Posted on 04/24/2002 9:58:46 AM PDT by Brian Kopp DPM
The Vatican summit of U.S. cardinals on ending the American sex abuse crisis has made many Roman Catholic priests wary that they will be sacrificed in a frenzy to restore trust in the church. While clergymen remain committed to ousting pedophiles from their ranks, they worry innocent men will be suspended and priests who could be rehabilitated will instead be discarded. Many also remain deeply concerned about comments from top-ranking prelates about a renewed need to bar homosexuals from the priesthood, regardless of whether they remain celibate. Cardinal Adam Maida of Detroit and Bishop Wilton Gregory, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, emerged from the meeting Tuesday saying the issue is among those the church must address. "I think that priests, having been overprotected in the past, are concerned there may be a tendency to throw them overboard to save the ship," said the Rev. Philip Murnion, director of the Pastoral Life Center in New York, which is not affiliated with the New York Archdiocese. "They want to assure that care be taken that the concerns and rights of all will be protected." Christopher Bellitto, a church historian and academic editor of The Paulist Press in New Jersey, said homosexual clergy have told him they are terrified they will be made scapegoats as the scandal drags on. "There is a real fear among gay priests that they are going to be seen as the fall guys," Bellitto said. American church leaders in Rome have been working on a communique expected to be completed at the close of the two-day summit Wednesday. Advocates for victims of priestly abuse have long complained that bishops have protected abusive clergy at the expense of children. Pope John Paul II, in an address to the cardinals, said there was no room in the priesthood for clergy who hurt young people. Cardinal Theodore McCarrick said Wednesday the prelates had agreed on a "one-strike-you're-out" policy on future sex abuse cases involving priests. That means priests who commit sex abuse would be dismissed from the clergy. But McCarrick said there was still some question about whether such a policy should be applied in old cases that have recently come to light. After the scandal erupted in Boston in January, bishops nationwide began scouring personnel files for past allegations, suspending dozens of priests and turning over church records to state prosecutors. The Rev. Robert Bullock, head of the Boston Priests Forum, a group of more than 100 priests formed in response to the crisis, called the "one-strike" approach misguided. "It's so sweeping that it does not seem to me to leave room for the presumption of innocence. Even for priests there's a presumption of innocence," Bullock said. At last week's annual conference of the National Federation of Priests' Councils in Montreal, some of the 300 priests at the event were so worried that they proposed creating a national forum to air their concerns, said the Rev. Robert Silva, the federation president. "It's frightening to us," Silva said. Removing a man from the priesthood is different from firing them from a regular job, Silva said. Under Catholic tradition, once a man is ordained, the church has a lifelong obligation to him for housing, financial support and other needs. Only the Vatican can remove a priest. "We are not a corporation, we are not a business and priests are not employees. There is a spiritual relationship which exists between a bishop and his priest," Silva said. Marianne Duddy, executive director of the gay Catholic advocacy group Dignity/USA, said she's been fielding calls from homosexual priests who are so frightened about the prospect of losing their jobs, they can't sleep at night and have sought counseling. "One guy has been a priest for 28 years," Duddy said. "Where would he go? What would he do? Would he able to leave with any kind of retirement money?" Estimates of the number of gays among seminarians and the 46,075 Catholic clergy in the United States vary dramatically, from 10 percent to 50 percent. Experts in sexual disorders warn there is no evidence that homosexuals are more likely than heterosexuals to molest children. Silva called the idea of weeding out gays "absolutely absurd." "The problem isn't being oriented one way or the other. The problem is whether you can live a celibate life," Silva said.
-- Priests Wary of Summit Results
Thanks!!!
Catholic priests? If they are 50% homosexual, no. I was speaking of the general population, where it is estimated that about 1% of the population is homosexual. Foot Dr. Kopp posted that homosexuals are three times more likely to be pedophiles. But if they are only 1% of the population, that means that hetero pedophiles outnumber homo pedophiles by a factor of 33. So that's were the major problem lies.
The crisis is not mainly a pedophelia problem because pedophelia is defined as attraction to pre-pubescent children. While there were a few cases of actual pedophelia in the Church, and Gagan was one of them, over 90% of the victims were post-pubscent boys.
As for homosexual pedophiles, as I proved the other day with your own premises, there are 33 times more hetero pedophiles than homo pedophiles.There are also 50 times more heterosexuals then homosexuals, so if your figure is accurate it would appear the RATE is higher for homosexuals. Regardless, when you move out of pedophiles (someone attracted to a child) - who are very rare regardless of the sexual orientation - and into Ephebophile (adults who are sexually attracted to sexual adolescents, including older minors) we find that the homosexual abusers, at least in the Church, are present at a far higher rate than the heterosexual abusers.
patent
BTW, Mr. Libertarian, your Romanian cousins can enjoy freedom partly as a result of the efforts of this pope and Solidarity, not that we would ever expect expressions of thanks rather than naked hostility from libertarians directed against what they cannot or will not understand.
Religious socialism???? What a maroon!
I worked backward from a similar assumption. You say 2%, I said 1%. Anti-homo advocates usually try to downplay the number of homos, so that's why I picked the lower 1% number. Other estimates I've seen put them at 2%. I've seen as high as 4%. Using your 2% figure and the 3x number from Dr. Kopp, the number of hetero pedophils drops to 16 times the number of homo pedophiles, and at 4% the number drops to 8 times.
For the problem to be parity -- equal numbers of homo and hetero pedophiles, and assuming 4% population of homos, homos would have to engage in pedophilia at a rate of 24 to 1 over heteros.
You forgot to mention that, while hetero pedophiles outnumber gay chickenhawks, gay chickenhawks' victims usually outnumber hetero pedophile victims 10 to 1.
I.e., for every chickenhawk there are a disproportionately HUGE number of teenage boy victims compared to the number of young child victims of hetero pedophiles.
Are you gay?
Labor Complaint Is Latest Hurdle For Teachers' Union
"In the most recent set of NEA resolutions, Kafer notes that the word "sexual" appears 41 times, "sexual orientation" 19 times, "reading" six times, and "mathematics" only five times.
"It seems like a preoccupation with an agenda that has nothing to do with reading and mathematics. I would think that would be a great concern to a teacher who is deeply committed to learning," she added. "There are other resolutions in there, too, about the environment, about cultural issues, things that have nothing to do with teaching, learning, or kids."
The other day you said 3 to 1. So you better cite your sources if your numbers keep changing. But in any event, assuming homos make up 4% of the population (an optimistic number, by the way) they'd have to outnumber hetero pedophiles by 24 to 1 just to reach parity with the absolute number of hetero pedophiles.
Even further back, Pope Pius XI, in a 1935 encyclical on the priesthood, said that those in charge of the clergy must not only foster and strengthen vocations but also "discourage unsuitable candidates, and in good time send them away from a path not meant for them."
"Such are all youths who show a lack of necessary fitness, and who are, therefore, unlikely to persevere in the priestly ministry both worthily and becomingly," Pope Pius wrote in Ad Catholici Sacerdotii. "In these matters hesitation and delay is a serious mistake and may do serious harm. It is far better to dismiss an unfit student in the early stages" to prevent him from being a "stumbling block to himself and to others with peril of eternal ruin."
They tell us homosexuality is inborn, thus it can't be "rehabilitated", thus they SHOULD be discarded.
You adopt the position thereby that it is inborn. You can't have it both ways either.
Do you consider sodomization of teenage boys to be pedophilia? Because that's what 90% of these cases are.
If we are comparing hetero and homo sexual acts, it only matters that the age groups be consistent. So what is the rate of adult to "teenage" sex for both hetero and homo adults?
No, that is pederasty. It's one of the reasons the media coverage is so deceptive here. Pedophilia is rare. Pederasty, while still not commonplace, is the bulk of the problem.
patent
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