Intelligent contributions to understand the problem of sexual abuse of children by clergy demands accuracy and context. With that information added, comparisons with other groups become useful.
These basic questions need answers to make such numbers valid and useful.
1. What is the source of the data? What is its reliability?
2. What is the instance of sexual abuse of minors? Over what time frame?
3. What are the total universes of people in each category? I.e., how many ministers, priests, etc., in each subgroup?
Only with this information in hand do the final, useful data emerge: How do the various groups compare to each other in instances of abuse per 1,000 members per year? Other, non-religious groups should be included to put this information in context in society: What are the rates per 1,000 among public school teachers? Private school teachers? Boy scout leaders? Social workers? Other groups where adults are in positions of trust with children? Homosexuals? Parents in general? Adults in general?
My educated guess from reading reports of arrests and convictions is the common-sense conclusion that the highest rate of abuse will be among the group which most tolerates (or even promotes) alternative lifestyles, including homosexuality -- that would be public school teachers. At the bottom of the list should be the group with the least tolerance of homosexuality -- that would be the Boy Scouts.
It would take some hard-slogging work by a handful of reporters to get the answers to these questions, but a major newspaper like the New York Times could easily assign a small group of reporters to get and state these answers. But the Times would never do that, because the results would undercut four of its editorial positions: opposition to the Boy Scouts, opposition to the Catholic Church, support for homosexuals generally, and support for the "teechurs" unions generally.
But there ought to be ONE major news organization, Fox perhaps, or the Wall Street Journal, that would assign the reporters for a couple weeks to get these basic facts, and stick the results in the eye of the "liberal" majority in the lamestream media.
Congressman Billybob