walk-In Counseling Center in Minneapolis has consulted with more than 1,000 victims of clerical sexual abuse, believes that the percentage of abusers is no higher among Catholic priests than among Protestant ministers. But in his experience, he said, priests have more victims because they operate longer before they are caught." 8

Some people view celibacy as an unnatural lifestyle. They speculate that a higher percentage of priests are abusers than are Protestant ministers and pastors, because of the Catholic church's celibacy requirement. The implication is that if celibacy were made optional, then priests could marry and wouldn't abuse youths and children.

Most Protestant clergy are free to marry, and most heterosexual ministers and pastors do marry. Unfortunately, we have been unable to find reliable information about the level of abuse among Protestant clergy.

There also does not seem to be any reliable information about the level of child molestation among those Roman Catholic priests who are married. Thus any abusive pedophile and hebephile data would be of such low accuracy as to be useless. (The existence of married priests within the Roman Catholic Church is a surprise to many. When the Episcopal Church decided to ordain females, about 95 Episcopal ministers in the U.S. were so distressed by the idea of sharing the priesthood with women that some converted to Roman Catholicism in order to remain in a purely male priesthood. The church allowed them to remain married.)

And compared to other groups:

Comparison of abuse in the Catholic Church with that in U.S. public schools:

A U.S. Department of Education report issued in 2004 examined a number of American studies into the prevalence of sexual misconduct by school staff. They found that between 3.5% and 50.3% of students are targets of educator sexual misconduct sometime during their school career. They found that teachers, coaches, substitute teachers were the most common offenders.

If this report is accurate, then sexual abuse by priests in the Roman Catholic church, and by other clergy, appears to pale in comparison with the abuse being experienced by children and youths in the public schools. 9

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Catholic priests are NOT exceptional in this sad reality, and quite possibly, they are less likely to commit these crimes than men in other groups.

Now you know. Tell your friends.