Dear veritas2002,
I'm in complete agreement that the Church should do what it can to avoid ordaining homosexuals. Even the chaste ones.
My point was merely that we can guess at who is and who isn't homosexual, but lots of folks are in the closet, and we fathers generally have no reliable way of discerning just who is and who isn't homosexual. This was in response to your:
"Why aren't fathers sending a very strong message to priests and bishops along the lines of: 'If you assign a homosexual priest to my parish, I will do all in my power to rid the parish of his presence and if he comes anywhere near my son I'll break both his legs.'"
As a father, I'm reluctant to break anyone's legs because he's a homosexual if I'm not really positive that he is a homosexual.
"I know that it is problematic to ascertain WHO is in fact homosexual among the current order of priests,..."
That was my point. You have taken Catholic fathers to task for failing to break legs, but you can see that without accurately ascertaining first who is indeed a homosexual, we fathers could wind up breaking a lot of legs inappropriately.
"What is most interesting is that the percent of offending priests pretty much matches the percent of homosexuals within the general population."
Okay. What do you infer from that? One thing that I might infer from your statement is that the population of homosexuals in the priesthood is not quite as high as some have alleged (30% or more), and is perhaps much closer to the general population at large (1% - 3%), but that a large percentage of homosexual priests, then, are molestors. I'm not sure I agree with either part of that inference.
sitetest
I accept your comments but let me add this...I do happen to know of a priest in a diocese who was known BEFORE ordination to frequent gay bars and to live an active gay lifestyle. The bishop was informed of this by a number of people and went ahead and ordained him anyway. Now two years after his ordination he has been removed from active ministry because he plied a male parishioner (not a minor)with alcohol and then sexually assaulted him while under the influence. Now this doesn't come under the child sexual abuse scandal, but it is an example of the same predatory homosexual MO. My disgust is this: the bishop was warned about this guy and did nothing. All I am saying is that the bishops are amply aware in many cases of males who have no business being ordained and do nothing, because oftentimes they too are homosexual and don't want to be 'outed.' I know too that many priests who lived in the same rectories as these guys knew exactly what was going on in terms of underage males being brought into priests' bedrooms. They too are repsonsble because they turned their heads. Once again, I say that it is the duty of men and fathers to put the bishops and priests on notice: "Don't even think about doing anything to harm my child." If there's an unidentified predator in the neighborhood, fathers assume added vigilance to protect their children. Where have the father's been?
I think there is some truth to the first half of this statement. Speaking to my pastor about a particular priest who was laicized in this diocese back in the early 1980s and what he did to young men (boys between the ages of 12 and 16), was enough to make me wonder out loud why my homosexual friends, some who are teachers in the public school system, look like angels in comparison. Its almost as though the homosexuals who become priests are the worst sort.