The homosexual problem of the priesthood is as you say - and unfortunately it still has not been properly addressed. So, are we to debate the crime of "pedophila" versus " ephebophilia?"
In either case, by the law - these were children. That is clear, and the crimes remain. Is a 7 year boy old more of a victim of rape by a priest than a 11 or 13 year old boy?
Does this age difference somehow lessen the impact of this enormous crime?
I realize that some homosexual men (priests included) favored pre-teen or early teen boys (and in very rare instances girls).
The number of criminal priests still numbered in the thousands. But I can see your point that the vast majority preyed upon boys on the verge of, or in the stages of, puberty.
So - where are we? We are still faced with a tragedy of vast dimension. Moreover, the church has paid billions, many lives were shattered, many victims or their families committed suicide.
It appears Satan is having a field day.
Thank you for your response and clarification. I realize now you understand this problem better than I imagined.
“So, are we to debate the crime of ‘pedophila’ versus ‘ephebophilia?’”
Adamantly.
“In either case, by the law - these were children. That is clear, and the crimes remain. Is a 7 year boy old more of a victim of rape by a priest than a 11 or 13 year old boy?”
There are differences between sex acts with seven year olds and sex acts with seventeen year olds. But that's not the point.
“Does this age difference somehow lessen the impact of this enormous crime?”
Of course, in some ways. If you knew of a 25 year old man having a “consensual” sexual relationship with a 16 year old girl, you would judge that differently than if he were having sex with a six year old girl.
But again, that misses the point.
“So - where are we?”
Well, first, it would be nice if folks got the facts straight. Most folks have at least some of the facts confused. The bishops, for example, view this as a scandal of pedophile priests, when truly, it was a scandal of homosexual priests.
Most folks make that same mistake.
Also, most folks think that the Church did nothing about this until they were forced to by exposure in the early 2000s. That's also untrue. The Church knew what was going on, from the top levels, by the early 1980s. Although the Church didn't seem to act strongly enough or quickly enough to suit Fr. Daley, the fact is that the Church DID start acting at that time, the problem peaked in the 1980s, and had declined over 90% by the mid-1990s. All without the scandals, the headlines, or any help from secular sources.
The Church took actions to reduce the incidence of abuse by priests, and over the course of a little more than a decade, its actions reduced the incidence by over 90%. That's not nothing.
Another error that nearly everyone makes is to think that the Church conspired apart from the rest of society to cover this all up.
That's a brazen lie. The Church kept these cases quiet at the suggestion of the mental health professionals involved, often at the behest of the families of the victims, and often at the request and with the assistance of the secular authorities.
Many evil things were done. Many of them were done out of evil intentions, sometimes by genuinely bad persons, but many, too, out of honest intentions but by stupid and ignorant persons who had lost their way. Especially bishops.
“We are still faced with a tragedy of vast dimension.”
The underlying tragedy - the abuse of children - was great, but the dimension was somewhat limited. The Jay report estimates approximately 10,000 victims and 4,000 perpetrators over the course of 50 years.
10,000 victims is a lot, especially to each victim. And 4,000 priests represents fully 4% of the entire priesthood in the United States during that time.
But 10,000 is out of many millions, and 4% still leaves 96% who did not commit these horrible crimes.
I don't see similar rage in the media for the hundreds of thousands of public school children who are sexually molested EVERY SINGLE YEAR by public school teachers and workers, numbering in the tens of thousands or perhaps even a hundred thousand or more EVERY SINGLE YEAR. Yet the dimension of the tragedy exceeds this one by an order of magnitude or two. Or three. I don't see anyone trying to sue the public schools - and their supervising government structures - for tens of billions or hundreds of billions, or even trillions of dollars, as they've sued the Catholic Church. I don't see concomitant loss of "faith" in public schools.
In fact, most of the people I see carrying on the loudest about the evils of the Catholic Church in regard to this scandal, I don't see them crusading loudly and virulently against the evils of the public schools of the United States. Occasionally, I'll see a token acknowledgment that there may be a problem there, but often, I actually see denial on the part of the Church's attackers.
So forgive me if, while acknowledging the faults, errors, and crimes of our bishops and some of our priests, I hold a cynical view of those who are otherwise critics of the Church. I do not believe the critics are of good faith.
In perspective, properly viewed, with the actual facts, rather than the distorted stories promoted by the media, with the often complicit, guilty silence of the hierarchy, it was a terrible and serious problem, but not one, ultimately of “vast dimension,” and not one that should have undermined faith in the Church.
“It appears Satan is having a field day.”
Indeed, but not principally off the actual facts of what happened, but off the distortions, misunderstandings, and often deliberate misrepresentations of the truth of things, using the lies about what happened to undermine the Church and faith in her.
That's why it's important to make accurate distinctions, to tell the truth accurately and carefully, to say what's what, and to say what's not what.
sitetest