[Catholic Caucus]Priest-Sociologist Examines Data on Clergy Sex Abuse

Mark Lambert Blogspot ^ | December 4, 2018 | Mark Lambert

[ebb tide]

Priest-Sociologist Examines Data on Clergy Sex Abuse

Much effort has been made to disassociate homosexuality from paedophilia to the point where this has become received opinion:

There is no connection between being a homosexual and being a paedophile. You are conflating two different things.

— LondonInternetChurch (@LInternetChurch) December 3, 2018

This predominantly secular paradigm has been adopted by the Bishops of England & Wales, who in 2010, publicly broke with the Vatican directive banning men with a deep-seated same-sex practice to be allowed into Seminary.

In 2010, Marcus Stock, now the tenth bishop of Leeds, then appointed General Secretary for the Bishop's Conference of England & Wales by Vincent Nichols (a well worn career path) stated:

"To the best of my knowledge, there is no empirical data which concludes that sexual orientation is connected to child sexual abuse.
"The consensus among researchers is that the sexual abuse of children is not a question of sexual 'orientation', whether heterosexual or homosexual, but of a disordered attraction or 'fixation'.
"Many abusers of children have never developed the capacity for mature adult relationships. Instead, their sexual attractions focus on children - boys, girls, or both.
"In the sexual abuse of children the issue is the sexual fixation of the abusers, and not their sexual orientation."

There could be something to his statement, I know many readers will find these words eminently sensible, except that, as has been demonstrated beyond doubt before and since, the vast majority of victims of abuse (over 80%) are adolescent boys, many of whom are post-pubescent.

This reality has been confirmed by a new report which argues that the evidence strongly suggests links between sexual abuse of minors and two factors: a disproportionate number of homosexual clergy and the manifestation of a “homosexual subculture” in seminaries.
The author of this report gives a stark warning:

“I found that clergy sex abuse did drop to almost nothing after 2002, but then it started to creep up,” he continued. “It’s been increasing. And there are signs that the bishops or the dioceses have gotten complacent about that.”

“It’s not at the great heights that it was in the mid-1970s, but it’s rising. And it’s headed in that direction,” he added.

“Although over 8 in 10 of victims have been boys, the idea that the abuse is related to homosexual men in the priesthood has not been widely accepted by Church leaders,” said Father Sullins.
“(T)he data show that more homosexual men in the priesthood was correlated with more overall abuse and more boys abused compared to girls,”

The increase or decrease in the percent of male victims correlated “almost perfectly” with the increase or decrease of homosexual men in the priesthood, he said, citing a 0.98 correlation. While the correlation was lower among victims under age 8, it was “lower but still strong,” 0.77. The statistical association between homosexual priests and abuse incidence was “extremely strong,” given that this scale ranges from -1.0, an inverse correlation, to 1.0, an absolute positive correlation.

Such results were “as close as you can get to a perfect correlation as I have ever seen,” Father Sullins said Nov. 2, adding that researchers usually consider correlation association above 0.3 or 0.4 to be a strong effect.

He took care to say it is the disproportionate presence of homosexual men in the priesthood, not the simple presence of any homosexual men, that appears to be the major factor.

“What I say in the paper is that when homosexual men were represented in the priesthood at about the same rate as they were in the population, there was no measurable problem of child sex abuse,” Sullins said. “It was only when you had a preponderance of homosexual men.”

The percentage of homosexual men in the general population is estimated at 2%. In the 1950s, homosexual men in the priesthood were about twice their percentage in the general population, making up 4%. In the 1980s they were eight times the percentage in the general population, 16%, according to Father Sullins.

“When you get up to 16% of priests that are homosexual, and you’ve got eight times the proportion of homosexuals as you do in the general population, it’s as if the priesthood becomes a particularly welcoming and enabling and encouraging population for homosexual activity and behavior,” he said.

Now, Pope Francis has stated in a book-length interview, that 'ministry or consecrated life' is not the place for people with ingrained homosexual tendencies. This reinforces an opinion he has expressed numerous times in the past, for example back in May in a meeting with Italian bishops.  Also in May, he met with Juan Carlos Cruz, the main whistleblower in Chile’s sex-abuse and cover-up scandal who was sexually abused by a Chilean priest. In that meeting, Cruz alleged that Francis said to him that God made him gay and that his sexual orientation “does not matter” (see my report at the time here).

As always, the Pope has jumped in with both boots, contradicting his own actions (re-activating McCarrick for example, promoting Coccopalmerio who's secretary was arrested at a "gay orgy" at the Vatican the Cardinal was reported to have personally attended, for another). But there's more evidence that make the Pope's words puzzling.

Like his concelebration of Mass and then kissing the hands of a notorious gay activist priest in 2014.

His walk into St. St. Gregory's in Rome while holding hands with Luigi Ciotti, another notorious pro-homosexual activist, a friend and admirer of the scandalous Fr. Andrea Gallo (1928-2013), who was a public Communist, Modernist, and supporter/ promoter of homosexuality.

There are literally loads of other examples which I will not list now, but when you read the Pope's statement in this book, you just have to shake your head and puzzle at how contradictory he actually is. He quite openly says one thing and does the opposite. He makes a statement then openly contradicts it in another statement. This is quite a problem for the man who has the job of breaking open the truth of the Catholic faith and explaining it to the world. Instead of the "great bridge-builder" he ends up looking like a confused hypocrite.

The Vatican directive is sensitive to men & women who suffer from same-sex attraction while stating clearly that it is not appropriate for people who are wrestling with such a condition to be admitted to a seminary or indeed to holy orders.

The Pope is implicitly affirming the official doctrine while subtly undermining it with a less stringent pastoral teaching. Instead of seeking to change the underlying rules, which would risk divisiveness and even schism, his example seems to say that it's perfectly alright for a priest or layperson to diverge from or ignore the rule in the name of welcoming as many people as possible to Christ's church.

What is clear is that when he says something like "homosexuals should not be in seminary" he doesn't mean it.

Francis may be betting that once the church stops preaching those doctrines that conflict most severely with modern moral norms, the number of people who uphold and revere them will decline rapidly (within a generation or two). Once that has happened, officially changing the doctrine will be much easier and much less likely to provoke a schism (or at least a major one) than it is in the present.

[ebb tide]

Catholic Caucus

What is clear is that when he (Bergoglio) says something like "homosexuals should not be in seminary" he doesn't mean it.

[ebb tide]

Ping

[scouter]

What is clear is that when he (Bergoglio) says something like "homosexuals should not be in seminary" he doesn't mean it.

True. But what it does do is give those bishops who really do want to clean up their dioceses, but don't have the courage, the cover they need to do so.

[Blurb2350]

Technically he's right: pedophilia and homosexuality are two separate perversions. But the Church's problem isn't pedophilia but pederasty,and pederasty is a very common practice among adult male homosexuals. It's how teenage boys and young men are coaxed into the homosexual "lifestyle." Where you have large numbers of homosexual men, you invariably have pederasty.

[lepton]

The percentage of homosexual men in the general population is estimated at 2%. In the 1950s, homosexual men in the priesthood were about twice their percentage in the general population, making up 4%. In the 1980s they were eight times the percentage in the general population, 16%, according to Father Sullins.

---

Or said another way:

In the general population, about one in 50.
In the 1950s, one in 25 amongst priests.
By the 1980s, one in 6.

[lastchance]

Thanks for getting to the gist of the matter.

[Gay State Conservative]

There is no connection between being a homosexual and being a paedophile.

Balderdash!

[Chainmail]

Ping.

[TChad]

There is no connection between being a homosexual and being a paedophile.

What a vile attempt to redirect the blame.

First, the obvious. According to The John Jay Report, 81% of the victims of the Catholic abuse scandal were male. All of the priests were male. Therefore, 81% of the abuse was homosexual. Had the abuse been entirely heterosexual, 100% of the victims would have been female.

Next, the statement pretends that the abuse was perpetrated primarily by pedophiles. That is false.

Kids mature early these days. Most males now enter puberty at age 10:

https://www.webmd.com/children/news/20121020/earlier-puberty-age-9-10-average-us-boy#1

According to the John Jay Report, only 14.2% of the abuse involved children aged nine or younger, and only 22.6% involved children aged ten or younger.

The Catholic sex abuse problem has primarily consisted of homosexual priests preying on early post-pubescent males, not preying on pre-pubescent children of both sexes. You can call those priests pederasts or hebephiles or a few other things, but stop pretending that they are heterosexual.

[piusv]

I wonder if he is saying this to make those who wish to clean up their dioceses *think* they have the cover when in reality he’s just tricking them into a false sense of security.

[scouter]

I wonder if he is saying this to make those who wish to clean up their dioceses *think* they have the cover when in reality he’s just tricking them into a false sense of security.

That could very well be the case.