Letter about Catholics wrong about Protestants [re claim 10% of Protestant clergy are sex abusers]

In the May 30 Chronicle, As Readers See It, “excerpts of an article written by non-Catholic, Sam Miller, a prominent Cleveland Jewish businessman” listed “the good things the Catholic Church has done.” This email was forwarded to the Chronicle by Elizabeth Zagar, who stated that she received it from a friend, also by email. It is true that the Catholic Church has done wonderful things, and I appreciated the article very much.

However, Sam Miller states that, “10 percent of the Protestant ministers have been found guilty of pedophilia. This is not a Catholic problem.” That statement seemed so far off base that I went to the Internet and found article after article quoting the same statistic; one had 12% of all Protestant clergy!

Finally, I found the National Catholic Register website where a letter of apology was printed by a woman who forwarded the same article that appeared in the Chronicle. It is entitled: “A Correction and an Apology” by Danielle Bean. She states: “But I should have dug a little deeper and looked more closely at some of the other parts of the speech. The rest of the speech, in which Mr. Miller relies heavily upon statistics found in an article from Sojourners magazine, cites an erroneous statistic of “10 percent of Protestant ministers have been found guilty of pedophilia.”

“This statistic was later corrected by Sojourners, but it had already been picked up by Miller and others. The facts are clarified in an email I received from Rev. Rob Pollock of Vancouver, BC:’ “The article you reference in your recent post “Jewish Advice…” contains false and defamatory information about Protestant ministers. In the original speech Mr. Miller cites, and reads extensively from, a July/August 2002 Sojourners article by Rose Marie Berger in which she misinterprets statements from Penn State Prof. Philip Jenkins regarding sexual abuse by Protestant ministers.”

“In the original article Berger writes ... ‘Philip Jenkins concludes in his book “Pedophiles and Priests” that while 1.7 percent of Catholic clergy have been found guilty of pedophilia (specifically of boys), 10 percent of Protestant ministers have been found guilty of pedophilia.’ (This quote is used in Miller’s speech) To which Philip Jenkins responds (Sept/Oct 2002) ... ‘I regret to say that the statement is baloney. I never said it, and it’s not true!... Every time this 10 percent statement appears attributed to me, I try to debunk it, but these things have a life of their own. I have no idea what the actual proportion of pedophile protestant clergy is, but I would be amazed if it was more than a fraction of one percent.’

In his rebuttal Rev. Pollock writes, “Regrettably, a much condensed version of Miller’s speech, as referenced on your blog, has recently gone viral within the Catholic community by way of the Internet and email. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of blogs, forums, Facebook pages, and news services that have posted this condensed version of Mr. Miller’s speech. It truly saddens me that such ‘false witness’ can be so uncritically accepted and further disseminated by so many within the Catholic community. It seems that we still find it easier to believe the worst about our neighbor rather than dig a little deeper for the truth.”

The Secular Schools are/were 10 percent (possibly more) and that’s where our focus should be, instead of carrying water for the homosexual predators who have infiltrated our schools at an ever growing rate. Our schools are being run by people who were/are teaching our kids about “fisting”, homosexuality is normal, etc. The English Fabians brought their program to the Fabians in this country, one of which was John Dewey (see their Atheist Humanist Manifesto). They were only to happy to begin the implementation, and as they believed in a gradual process, it wasn’t even noticed by the public-at-large until fairly recently, today we’re seeing the fruits of their labor. It will get worse - HORRENDOUSLY WORSE - unless they’re stopped.

Except for the 10% number (I think it's more like 1.5%), I'm in complete agreement with you on this. I'm no fan of public, i.e. government-funded-and-run school systems, and what you point out is one of many reasons why. Moving children out of public schools and into charter schools, private schools, and home schools is the best solution IMO.

I read sometime last year where a representative of the Education Dept stated 10%. I have no idea where I read it and couldn’t find it a few weeks ago though didn’t try very hard...it has to be out there somewhere - don’t have time to look but will try later.

You mentioned John Jay...:)

Opinion: John Jay report holds lessons for Baptists
http://www.abpnews.com/content/view/6438/9/

What does a post Murphy made about the Apostle Paul have to do with my comment? per your link.

“Those other guys are just as bad (or worse) is a defence?

I only deal in that to which I can attach names/dates etc., not anonymous surveys.

What others have done or not is irrelevant to my comment.

Whether you discuss or not is up to you.

Opinion: John Jay report holds lessons for Baptists

A couple of observations:

If you missed this recent post of mine, I find the John Jay Report suspect in at least one area. I think we can all agree that the church had bishops trying to stop the crisis, and others trying to perpetuate it. We know that some bishops (Weakland in America and Vangheluwe in Belgium) not only moved perpetrators around knowingly, but were perpetrators themselves. Yet the John Jay report assigns five categories to sum up bishop responses, yet inexplicably, no category was created for "perpetrators".

And re the ABP article, I think it's a gross error for the author to say that "Southern Baptists have refused to implement any denominational record-keeping on credibly-accused Baptist clergy". There's a key misunderstanding around the issue of ecclesiology: the SBC is run bottom-up, not top-down. The Catholic Church could create such a list, because it's ruled largely from the top down (at least at the Archdiocese level) The SBC simply isn't a central, standing organization that can do so, w/o prior authority from it's independent member congregations. That's why they are called the Southern Baptist Convention, and not the Southern Baptist Denomination. In order to implement record-keeping, the SBC would have to change their organizational model into something more centrally-governed and top-down imposed, which runs against their core beliefs regarding the authority of the local congregation.

Also, the author of this piece, Christa Brown, is a doctorate student at the Iliff School of Theology. Iliff is a United Methodist school, hardly a bastion of political or religious conservatism.

I answered most of your questions on this thread (taken from post #18 - we can continue the discussion there if you want...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2720579/posts?q=1&;page=51

“Also, the author of this piece, Christa Brown, is a doctorate student at the Iliff School of Theology. Iliff is a United Methodist school, hardly a bastion of political or religious conservatism.”

Agree.

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