Posted on 01/26/2014 10:58:59 AM PST by Brian Kopp DPM
Humor so dry you could pour it in a cocktail glass and drop an olive in it.
You missed my point completely. I guess I was being too subtle for you.
The trend was already dramatically upward by the time of the “VII popes.” From what I can make out, in 1951, there are perhaps 50 abuser priests. By 1955, there are over 100. Two years later, there are roughly 150. A tripling in six years.
As well, when were all these priests ordained? When did they enter the seminary? Typically, men are ordained no earlier than age 25 or 26. Assuming, at the latest, entry into seminary after obtaining a baccalaureate degree, these priests abusing by 1955, IF EVERYONE OF THEM HAD BEEN NEWLY-ORDAINED, they'd all been in the seminary since 1951.
By 1960, there are over 250 abusers - a five-fold increase since 1950. Bu not a single one of those priests could have entered the seminary after the death of Pope Pius XII!
My own view is that Pope John XXII called the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council because he could see the crisis in the Church, one symptom of which was homosexuals coming into the priesthood in large numbers.
Did you ever wonder why Pope John XXII gave the exhortation firmly forbidding the ordaining of homosexual men? Do you think this just fell out of the sky? One morning, the Supreme Pontiff woke up with a bee in his bonnet and said, “Let's let folks know that homosexuals are still banned from the priesthood!”
My own belief is that he was responding to a growing crisis in the Church, one that had been growing for a lot of years before 1958.
Obviously, his attempts to fix the problem don't appear to have done a lot of good. But let's place this crisis properly in history. This problem was already well under way before the “VII popes.” I don't know when the seeds were planted, but they were already in bloom by the last few years of Pius XII.
It's clearly well-past time that we stop blaming the ills of the Church on an ecumenical council.
sitetest
I'm not blaming them on the council. During the time of Pope Paul VI homosexual infiltration of the priesthood exploded. Yes it started well before the council but it increased dramatically under his pontificate.
My larger point is that it was already exploding by the early 1950s. From 1950 to 1960s, the number of abuser priests grows MORE THAN FIVE-FOLD. In 10 years. It almost doubles again by roughly 1980, but the explosion is well under way with men who were accepted for the priesthood starting, likely, in the late 1940s, and being in absolutely full swing, full explosion, by 1955.
Frankly, this likely understates how severe the problem probably already was in the 1950s, since the taboo against homosexuality was much, much greater in 1950, 1955, or even 1960, than in 1980.
The only thing that one can say about Pope Paul VI is that he, like Pope John XXIII, and Pope Pius XII before him, seemed entirely unable to resolve the problem.
It really took Pope John Paul II to wrestle the problem to the ground, to actually act in a manner that began to mitigate the abuse levels, and to begin to bring some sanity back to the seminarians. Even so, his actions, and even those of his successor, were not wholly successful.
But if they'd been followed by another worthy successor, I'd be more confident that the JPII-Benedict reforms would have taken deep root and flourished for a long time to come.
Now, I'm not so sure.
Time will tell.
sitetest
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