zeus,
I know the difference between homosexuality and pedophilia, but you are ignoring the facts.
A pedophile is a person that engages in sex with a child, not a consenting teenager, not a confused teenager, and not a coerced teenager.
Joey Buttaffuco is not a pedophile, he is a dirt bag. So are a lot of these priests.
That doesn't make it any less of a crime if the teenager was still under age, but it suggests a DIFFERENT PROBLEM from pedophilia. All the cases should not be lumped together as pedophilia! They aren't all pedophilia.
The other point is that it's almost always male on male and rarely male on female. That also suggests something else vs. the general population.
This is the reality.
I'll lay it out step by step. Take it one step at a time.
1. The Catholic church teaches that there is nothing wrong with having homosexual feelings. There is only something wrong with homosexual acts. You don't have to agree with that, but it's their rules, not mine, and not yours.
2. There is nothing in the rules that prevents homosexuals from becoming Catholic priests.
3. The stats I have seen suggest that the percentage of homosexuals in the general population is somewhere around 5%-10%. Given that there is probably an agenda in those stats, it's probably at the lower end of that range or even lower.
4. The only stat I have ever seen on Catholic priests suggests that about 40% of all priests are homosexuals. That study was done internally by the church anonymously not too long ago.
5. I suspect that well adjusted homosexuals are no more prone to pedophilia or sexual abuse than well adjusted heterosexuals.
6. I am not a psychologist, but I would confidently guess that both homosexuals and heterosexuals that are comfortable with their sexuality and not interested in celibacy would not be interested in the priesthood. Celibacy probably does not account for those divergent stats. However, you still have to somehow account for the fact that there are about 40% homosexuals in the priesthood vs. about 5% in the general population.
Again, I'm not a psychologist, but I suspect that there's a percentage of men that are brought up in religious households (and some that aren't) that have feelings of homosexuality and pedophilia that are extremely confused and seek out the priesthood as a way of coping with it. I think that's a pretty good guess as to why we see these stats and these results.
If I am right, there are many men that are becoming priests for the wrong reasons. It's not their true calling to serve God/Jesus. They are becoming priests because they have problems. Eventually, many of them weaken and act on their feelings with teenage boys and even some younger boys.
You need to separate the various issues.
1. Define the problem properly - It's not all pedophilia. It's not even mostly pedophilia. To a large extent it's a concentration/subgroup of homosexuals with emotional problems.
2. Define why the church has this problem - My best guess is stated above.
3. Criticize the Church for the way it handled the problem and tried to hide it - We agree on this.
4. Understand that the Catholic Church has a lot of enemies that target it for attack with misinformation, spin and lies in order to advance a political agenda even though the church does a ton of good for people throughout the world.
5. Understand what would happen in the media because the Church has so many enemies if it started rejecting or attempting to reject people for the priesthood based on sexual orientation and other risk factors in order to reduce or eliminate the problem - It would be like profiling Muslims/blacks etc... is now, but ten times worse even though it would probably help.
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