Catholics say perverted priests less common than horny protestants...

[rfranklin]

SEXUAL ABUSE IN SOCIAL CONTEXT:
CATHOLIC CLERGY AND OTHER PROFESSIONALS

Special Report
by
Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights

February 2004

(excerpt)
In the spring of 2002, when the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church was receiving unprecedented attention, the Christian Science Monitor reported on the results of national surveys by Christian Ministry Resources. The conclusion: “Despite headlines focusing on the priest pedophile problem in the Roman Catholic Church, most American churches being hit with child sexual-abuse allegations are Protestant, and most of the alleged abusers are not clergy or staff, but church volunteers.”

Finally, in the authoritative work by Penn State professor Philip Jenkins, Pedophiles and Priests, it was determined that between .2 and 1.7 percent of priests are pedophiles. The figure among the Protestant clergy ranges between 2 and 3 percent.

http://www.catholicleague.org/research/abuse_in_social_context.htm

[Dogmudgeon]

1. "We're less worse than they are!"

In. Fucking. Credible.

--p!

[BattyDem]

2. This is the problem I have with ...

hard-core "religious types" - they never take any responsibility for anything! They preach to people and tell them how they should live their lives, they judge people as sinners and deviants, and yet when they're caught doing something wrong, do they apologize? No. Do they acknowledge the problem and vow to find a solution? No.

They make excuses and point fingers at other people - "We may be bad, but we're not as bad as they are!" :eyes:

[rpannier]

3. Oh...that makes me feel so better.

So, let me get this straight...they're saying "We're cheap, sleazy and tawdry, but not as cheap sleazy and tawdry as another group is." That's a f**ked up defense of something criminal.

[Cheswick2.0]

4. This is just dumb

The are comparing Preist to member volunteers and making that they basis for why Protestants are worse?

[roguevalley]

5. so to sum it up: they both suck.

[JVS]

6. I'm not sure the Catholic League is a credible source on this matter

Also to a large degree this scandal is as much about cover-up as it is about molestation. Of course the molestation is a horrible crime, but what compounds it so much is the knowlegde of superiors who instead of either going to authorities or defrocking priests decided that the best policy was to send the offenders to different areas and hope that the offences wouldn't be repeated.

[DemBones DemBones]

10. The same thing has happened with rabbis being protected

by their peers and their congregations when it became known they had abused
children. Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses, Methodists, you name it, and someone has covered up for a clergyman. It's bad.

I have my own reservations about the Catholic League, but I believe their sources (the Christian Science Monitor, Philip Jenkins at Penn State) are credible.

[JVS]

12. The organizational structure of the Catholic Church increases...

possibility for covering up abuses of this nature though.

Staffing and placement decisions within the Catholic church are not made from below, but rather from above. This is the essence of the scandal involving Cardinal Law. It was his responsibility to deal with the problem and he didn't "Critics have accused Cardinal Law of moving priests from one pulpit to another rather than confronting the problem" http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2572517.stm
The problem with this kind of a system is that those at the parish level are not used to questioning the decisions made by superiors and one day Fr. Bob shows up and because decisions have been made above nobody questions what the reason for his arrival is. It's not in their hands.

Before I move on to describe the alternative methods of organizations, I'd like to criticize the methodology of the study. Protestant is not a denomination, in fact the word has taken on a set-theoretical definition of "all that is Christian but neither Catholic or Orthodox" This category covers a wide variety of clergy members ranging from Anglican, Lutheran, and Presbyterian pastors who have been through a ordination (and presumably a moral screening) process every bit as demanding as those of a Catholic Priest all the way to guys who got their ordination through the mail or who simply started a church on their own. Thus to study "Protestant" clergy in comparison to Catholic clergy is akin to studying birds in comparison to chickens. One of the reasons that many Catholics and mainline Protestants have confidence in their clergy is that they know that these men and women have dedicated several years of study to becoming clergy and done so under the supervision of authorities that would likely expel them from seminary if questionable behaviors were to surface (i.e heavy drinking, going to whorehouses, etc.). The study would be better to compare like to like instead of comparing Catholic clergy to a broad "other" category. Frankly, I'd expect priests to be held to a higher standard than do it yourself holy-roller church starters.

In most mainline Protestant churches staffing decisions are made by the congregation. Individual congregations hire and fire pastors. Thus situations where it would be possible to cover up a minister's wrong-doing are less frequent and would require the cooperation of numerous members of the congregation, in particular the victims as well. If pastor Bob is screwing around with the kids there is not going to be a call from the archbishop to move him somewhere else. Pastor Bob can either quit and go looking for a new opening somewhere or he can wait until the congregation gets suspicious of him and fires him. Congregations where Bob would apply would likely be suspicious of his inability to stay anywhere for long. For Bob not to face prosecution and remain a clergy member would be difficult because there is no way for him to just up and disappear without arousing suspicion. Basically, the Catholic church's efficiency when it comes to assigning and rearranging priests from above like so many soldiers is really good at putting priests into churches, but its practices can lend itself to cover-up and placement of clergy who should not be there.

[burn the bush]

7. they were all suposed to be Christians, were they not?

Catholic, Protestant, Methodist.....

[DemBones DemBones]

9. Yes, indeed, and all have sinned. No excuse for

their behavior. Catholics just want people to realize this is not a Catholic problem but a human one.

(There are rabbis in prison for the same thing, by the way, and I don't think their religion supports it in any way. But we must not think it's a Christian problem, either.)

[DemBones DemBones]

8. The lack of reading skills evidenced by posts in this thread is

enough to make me fear for the future of our society.

For starters, your "headline" is misleading. It's not "Catholics" saying this, it's a Special Report by the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, which is not a part of the Catholic Church but a private advocacy orgnaization. I don't have any idea how many Catholics belong to the Catholic League but it certainly doesn't speak for all of us.

In their report, the League discusses the results of a survey by the Christian Science Monitor, a respectable, non-Catholic newspaper which is often a good source of news not reported by the mainstream media. It now reports regularly on Iraq; I used it as a news source during the Viet Nam war, too.

It also reports what was said by Philip Jenkins in his book, Pedophiles and Priests: 0.2-1.7 % of Catholic clergy are pedophiles while 2-3% of Protestant clergy are pedophiles.

(That means "perverted priests" are less common than "perverted Protestant clergy," not only less common than "horny Protestants," a much larger group that would include our own Bill Clinton.)

It's my understanding, BTW, that Philip Jenkins was once Catholic but no longer is; I think he may be Episcopalian now.

So, the Catholic League reports that the NON-CATHOLIC Christian Science Monitor says "most American churches being hit with child sexual-abuse allegations are Protestant, and most of the alleged abusers are not clergy or staff, but church volunteers” and that the NON-CATHOLIC Philip Jenkins reports more pedophiles among Preotestant clergy than among Catholic clergy.

Why not a headline saying "SURVEY, OTHER RESEARCH SHOW PEDOPHILE PRIESTS ARE LESS COMMON THAN PEDOPHILE PROTESTANT CLERGY?"


I have yet to read the entire article but I am sure it does NOT excuse the bad actions of priests, contrary to what some are stating in this thread.

The Catholic League, I suggest, wants to get across the message that pedophilia is not a problem found only in Catholic parishes. People who delude themselves that their children are safe with adult males who aren't Catholic priests may have some awful surprises ahead.

[Nikki Stone 1]

11. I agree with your analysis of the article but I'd like more information on

the survey, how it was conducted, etc. Self-report surveys can be quite inadequate. My own instinct is that both figures, Catholic priest and Protestant clergy, are far too low.