By BRIAN CLOWES
Part 4
(Editor’s Note: Brian Clowes has been director of research and training at Human Life International since 1995. For an electronic copy of the complete four-part series on homosexuality and the Church crisis, e-mail him at bclowes@hli.org.)
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“When these [pedophilia] cases started to be reported, we realized there were a hell of a lot more out there than anyone realized. Offenders exist in literally every faith group” — Child abuse expert psychologist Gary Schoener.
Is Celibacy The Cause
Of The Problem?
Some claim that the sexual abuse crisis would have been either avoided entirely or greatly reduced in scope if the Catholic Church allowed priests to marry. Those who make the assertion that priestly celibacy contributed significantly to the crisis cover the entire theological and political spectrum — from longtime dissenter Fr. Hans Küng and Christoph Cardinal Schönborn, archbishop of Vienna, to certain conservative commentators.
Some people extend this line of reasoning even further, claiming that less than half of priests are celibate, so the rule should be eliminated since illicit clerical sex is “happening anyway.”
However, a little common sense and a few relevant comparisons show that the claim that priestly celibacy was a significant contributor to the crisis is unfounded. The problem is, as discussed previously, homosexuality.
Those priests who sexually molest boys have just as much access to adult women as other men. As we have seen, the reason that the great majority of victims of predatory priests were boys in the age bracket 11-17 is that these priests were not particularly interested in women in the first place.
Protestant Denominations
Are Suffering Too
The most certain proof that there is no correlation between celibacy and child molestation comes from the fact that married Protestant clergy commit child sexual abuse at about the same rate as Catholic priests.
Three corporations — Church Mutual Insurance Company, GuideOne Insurance, and Brotherhood Mutual Insurance Company — insure the majority of Protestant churches in the United States. These three companies found that there has been an average of about 333 reported incidents of children under the age of 18 being sexually abused by Protestant clergy, church staff, volunteers, or congregation members annually over the past several decades.
By comparison, 4,392 priests (out of 109,000) were accused of sexual abuse during the time period 1950 to 2002, an average of 84 per year.
These numbers seem to be confirmed by a comprehensive 1996 study by Professor Philip Jenkins of Penn State, which found that between 0.2 percent and 1.7 percent of priests are pedophiles, and two to three percent of Protestant clergy are pedophiles, a somewhat higher rate.
Since Protestant clergy and staff are all free to marry and their rates of abuse are the same or higher, it is very difficult to argue that allowing priests to marry would have lessened abuse rates in the Church.
So why do we not hear about the “minister pedophile crisis” more, considering that it is comparable in scope to the “priestly pedophilia crisis”? Why does the American public believe that almost all child sexual abuse occurs among Catholic clergy?
The answer is complex. First, because all of the mainline Protestant denominations are “pro-gay,” the media may very well be hesitant to attack its allies in the push for homosexual special rights.
Additionally, the Catholic Church’s consistent teaching on sexuality and marriage makes it the prime target of those who want to redefine sexual morality and marriage.
Finally, it is an extremely difficult task to discern patterns — and therefore guilt — among the ten thousand or more Protestant denominations, all of which have different belief systems and different ways of viewing and handling the sexual abuse of children.
Conclusions
As we have seen, we often hear from the homosexual-rights movement that “gays” are “born that way.” This has never been proven scientifically, yet the error persists as “fact” in most media treatment.
Many experts believe that, in many cases, homosexuality is an acquired condition due to the lack of an effective male role model, or due to other “nurture” issues, rather than “nature” issues. We do not hear from these experts simply because they are ignored by the media and censored and attacked by homosexual groups.
In the most fundamental sense, this point is irrelevant. We are all born with weaknesses, a direct result of our fallen natures. We can deal with these weaknesses in one of two ways — we can accept them as crosses given to us by God, and we can glorify His Name by struggling to overcome them with the aid of His grace. Or we can simply give in and use the “born that way” excuse, essentially a vote of “no confidence” in God’s grace and its ability to save us.
A person can have a genetic predisposition toward alcoholism. Yet our spouses do not accept the “born that way” excuse if we arrive home drunk every night. Nor should they! Kleptomania may also be partly genetic, yet no court in the land has ever accepted the “born that way” excuse as a defense against shoplifting charges.
Alcoholics and those tempted to steal can be good and holy priests and ministers — just so long as they recognize their weaknesses, avoid near occasions of sin, and fight to overcome them on a daily basis with the help of God’s grace. Men who are sexually attracted to women or to other men can also become saintly priests and ministers — but only if they do not give in to temptation and act out their desires.
A man who is living an active homosexual lifestyle should never be ordained a priest or minister. The danger to souls and to lives is just too great, as the sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church has amply demonstrated. This is primarily because ephebophilia, or the sexual desire for adolescent boys, has always been a hallmark of homosexuality, as shown by numerous scientific studies, and as admitted by a number of leaders of the homosexual “rights” movement themselves.
Homophile groups are exploiting the current crisis in the Church in order to achieve their goals, a classic strategy of infiltration and subversion. Many of these groups vocally supported “man boy love” in the 1960s and 1970s. Now the same groups are attacking the Church because pedophile priests followed their advice!
In fact, a more brilliant strategy to destroy the authority and credibility of the Catholic Church could not be imagined. Thousands of homosexuals infiltrated the seminaries and were ordained — and then molested boys — and the anger the public feels was not directed towards the homosexual priests, but at the Church itself.
Of course, as we have seen, the Catholic Church and its seminaries in North America appeared to be very welcoming to homosexuals in the 1960s. Word gets around, and, as Patrick Moreland of Church Mutual Insurance explained, “By their nature, congregations are the most trusting of organizations, so that makes them attractive targets for predators. If you’re a predator, where do you go? You go to a congregation that will welcome you.”
The primary goal of those attacking the Church is to publicly destroy its moral authority so that people will not heed its teachings that homosexual behavior is sinful and that homosexual “marriage” is a fraud. This strategy worked brilliantly in Ireland earlier this year. Surveys found that many of those Irish voting to redefine marriage cited anti-clericalism as one of their primary reasons for voting the way they did. And this feeling was based primarily on the Irish Church crisis.
A secondary goal of these groups is to eliminate the requirement for celibacy among priests. However, married Protestant clergy have a rate of child sexual molestation that is approximately equal to that of Catholic priests, proving that celibacy has nothing at all to do with pederasty.
In summary, many have attacked the Roman Catholic Church because of the sex abuse crisis. However, these individuals and organizations appear to be motivated not by a desire to enlighten mankind or protect the innocent, since the crisis has already largely subsided, and stringent policies have been enacted to prevent the abuse from reoccurring.
Rather, their motivation appears to be more one of bigotry and a desire to muzzle and sideline the Church’s moral opposition to the “gay rights” movement. Homophile attacks on the Church and the papacy have one purpose only — to destroy the voice of the only remaining major opponent of the lethal “homosexual agenda.”
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