Posted on 11/16/2006 9:54:57 AM PST by presidio9
The US Roman Catholic Church has asked a criminology school to delve into the darkest pages of its history by probing the causes of a priest sex abuse scandal.
At a meeting due to end Thursday in the eastern city of Baltimore, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops voted to disburse 335,000 dollars to fund the first three phases of a study by New York's John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
"It will be a groundbreaking study, never done before in the US, nor in the world," Bishop Gregory Aymond, who chairs the Committee for the Protection of Children and Young People, told AFP.
"We don't know what would come out of it, but we are going to tell the truth," said Aymond, of Austin, Texas.
In 2002, the John Jay College of Criminal Justice had made a list of complaints and pedophilia cases in the US Catholic Church since 1985, when one of the first scandals came to light with the case of a Louisiana priest.
The university will now look into the "social and historical context" of sex abuse to see if such cases are more frequent in the Church than in the rest of society, notably in schools and youth clubs, Aymond said.
The Church wants to "look at what is unique" in the priest sex abuse crisis, he said.
The first part of the study would be completed in 2008 and made public, although the names of suspected priests would be omitted.
In the second part, the university will evaluate the Church leadership's response to sex abuse cases.
"We want to see where we failed and made some mistakes, and learn from those who handled it well," Aymond said.
The study will also paint a psychological profile of pedophiliac priests by reviewing cases in treatment centers.
The review will aim to show "to what extent is a priest sexual abuser profile the same as the psychological profile of the non-priests who are sex offenders," Aymond said.
The university will also interview abuse victims and examine education at seminaries over the decades.
The majority of priests accused of sex abuse were trained in the 1960s and 1970s in seminaries where psychological tests and sexuality education have since been introduced.
A final phase of the study will make proposals on how to prevent sex abuse and help victims.
"Our goal is to ascertain the causes of the clergy sexual abuse crisis and if we need to change any method we have now," said Teresa Kettlekamp, the executive director of the bishops conference's Office of Child and Youth Protection, which was created in 2002, in the wake of the sex abuse scandal.
But the study would also be useful to schools and youth groups, Church officials said.
"The pathology of abusing children isn't unique; it's a societal problem," Kettlekamp said.
"We are hoping it will be a big, big help to the society in general," she said.
For example, there are two verses that contradict the idea that celibacy is intrinsically evil:
Matthew 19:12"For some are eunuchs because they were born that way; others were made that way by men; and others have renounced marriage because of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it."
1 Corinthians 7:8-9
Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I am. But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.
Priest Maxi knows the answer....
1. It's common knowledge that pedophiles seek out professions or other outlets that bring them into contact with children as authority figures, in order to misuse that authority.
2. Celibacy, as defined by Dictionary.com, has several definitions for the word. Only one of these involves completely abstaining from sexual relations.
The other two read as follows:
2. abstention by vow from marriage: the celibacy of priests.
3. the state of being unmarried.
Homosexuals (until recently) haven't had any interest in being married, so vowing "celibacy" wasn't the sacrifice it would be for a straight person. But to a homo with Clintonian ability to define words to suit their own purposes, they can claim they are celibate because they abstain from marital relations.
Contrast that with the rampant pedophilia by teachers we've seen in the press. Teachers don't take a vow a of celibacy, but they do work in a "calling" that brings them into authoritative contact with kids, which some number of them abuse. It's just not the strictly homosexual kind, like you tend to see in priests, a job restricted to males only.
Homosexuality is a sin, per the church, they must remain celebate. So they become priests, but the celebacy thing is damn tough to keep. An old friend of mine, gay, almost joined up and explained it to me. The real problem is the decades (centuries) of coverup. Go with a no tolerence policy and it would be less frequent, but it would still happen and you'd also be even shorter on priests.
Which is why married men don't sexually abuse young girls and boys, right?
Secondly, while horrific, the rate of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests is about the same as the rate of sexual abuse among Protestant ministers and public school teachers.
Finally, Jesus and St. Paul recommend celibacy "for the kingdom of heaven," for those who can accept it. See post #41.
The cultural upheaval of the 1960's along with many men who did not want to go to Vietnam going into the preisthood as a way to avoid the war. Also a acceptance of gays into the preist hood as long as they said they would be celebrate. Big mistake.
The facts have already been collected please see the book: "Goodbye Good Men: How Liberals Brought Corruption into the Catholic Church" By Mike S. Rose. The investigation is there for all to read.
Why not ana-lyse why the Fox ate the chicken!... Can we cure the Fox...
You have to give to them... They are SUCH INTELLECTUALS... SO ERUDITE AND SO ENLIGHTENED... that only them can understand why queers like young boys
The rest of us are just, stupid, sleaze-balls, little children, twits, and the like... - ROFL
Yeah, those Catholics should learn something from the fact that schoolteachers and protestant ministers and Anglican priests never molest kids.
Oh, wait...
Your post...in a word...IDIOCY!
I try very hard to avoid these threads, since the answer is obvious, and the irrational ones come out in droves, on both sides of the issue: both gays and anti-gays.
I can't resist, however, commenting on the tone and logic of the posts already made which suggest that voluntary celibacy turns an otherwise healthy heterosexual male not only into a homosexual, but also into a child abuser.
Rubbish.
Really?
Was Haggard, the homosexual protestant minister who just fell from grace, celibate?
Yeah, because homosexuals and pedophiles are naturally drawn to celibacy....
LOL
Unfortunately, Kettlekamp has a spotty history:
http://www.catholicculture.org/docs/doc_view.cfm?recnum=6851
Two comments. One is that the problem isn't "homosexuals and pedophiles" (as if they were two separate groups) ... it's almost exclusively homosexuals who are "ephebophiles" (molesters of pubescent and post-pubescent boys).
Second comment is that the solution is obviously to weed out the homosexuals. Even homosexuals who aren't going to molest boys and even those who have the strength to remain entirely chaste don't belong in the priesthood, an environment where they will be surrounded by men, and thus by temptations, at all times. It would be like having me sharing a house with a woman (or worse, women) to whom I am not married.
The phrase, "the husband of one wife," means that the candidate for bishop must not have more than one wife. If the intention was prescriptive, Paul would be contradicting Jesus, and himself, since he says in 1 Corinthians 7 that it is better for single people to remain unmarried.
1 Corinthians 7:8-9Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I am. But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.
LOL! Petronski, you are a gem.
Sorry, my post was meant for ALL
That happens every where. You cannot volunteer in a public school without a background check either. Safety and insurance reasons.
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