Posted on 01/18/2014 8:57:41 PM PST by narses
Last week, I suggested that having comprehensively and repeatedly apologised for the small number of priests who have in some way sexually abused children and young people, it was time we moved on to the offensive against those who (often with an undeclared anti-Catholic agenda) continually assert that the Church is in some way particularly prone to this disgusting crime. I referred to a Newsweek article which said that “priests seem to abuse children at the same rate as everyone else”.
The fact is, however, that not only is the Catholic Church NOT an endemically paedophile organisation, the evidence is now emerging that, in fact, even Newsweek is exaggerating: it’s not that “priests… abuse children at the same rate as everyone else”: actually, according to Dr Thomas Plante of Stanford University and Santa Clara University, “available research suggests that approximately two to five per cent of priests have had a sexual experience with a minor” which “is lower than the general adult male population” – in which the percentage of those who have interfered with minors “is best estimated to be closer to eight per cent”. In other words, children who have anything to do with priests are between 1.6 and four times LESS likely to be abused by them than by anyone else.
“When,” asks the blog La Salette Journey, giving these and other details, “will the media acknowledge that the sexual abuse of children is not a ‘Catholic problem’?” The fact is, suggests the writer, Paul Anthony Melanson, that “the media are not so much concerned with the welfare of children as they are with unfairly portraying the abuse of children as a ‘crisis in the Church’ ”. For example, the state school system in the US has a considerably higher rate of sexual abuse than the Catholic Church: according to a report prepared for the US Department of Education entitled Educator Sexual Misconduct: A Synthesis of Existing Literature, “9.6 per cent of all students in grades 8 to 11 report… educator sexual misconduct that was unwanted.” This report has been virtually ignored by the media.
But the penny is just beginning to drop. An article by Jim Dwyer in the New York Times reported (April 27) that the New York State legislature is now addressing the fact that child abuse is not only a problem for the Church, but for the whole of society. “Should it be possible,” asks Dwyer “… to sue the city of New York for sexual abuse by public school teachers that happened decades ago? How about doctors or hospital attendants? Police officers? Welfare workers? Playground attendants? … To date, New York City has been publicly silent…. but sees the possibility of enormous expenses.”
Well, join the club, New York City. As Dwyer’s article points out: “Since 2004, Catholic dioceses nationwide have paid $1.4bn to settle claims of abuse, many from acts from the 1970s or earlier… Yet [he continues] there is little evidence to show there is more sexual abuse among Catholic priests than among clergy from other denominations, or, for that matter, among people from other walks of life.”
That’s the bottom line. This is a problem we share with everyone, though actually we are less guilty of it than society as a whole and are doing a lot better in acknowledging such child abuse as does exist. We need to get that, and the evidence for it, firmly into our heads. We have a battle ahead: we all need to be prepared for it.
“Yeah, if only we could do something to make the majority of the members of the Catholic denomination quit voting for abortion and gay marriage”
Horsesh*t. The total number of Catholics that voted for Romney dwarf ANY bible-thumping protestant faith.
Without Catholics there would be no pro-life movement.
Catholics also founded the National Right to Life Committee,
which is the oldest and the largest national pro-life organization in the United States with affiliates in all 50 states and over 3,000 local chapters nationwide.
http://www.nrlpac.org/about_us.htm
National Right to Life Political Action Committee (NRL PAC) is the largest and most effective pro-life political action committee in the country and has been for more than 32 years.
NRL PAC‘s charge is straightforward: to actively support electable pro-life candidates for federal office who will work to further the goals of the right to life movement, focusing on the most competitive races in the nation.
The National Right to Life PAC is held in such high esteem for one simple reason: its capacity to deliver votes to elect pro-life men and women to Congress. Since its inception in 1980, the help of NRL PAC has meant a consistent advantage for pro-life candidates over pro-abortion
Cruz Sen. Ted Cruz
In 2012, 80% of the 290 federal candidates endorsed by National Right to Life PAC won their elections. Of those 290, NRL PAC actively focused in 99 of the most competitive federal races. Despite being vastly outspent by pro-abortion groups, 57 of these 99 candidates supported by NRL PAC won.
What a bizarre way to defend the pro-abortion voters.
The pro-abortion left owns the vote of most of the members of the Catholic denomination and is importing them by the millions, yet we pro-life conservatives have to listen to their fiercest defenders and endure all their nasty attacks and cussing.
We need to end this growth of Catholic voters, or we lose everything, (I mean of course everything that pro-life conservatives care about for any of those here that support the importation of more lefty, pro-abortion voting Catholics).
Given the regularity of attacks against Catholicism, I recently looked at election data similar to what you posted. There’s no data to justify the general hostility.
So you don’t think it is a problem that the catholic vote does and almost always has, been a democrat vote, and that we are importing millions of new Catholic voters every year, ever since the democrats changed the immigration laws to do just that in 1965?
The left is depending on Catholics to put them over the top permanently, and you don’t see that as a problem for conservatives?
Lol, of course I meant importing masses of new Catholics every year, and that the total since the democrats passed the JFK law in 1965 is in the tens of millions, counting the millions of Catholic immigrants and their resulting Catholic families.
Baloney. You can't prove that and your assertion is not a fact.
The Catholic church does not own the pro-life movement any more than it owns the Bible, despite the claims of it being so.
Your dimwitted statement proves you are totally clueless about abortion and about the pro-life movement in America. I’m not wasting my time posting anything else to “prove” Catholics stood alone in trying to protect human life. I post the links and you refuse to read them.
Catholics started the pro-life movement before and after Row v. Wade. Protestants by and large went along with Roe v. Wade.
I have never in my life seen anyone that harbors such hatred for another faith like you do for Catholicism. It’s not healthy. You might want to seek some help for your anger.
Never once have you ever said anything favorable about Catholics. Only irrational rants.
There is no doubt if I posted an article on Mother Teresa and what a great Christian she was and all the good she did for humanity, you would reply and say she was a overrated and should have saved more babies. But probably you would have just ignored the post. If it means saying anything good about Catholics that is not coming from you.
Re: previous post on this thread......
Please see this post by a Catholic priest on this board.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/3115093/posts?page=84#84
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