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Thank you for posting this. I have had the honor of spending a few days in the presence of this good priest and have never believed the smears against him.

That said, I believe he is wrong about the number of priest-abusers. Newsweek quoted Richard Sipes as stating that close to 20% of the 57,000 priests in the US are homosexual and half of these are sexually active. --And this may be a low estimate. Some put the number of homosexual priests at closer to 40%, with half sexually active. Of this number, it is true that true pedophilia--the sexual abuse of children--is rare. But the abuse of male adolescents is far less rare and represents a much higher per centage than would be indicated by the Ratzinger comment.

This doesn't make Fr. Groeschel wrong to focus on true pedophilia per se, but it suggests that he, like others in the Church, are still in considerable denial.

This doesn't make Fr. Groeschel wrong to focus on true pedophilia per se, but it suggests that he, like others in the Church, are still in considerable denial.

What to believe? The numbers are probably different depending on what part of the country you are in. The other day Fr. Greeley weighed in on the number of abusing priests (inc. those abusing children as well as those abusing teenagers) and his estimates were on the low side as well.

It probably doesn't matter about the numbers so long as they are weeded out one way or the other. This is a case of NOT letting the tares grow along with the wheat.