“Homosexuality And The Church Crisis”

By BRIAN CLOWES

Part 3

(Editor’s Note: Brian Clowes has been director of research and training at Human Life International since 1995. For electronic copies of previous articles on homosexual “marriage,” the special rights agenda, and the role of homosexuality in the Church crisis, e-mail him at bclowes@hli.org.)

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During the height of the sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church, the mainstream press and liberal groups systematically pilloried the Church and bishops who moved guilty priests from diocese to diocese or covered up for them. Meanwhile, they entirely ignored the well-organized and determined efforts by professional associations and sex educators to decriminalize and normalize child sexual abuse.
As early as 1988, a leading American psychological journal, Behavior Today, claimed: “Pedophilia may be a sexual orientation rather than a sexual deviation. This raises the question as to whether pedophiles may have rights.”
When the American Psychiatric Association (APA) sponsored a symposium in 2002 where participants discussed the removal of pedophilia from an upcoming edition of the group’s psychiatric manual of mental disorders, there was not a murmur from the media.
At about the same time, The Archives of Sexual Behavior published a special edition in December 2002 discussing whether pedophilia should remain classified as a mental disorder. This, too, apparently escaped the notice of our nation’s professional journalists.
The push to normalize pedophilia has even reached into the highest levels of our own government. In 2002, Bill Clinton’s Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders said that “I think some children have [sexual] encounters with adults and may not necessarily have what we measure as harmful effects.”

Definitions And Calculations

In June 2002, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops approved the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People. The Charter created a National Review Board (NRB), which commissioned a study of the sexual abuse of minors by Catholic clergy by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York. This study was completed in 2004.
The John Jay study defined “pedophiles” as people who “exhibit recurrent, intense, sexually arousing fantasies, urges, or behaviors related to sexual contact with a prepubescent child over a period of at least six months duration.”
When people speak of the current crisis being a problem involving “pedophile priests,” they are addressing only a small percentage of the accused. According to the John Jay study, most of the sexually offending priests are not pedophiles; they are in fact “ephebophiles,” who “exhibit these same fantasies, urges, or behaviors towards post-pubescent youths.” The study also states that ephebophilia is a “homosexual attraction to adolescent males,” a classification that might describe several “gay rights” activists quoted previously.
Table 3.5.4 of the John Jay Study clearly demonstrates that, as the age of the victims rises, the percentage of victims decisively shifts from primarily female to overwhelmingly male. True pedophilia — that is, male sexual abuse of young girls — accounted for 58.3 percent of all incidents involving victims one to seven years old. Pederasty, the abuse of boys by men, accounted for 85.3 percent of all incidents involving victims 11 to 17 years old.
These results stand in stark contrast to United States Department of Health and Human Services statistics, which show that male-on-male child sexual abuse in the USA comprises only 14.4 percent of all sexual abuse committed by males. In other words, in the general population of males who sexually abuse minors, only one in seven molests boys. In the population of priests who sexually abused minors, six in seven molested boys.
Many experts have claimed that there is a much higher percentage of homosexuals in the priesthood than there is in the general population.
Let us assume for a moment that the concentration of male homosexuals in the priesthood is six times greater than it is in the general population — about ten percent.
If we assume that this number is indeed correct, using the figures given in Table 3.5.4, we find that a homosexual priest is (85.3 percent/10.0 percent)/ (14.7 percent/90.0 percent) = 52 times more likely to molest a child aged 11 to 17 than a heterosexual priest.
If we use the more reasonable assumption that five percent of all priests are homosexual (still about three times the average in the general population), we see that a homosexual priest is (85.3 percent/5.0 percent)/ (14.7 percent/95.0 percent) = 110 times more likely to molest a child aged 11 to 17 than a heterosexual priest.
It is logical that homosexuals who sexually desire young children deliberately seek employment that will bring them into proximity with the greatest number of children possible. The most “promising” jobs of this nature include clergymen working in youth ministries, Boy Scout leaders, and schoolteachers.
We have witnessed the sustained campaign by homosexual groups to force the Boy Scouts of America to accept homosexual scoutmasters, which recently met with success. Less visible is the fact that homosexual teachers have been involved in a hugely disproportionate number of all recorded cases of teacher/pupil abuse, and this has been known for decades.
A 1978 nationwide survey of school principals showed that they received 13 times as many complaints about homosexuals sexually molesting students than they did about heterosexuals molesting students.
More recent studies have shown that homosexual teachers are from 90 to 100 times more likely to molest students than heterosexual teachers. A comprehensive 2006 survey of 902 articles on teacher sexual molestation of children revealed that, of the 3,457 victims of teacher sexual described, an incredible 56 percent fell victim to homosexual teachers.
We hear almost nothing from government and the media about educator sexual misconduct, even though almost ten percent of all students in grades 8 to 11 have reported unwanted sexual conduct from teachers. In fact, it is estimated that more than 4.5 million students have been victims of unwanted educator sexual behavior — a number that is 437 times greater than the number of children who were abused by Catholic priests.
School administrators have ignored or covered up the great majority of complaints by students regarding sexual abuse by teachers. Only about one percent of the teachers who admitted sexual abuse of students under their care lost their jobs. Two-thirds suffered no consequences whatsoever. Most were transferred to other school districts with positive recommendations, and some received generous early retirement packages. In only about one percent of all transfers were the receiving school districts warned that the teacher was a child sexual predator. The preferred term among educators for this practice is “passing the trash.”
Liberal groups and the press loudly condemned the practice of moving pederast priests from diocese to diocese, but have been silent about the same, but much larger problem, in the schools. Why?
Because teachers and the educational system are firmly controlled by liberals — and social engineers consider the public schools essential for indoctrinating successive generations of children in liberal thinking. Meanwhile, the Catholic Church remains the sole major opposition to the homosexual agenda.
This gross inconsistency proves that liberal groups and the media really don’t care about the welfare of children — their primary goal is to undercut the moral authority of the Catholic Church.

A Diocesan
Administrator’s Comment

It is clear, even without reference to the numerous reports throughout the recent years, that homosexuals have infiltrated the ranks of the clergy to an astonishing degree. In some corners of the Church, such behavior has long been seen as acceptable.
To cite just one example, Msgr. Richard Sniezyk, appointed to head the Diocese of Springfield in
Massachusetts after its bishop resigned amid sexual abuse allegations, said in an interview that the recent scandal in the Catholic Church stems from a belief among some priests during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s that sex with young men was “acceptable.”
“Msgr. Richard S. Sniezyk, 66, the leader of the Springfield Diocese until the Vatican names a bishop to replace Thomas L. Dupre, said that as a seminarian and then a young priest…he heard of priests who had sex with young men, but ‘no one thought much about it’ because priests didn’t recognize how mentally and emotionally damaging their behavior was….‘It was that era of the ’60s — most of it took place from the mid-’60s to the early ’80s — and the whole atmosphere out there was, it was OK, it was OK to do’.”
This is not a statement by an anti-Catholic or homosexual activist, but rather an admission from a duly appointed shepherd of souls in this Massachusetts diocese.
Some researchers assert that just because an activity is homosexual in nature does not mean that the person committing the act is a homosexual. For example, criminologist Margaret Smith said: “The majority of the [clergy] abusive acts were homosexual in nature. That participation in homosexual acts is not the same as sexual identity as a gay man.”
This is like saying that someone who frequently steals is not a thief, or that someone who has a habit of racing his sports car down crowded city streets at a hundred miles an hour is not a reckless driver.
Men who sexually molest boys may claim not to be homosexual, but this assertion is disingenuous at best and deliberately deceptive at worst.