An article from NewsWeek has been posted over at The Sacred Page – Newsweek: Priests Unfairly Targeted as Abusers dealing with the scandal of abuse in the Catholic Church. These are things that I have known or thought about before, but for many of the readers of this blog perhaps may not be. Even though I am a Catholic who often wonders whether the Eastern solution concerning priestly celibacy might not work for the Roman Catholic Church, I do not wonder about this because I believe celibacy leads to perversion as some suggest. In fact, I think if you asked any social scientist whether getting married cures pedophilia, they would answer in the negative. This articles deals with a number of these issues by citing that incidents of abuse are no higher among Catholic clergy than among the population as a whole. It may just seem that way for a number of the reasons discussed in the article, not the least of which is the size of the institution. Be sure to click on over and check out the article.
As a postscript, I am not making any comment here on the church’s handling of cases of abuse. Rather I think there is an undue stigma attached to the priesthood now when most of the priests that I know are fantastic servants of Christ