The real cause of the Scandal was “homophobia”

47 comments

• Both teachers, the priest, the principal and the diocese should be sued by both sets of parents.  Immediately. 

  Obviously, the priest is in trouble.  If one or more of the girls are under the legal age of consent in that state, what he has done is statutory rape—which is a felony, punishable by imprisonment in the state penitentiary in most states, I believe.  It is here in Michigan.

  In addition, many states have reporting requirements, which have very serious penalties if they are disregarded.  These teachers are probably in trouble with the law, if it is followed up.  This is a crime also, and can lead to the loss of teaching certifications and the serving of jail terms.

• As the article said, he plead guilty and got eight years.

• I guess when you have a disoder, like attraction to the same sex, you have a tendency to say disordered things.

• Maybe David France has been slumming in John Hensen’s bible along with the Archbishop of Canterbury.

  Regardless, so long as “it’s all the Catholics fault” can be applied, alls well in their world.

• With a church full of gay men, there is no apparent answer to this problem. Or have I become more cynical than I care to admit.

  With the spotlight on our politicians, others are rejoicing with the silence from Rome.

  Is the Vatican still open?

• Our Church is the most heavily queer organization in the country (outside of queer groups themselves).  The Church has been queerized to a far greater degree than society itself. 

  Homosexual men are to be loved, as are all.  But true love means acknowledging that they suffer from a severe sexual disorder – which greatly tempts them to sexual perversion and deviance – and either helping them to be cured of it, or helping them to live as chaste life, as all Christians are called to.

  People with such a severe disorder should not be priests.  NO GOOD COMES FROM THE QUEERIZATION OF THE PRIESTHOOD.  ONLY BAD COMES OF IT.

  The results of the homosexualization of our Church?

  1) Active dissent, at all levels, with regard to Catholic sexual morality and homosexual acts (only 50% of priests believe they are sinful);
  2) Rampant homosexual activity among homosexual priests (yes, some are chaste, but a great many are not);
  3) The rape and molestation of thousands of teenage boys by priests;
  4) Molestor shuffling, lies and obfuscations on a daily basis from our supposedly ‘holy’ bishops (the ones who have not been caught engaging in perverted sex acts themselves with boys);
  5) The clear understanding among today’s Catholic male youth that a good many priests are effeminate, sexually disordered, and not unlikely to be looking for some boys to ‘befriend.’ (Around here, at Catholic schools, teenage boys make constant homosexual priest jokes…)
  6) A level of distrust so high that most parents will never allow their sons to be alone with a priest.

  The dequeerizaiton of the priesthood is under active discussion at the Vatican – but many, including the American bishops, are opposing it. 

  The question is – are we going to have an effeminate, queer, homosexualized Church, or one with priests who are normal men, and who don’t look with lust at our sons?

• I recall reading a visionary’s description of the priesthood: there was a field filled with priests and half of them were on fire.  This is the truly sad part of this situation, FOR THEM.

• It’s interesting to me that France wants to imply that homosexual priests raped teenagers because they were repressed.  It’s my understanding from some of my homosexual male friends that young teens are much the subject of homosexual lust.  For France to blame it on Catholic repression is simply ridiculous.  He needs to take a look at his own culture.

• Peace, all.

  What “Sinner” and other commentators seem to want is to have it both ways: that gays have taken over the priesthood since Vatican II, but that doesn’t seem to jive with the peak of sexual predation in the 60’s—by pre-conciliar trained seminaries. So facts are altered to fit the ready-made conclusion.

  Simple facts are just so hard to reconcile, whether one is a homosexual activist or a traditionalist Catholic.

• What I argue is that these guys represent homosexuality in pure and total repression. :comment_author>
  rbitler@optonline.net
  
  67.83.96.124
  2004-06-25 12:52:42
  2004-06-25 16:52:42
  Earth to Todd: 

  NORMAL MEN DO NOT SEXUALLY MOLEST TEENAGE BOYS.

  NORMAL MEN ARE DISGUSTED BY HOMOSEXUAL ACTS.

  Further, given that homosexual priests are a minority in the priesthood, and brought about 90% of the molestations, they are far, far more likely to abuse teenage boys than normal men are to abuse teenage girls.

  Without a queerized priesthood, there would have been no major scandal.

• Various inane and harmful idiocies now being advanced by certain bishops, psychologists, homosexuals, homosexualist organizations, heretics and dissenters within our wounded and bleeding and sodomized Church;

  1) The men who molested thousands of teenage boys within the Church were not homosexual;

  2) The men who molested thousands of teenage boys were homosexual, but only raped because they were ‘repressed’ (the one above).  [Acutally, they did it because they thought they could get away with it…];

  3)  The men who molested thousands of teenage boys were homosexual, but can be treated with a three-week stay at a homosexual run ‘clinic’ in rural Pennsylvania;

  4) Homosexuals are not sexually attracted to teenage boys;

  5) Our priesthood benefits from being effeminized and queerized;

  6) There are no webs of homosexual priests, engaging in blackmail and trying to hide different disturbing facts;

  7) Your sons are now safe in the close company of homosexual priests;

  8) Homosexual priests are completely committed to Catholic sexual morality;

  9) You common folk, you people-on-the-street, who think the scandal has something to do with rampant homosexuality within the priesthood, are just so, so ignorant;

  10)  We know what’s best and you don’t.

  (But in the meantime, we’d like to you to send your teenage sons to that overnight retreat in the next town next weekend…)

  People like the (ACTIVE HOMOSEXUAL) man who wrote this book are a clear and present danger to our children.

• Peace, Sinner.

  Point by point:

  1. Wrong, some pedophiles and ephebophiles were heterosexual by base orientation, some homosexual.

  2. Wrong: lots of flashpoints for predation, and the most likely were psychosexual immaturity and prior abuse. Addiction also plays into the picture, especially addiciton to power.

  3. Most professionals realized by the early 80’s that sex addictions are incurable.

  4. Ephebophiles are attracted to teen males. Some of these predators are gay, some not.

  5. Since most of the abuse took place before the Council, how does this reconcile with your theory about dissent?

  6. I’ve even known of webs of heterosexual priests who have done this in regard to affairs with women. That priests sometimes prefer the company of unhealthy peers is nothing new.

  7. Right.

  8. As with all priests: some are, some aren’t. It would be better if all were, but this is the planet Earth after all.

  9. Right.

  10. Sounds like the motto of the traditionalists to me.

  Valiant try, my friend, but you should stick to arguing your own points instead of making parodies of others. Heinous as sexual predation of children, teens, and women may be, the major scandal remains the complicity of bishops in covering up, intimidating victims, and obstructing justice. Catholics have known about predator priests for years; this was nothing new. What has shocked and scandalized the Church is that many bishops are accessories to crimes against the innocent.

• Todd,

  No offense but, where do you get the idea that ephebophilia actually exists as a distinct category of sexual orientation?  Such would seem to be implied from your post.

  I can tell you that there is no disorder or recognized orientation within the field of psychology called ephebophilia.  The word is nothing more than a neologism, concocted for the purposes of excusing chicken-hawk’s more public indiscretions.

• Peace, Bubbles.

  I think that ephebophilia is the preferred term among traditionalist Catholics who wish to emphasize their theory that gays are behind all the sexual abuse of minors. I’m just speaking the MaChurch lingo. Like pedophilia, ephebophilia is not a sexual orientation, but a sexual pathology. Where a person is born straight or gay, abusers are the way they are because of nurture.

  I think unequal sexual relationships involve far more than sexual orientation of the perp as a driving force.

  In the secular helping professions, child abusers are often (but not always) indifferent to the gender of victims. Combine this testimony with the tendency of pre-conciliar priests not having as much access to young girls, and I think the homosexual exploitation angle is pretty much one chapter of an otherwise lengthy book.

• Todd, I don’t concur.  Apart from a few, select individuals riding their personal hobby-horses (hardly constituting a theory conspiracy), no one suggests that gays are behind all of the sexual abuse issues in the church.  They’re just behind 80% of the cases, not 100%.

  – Ephebophilia cannot be considered a pathology.  There is nothing pathological about being sexually attracted to someone possessing secondary sexual characteristics.  It’s one of the keys of normal sexual attraction.  That it occurs in homosexually oriented individuals should come as no surprise.  But the pathology there lies in the gender conflict, not in the age of the target.

  – The pathology of having sex with underage children lies in the will to seduce, coerce or intimidate someone into a sexual relationship against their will, by exploiting the fact that the person is incapable of giving fully informed consent due to their lack of maturity.

  – Of course, the hallmark of pedophilia is the sexualization of immature relating.

  – The research literature states the opposite of your assertion.  The vast majority of sexual abusers are exclusively heterosexual or homosexual.  Very few jump the fence regularly.  Indeed, most pedophiles express revulsion at the idea.  This may be a self-serving declaration by pedophiles, but it’s common across the population.

• Peace, Bubbles.

  We agree to disagree.

  I suspect that men born gay are behind a slightly higher percentage of cases than the total gay population of the priesthood. The Jay study wasn’t clear on this, but the evidence pointed that way. Furthermore, child sexual abusers in the secular world most often perpetrate regardless of victim gender. Most Catholic victims were boys? That’s not hard to figure out: that’s who pre-conciliar priests had the most access to.

  Ephebophilia, like pedophilia, is not primarily a sexual pathology. Like rape or the seduction of women, it’s primarily about power. And funny, wasn’t the whole bishop cover-up deal about power, too?

  And even if we were talking about a sexual pathology, I would still disagree. It is not normal or healthy to insist on a non-mutual relationship. That’s why batterers, control-freaks, and fetishists are also pathological. I’m intrigued you would not consider the seduction of teens non-pathological.

  I would be interested in seeing the research literature you allude to. My understanding was that pedophiles run both ways because of the similarity of pre-pubescent children. Additionally, some predators might indeed gravitate to teen males only, but that happens in prisons, too, even among perps who were born heterosexual.

  Unlike most people commenting in St Blog’s you make reasonable points, so I’d ask how you address the possibility that some priest-perps “act gay” in the sense that they interact with men, but might actually be living at odds with their root sexual orientation. Also, how do you account for the 20% (as you state)? Are we not better served to address the manipulation of minors directly, rather than focus (seemingly) exclusively on the homosexual issue?

• We have a couple of different things that have been conflated into the same thing, too.

  There’s the rare case of true pedophilia—I believe John Geoghan was actually a pedophiliac.  That is caused by a reasonably rare and very twisted style of preferentially relating to small children sexually.  It’s a psychological issue, with arrested development as a cause.

  Then there’s the cases of ephebophilia in Boston, and other places.  Yes, it happened, but people are confused about why it happened.  Do we have that many gay priests, etc?  It could have been one or a mixture of a number of things:
  1) each priest involved bankrupt to the point where they would stoop as low as homosexual statutory rape to assert their
  a) sexual desires, b) authority (not likely in my view—priests are adulated over already), c) satanic activity.
  2) a generally sexualized atmosphere among the priests of Boston and a few places where kids (generally boys) were remarked and accepted to be bait and prize for those wanting to assert their a, b & c.
  3) groups of priests working together such that they could get more a, b & c.

  Honestly, no one quite knows how much group involvement there was.  No one quite knows how much satanic involvement there has been.  This is an issue no one wants to talk about.

  And then there’s the case of the homosexuals in the seminaries.  This situation is highly eroticised, as anyone who’s ever witnessed it can attest to.  This IS about SEX.  It only becomes about power when there are turf wars over who gets to be there, and what the Church should be teaching. 

  There is a lot of blatant aggression by homosexuals on the populations of seminaries (and indeed on the general population) to get us to allow certain kinds of perversions.  It’s wrong.  But it happens.

• Hardhead and Sinner,

  You have defined homosexuality as a disorder.  The church defines homosexual actions as disordered (not the person).  The APA does not define a homosexual as disordered.  Both of you openly put down the assessment of the psychological world, yet are perfectly happy to use psychological terms to back up your opinions. When it suits you, they have a psychological disorder.  When it doesn’t, the opinions of the psyschological world are part of what is behind the problem.

  Sinner, in one post you say that homosexuals are in the minority, then 10 MINUTES later, you cry that it is running rampant in our priesthood. 

  I understand that both of you would love to rid the priesthood of all homosexuals.  But when you contradict yourselves regularly, its hard to take your opinon seriously.  These arguments smack of a mob mentality

  The facts are less than 2% of all our priests have molested. 90% of these cases involve teen boys If the priesthood contains 10% homosexuals, then a majority of our homosexual priests are not predatory.  Continuing with the facts, 13.5% of US teachers admit to having sex with a student.  The number of abusers within that group translates to over 10 times the amount of total priests we have in the US.  Last time I checked, kids are still going to school.

  Get rid of the abusers?  ABSOLUTELY!  But there are many, many chaste homosexuals priests that are doing wonderful ministries.  Torches and pitchforks are not necessary to heal our Church.

  Jaime

• But Jaime, what if only 2% are interested in kids, and the other 8% are interested in each other?  Or in going to the local freeway rest stop? 

  And what if the number of practicing homosexuals is not 10% of the priesthood, but more like 25%? 

  This is what people wonder about.  The news media doesn’t pick up everything.  They have an HUGE agenda and they’re not omnicscient either.

  My advice?  Stay FAR AWAY from swishy priests.  Keep your kids FAR AWAY from swishy priests.  I’m not going to tell you that if you refuse to see evil, you deserve what you get.  But I am going to tell you that you have been warned—by me and by many others. 

• “And what if the number of practicing homosexuals is not 10% of the priesthood, but more like 25%? “

  Well that would certainly add to my argument that not all homosexual priests are predatory.  It would certainly argue against Hardheads assertion in another thread that “all homosexuals will eventually molest”. 

  If the other 8% are interested in each other (or other men) that is no different than the 90% of priests that are interested in women.  Unless the Church makes it mandatory that only Eunuchs can become priests, there will always be an attraction.  Ones who act upon it and don’t remain chaste need to be dealt with.  Priests that abuse their power and manipulate teens, parishioners and those they minister to need to be removed.

• Actually, there was a Kansas City Star report on the prevalence of AIDS in the priesthood which was quickly hushed up.  It appears, according to that study, that priests die of AIDS at a rate about 4X that of the general population.  What does that suggest, given the population statistics of the prevalence of AIDS?

  Do we really want to pay for this?  Do we really want to subject our kids to this?  Think about it.

  Do you really think that being a priest is a matter of trollling for sex?  Should a priest be spending his time this way?

  Think also about scripture, which condemns the homosexual act (and make no mistake—also the ones who do it—damnation refers to people, not acts) many times. 

  This is the real problem.  It is widespread and it is unspeakably evil. 

• michigancatholic

  Are you suggesting that I am making the argument that “being a priest is a matter of trolling for sex”?

• I hope that’s not what it has become for some, especially for some priests.  And I hope that advocating it has not become one either.

  The fact is that this IS a problem.  And since the real purpose and teaching of the church is not primarily about SEX, then those who are pre-occupied with it might be mis-employed.

  Indeed, it is the case that the priesthood is an ideal way to insert oneself into the intimate confidence of a person, while maintaining secrecy and absolute trust. 

  I contend that there are a fair number of people in the priesthood who should not be there.  Ie. they are there for reasons other than purely religious reasons—ie seeking heaven and helping other people attain heaven also….  Perhaps they are there for social, political, sexual or other reasons—to obtain change, etc.  Or maybe it’s something respectable to do if you weren’t going to get married anyway??? 

  It shuts up your relatives and they like you again.  It may be as simple as that for some.

• Peace, all.

  Jaime’s posts make the most sense here. I suspect that most Catholics priests are generally celibate and chaste, including most priests born gay. Those who argue that seminaries are becoming increasingly homosexual have anecdotal stories, no hard evidence. But if it were true that there are more gay priests since Vatican II, what does it say about these homosexuals that the rate of predation of children and teens has plummeted since 1972? Certainly not all abuse since then has been reported, but given the greater openness of society to receive a child’s testimony, one would think from all the talk that pedophilia and ephebophilia are still rampant.

  By the way, I understood the Jay report to find that about 4/5ths of victims were male, the same fraction were teens, and the percentage of male victims 13-18 was about 73%.

  Any priest sexually acting out with anyone, consenting adult or whomever,  doesn’t belong in ministry. Any bishop who has knowingly moved a predator—the same. Scapegoating faithful homosexual priests is at best wishful thinking, and at worst, gravely sinful.

• Oh, Todd, I’m sure they haven’t caught them all.  And the nature of this thing makes it so people don’t have a chance to speak to a lawyer til years after it happens.

  You see, there are a bunch of big payoffs for abusing kids rather than adults.

  1) little boys don’t get pregnant.
  2) little boys don’t usually have AIDS.  Don’t go tilt—this is a worry for a gay man who does not want his sexual activity revealed by an illness he could catch.
  3) little boys are not believed many times.
  4) you can scare little boys into silence.
  5) little boys cannot afford to hire lawyers.
  6) you can confuse little boys for years and by the time they say something it can be past the statute of limitations.
  7) little children feature big in satanic rituals.
  8) some little kids are not watched very closely by their parents.
  9) some parents are enamored of the idea they may be raising a priest and want the boy to spend time with the priest—instant access.

  big payoffs, lots of them.

  I do agree with you that “any priest, acting out with anyone, consenting adult or whomever, doesn’t belong in ministry.  Any bishop who has knowingly moved a predator—the same.” 

  I am very careful who I go to for confession, etc.  I urge everyone else to do the same. 

  I would not allow the minor children in my family to be alone with any priest for a minute.  Sorry, but that is the case.

  And I will not listen to a priest who defied church teaching.  I have walked out of Mass for it and would do so again in a minute if they defy church teaching as it has been taught for the whole 2000 years of chruch history.

• Peace, mc.

  Your payoff list seems accurate to me, though as you introduce it, it applies for girls as well as boys with two exceptions: female adolescents in #1, and #2 for anyone abused by another person.

  I’m not sure what defiance of church teaching has to do with sexual abuse, as most of modern human society, not to mention the legal system pretty much abhors the notion of adults having sex with kids.

  If you’re suggesting that liberal defiance has something to do with sex abuse, I think you’ve badly missed the mark. As progressive efforts have solidified in the Church over the past thirty-some years, rates of child sexual abuse have dropped dramatically. I think the abuses of pre-conciliar seminaries were a large contribuing factor to the formation of predators in the clergy, but I would stop short of suggesting that child abuse is a sin of traditionalists. I think pre-conciliar systems were safer for predators, safer by a long shot.

• “You have defined homosexuality as a disorder.  The church defines homosexual actions as disordered (not the person).”

  This is incorrect.  The church does not limit its teachings to “homosexual actions.”  Rather, the church teaches that homosexual inclinations are intrinsically disordered.  Therefore, it is not inaccurate to speak of homosexuality, that is, the inclination to homosexual conduct, as disordered.

• Todd, the reason I used “little boys” in some of the statements is that abuse of boys is where the problem is most often seen.  The reasons apply to both little girls and little boys, teenaged boys and teenaged girls.  It’s just that some of our more retarded and immoral clergy in Boston have had boys as their targets more often than girls.  Probably because Boston seems to be a hotbed of clerical queers.  Queers who would like to ping each other, but probably don’t want to catch AIDS and be found out or some such reason.  So they harass kids for jollies because they’ve been all-round safer targets (for the reasons above).  And hey, as long as you’re going to be a pervert, you might as well do it right, yes?

  I’m just waiting for some newspaper to do an expose on kids who caught AIDS and STDs from their priestly encounters of the crappy kind.  Or the numbers who have subsequent mental problems/suicides etc. OTOH, maybe they won’t do it because it will upset the oh-so-holy alliance between the press and the perverts.  But the perverts shouldn’t be lulled too much.  After all the press is in it for the power and the $$$$ and they will sell out the perverts if the pot gets rich enough, ala DMN, Boston Globe.

  As to dissent, homosexuals, by their very nature and definition want to upset at least one doctrine—the prohibition of homosexual sex.  This leads to blackmail and all kinds of other things, fast.  I don’t trust any of them.  Period.  I don’t have to.  It’s not mandatory.  You don’t like it? Don’t look.

  In fact, I don’t trust any dissidents.  Don’t have to listen to them.  Don’t have to talk to them.  I don’t have anything to learn from them.  Period. 

  BTW, PMC is right.  The Bible says homosexuals, it doesn’t actually qualify as to “not the person” when it talks about things that send one to hell.  Ideas don’t go to hell—unrepentant sinners do.

   

   

• Todd,

  Some points:
  “I suspect that men born gay…”
  I have to reject the “born gay” assertion; my understanding is that it has no basis in fact.

  “child sexual abusers in the secular world most often perpetrate regardless of victim gender”
  If one is discussing single-offense or opportunistic abusers, then yes, that can hold true.  However, for those persons whose primary sexual orientation is toward pre-pubescent children, IOW Pedophiles, the research suggests that the sex of the child is crucial in the vast majority of subjects.

  “Ephebophilia, like pedophilia, is not primarily a sexual pathology”
  I have to reject the use of the word “Ephebophilia” as I have no reason to believe such a thing exists as a separate or distinct category.  It is entirely normative to experience sexual attraction to a person of the opposite sex displaying secondary sexual characteristics, who is nevertheless, younger than the age of consent.  I can only regard the unspoken assertion of legitimacy in the use of the word as being artificial and without merit.

  “Itimes that discrimination is warranted, however, unjust discrimination is never warranted.  Remember, evil can never bring about good.

  Camilam

• Todd, one more thing:  you seem to assert that the rate of abuse within the Church is dropping or has dropped.  I would caution you in that the rate of reporting and rate of abuse are two distinct things.  The average lapse of time between first offense of a male against a boy and the boy’s reporting it to anyoneis 20 – 30 years.  Usually the wife or a substance-abuse counselor is the first to know.  As far as I know, there is no substantiated reason to believe this span of time is changing.  My belief is that 20 years from now, we will be dealing with offenses that are happening right now.

• I think what Domenico wrote was just fine, actually. I think the Catholic faith is not about sex primarily at all.  This is some sort of side issue that looks big to people who don’t have a clue about the real Catholic faith.

• Camilam,

  I’m not sure in what sense you’re using the word ‘caveat.’  What I wrote is the Church’s teaching.  A ‘caveat’ to that would suggest a limitation or qualification, and to the extent you may be claiming that there is a qualification on the teaching on the nature of the disorder, I can’t agree with you. 

  You’re correct that homosexual inclinations are a trial for many, and are not in and of themselves sinful.  Yet, I’m puzzled by some of your choices of words and emphases.

  Yes, homosexual persons are called to chastity, as are all Christians, and to seek “self-mastery,sona Christi”, as each of them is called to do.

  Am I right, or do you want to clarify what you mean by “interested”?

  Todd: 

  “I suspect that men born gay are behind a slightly higher percentage of cases than the total gay population of the priesthood.”

  No one is born “gay”.  No one.  “Gay” implies a conscious decision to embrace as good (and, most often, act out on) one’s disordered same-sex attraction.  “Homosexual” is a condition characterized by same-sex attraction whose cause(s) may or may not be genetically influenced.  Indeed, whether anyone is born homosexual is a matter on which scientific research is, at very best (i.e., “best” for those who think of such a disordered condition as good), grossly inconclusive.

  Please, Todd, stop equating “gay” with “homosexual”.  Intelligent discourse on the subject demands scrupulous maintenance of this key distinction.

• “…trials are made to be passed.  What would be the point of the trial if there was no positive outcome?”

  That all depends on what you mean by “passed,” Camilam.  If by “passed,” you’re referring to resurrection to eternal life with Christ, then I’d agree.  OTOH, if you’re contending that trials are “made to be passed” in this lifetime, then I think you’re wrong.  I would think that an exclusive attraction to persons of the same sex is a trial that would be quite hard for one to consider as having “passed,” as opposed to being something that one must struggle with daily.  I’d say the same about alcoholism.  I don’t think an alcoholic will ever have “passed” his trial.  He just struggles for the daily grace to live his life in accordance with God’s plan.  Start thinking you’ve ‘passed’, and you’re in real trouble. 

  I think we can conceive of a _potential_ “positive outcome” that may be inherent in all trials, but I’d contend that that has more to do with cooperating with God’s grace and offering up one’s suffering than with “passing the trial.”

• PMC,

  Passed:  I guess that I would say both.  I think that there are some homosexuals who do in fact find “self-mastery.”  But I think that it is inherent in the human person that both can be attained.  God doesn’t make things that are impossible.

  As for the “positive outcome,”  I absolutely agree with you.

  We are on the same page, my friend.

  Camilam

• People can and do fail trials all the time.  Great fortunes are made in gambling and prostitution on this premise.  Indeed, have you ever seen the red-light district in Amsterdam, complete with the people who lay in the street because they cannot or will not control their habits?  Don’t be naive.

  Steve’s right on the distinction between *gay* and *homosexual* too.  Homosexual is a term describing sexual inclination.  Gay is a term describing acting out.  They’re very different descriptions.

• Steve

  Substitute “interested in” with “attracted to” if that clarifies things for you.  My point was that priests are going to have sexual desires. It was not to infer that all priests act upon them.  It was simply to recognize that our priests, both heterosexual and homosexual would have these desires.  If both are living chaste lives, there is no difference between the two. 

• Todd—

  But if it were true that there are more gay priests since Vatican II, what does it say about these homosexuals that the rate of predation of children and teens has plummeted since 1972?

  I’m not sure where you’re getting your figures, but—for Boston, according to the AG’s report (may still be on their website)—figures for the 40s and 50s averaged about one complaint per year, figures for the 60s, 70s and early 80s jumped to 10 or more per year; the numbers didn’t start to go down until 1984 (when Law came in, actually).

• michigancatholic,

  “People can and do fail trials all the time.”

  I understand this.  However, I choose to look at the glass half full.  I choose to give ALL people (gay or straight) the benefit of the doubt that while sinful, they can find the road to Christ.  It means that they must go through trials, but that while the trial may be life long, they can, in fact, overcome their weakness and find “self-mastery” in whatever they do.

  Self-mastery and trials are not prinicples strictly for the homoexual.  There are many trials that straight people must go through all the time.  Pick an addiction, or better yet, pick a pathology.  If a drug addict can overcome his trial, so can a homosexual.  If a chronic liar can learn to tell the truth, he has overcome his pathology.  Why are we so quick to lump all homosexuals?  They have every opportunity to find Christ.  They have every opportunity acheive “self-mastery.”  To deny this opportunity is to unjustly discriminate.  We simply cannot do this, it is against what the Church teaches.

  “…have you ever seen the red-light district in Amsterdam, complete with the people who lay in the street because they cannot or will not control their habits?  Dont the purpose of sex is to beget new human life, and that those whose sexual drive is turned in some other direction entirely suffer from a serious psychological abnormality.

  As for the APA, it understood homosexuality to be a serious disorder for years and years, until gay activists got a minority of members of the association to change that designation.  Whom do I trust?  What the man on the street knows, or what some pin-headed psychologists (like the ones who repeatedly ‘cured’ homosexual molesters) tell us?  The average homosexual man today carries multiple venereal diseases, and has a life-span 20 years less than the average normal man.  That’s NOT normal.  It’s the result of a highly disordered inclination to misuse God’s beautiful sexual faculty – meant to create new human life within the context of life-long and God-blessed marriage.

  “Sinner, in one post you say that homosexuals are in the minority, then 10 MINUTES later, you cry that it is running rampant in our priesthood. “

  Yes, Jaime, that’s correct.  They are not at all mutually exclusive.  It is a minority within the priesthood that is homosexual (in most places), though it is a sizeable minority.  The priesthood is ALL MALE, and among the homosexuals in that ALL MALE priesthood, there are abundant opportunities to engage in homosexual acts.  Surveys of priests indicate that the majority of homosexual priests are NOT chaste.  (And just imagine normal priests living among willling and ready women day-after-day.  It would be much harder from them to be chaste.)

  “I understand that both of you would love to rid the priesthood of all homosexuals.  But when you contradict yourselves regularly, its hard to take your opinon seriously.  These arguments smack of a mob mentality.”

  I haven’t contradicted myself, Jaime.  The ‘mob’ mentality is that which exists within the Church, many elements are trying to tell us that having lots of homosexual priests is ‘good’ for the Church.  It’s not.  It leads to homosexual acts among priests, a watering down of the teaching of Catholic sexual morality, in many places to actual promotion of homosexuality, and finally, to the rapes and molestations of teenage boys.

  That there are some chaste homosexual priests does not in any way make it prudent or safe for children to have a homosexualized priesthood. 

  We need priests who are normal men.

• “Ephebophilia, like pedophilia, is not primarily a sexual pathology. Like rape or the seduction of women, ithere, because this is only a blog, this is a turning point for the culture and the church.

  You think back on this 20 years from now, and you remember it.  You will see that this argument is not what you, in your silliness, have taken it to be.

  We’ve had quite a few near misses but this is the first time we are on an unavoidable collision with the culture in quite this way.  Even the non-catholics are watching in fascination, because they can see it coming.  That’s what all the notoriety is about. 

  Here is a fine example called rightly enough “Gay marriage places church and state in historic clash.”  It is a no brainer now—there’s going to be fireworks, my friends.

  Catholics who’ve been on the net for years have been watching this develop.  You’ve probably seen it develop yourselves.  They’ve been saying that the time is coming when Catholics will have to choose.  The time is coming when the party is over.  We’re just about there.  We’ve got a little ways to go, but most of the details are in place.

  We’re going to take a beating and it’s going to be ugly.  Boston was just the beginning.  And there’s nothing on earth you or I are going to be able to do about it except to submit to God’s will and profess the truth of Scripture and Tradition.

  I wish you well, and I wish you faithfulness.  This is bigger than a silly argument in Domenico’s blog.  Understand?

• Michigancatholic

  Have I been silly?  I will fully admit to it.  Tis a reaction I have when statistically and theologically backed statements are responded to with an assertion that I am naive and have an ill informed gut. 

  “watching this develop”  “The time is coming when the party is over.”“We’re just about there” 

  Its these conspiratorial indirect statements that gets to the core of all these threads.  Should we trust the leaders of our Church?  You don’t.  I do.  Is there an evil satanic conspiracy to bring down Mother Church?  Absolutely.  Its been going on for over 2000 years now. You would say that the latest scandal was a victory for evil.  I would say the true victory lies in the fear and mistrust that is spread in the aftermath.  The sweeping generalizations about good chaste men who have been lumped in with the 2% of horrible priests that have abused their position and their charge. 

  Actually Boston wasn’t the beginning.  The beginning was with Father Porter in 1992 in Minnesota.  Yes the things we can do about it include submitting to God’s will and profess the truth of Scripture and Tradition.  But God’s will calls us to act out of love, not out of fear. 

  I don’t know who “they” are who say the time is coming when Catholics will have to choose.  We’ve been having to choose since the inception of the Church. 

  I know you don’t get any of this michigancatholic.  Not to sound condescending, but I have faith that someday you might. 

  Sincerely

  Jaime

• Please read the article I keep posting for you, Jaime.  And then you might understand what we are talking about here.  The link again is here.

  Domenico said “In other words, the solution to the Scandal is not chastity, but the rejection of chastity. So on top of ending priestly celibacy, we have to allow gay marriage or something.”

  And then I posted the article above which is precisely about what Domenico was talking about.

  BTW, consider this thing that Archbishop Chaput (not the USCCB) said this week:

  “In thinking about today’s debate over the identity of marriage, Catholics need to keep three basic principles in mind.

  First, this is NOT a debate over minority rights. In fact, casting it in that language is gravely misleading. The traditional legal protections around marriage are designed primarily for the bearing and raising of children. Minority groups have every right to live in the United States without intimidation. They do not have a right to redefine marriage in a way that undermines the family and attacks the environment in which children learn about the world and grow to maturity.”

  I’ll link the rest as Domenico has requested we do rather than cut and paste it here….. Catholics must proclaim, protect truth about marriage, family

  Here, Archbishop Chaput is doing what the USCCB refused to do—lead.  Some others are leading too—Bishop Burke, Bishop Bruskiewicz, etc.  Most are still refusing to commit themselves.  Some are rushing for the chance to cave in.

  In addition to not having the right to redefine the sacrament of marriage, gay pressure groups also do not have the right to redefine scripture, tradition OR the church’s 2000-yr old teachings on sexual behavior.

  Sorry but it can’t happen.  It won’t happen and we may take a beating over that.  A lot of people are going to leave, and a lot will whine and come up with all kinds of reasons why they should do this or that.  It will be interesting.  It may be painful.  Hell, it already is.

  That was my point.

• What we are talking about here is not gay marriage.  That was an aside listed by Domenico.  The article deals with the assertion that homophobia and repression was at the core of the scandal.  The discussion thread grew into whether homosexuals can/should be allowed to be priests. 

• May I quote Domenico from his original post? 

  “In other words, the solution to the Scandal is not chastity, but the rejection of chastity. So on top of ending priestly celibacy, we have to allow gay marriage or something.” 

  It’s right there in the middle of what Domenico wrote.  He wrote it as a summation of what was stated in the gay magazine The Advocate.  That is why what Domenico wrote starts with the words, “In other words.”  This conclusion of Domenico’s is precisely the topic of this thread.  It is not an “aside.”  It is the consequence that Domenico sees to the premises as stated. 

  Domenico is very logical and clear when he writes.  I assure you that this statement is not a red herring or an “aside.”  But if you don’t believe me, you could ask him.

• Oh…

  I think gay marriage is a bad idea

• Michigancatholic

  Hey here’s something wacky.  After reading all the posts on the discussion thread (now at 56)  The very FIRST time the subject of gay marriage came up was after I refuted your argument about when conversion happens.  And that occurs around the 50th post. (including all of yours) 

  Gosh I wish you had straightened us all out a lot sooner.  But in any case, if you’d like, I’d be curious to hear your response to my suggestion of conversion.

  Just a thought! 

• Actually Sinner also mentioned it near the top, but a lot of people got sidetracked because they were all into the proportionalism aspects.  And we’ve talked about them elsewhere.  Go figure.

  I think gay marriage is a bad idea too, but you probably know that. 

• I’ve just found this blog, more than a month late, but I thought I’d try offering a clarification anyway since an interpretation of my work launched the discussion.

  The argument I make in Our Fathers is that homosexual men from a certain generation—those ordained between 1960 and the early 1970s—were responsible for a huge increase in sexual abuse of minors. Incidents rates in previous generations, and subsequent generations, which some posters above have rightly said includes a disproportionate number of gay priests—were considerably lower than the national average. But for this generation, the offense rate was as high as 12%. That means more than one in 10 priests drew credible abuse charges, a stunning figure. (Most priests, gay and straight, comported themselves in a moral and ethical manner, it goes without saying.)

  We also know from statistics that gay men are considerably less likely than straight men to engage in criminal sexual activity. So the question was begged: Why is this subgroup of apparently gay men behaving in this criminal way?

  Luckily, there exist several large-scale but generally overlooked psychological surveys of priests from this period o many of them as part of my research that their views of the Church, of sexual expression, and of the sexual behaviors of typical Americans were (and are) all quite skewed. I know from speaking to their psychiatrists and treatment physicians that they suffer a unique syndrome of disorders.

  Everything indicates they entered the priesthood—many as children, as this was the last generation to join minor seminaries at age 12 or 13—for all the right reasons. They seem also to have been ordinary kids.

  Straight priests from this generaiton acted badly, too, but not as badly as the apparently gay priests. What went wrong? Besides myself, no expert has yet ventured a guess based on this fact set. In Our Fathers, I piece together several dozen individual narratives to try to find the answer.

  Those who monitor the psychiatric health of the priesthood feel that a change in seminary formation practices in the middle 1980s put a halt to the problem. That change was remarkable in its simplicity. For the first time, it was realized that celibacy was an overwhelmingly difficult burden—and could best be shouldered if the priest or seminarian had a chance to “process” his daily and normal challenges in frank discussions with formation directors, instead of in once-a-year inquiries with broad questions like, urbing case of Fr. Mark Campobello, a priest of the Rockford diocese who admitted to having sex with two different teen girls. The scary part is that the allegations were first brought to attention of a Catholic school teacher back in 1999, and she didn’t report it at first because she didn’t know about the state’s mandatory reporting requirements. It’s a long story full of the now-standard details: the priest’s obviously imprudent close relationship with a minor, adults who knew that something was going on but didn’t do anything, diocesan officialscouts), the parents were very, very happy that I had.