Let’s see how this would work:
“Your Honor, Since everything I’ve been accused of is in the past, you must be biased or you wouldn’t keep bringing it up, particularly since I’m in this 12 step program.
So unless you can prove to me you lack bias you shouldn’t comment on my actions and to continue doing so is intellectually dishonest of you”.
“The rate of abuse in the Church at the height of the scandal was at least, no greater than the general population, if not less than the population.”
But the clergy ARE NOT the general population according to Catholic teaching. It is a vocation from God that indelibly changes the man so that once ordained the priest is always a priest, for life.
Furthermore he is a shepherd responsible to Christ for the sheep that ultimately belong to Christ. He is charged with their protection and feeding etc.
Given all that, you’re using the general population as a standard?...............ho boy.
I have not seen a single Catholic deny or defend child molestation, but I have seen wide scale denial and ambivalence regarding molestation by non-Catholic clergy from the non-Catholics. This lack of outrage and condemnation simply illustrates that the real agenda of the non-Catholics is not to comfort and heal the victims or even to prevent new victimization. It is only to harm the Catholic Church.
When I see non-Catholics loudly state that; "Yes, my denomination has abusers in its clergy and it is wrong" and when they address all victims of clergy abuse as a group, not singling out the victims of Catholic clergy as an exploitable group to attack the Church I will begin to see things differently I am sure such non-Catholics exist, just not in any numbers here on FR.
No that's not what I'm saying. Let me use a hypothetical that should be quite illustrative.
The continued criticism of the Church for the scandal, to the exclusion of other abuse elsewhere, is akin to a judge constantly handing guilty verdicts to accused molesters who are Catholic, to the exclusion of other people of other failths/systems. IOW, it's like giving a guilty verdict to an accused preist when an equally guilty public school teacher gets a pass.
Both are guilty and should be convicted (in this hypothetical), but only one gets convicted. If any judge was found to have a record of such bias, he would be asked to recuse himself from such cases. As he should.
As far as comparing the rate of abuse in the Church with the general population, I think this is perfectly valid for two reasons. One, while priests are called to a different vocation than most, simply having a different vocation does not imply, nor is it intended to imply, that they are somehow more "holy" than the laity. They are human beings like the rest of us and thus are equally as fallable.
Second, given that the rate is the same if not lower (I tend to believe it's lower, but I have no desire to get mired in a debate about that, especially since that isn't relevant here), then the reason to single the Church out for abuse becomes even more indefensable. That is, if the rate if abuse is equal to the population as a whole, which it is, then it is inaccurate to call this a "Catholic problem". It should be called a societal problem, or a human problem.
That is, again, if one is intellectually honest.