On that point you are correct, and I will correct the statement on future posts. It is, however, the CSM piece that paints the bleakest picture for the Catholic Church once you compare apples to apples with the John Jay study. The presentation is cooked with a bias towards the Catholic Church - I can't tell if it's the author, or the actual study that serves up the anti-Protestant bias. Getting perfect scores in my Masters-level Statistics courses taught me to spot statistical slight-of-hand, and they're all over the CSM piece. That's the reason I previously stated the CSM piece was Catholic propaganda, and if it's not, it's certainly being used as ammo.
“The data on the Protestant clergy tend to focus on sexual abuse in general, not on sexual abuse of children. Thus, strict comparisons cannot always be made. But there are some comparative data available on the subject of child sexual molestation, and what has been reported is quite revealing.
In a 1984 survey, 38.6 percent of ministers reported sexual contact with a church member, and 76 percent knew of another minister who had had sexual intercourse with a parishioner.[xiii] In the same year, a Fuller Seminary survey of 1,200 ministers found that 20 percent of theologically “conservative” pastors admitted to some sexual contact outside of marriage with a church member. The figure jumped to over 40 percent for “moderates”; 50 percent of “liberal” pastors confessed to similar behavior.[xiv]
In 1990, in a study by the Park Ridge Center for the Study of Health, Faith and Ethics in Chicago, it was learned that 10 percent of ministers said they had had an affair with a parishioner and about 25 percent admitted some sexual contact with a parishioner.[xv] Two years later, a survey by Leadership magazine found that 37 percent of ministers confessed to having been involved in “inappropriate sexual behavior” with a parishioner.[xvi]
In a 1993 survey by the Journal of Pastoral Care, 14 percent of Southern Baptist ministers said they had engaged in “inappropriate sexual behavior,” and 70 percent said they knew a minister who had had such contact with a parishioner.[xvii] Joe E. Trull is co-author of the 1993 book, Ministerial Ethics, and he found that “from 30 to 35 percent of ministers of all denominations admit to having sexual relationships—from inappropriate touching to sexual intercourse—outside of marriage.”[xviii]
According to a 2000 report to the Baptist General Convention in Texas, “The incidence of sexual abuse by clergy has reached ‘horrific proportions.’” It noted that in studies done in the 1980s, 12 percent of ministers had “engaged in sexual intercourse with members” and nearly 40 percent had “acknowledged sexually inappropriate behavior.” The report concluded that “The disturbing aspect of all research is that the rate of incidence for clergy exceeds the client-professional rate for physicians and psychologists.”[xix] Regarding pornography and sexual addiction, a national survey disclosed that about 20 percent of all ministers are involved in the behavior.[xx]
In the spring of 2002, when the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church was receiving unprecedented attention, the Christian Science Monitor reported on the results of national surveys by Christian Ministry Resources. The conclusion: “Despite headlines focusing on the priest pedophile problem in the Roman Catholic Church, most American churches being hit with child sexual-abuse allegations are Protestant, and most of the alleged abusers are not clergy or staff, but church volunteers.”[xxi]
Finally, in the authoritative work by Penn State professor Philip Jenkins, Pedophiles and Priests, it was determined that between .2 and 1.7 percent of priests are pedophiles. The figure among the Protestant clergy ranges between 2 and 3 percent.[xxii]”
SEXUAL ABUSE IN SOCIAL CONTEXT:
CATHOLIC CLERGY AND OTHER PROFESSIONALS
Special Report
by
Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights
February 2004
Anecdotally, I suggest that such statatistics are meaningless, because they ignore the practrice in the protestant denominations is not to report offenders but to get them out of town. However, the abuse I have onserved in these denominations tends to be heterosexul. I agree that the whole scandal is owing to ther trap that the Church feel into in the 1970s when it lowered its standards to admission to the priesthood generally and the “gays” flocked in, warnly welcomed by the gay priests already there, who had a field day while orthodox priests were demoralized by the shattering of the traditional image of their vocation.