Well, as they say you can't begin to solve a problem until you've admitted that you have it. We must be living in parallel universes. I have met very few American priests who weren't gay or deeply confused in some other way.
I'm originally from Wisconsin, now living in California. The priest at the little parish I grew up in is tres gay. He has a "very special friend" that he goes on all sorts of little outings with. One of the priests in another parish I was involved with in Wisconsin will spend the rest of his life in prison for serial molestation of boys. I have had friends and family who were molested by priests. One of the priests who knew my nephew (I'm not sure whether he actually molested my nephew, could have been the co-pastor) is on the lamb someplace as the secular authorities are looking for him on other child molestation charges. That man preached from the pulpit that homosexuality was natural, normal and good. He wrote his doctoral thesis on debunking St. Paul's condemnation of homosexual acts.
I myself spent a couple of years in a seminary in the 1970s and I can tell you the priests and seminarians were nearly all gay or in some other way deeply emotionally twisted. Every heterosexual man that I knew back then left the seminary. I can't remember any heterosexual being ordained. They were essentially all gay. Not all of them were unchaste, but many were. But nearly all of them had same sex attraction disorder.
That's my experience. I guess you have a different take on things and that's fine with me.
But the fact that we're paying out billions in civil claims for massive homosexual misconduct by the clergy would lend itself more to my take on the reality of the situation, would it not?
I would add that the fact (which I think is rather apparent to most) that the American clergy is overwhelmingly homosexual would tend strongly to discourage normal young men from entering the seminary. Who, after all, would want to have their good name associated with a calling that is associated forever in the public mind with the worst kind of perversion?
ones who want to take back their church. It does sound like you came from a twisted parish. I sadly do admit that they are out there; birds of a feather and all that. However, I have yet to meet a gay priest personally and I have yet to attend a parish that is preaching homosexuality from the pulpit. I have attended some who were more lax, (not doctrinally, but in practices with their music or some such other things) but I have belonged to parishes in NJ, SC and FL and I have yet to meet or know of a priest involved in any such thing. We have had a bishop replaced for this a while back( for not reporting someone, but I am not sure if it was a priest or someone else involved in a ministry) and we do have a heterosexual priest scandal right now (fr Cutie). We also had an embezzlement issue by a priest a few years back in our diocese.
I do not doubt you had these issues happen, and I know they have happened in other places. I just don’t think it is as widespread and rampant as you think. I am sure it is rampant in localized dioceses, and you sound like you found a couple of them. While I deplore it, and it MUST be routed out, I just cannot paint it with the rampant broad brush that a person who was stuck in the middle of it might want to do. It would be like being the person inside a tornado, while someone in another state looks on.
Tornadoes are fierce and frightening and life changing when you are in the path of one, but most people are never in the path of one. While we must do everything possible to protect people who are in the path of them, and help them recover from being hit with one, most people are not ever hit by a tornado. We recoil in horror when they are, and do all we can to fix it but it does not make the rest of the country a bad place. perspective is important here, and while I cannot imagine the horror you have been through, we are doing what we can to root it out and help those who have been affected.
I do not know the overall number of persons who have brought a case against the Church for sexual abuse, so I am unable to put this in number form, but for having almost 100,000,000 catholics in this country, I would venture that it was not nearly even a tenth of that(I vaguely remember hearing something like 650 cases but could be way off). The cases that settled were for huge numbers, and rightly so. While one case is too many, I am still waiting for the outrage from the public on teachers abusing children, little league coaches, boy scout leaders, and their own parents, family friends,etc.
I am not excusing, I am pointing out deviants in all walks of life exist and it is a bit of a farce to not point this out. YOUR personal experience is with the Church, therefore your anger is justifiably directed at it. For the many of us who have not been abused, it is not any different who or what institution or affiliation is doing the abuse, it is ALL wrong. Teachers, boy scout leaders, other clergy, little league coaches, parents, family members are all the same to us; people in positions of power or trust over children who take advantage of it and abuse.
It is not to diminish your experience, but to acknowledge it occurs everywhere, not just within the Church. This would give us a warped view of one institution( justifiably if that is where you were harmed) instead of recognizing it is all deplorable.
I will pray for you, and your family. Those who have harmed you will meet their Maker and receive their justice, either in this life or the next. Nobody gets out without it. I am sending a young man to seminary who loves this Church and his God more than life itself. He will work with all he has to change what wrongs he sees. There are dozens in the seminary he is planning to attend who feel the same. God will not let the gates of hell prevail against His Church, on this you can rely.
We can only choose one of two ways, to be part of the problem or part of the solution. I have chosen the latter, as I hope you have. Most are not burying their heads in the sand, most have been asleep and are waking up. Look around you at the changes just in the last couple of years. American Catholics, and Americans in general for that matter, have been on auto pilot too long thinking good would flourish if good men said nothing instead of evil. I am hopeful that this lesson has been learned and the results will be a stronger, faithful Church and country.
God bless you and keep you. May His healing hand touch your heart and strengthen you for your journey.