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To: wideawake
Evidently the Catholic church is not the same everywhere. My local parish had a priest who took the acolyte class into the church basement and got them drunk on communion wine and molested them. This was back in the '60s. I know it is true because my father was the desk sergeant at the police station when the complaint came in.
200 posted on 01/15/2003 9:58:30 PM PST by Eva
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To: Eva
No farflung organization is the same everywhere in practice.

And plenty of Methodist, Episcopalian, Baptist, Lutheran, etc. ministers and reverends have been in trouble for child molestation as well.

One example: the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod, a very conservative Biblical denomination, had a scandal in the mid-90s where 14 pastors and ministers were credibly accused of sexually abusing young boys under their spiritual care. The church covered up many of these cases - in one case, that of Daniel Reeb who had actively molested boys for 30 years - the perpetrator admitted to his conduct and was still permitted to preach. Several of these men had their legal defense paid for by the church.

There are 2.5M baptized LCMS Lutherans. There are 62M Catholics. There are 8,000 LCMS clergy and 47,000 Catholic clergy in the US or six times as many.

75 priests in the US are credibly accused of molestation, or about 5 times as many.

Statistically, you are slightly less likely to be hurt by a Catholic priest than an LCMS minister.

However, the media and conservative Protestants like to play up the problems in the Catholic Church as if they were unique to the Church and more widespread than in any other denomination. That's demonstrably false.

It's particularly silly to see conservative Protestants pile on in this way - I only know about the LCMS problems because they were somewhat publicized by liberal Midwestern newspapers. I'm sure much more liberal denominations have worse problems which are never reported.

Protestants who harp on the Church's difficulties are undercutting the largest pro-life organization in America and putting weapons into the hands of Christianity's enemies.

I want to see these filth punished even more than you do - but not at the price of seeing the good name of 99.95% of the Catholic clergy dragged through the mud.

201 posted on 01/16/2003 5:35:59 AM PST by wideawake
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