....Philip Jenkins responds... ‘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.’
....“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 web address for the National Catholic Register article is as follows: 'Be Proud You Are Catholic' Speech Contains Error
See also this: Sojourners Commentary:
NOTE: An earlier version of this article contained incorrect statistics about Protestant ministers and pedophilia, misinterpreting information from the book Pedophiles and Priests by Dr. Philip Jenkins. The information has been corrected. Dr. Jenkins' comments are below.--The EditorsIn an article in Sojourners, Rose Marie Berger wrote the following:
"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."
I regret to say that the statement is baloney. I never said it, and it's not true!
In PEDOPHILES AND PRIESTS, I was attacking a statistic that claimed that a proportion of Catholic priests were pedophiles on the basis that the sample was worthless, since all the men involved were undergoing psychiatric treatment. Hence, you could not extrapolate that figure to the whole priestly population. In order to demonstrate the foolishness of the argument, I cited another study of protestant ministers UNDERGOING TREATMENT, which found that ten percent of them were also pedophiles. By this argument, I remarked - as a reductio ad absurdum - then ten percent of protestant clergy were also pedophiles.
(By the way, pedophilia is a psychiatric condition not a criminal offense, so nobody can be "found guilty of pedophilia")
Every time this ten 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.
I hope that clarifies my position.
Ms Berger may well be making an excellent point - that there is no evidence that abuse rates are higher for protestant than for catholic clergy. But this particular figure is a kind of urban legend.
Philip Jenkins
Distinguished Professor of History and Religious Studies
Pennsylvania State University
“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’”
No doubt we will soon see such an apology issued by people in this forum who exaggerate the number of Catholic clergy who are pedophiles.
Crickets.
It seems weird to use the category “Protestant” anyway, when comparing something like this to the Catholic church.
Shouldn’t they compare particular denominations to the Catholic denomination, such as the Lutheran church, or the African Methodist Episcopal, or the Presbyterian whatever so that we can see how particular denominations do, rather than compare one specific, tightly run church to a collection of everything outside of it?
So....some guy called Jenkins wrote an article about the frequency of clerical sex abuse which was misquoted or misunderstood by a woman named Berger, whose mistakes were picked up by a Jewish businessman named Miller who wrote an article for "The Chronicle"(??) in which he repeated the same mistakes.
Have I got that right?
That's great, Alex. Keep it in front of us.
We all know that one reason the Catholic Church is targeted is because lawyers need a ‘target’ with what they think are ‘deep pockets.’ The embarrassment to the Priest or Religious charged with a sexual crime is a smear not on just ‘that’ one person or one church or organization, it is an attack on the entire Catholic Church.
Protestants abuse young girls sexually. I was married to one ... but it’s called ADULTERY in the Protestant Church ... and the solution is a divorce and the minister/preacher can remarry without much fanfare if the ‘child’ is over the legal age.
And unless it’s a big name television preacher, the public won’t ever hear about the sexual exploits of most deviant Protestant preachers. FEW Protestant preachers are sued by their child-lovers because VERY FEW Protestant preachers have any money and they’re considered ‘self-employed’ and unable to cash in on their church denomination’s funds.
If it’s a Baptist, like the one across the street from where I lived, the Baptist Church sent him to some ‘counseling’ organization in Texas to be rehabilitated and paid off the woman [in this case, and married] with a sizable “gift.” [However in his previous church he had been with an UNDERAGE girl.] He came back from ‘counseling,’ his wife didn’t lose her position in the community and the ‘other woman’ drove around in a new car. End of story. BARELY made the local paper and only because a reporter caught the reported incident on the Police Scanner.
The public’s lurid curiosity about celibacy is fed by the uneducated sexually deviant purveyors of sleaze and headlines. And some of them are so-called “catholics” who don’t know the Church nor her teachings.
PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHERS sexually abuse children regularly. It rarely makes the papers. Teachers Unions protect the guilty and the child is made out to have ‘enticed’ the teacher ... except MayBe when it’s a Female Teacher and an underage male.
H3LL, if NAMBLA and GLBT and GLSEN had their way, TEACHERS would start having sex with Newborns before they left the Hospital Nursery and call it all ‘education’ ... and ACLU and Teachers Unions would be protecting the sexual deviants.
As long as the public sees sex as a recreational sport and not as a procreative responsibility ... children [heck, everyone] are at risk of rape and sexual abuse.
Inside the marriage of one man/one woman, it’s a whole nuther ballfield. Or bedfield.
WOW, 10%!!! And the state-run media didn’t even notice the error. Interesting, though to give them the benefit of the doubt, they probably checked them first. I’m positive they know the numbers for the Secular Schools though...
“Penn State professor Philip Jenkens reported that between 2 to 3 percent of Protestant clergy are pedophiles. His same study reported that less than 1.7 percent of Catholic priests are pedophiles. There is simply no reason to think that clergy child molesters are solely a Catholic problem. -
***The results of this survey were reported in the book, Ministerial Ethics by Joe Trull and James Carter (2d ed. 2004), and in The Baptist Standard editorial, “Churches must act to prevent clergy sexual abuse,” 4/22/2002. - (source: The voice of SNAP Baptist)” -
http://stopbaptistpredators.org/alarmingnumbers.html
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2712883/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2720579/posts?q=1&;page=51
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2709296/posts
See the above links where the above stats were posted plus more information. 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.
Alex, you’re obviously good at research...I wish you’d do some digging into the Fabians (for a start)...you’d get a rude awakening.