Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the secretary of state of the Vatican (a city-state where the church is judge, jury, and executions), insists that it’s not the Catholic Church’s banning of priestly sex, but the plague of homosexuality that’s to blame for its pedophilia scandal. “Many psychologists and psychiatrists have shown that there is no link between celibacy and pedophilia but many others have shown, I have recently been told, that there is a relationship between homosexuality and pedophilia,” he says, obviously ignoring the phenomenon of male priests molesting female children. That, of course, is the work of the devil.
rage_stl
These statements are just pathetic. I went to a private catholic grade school and didn’t know someone could be gay, enjoy their life, and not be a pedophile. The church did more harm than good for me.
Related note: I absolutely love the damage control that goes on within the church. Sometimes I wonder if the abuse had never been brought up, would the church have even dealt with it?
John M
I hope the Catholic Church evicts all gays. That would be about 50-60% of priests, maybe higher. Such a loss of priests would then accelerate the disappearance of this morally confused organization clinging to medieval pomp and nonsense.
Carsen Tyler
Ugh, freaking hate this statement. I mean it is bad enough to be left out of the Catholic Church in both the Sacrament of Matrimony and Holy Orders and to be left out of most things in the Church to begin with, these idiots have to blame these crimes on being a homosexual. Fuck, it hurts to hear stuff like this, I mean I grew up in a Catholic family and schooling, and I still find being part of the Church as something I need in my life.
I am able to forgive, and I know the Vatican and the Catholic Church will change for the better eventually (and that change will be very,very slow). I am a youth minister and I’ve seen the new Catholic Family Acceptance Projects and it is amazing. They call for families to accept and love their LGBT children because they will always be their children and they work towards making the Catholic Church more accepting and inclusive. They even call for LGBT couples to be allowed to marry in the church since any loving relationship is a life giving relationship.
Haha but I think attending an All Girl Catholic school who had a very accepting community helped. I mean my big brother got his diploma re-printed to make it gender neutral and including his real name. And when the Vatican said that those who had homosexual tendencies could not be in the clergy we ended up with a flood of Lesbian Ex-nuns to be our teachers, coaches, and librarians. And it was the first Catholic school to allow LGBT parents to apply as parents rather than a single parent/guardian. So maybe I was a lucky one.
Blake J
Big shock!!!
Everything that can be blamed on us, will be blamed on us.
We are the escape goats for (almost) every evil in the world.
It is the biggest drawback to being a minority that will stick to ~8% of the population forever.
With the races, genders, etc. they could breed themselves to larger numbers.
We could always start killing large numbers of heterosexuals to try balance the numbers.
But unfortunately the majority of us homosexuals are not soulless monsters like our heterosexual counterparts, so that is unlikely to happen.
Lamar
Once again homosexuality is the scapegoat (sigh …)
CALDWELL
You need to find a hundred year old book, The History of Sacerdotal Celibacy in the Christian Church, by Henry Charles Lea. In the late 19th century, in France, there were many prosecutions of priests where the victims were young women. A researcher found 110 such prosecutions reported in the newspapers between 1861 and 1879. In some cases there were multiple victims – 32, 299, 50, 25 and 67. (See pages 573-574.) Lea also reports that clerical mistresses were not uncommon. Is it possible that the church, in its desire to suppress clerical relations with women, so changed the nature of its clerical lifestyles and recruiting practices that it ended up with a sexually immature clergy whose sexual opportunities only could be with boys?
Forrest
The catholic church deserves a modern day inquisition. They have no shame. Continue to attack others to shift blame and will never be held accountable because they are a self governing dictatorship.
Ticked off Ex-Altar Boy with knife
Catholic leaders are appealing to vulgar prejudices to attack already marginalized groups, to cover their own hypocrisy and evils.
Michael
Probably one of the reasons so many pedophiles joined the priesthood is that up until now, when it all became public because victioms came forward, they could freely work with children in an institution that was more interested in protecting the church establishment than in protecting children. Many times the only action that the church took was to move the priest to another parish where he still was able to work with children.
Cam
I’m sure that the tousands of little girls raped within the church and the tends of thousands of young women tortored in the Megdeline laundries throughout the decades WISH that their priests had been homosexual.
Jaroslaw
#9 Michael – I’m not defending the Church at all in a coverup or whatever, but you can’t have it both ways.
If the Church covered it up and kept it secret, how would pedophiles know to join?
Bianca
I don’t think all these priests who molest boys specifically are necessarily gay.
Although there’s no doubt they have molested millions of girls and women too, it’s a lot easier to molest boys because the repercusions aren’t as great. Boys don’t get pregnant and you can’t tell if they are virgins or not. Less incriminating evidence. Society was always less concerned when people of the same gender spent time together.
Bianca
repercusions = repercussions
kevin57
This dear cardinal must not have heard about the John Jay Study in the U.S., one which the U.S. bishops commissioned to get to the causes of pedophilia in the priesthood. They have explicitly refuted a link between homosexuality and priestly pedophilia.
alicia banks
eject this rabid liar and the pope now!
they are all institutional child abusers and cowards who prefer to blame homos rather than their buybull & homohatred for their ongoing sins!!!
shame!!!
see more:
http://aliciabanks.vox.com/library/link/6a0123ddb39306860b0123de1b688c860c.html
Marilyn
Studies of the sex abuse scandals from the John Jay Report revealed that 81.9 % of sex crimes committed against young people by Catholic priests during the past 52 years involved men preying on boys.
Only 5.8% of victims were under age 7; 16% percent were between ages 8-10; and over 78% were between the ages of 11-17.
44% of the accused priests were accused by more than one person, and contrary to the suggestions implied by the media, the victims have not been pre-adolescent children; they were generally teenage boys.
Pedophiles are attracted to children without secondary sex characteristics that develop at the onset of puberty. 78% of the victims were between 11 and 17. That’s after puberty, for the most part.
It’ s not, largely, a pedophilia problem. Most of the victims were boys at or past puberty. You can call it ephebophilia, homosexuality, or twink fetish, but at least be honest about what it is instead of pretending it’s something else.
B
When Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone said, “I have recently been told, that there is a relationship between homosexuality and pedophilia,” he was probably “told” by equally uninformed or scapegoat-seeking church officials. The resulting propaganda is probably the source of the beliefs people like Marilyn expressed in No. 16. The “it’s ephebophilia, not pedophilia” ploy is a standard propaganda trick – some professionals use more fine-grained terminology for research/treatment reasons, but in colloquial language, people just use pedophilia, so you throw out a technical term that most people don’t understand and make a big deal about it, in the hopes that they’ll get confused and stop blaming you.
http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/rainbow/html/facts_molestation.html
has some useful background information. Real research has shown that Cardinal Bertone doesn’t know what he is talking about.
Steve Baker
@Marilyn:
Very nice parsing of the data to suite your agenda.
I suggest you might update your information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Jay_Report
Specifically:
“Half the priests were 35 years of age or younger at the time of the first instance of alleged abuse. Fewer than 7% of the priests were reported to have experienced physical, sexual or emotional abuse as children. Although 19% of the accused priests had alcohol or substance abuse problems, only 9% used drugs or alcohol during the alleged instances of abuse. Almost 70% of the abusive priests were ordained before 1970, after attending pre-Vatican II seminaries or seminaries that had had little time to adapt to the reforms of Vatican II.”
These study results are partly due to the study method. The data studied was provided by the Dioceses themselves and came pre-tainted with their own views of the facts. Nevertheless:
http://www.politicsdaily.com/2009/11/18/new-catholic-sex-abuse-findings-gay-priests-not-the-problem/
http://www.bishop-accountability.org/reports/2004_02_27_JohnJay/
Please give reference to where your numbers are to be found in the report, linked above.
This so-called link between homosexuality and pedophilia simply does not exist in the real world. Rather, it is alive and well in the minds of aging Bishops in the Vatican. Their reasoning has always gone something like this:
Most of the victims are boys abused by men, therefore, the abuse is homosexual in nature,
therefore,
ALL homosexuals abuse boys.
This reasoning is simply faulty and is applied for the sole purpose of scape-goating gay priests.
“Thou shalt not bear false witness against others.”
Michael
@Marilyn:
Marilyn: You mean to tell me that a boy 11, 12 ,13 is not a child? You’re classifying them as teenagers and therefore the term pedophilia does not apply. Are you seriuos? The legal age of consent in the U.S varies by state, but is overwhelmingly over 16. Parsing all the data the way you do is just a way of obfuscating the problem and blaming gays for it. The main issue is that the abusing priests committed a crime and when alerted, the church authorities did little to correct the situation. They let the problem fester until it got out of control. And are now playing the blame game which includes demonize the gays.
charts.1
Priests having oral and anal sex with 12 and 13 year old boys is just wrong.
charts.1
ALL PRIESTS know what priests are molesting and the ones not molesting are complicit of these crimes and accessories after the fact (aware of sexual abuse)
Catholic priests share living quarters with other priests from their diocese. All priests know who the hard working priests are, who the lazy ones are and yes, who the sexual predator priests are. All priests know of the accusations of priests they know, they are aware what priests have been traded off to other parishes and dioceses because of sex abuse, yet these so called good priests remain silent. Shame on the catholic clergy. ALL OF THEM!
RH Aamanorie
Outrage due to video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8NVBQpZHRM
truth
They should be in prison where they belong just like any other child molester. It would be great to put them into a cell with inmates to give them what they deserve, like a shank in the neck. The church hides these issues and sends them to places where they can hide with others just like them and hide it from the rest of society. I hope they all burn in hell. Pieces of shit should be eliminated from society
bill_ding
I was imprisoned in a Catholic boarding School in Loretto, Florida in the 1960’s. I got sick and had a fever, the parish priest who lived on the premises was called to pray over me. After doing so he said he had to take my temperature and to take my jammies down and spread my legs. He put his finger into my anus and fondled my penis until I had an erection. He masturbated me to orgasm. He came every 4 hours to “check on me” for the next 2 days, and each time molested me. WHen he was doing this, the nun turned away and did not look, so she knew what he was doing. If I could find that priest I would cut his pathetic balls off and shove them down his throat. I heard from other kids that he put his fingers up in them all the time. It became almost routine, getting fingered by Father. One day he disappeared. Rumor was that some kids father killed him for molesting his boy.