Thank God - literally - for the Reformation
Your thanks are between you and God, but I wouldn't do it on account of sexual abuse of minors.
First stats I come across are these, from an apparently Baptist site. Over a 50-year period that has now been extensively investigated (1950 to 2002), credible complaints against Catholic priests in the U.S. were an average of 228 per year.
The article points out that the Catholic church is far more centralized than the various Protestant denominations and churches, not all of which maintain records, so the number of cases involving Protestant ministers is likely to be comparatively under-reported. But quoting from just three insurance companies that cover Protestant churches, the average number of credible complaints against ministers annually was about 260.
The figures for public-school teachers are dramatically worse than either of the above. A 2004 study commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education found that of public-school students in grades 8 to 11, 6.7 percent were physically molested by a teacher or coach.
That's about 25,000 kids per year in that age group.
(The study is called, "Educator Sexual Misconduct: A Synthesis of Existing Literature").
The investigator, Charol Shakeshaft of Hofstra U, told a reporter that, compared to the Catholic church, the problem in public schools is "100 times worse."
Molesting children is a problem of human nature--particularly male human nature. Personally, I think abusers should be hanged. The Catholic Church is the source of the Christian teaching that human nature is flawed, and that molesting children is gravely sinful. However much we despise sin, we have to admit the Church tells the truth.
“Molesting children is a problem of human nature”
I didn’t say otherwise. I said that the Catholic Church is a bureaucracy that — like all bureaucracies — needs to be exposed to competition, or it becomes corrupt. That’s what the Reformation did, it injected competition into the Christian Church.
The corruption of institutions is a problem of human nature.
You don’t overcome that problem by giving an institution unchecked control, insulated from accountability and competition. We conservatives know that this fact is true about the public schools — they need competition. So does the Catholic Church, and indeed all churches. That’s why I say, Thank God for the Reformation.