Uh, no. Try reading the Johns Hopkins report on the crisis. The priests’ abuse crisis occurred mainly during the 1950s-1970s. (It’s hard to say if it was ongoing by the early 1950s or not, since we can mainly judge by the complaints.) By 1990, the abuse rate was cut 99%.
It’s true that it was a problem of gay sex. Most of the abuse cases were homosexual in nature; most involved POST-pubescent teens. Almost none involved minor girls.
But it’s not true that the problem stemmed from the church trying to become tolerant of homosexuality. More likely errors include:
Gay Christians may have been drawn to the priesthood, believing falsely that the celibate life would make their sexual issues irrelvant;
Too many in the Catholic Church turned towards secular psychologists for counsel on how to deal with problem cases, rather than official church teachings;
Misplaced compassion was often shown to the perpetrators, who were known colleagues, than to the more faceless victims.
Many gays stayed in the ministry, in the false expectation that the Catholic Church would someday liberalize its sexuality-related morals, perhaps at some sort of “Vatican III.”
Many priests desired to change moral laws against birth control, abortion and married priests. Rather than being troubled that priests were excusing sexual immorality as a sign that such a priest may have his own guilt over sexuality, they saw such a priest as a comrade in arms.
A “lavendar mafia” developed within the Church to secure key positions which could block attempts to combat homosexuality in the priesthood. This included Cardinal Bernardin, who had the fawning admiration of the media, which dubbed him “the American Pope.”
According to some, one potential fault within the papacy was that John Paul II was slow to realize the enormity of the problem, having remembered when false accusations of homosexuality were used by Nazis and Communists to go after their enemies. Nonetheless, he eventually became remarkable effective at combatting and ending the problem long before the media even picked up on it; by 1990, he had reduced incidents more than 99%.
Excellent and informative post.
A problem manifest in the "Social Justice" wing of the Church.
It was long ago known that the applicants to the priesthood were homosexuals or it became obvious while the men were in seminary. It was temporized with, probably based on the shortage of priests and the hope the homosexual could control his impulses; he could not. I am not anti-catholic and have no doubt that the Roman Church is in the process and will continue in the future to take heroic steps to purge the institution of perversion. It is a very important Western institution and it needs to be as pure as possible as the West faces the many assaults launched against it.