Followup to my previous post:
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](http://www.martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/nov2006/pedophile1.html)
Bolding added.
I remember just reading… where was it?—ah, yes, here it is! A Psychology Today article: Beyond Bad-Apple Priests: Who the Pedophiles Really Are. The article claims that only a tiny fraction of child sex abusers are priests, and goes on to talk about who child sex abusers typically are.
Oh, now see, that’s a good point. We wouldn’t want to slander those poor, misunderstood child rapists by calling them pedophiles.
Just kidding. Your “cite” is total bullshit.
What’s wrong with calling child rapists “child rapists”, pedophiles “pedophiles”, and pedophiles who have raped children “pedophilic child rapist”? None of the terms is particularly endearing, so it’s not like we’re using euphemisms. We’re simply categorizing things based on tangible differences. Doing that helps you study cause and effect and so suggest workable solutions. Not recognizing different sub-classes of misbehavior simply prevents you from being able to find proper, workable solutions because you’re trying to solve 10 problems with a single solution without the benefit of taking into account that there is more than one problem.
Regardless, the point remains that if you define “pedophile” as a person who actively does things to prey on children, and you use that definitional criteria to obtain a group of research subjects, then unsurprisingly you’ll find that all of your research subjects actively do things to prey on children. That’s a rather self-fulfilling prophecy. And that essentially is the definition of a pedophile that is used in most research (at least that I’ve seen.) But, most people who molest children don’t fit that criteria.
Better cite:
That’s a different question, though. The OP is assuming there’s something about Catholic priests that make them more likely to molest.
Actually, the Pope just apologized on Friday to Irish Catholics:
Not unless you read a different OP than I did.
Only what, a decade and a half after allegations arose publicly with regard to priests abusing children. I gotta hand it to you Ratzinger. You’re on the ball.
But there are altar girls, and have been for some years new. At least since 1994, when it was explicity permitted in canon law, and I think even before that, when some dioceses were flying under the radar, so to speak, and doing it without explicit permission in canon law.
This is what I think the situation is, anyway. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable will come along and correct me.
Well, true, but the RCC is the only church that *is *an institution, in this sense. In just about any other church (let’s exclude the Orthodox Churches here), the minister/priest/rabbi/whatever answers to the congregation at his or her church, which hires and fires (subject to contractual limitations) ministers at will.
It’s entirely possible that a Methodist congregation, say, may become aware that its minister has been accused of some kind of improper sexual conduct, and may choose to dismiss that minister, but not turn him over to the authorities. What that congregation can’t do, and what the RCC is horribly guilty of having done all too often, is foist that minister off on some other Methodist church.
I agree, the biggest factor in this mess, is the fact that the bishops did not confront the issue straight on. Instead, they sent these perverts to treatment centers, then transferred them (to wreak further havoc).
The late ex-priest John Gaughan admitted to molesting over 100 children, in his career. Had he been arrested and jailed immediately, a lot of poor kids would have never been harmed.
Part of this was due to attitudes in the 1950’s and 60’s-the gym teacher where I went to school (Jr. HS) was an active molester-he would take kids on summer “outings” and regularly molest his victims. I always knew there was something strange about this guy-he would stare at us as we were showering (after gym class). Finally, some kid told his parents-and the guy left townas far as I know, he was not prosecuted.
Sage Rat, your cite says that most predators aren’t pedophiles. But you said that most people who have sex with children aren’t predators. I would argue that the people having sex with children are by definition predators, even if they aren’t necessarily pedophiles. (I’m not saying I agree with that, just that to my mind pretty much anyone having sex with a child is a predator and abuser.)
Possibly, I read an OP that asked:
which assumes that there’s something specific about the Catholic priesthood that attracts pedophiles.
I personally suspect, although I have no statistics showing this and almost by definition there can’t be statistics showing this if my hypothesis is true, that there are less acts of pedophilia happening today than at any other time in history. I do not mean by this that there is any smaller proportion of people who wish to commit pedophilic acts, regardless of whether they are solely attracted to children or are only attracted in the proper circumstances. I suspect that the proportion of people with those tendencies doesn’t vary over time.
Paradoxically, there may be more people who have been convicted of pedophilia now than ever before. That’s part of what I think of as a certain respect (almost a paranoid protectiveness) toward children today. Children used to not get believed as much. Children used to not get respected as much. Children used to not get sheltered as much. I suspect that much more pedophilia was ignored in the past, so it doesn’t show up in the crime statistics. More pedophiles today are holding themselves back from their desired acts, partly because they have already been convicted and know that they are being watched, partly because they fear getting convicted, and partly because more of them are in prison.
Which is different from what you said in post #26:
“The OP is assuming there’s something about Catholic priests that make them more likely to molest.”
I don’t particularly see the difference between the two statements, but ok.
Well, the one is saying that pedophiles come to the Catholic Priesthood because there’s something in it attractive to them. So someone who’s already a pedophile might think, “Oh a career path that lets me be around kids.”
The other is saying that Catholic priests are more likely to become molesters. I don’t know, maybe not being around women makes them more likely to molest children.
The psycho-medical model of the day contended that this condition was treatable. Sending offending priests off to treatment and then reassigning them was not just something that the church fathers used to cover up a scandal, it was what at least a portion of the medical community was recommending at that time.
Last year, a town in my area hired a teacher from another town. A few days before the start of the school year, it came out that he had been fired from the other school system for “inappropriate” contact with students - but in the deal that allowed him to be fired, the town agreed to give him a positive recommendation, with no mention of the reason for his termination. This didn’t happen in the 1970s, it happened in 2009.
It ain’t just priests, and it ain’t just the church.
Maybe, but like the study above showed, Catholic priests aren’t more likely to become molesters.
More thoughts on this.
I grew up in the Catholic Church. I grew up in an entirely Catholic environment. School, church, after-school activities, social life, everything.
Look, priests are around women all the time. There is ample opportunity for priests to have sexual relationships with adult women, and believe me, it happens. And not only because priests are manipulating women into relationships – often enough the woman goes into it with her eyes open. Of course, this does not come to the attention of the criminal justice system (and it shouldn’t, of course – our legal system should not be in the business of enforcing the Catholic Church’s celibacy requirement).
So I think that the idea that priests are sexually abusing children or adolescents only because they don’t have access to women doesn’t really hold water.