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I'd point out the following:

1. Being a pervert has nothing to do with celibacy. I work around the prison system and have talked to lots of child molestors and the people who treat them. None of the ones I have met have taken vows of celibacy. Most were married at one time or another. I believe the percentage of married Proestant clergy who have committed the same type of crime are about the same as Catholic clergy. It is a fallacy that a frustrated sex drive leads one to molest little kids.

And, how many married Protestant clergy anyd laymen have committed adultery, or wanted to?

2. At least part of the problem might be the way Catholic seminaries operate (not talking about the homosexual issue here - yet, anyway). I admit that I am speculating in part, but let me relate my own experience, and hope that a priest who has been through this might comment. I attended a fairly well known evangelical seminary before I became a Catholic. All of the students there were college grads, and most were pretty high achievers academically. Some were in their 30s and 40s, many had families, lots had already had other jobs. In contrast, lots of Catholic young men start on the seminary track right after they graduate from high school. I think this might have the effect of not giving them enough exposure to the rest of the world before they decide to become priests. Some of them may not be fit to be priests, but they are already on the priest track and to bail at that point means, in their minds at least, admitting an embarassing failure spiritually. I don't think an 18 year old kid knows whether he is supposed to be a priest (there may be exceptions, but for the most part I don't think God's in a hurry).

This doesn't mean they will become child molestors. I don't think that is the case at all. It may make it easier for them to look the other way when one of their fellows does something inappropriate.

By the same token, I know lots of priets who have been through the current system who are just fine. Most are deeply spiritual, highly educated, men. But a reform of the seminary system should be considered.

3. Anyone - including priests - who molests a kid deserves punishment to the full extent of the law, and beyond. Any priest or other clergyman who abuses his office should be punished. The failure of some church officials to root out and punish such priests is something they should have to answer for here before the secular authorities and something that they will have to answer for in front of God.

4. At the same time, this problem is hardly unique to Catholics. Someone suggested in an earlier post that schools wouldn't pass around teachers who molest kids the way that the RC church has done with priests. When the person has been convicted of a crime, this is true. Before he is, ie, when he has been only accused or suspected, it happens. I have the unfortunate experience in my own extended Protestant family of someone who found a job teaching in public schools and private schools who had engaged in criminal sexual activity with a minor (who, with his/her parents, decided not to press charges) and, while teaching at an evangelical college, with at least one student there. In fact, I can think of at least two men who taught at the evangelical college I attended who were accused of having had affairs with students.

There is, in other words, an institutional aspect to the problem. In any institution or organization, be it government, a corporation, or whatever, there is a tendency to try to CYA and cover up problems. The RC Church is more institutionalized than most other churches. That may be part of the problem. It's human nature at work. Being institutionalized and organized also allows an entity it to actually do more than it could accomplish otherwise, so that fact itself is not all bad.

I recall what a Lutheran friend of mine said once when he was telling me about some scandal in the Lutheran school of which he was a board member. He said that his evangelical friends were scandalized when he told them about the goings on there, which as I recall involved embezzlement and maybe an affair of some kind. He said that as Lutherans, they just expected some people to behave badly once in a while. I think that is a pretty realistic expectation (and no, I'm not knocking Lutherans). Now, molesting a kid goes beyond that, but the tendendy to want to cover up problems should be no surprise, as wrong as it is. It is common to all institutions.

5. One of the reasons that the sex abuse story became a big one was the money involved. The RC church has a lot of money. If the pastor of the little house church down the street molests a kid (I know of such a case)there won't likely be a big lawsuit if he is judgment-proof, that is, if he has no money and the church has no money. If it is the RC Church, it is presumed that there is alot of money.
Unfortunately, the big settlements take money away from the legimate work of the church. The victims deserve justice, and the perps should go to prison. Those who participate in a cover-up should also go to prison. Whether or not justice is ultimately served by a big financial pay-out to the victims and their self-serving lawyers is another question.

6. Another aspect of this is the idea in some Protestant circles that the sheep and the goats are seperated now instead of at the last judgment. Catholics tend to expect the church to contain good people and bad people, and that God will sort them out in the End. Protestants of the more evangelical and fundamentalist variety, tend to expect their churches to contain only people who have been "saved," and therefore to be good only. Thus, when they hear about scandals in the Cahtolic church they condemn the entire institution. There are some fundamental differences of opinion about what the Church is and is supposed to be at work in the formation of opinion about this issue.

7. Some of the media - and others - seem to think that anyone who is merely accused of sexual improprieties should be removed from the priesthood. Recall the case of Cardinal Bernadin, who was too liberal in my opinion, but who was accused of molesting a young man. The young man on his death bed, dying of AIDS, admitted the accusation was false.

Most agree that this is absolutly not the case in let's say Baptist schools. >>>

No Just in Baptist churches:

CHURCH EVANGELIZERS PREYED ON LOW-INCOME KIDS.

Men from a rural Baptist church known for its aggressive evangelizing of children are suspected of molesting as many as 22 boys & girls. The associate pastor, volunteer bus driver & a third church member are believed to have fondled some & raped others, ranging in age from 3 to 10, on church buses & property. Charges involving 10 victims were brought against Associate Pastor Timothy Lee Leonard, 32, of North Sharon Baptist Church near Grass Lake, & volunteer Sunday school bus driver, church deacon Mark Foeller. Three other church members are being investigated. The suspects went to low-income housing projects or trailer parks in 4 counties, telling parents they would "take the children to church & teach them about God", according to Det. Robert Fitzpatrick, Jackson Co. Men would walk up to children in their yards, coaxing them with treats to come to weekend services or summer Bible school. Leonard was relieved of church duties involving children in August, after police started investigating him when a doctor reported suspected abuse in a child with a sexual disease. He also worked as instructor & gym teacher in the North Sharon Christian School, enrolling about 65 students. "
We have to keep our kids _safe_ from Baptist pedophiles!

* BAPTIST VOLUNTEER CONVICTED.

Granite State Baptist Church volunteer David Kirsch, 39, of Salem, was convicted of sexually assaulting 6 young girls through the church from the late 1970s to the mid-1980s.
Source: USA Today 9/25/92.

* MINISTER & GIRLFRIEND INDICTED.

Trenton pastor Franklin Tucker, 37, Final Call Ministry, was indicted for molesting his girlfriend's daughters, 9 & 15. His girlfriend was indicted for forcing her daughters to recant the allegations to police. The abuse came to light when the 9-year-old told a school official, who contacted police. Source: Trenton Times 9/15/92.

* BAPTIST PASTOR RESIGNS AMID SCANDAL.

Asheville Baptist pastor Michael R. Stewart, 34, of Oakley, resigned following his arrest in a prostitution sting. Stewart's name was among 400 on a full-page ad that month promoting family & traditional biblical values. Source:
Citizen-Times 6/30/92.

* CHURCH SUED FOR NEGLIGENCE.

One of several girls who said Alva minister Rev. Robert Bruce Brigden molested her is suing the First Presbyterian Church for failing to check his background before hiring him. Allegations of sexual crimes were made at his former position in Kansas. Charges allege that he molested Alva church girls, ages 4 to 14. The church posted his bond. Source: _Tulsa Tribune

* PRESBYTERIAN MINISTER GETS 40 YEARS.

Rev. Robert Bruce Brigden was sentenced to 40 years in prison for molesting young girls in his congregation, convicted on 8 counts of lewd molestation & 1 count of rape by instrumentation involving a girl, 7. Bridgen, 57, was accused of molesting 11 girls, aged 4 to 14, during the 4 years he was at the Alva church. His congregation put the church up as bond, insisting he was innocent. He was placed in protected custody. Brigden blamed his arrest on a girl, 4, whose parents were the first to take the children's allegations seriously. "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned," Brigden wrote his wife about the 4-year-old, whom he described as "4 going on 400 years old", saying she invited him to spend the night in her bed, & was mad that he declined. Source: Tulsa Tribune 8/92, Tulsa World 9/3/92, _Daily Oklahoman_ 6/14/92.

* CHURCH VOLUNTEER CHARGED WITH CHILD PORNOGRAPHY.

Church volunteer Seven Jon Long, 41, was arrested for sodomy and taking pornographic pictures of young girls under 12 from Assembly of God Church in Rogue River, where he was a youth volunteer. He told detectives his pictures were art. Source: Daily Courier, Grants Pass, 4/17/92.

* CONVICTED PASTOR "RIGHT WITH LORD".

Rev. Virgil Carpenter, 48, pastor of Bible Missionary Church in Ontario, was convicted of sodomy & sexual abuse of a girl, 9, over a 1-1/2 year period. A jury convicted Carpenter of 2 felony counts of sodomy & 4 felony counts of sexual abuse. He faces 5 additional felony charges in 2 upcoming trials. "I'm really not worried," he told supporters who had gathered in the courtroom before the verdict. "I'm right with the Lord." Source: Corvallis Gazette-Times 10/11/92.

Why weren't these stories given national press coverage? Why is there a coverup of Christian pedophile ministers' crimes against America's children???

Here are 146 more examples.
http://www.reformation.com/CSA/baptistsabuse.html

Just don't blindly defend something in the Baptist Church, especially when the facts staring you in the face tell the opposite. If you do, you are part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Right now Catholic Bashers are my problem.