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Sorry,Gross-anne....it’s not a Catholic problem.It’s a HOMO problem!!!

By Stanley Kurtz, from the June 3, 2002, issue of National Review

The sex-abuse scandal currently plaguing the Catholic priesthood has already grown to the point where it poses a serious threat to the power, prestige, and credibility of the American Catholic Church. The sky, so to speak, is falling. An institution whose fundamental strength and continuity (whatever its many problems) could once be taken for granted is experiencing a genuine crisis.

.....The priesthood scandal is a stunningly clear case in which the opening of an institution to large numbers of homosexuals, far from strengthening norms of sexual restraint, has instead resulted in the conscious and successful subversion of the norms themselves.

.....After Vatican II, and in conformity with the broader cultural changes of the Sixties, the U.S. Catholic Church allowed homosexuals to enter the priesthood in increasing numbers. The homosexual orientation itself, it was stressed, was not sinful. So as long as a homosexual adhered to the very same vow of celibacy taken by his heterosexual counterpart, there was no reason to deprive him of a priestly vocation. This was a compassionate stance, and one that promised to incorporate a heretofore stigmatized minority into a venerable institution, thereby strengthening the institution itself.

.....Yet imagine that an opponent of this new openness to homosexuals in the priesthood had uttered a warning cry. Imagine that someone had said, back in the 1970s, when homosexuals were flooding into Catholic seminaries all over the U.S., that substantial numbers of gay priests, far from accepting the rule of celibacy, would deliberately flout that rule, both in theory and in practice. Suppose that someone had argued that homosexual priests would gain control of many seminaries, that many would openly “date,” that many would actively cultivate an ethos of gay solidarity and promote a homosexual culture that would drive away heterosexuals — especially theologically orthodox heterosexuals — from the priesthood. Suppose this person went on to argue that, at its extreme, the growing gay subculture of the priesthood would tolerate and protect not only flagrant violations of celibacy, but even the abuse of minors. Then suppose that this person predicted eventual public exposure of the whole sordid mess, an exposure that would precipitate a crisis within the Church itself.

Naturally, anyone prescient — and foolish — enough to say all of these things in the wake of the Sixties would have been excoriated and ostracized as a hysterical gay-hater. It is simply bigoted, he would have been lectured, to claim that large numbers of homosexuals would take the vow of celibacy without making a good-faith effort to adhere to it; and even more so to claim that gay priests would embark on a campaign to deliberately subvert the Church’s sexual teachings. And surely our foolish (and hysterically homophobic) friend would have been assured that an institution like the Catholic priesthood would attract only the most conservative homosexuals, not a bunch of “queer” radicals. Besides, even if a very few homosexuals did go so far as to actually abuse the children who had been given into their care, surely the number of such cases could never rise to the point where the stature and credibility of the Church itself would be put into doubt.

.....Yet all of these things have happened. Consider Jason Berry’s extraordinary account in Lead Us Not Into Temptation: Catholic Priests and the Sexual Abuse of Children (1992), all the more striking for coming from the pen of a liberal Catholic who would himself like to see a liberalization of the Church’s sexual teachings. According to Berry, as the proportion of homosexuals in the priesthood increased dramatically in the 1970s and 1980s, many gay priests were visiting the seminary “on the make,” frequenting gay bars, and “befriending” high-school students. Berry reports a study of 50 gay Catholic priests, only two of whom said that they were abstaining from sexual activity: “Sixty percent said they felt no guilt about breaking their vows. Ninety percent strongly rejected mandatory celibacy . . . and slightly less than half reported that they engaged in sex in public toilets or parks.” According to Berry, Richard Wagner, author of the original study of these gay priests, found that 34 percent of his interviewees called their sexual partners “distinctly younger.” (Wagner did not say how young.) What’s clear from Berry’s account is that sexual abuse of boys by homosexual priests (the typical form of abuse in the current scandal) was part and parcel of a larger gay subculture within the priesthood, a subculture that effectively enabled the abuse of minors by encouraging flagrant homosexuality, and openly flouting the rule of celibacy itself. Indeed, in a now infamous case, a priest who has been the subject of abuse allegations over a period of three decades, the Reverend Paul Shanley, went so far as to advocate abuse in an address to the convention that led to the founding of the North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA). Here, the connection between sexual abuse and an openly “queer” culture was frighteningly direct.

.....Of course, it is true that powerful conservative bishops, who were in no way part of a homosexual subculture, played a critical role in covering up the abuse. They bear responsibility for their actions, yet their cover-up was itself motivated by their knowledge of the size and significance of the problem: To expose any given case was to risk a public unraveling of the larger problem of sexual abuse, disregard of celibacy, and the place of the gay subculture within the Church as a whole.

It is also true that cultural changes abroad in America in the wake of the Sixties eroded the ethic of celibacy among heterosexual priests as well. Yet heterosexual priests disenchanted with celibacy tended to leave the Church. Gay priests who rejected celibacy, on the other hand, tended to remain within the Church and, in word and deed, opposed the requirement of celibacy.

Of course, the mainstream press has done everything in its power to deny or minimize the connection between the priesthood scandals and homosexuality. Here is a case where the bias of the mainstream press on social issues matters tremendously. How can people debate the effects of social and sexual changes that the press barely even acknowledges to have taken place?

http://old.nationalreview.com/03june02/kurtz060302.asp

Consider reported cases of the sexual abuse of minors by priests. Over 80% involve same-sex encounters.

But, wait, if homosexuals are roughly 3% of the population, then shouldn’t 97% of abusers be victimizing females? Don’t heterosexual priests have the same access to girls that homosexual priests have to boys? Couldn’t happy/rainbow priests have found adult partners? (The media coined the phrase “pedophile priests” to divert our attention. Homosexual priests would have been too descriptive – but more reflective of reality.)

Homosexuals are more sexually attracted to children than heterosexuals.

There is no organized movement among heterosexuals to abolish age of consent laws. There is no North American Man-Girl Love Association. The North American Man-Boy Love Association – NAMBLA (whose motto is “Sex Before 8, Or It’s Too Late”) – is well-represented in almost every gay-pride parade. Heterosexual males who prey on adolescent girls don’t have a cute insider name for themselves. Gay pedophiles call themselves “chicken hawks.”

http://www.donfeder.com/articles/0604homoEggRoll.pdf