Stop Clerical Sex Abuse Now

The Roman Catholic church is once again being rocked by scandals of sexual abuse by priests.  Simultaneous scandals have erupted across Western Europe and in the United States.

According the the Monsignor Charles Scicluna, sixty percent of known abuse cases are homosexual, while only 30% are heterosexual.  The church categorizes another 10% of cases as “acts of true pedophilia.”  Monsignor Scicluna is obviously using some linguistic gymnastics to categorize his numbers.  I wonder at what age he considers “true pedophilia” to stop?  8?  10?  12?  14?

The Vatican handles about 3,000 cases of sexual abuse by priests every year.  The priests are removed in only about 10% of cases.  Those are the Vatican’s numbers, not mine.

The church is under fire for two systematic behaviors which amount to complicity in these crimes:

• Deliberately not reporting these crimes to the civil authorities.  The pope himself, while a cardinal in 2001, penned a memo instructing bishops to keep abuse cases confidential.  This was widely interpreted inside the church and out as being a directive to avoid notifying law enforcement of criminal abuse.

• Transferring abusers to new parishes without warning the communities involved.  This is standard practice in the church.  It has caused another round of public outcry because the Munich archdiocese recently acknowledged that it had transferred a sexually abusive priest to community work while the current pope was the archbishop in Munich.

It seems to me that both of these are missing the deeper truth.  The vast majority of these issues arise because of the unhealthy attitude of the Roman Catholic church towards sexuality and marriage.  Sex is a natural human drive.  Managed properly, it is responsible for the survival of our species.  Managed improperly, it leads to people in positions of authority and trust sexually abusing children in manners too horrifying to be discussed here.

Saint Peter, the first pope, was married.  This was the standard for the first three centuries of the church’s existence.  Clerical celibacy is a matter of policy within the Roman Catholic church.  It is not a matter of religious dogma.

If the Roman Catholic church is serious about stopping this pattern of abuse, they will do away with their ridiculous rules against priests engaging in normal healthy sex lives.  Jewish, Islamic, Protestant, Anglican, and Eastern Orthodox churches all have married church leaders and none of them experience sexual abuse problems on the level of the Roman Catholic church.

If you are a past victim of clerical abuse, please contact the police and the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.  If you don’t stand up and stop these people, no one will.