You’re all just of bandwagon jumpers. I was into raping babies before it was fashionable.
People who want to join an organization with a long history of protecting child molesters, I expect. An organization with access to children, where a man can attain a position where his virtuousness is regarded as a given.
Really; child molesters aren’t morons, and they do communicate with each other ( thus the existence of such things as child porn networks ). I’m sure it’s been fairly common knowledge among them for decades that the Catholic Church is a safe haven for them. So for years and years they drift in and accumulate; until finally the scandals started breaking into the public eye.
You do? I didn’t realise there was doubt any more, given the copious evidence available these days.
Usually one hears speeches about how it’s just an isolated incident, one bad apple doesn’t spoil the bunch, and so on. Along with accusations of Catholic bashing, and claims that every other organization has just as many child molesters and that those organizations would protect them just like the Church. Without evidence that it’s so, and without acknowledging just how much of an insult that is to the other organizations in question.
That makes little sense, considering there were pedo priests *before *it became standard policy for the RCC to shuffle them around. If there hadn’t been molesting priests, there wouldn’t have been a need for the policy, QED.
However, according to psych studies, sociopaths (I mean real, honest to god ones, not your garden variety internet sociopaths :p) tend to gravitate towards positions of power and authority that set them apart and above the vulgum pecus and the rules governing normal society. While I wouldn’t jump the gun and assume all priests are sociopaths, it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that the profession fields a higher proportion of them than the mean. The opportunity to roger kids up the bum is just a perk, IMO. As I understand it, rape’s usually about power, not sex.
It makes plenty of sense; some would join for other reasons; and they’d gravitate in ever larger numbers as word of how good life for them in the Church was. And I doubt the practice of covering up for priests started with child molesters; it certainly isn’t restricted to them.
That’s more of a political theory than anything else. Rape is primarily about sex in most cases; not power.
… I am actually surprised there is something Bricker calls indefensible. This is not a slur on him, nor do I even remotely think he approves of child porn. But this is Bricker calling something indefensible.
My mind is blown, brethren.
I wonder whether anyone has ever looked into comparative rates of abuse by various such organizations.
I can’t help but think that requiring Catholic priests to be officially celebate makes such stuff more likely - not because being celebate drives people to rape kids, but rather because it provides perfect cover for those already so inclined - no inconvenient spouse hanging around, and no qualms on the part of parents and others about a guy apparently uninterested in acquiring one (his own age).
Everybody sing along…
If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands…
According to “Pedophiles and Priests: Anatomy of a Contemporary Crisis”, by Philip Jenkins of Pennsylvania State University, the rates of pedophilia among priests is statistically the same as that found among married men.
I’m not aware of any studies that show a higher rate among priests. Can anyone expand my knowledge in this area?
So you’re telling us Bricker has “blown” your “mind” eh? Scandalous!
I’m with Malthus though. It’s tough to belong to an organization you believe in and devote a lot of energy to, and then have to bear the shame brought on that organization by sociopaths who exploit its weakness. I think the Christian message is a good one, but the organizations that use it to fleece and control regular folks are definitely a problem.
I read the synopsis in the attached link, but I have serious reservations about the thesis that the rates of priestly sex abuse is no higher than in the general population, and the whole scandal is a mixture of news media “folk devil/moral panic” hyperbole, target-of-opportunity litigation, and anti-Catholic scare-mongering.
It could well be true - I admit I’ve personally seen no statistics - but stuff like the Bishop being busted for kiddie porn mere days after negotiating a sex-abuse scandal lawsuit indicates anecdotally at least a wider, systemic problem.
I note that the author of that work is also the author of a book on anti-Catholic prejudice, which could point in either direction but which tends to make me think he’s pursuing a common thesis.
The Vatican itself very recently stated that “no more than” 5% of priests were engaged in sexual abuse of children, and in any event most of those were ephibophiles and not pedophiles:
I have no idea how many adult males engage in sexual abuse of minors, but I’d be surprised if it was one in twenty. Then again, I’m often surprised.
The article goes on to note that the official Church position is that other faiths have it just as bad - which representatives of those other faiths tend to deny.
On the contrary, a single case doesn’t indicate anything except the existence of a single case. If I could show the case of a police officer arrested for child porn days after he testified against a sex offender, we’d have a similar reaction based on the conflation of those two incidents, but it wouldn’t be relevant to establishing any kind of a trend or rate amongst police for child sex abuse.
Bishop settles sex abuse cases and gets busted for child porn: a dramatic story, but it doesn’t have any evidence about percentages or trends.
Very valid point. Which is why I asked for any other studies. Like you, my first instinct is to agree that the priesthood offers a certain number of lures for pedophiles. It’s a profession where no one will question why you don’t have an adult romantic partner, and one that may well offer up access to large numbers of youths with the added benefit of being able to spot, steer, and counsel alienated or disturbed youngsters.
But in the absence of any sort of study that looks at hard numbers rather than supposition, I’m not prepared to accept it as a proven fact.
Sure – which is why, again, I’d like to see something in the way of actual facts.
What the Church has that most other faiths generally do not is an organization: when the local rabbi is a molestor, he can’t be quietly sent to another temple by the Archrabbi, because there is no Archrabbi. So when the desire to “protect the Church” is mutated into a desire to a desire to protect the molester, the RCC can dole out more damage than most other faiths.
But that’s not a showing of how prevalent the incidence of molesters is; it’s a statement about how they can evade consequences for longer.
Very true, it is mere anecdote. However, the fact that a bishop is involved - same guy with the power and authority within the organization to deal at a policy level with the issue of child abuse (and has!) - it is a telling anecdote.
The better analogy to a policeman busted after testifying against an abuser, would be a police chief busted for corruption after presiding over a process disciplining cops for corruption. A bystander may be forgiven, in the latter case, for getting the impression that the police force at issue has a problem with corruption.
Agree. And no doubt there is truth to the charge that the media loves this story.
I agree with that as well. The Jewish example is instructive, since Rabbis are generally hired by congregations - who can and will fire them over improprieties.
That’s a good point, because it invites the inference that the bishop may have used his position of power to protect others similarly situated and better conceal his own proclivities.
There are some interesting numbers, mostly derived from the John Jay Study that support the 5% number… sort of. It focuses heavily on the United States, where the media coverage and a move away from Catholicism may have encouraged victims, at least those that are still alive, to come forward (2/3 of the allegations in question were made between 1993 and 2003).
It is difficult not to wonder if the numbers aren’t higher in countries where the population is much more heavily Catholic, but also poorer and with less direct access to the media.
5% is hardly a comforting number from a group that claims to have such might moral authority, and it is much less ‘respectable’ when you take into account what percent of the clergy allowed the abuse to happen without committing it themselves. The Pope himself could molest half the Catholic kids in his world and have it kept secret by his minions – I doubt the victims would find it more comforting than having thousands of abusive priests.
Perhaps. But married men aren’t part of a large and influential organization that, for decades, put a lot of time and energy into covering up the deeds of the pedophiles among them. And (can’t forget!) moving them along to new territories every so often, to give them a whole new set of kids to fuck.
Yes. You made it back just in time!
No, it’s a psychological profile of a scientist who looked at the data of convincted rapists. Rape isn’t about sex, but about power, or revenge.