Cardinal Schönborn says celibacy partly to blame for clerical sex abuse

The Times of London ^ | March 11, 2010 | Richard Owen

[EveningStar]

A cardinal seen as a future candidate for the papacy has broken a Vatican taboo by raising the possibility that priestly celibacy is among the causes of the sex abuse scandal sweeping the Roman Catholic Church.

[Patrick1]

Funny, pedophiles used to be called evil or sin. Christians are supposed to change the culture not surrender to it, future Pope indeed.

[dead]

If they only had a wife, they'd stop diddling boys.

Logic meltdown.

[EveningStar]

ping

[edcoil]

“sex abuse scandal”

Is it the same problem for our teachers? Or the UN when they enter a country?

[DManA]

As an outsider looking in, I never know how to take these stories. Did the reporter get it all screwed up? Is this a lose cannon or someone who is speaking for the Church?

[John W]

Wasn’t a lack of sex problem. Was a homosexual pedophile problem. For the most part.

[Past Your Eyes]

I ain’t a Catholic but how can anyone deny that what he says is true? Anyone who observes human behaviors should be able to figure it out.

[Past Your Eyes]

I ain’t a Catholic but how can anyone deny that what he says is true? Anyone who observes human behaviors should be able to figure it out.

[camle]

if it was celebacy, the abuse would have female victimes in porportion to their numbers in the natural population, instead it is overwhelmingly boys who are abused.
what does this tell you about the sexual preference of the perps?

and could someone tell me why, gay men abuse boys even when heavily involved with the scrpiture, they should be celebrated?

[Ben Mugged]

Not everyone knows the Catholic church does allow married men to become priests. The best priest I ever knew was divorced and a lawyer from Philadelphia. Entered the priesthood late in life.

[Natural Law]

Now stand back and watch the anti-Catholics pounce without even verifying what the Cardinal actually said. The actual comment was that the Church must investigate all long list of all possible causes including celibacy. He did not suggest or conclude that it was “partly the blame for sexual abuse”.

[EveningStar]

I’m not a Catholic, but let’s not turn this into a Catholic bashing thread, OK?

[Antioch]

Is there even one faithful Catholic left in Vienna? Cardinal Schönborn needs to focus on the near total apathy in his own backyard and stfu on larger issues like, say, the teaching of the Catholic Church.

There should be a Liberal Catholic counterpart to Godwin’s Law: “As a Forum discussion of the Catholic Church grows longer, the chance of it degenerating into atheists blathering about pedophilia and the crusades approaches 1.

1) The reality is that although the pedophilia scandal is real but grossly distorted and exaggerated. Number one, this is largely a North American phenomenon facilitated by national bishops conferences teaming with dissident, liberal theologians. These are your villains who have consistently promoted and protected their fellow closeted priests. examples: Archbishop Rembert Weakland, Bernard Law, Roger Mahony and Bishop Thomas Gumbleton.

2) The American Church represents about 5% of world Catholics and the number of American priests accused over a half-century span was about 4,392 representing about 4% percent of 110,000 American priests (one quarter of one percent of the 408,024 Catholic priests worldwide).

3) Now lets look at how human beings with access to children behave when they are freed from the evil, repressed, pedophilia-inducing Catholic Church. Study 2004: “Educator Sexual Misconduct: A Synthesis of Existing Literature” by Virginia Commonwealth University Professor Charol Shakeshaft. Conclusions: Nearly 10 percent of U.S. public school students have been targeted with unwanted sexual attention by school employees, and in those cases, 40 percent of the perpetrators were women. As an example of the extent of secular adult abuse, 422,000 California public-school students will be victims before graduation — a number that dwarfs the state’s entire Catholic-school enrollment of 143,000. Secular teachers commit pedophiliac acts at a rate 20x greater than priests of the Catholic Church.

4) Media Bias: The Boston Globe began publishing on Jan. 6, 2002, a series of reports regarding sexual abuse of children by priests in the Archdiocese of Boston. In a flash, newspapers around the country began reprinting the Globe’s reports and developing their own. They published 728 stories in January; 1,095 in February, and 2,961 in March. By April, these papers were publishing a new story every nine minutes, 160 every day, 4,791 for the month. By year-end, American papers provided their readers over 21,000 stories of sexual abuse by Catholic priests.” All this over a 52-year period, where some 4,400 priests nation-wide were “accused” of molestation, and many of those accused were acquitted. If the liberal media were to print lurid stories about the teacher-student sex abuse at the same rate as they reserve for priests, the country would be parched treeless desert for all the paper they would need to print it.
What can we conclude from all this? Of all males who abuse children sexually:

4 percent were priests (By the 1990s, priest abuse declined dramatically, from under 3 percent in the 1990s to near zero in 2000 and after. Source: 2003 Research Study Conducted by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

30% are stepfathers
24% are adoptive fathers
20% are the mothers’ boyfriends
12% are coaches, neighbors, clergy, daycare providers
10% are strangers

4% were priests.

My conclusion as a parent is this: If I must place my children in the care of an adult, my safest bet is to entrust them with Catholic priests (which I do).

[MrChips]

Most pedophiles, including priests who are pedophiles, are heterosexual.

[Sans-Culotte]

I ain’t a Catholic but how can anyone deny that what he says is true? Anyone who observes human behaviors should be able to figure it out.

Maybe you ain't a Catholic, but if you ain't married, does that mean you'll feel the urge to sodomize children?

[John W]

Most of the known abuse cases in the Roman Catholic Church were of a homosexual pedophile nature by definition. I don’t know how else you could refer to a man sexually abusing a minor boy.

[ElPatriota]

OH REALLY?..... HOW IS THAT?

LOOK i went to the seminary for one year (long story) and even though I had a lot of fun there (lots of soccer) I never considered the real possibility of becoming a priest.. WHY Y0U ASKED?... Because when I saw some WOMEN...YES WOMEN... I felt my knees wobble... That's right... I sure would have been a bad priest

Now what does that have to do with QUEERS abusing little children? Wouldn't you say that has to do more with PERVERSION... A CORRUPTED MIND?... A SICK BRAIN?

See the cuties in the PIC? What do you think of them?

[dead]

Most pedophiles, including priests who are pedophiles, are heterosexual.

That's a dopey statistic, considering that 97% or so of all people are heterosexual.

[skr]

I think priests should be allowed to marry, but I don’t agree that celibacy is the problem regarding child molestation; that comes from allowing pedophiles into the priesthood.