Catholic Church Sexual Abuse (Exposing the Lies, Defending our Priests)

With the retirement of Pope Benedict XVI from the papacy, CNN and other news media outlets raged with stories about corruption, the papacy, the problem of priestly celibacy, and countless conspiracy theories.  “The Catholic Church needs to change!”

News stations and social media outlets are still ripe with gross charges that priests are rapists, that all priests are pedophiles, that Pope Benedict XVI was involved in the whole thing and tried to cover it up, etc. Others continually repeat the myth that priestly celibacy is the main cause for the sex abuse scandals in the Catholic Church. If the old men in Rome would just get up with the times and allow priests to get married, then the numbers would surge along with a drastic decrease in the number of children being abused.  It sounds pretty simple, no?

All of the above lies and accusations are, of course, false! This is what we will be addressing in this article.

***If you would like to watch my Youtube Video here on this topic with even more information, click the link.

The REAL TRUTH!

Sexual abuse is not an issue of celibacy, but a lack of it!Pedophilia itself is also not an issue of celibacy but a psychological disorder, a mental illness.  This goes for anyone, religious or secular.

While the media would have us believe differently – statistically and otherwise – the Catholic Church has been one of the least perpetrators of any institution in the world regarding sexual abuse.  What the media usually fails to announce is that 99% of the abuse cases they report are old cases that they have rehashed – most of them from 30-50 years ago.  Even though they are being presented today as if they were current, most of these cases took place nearly a half century ago.

Don’t believe me?  Check out the “John Jay College of Criminal Justice” who has rigorously performed all the major research on this issue.  Their latest reports from 2008 until at least 2014 onward show that there have been only about six or seven credible allegations each year involving minors.  Not seven-hundred.  Not seventy.  Seven.  And, this is six out of the forty thousand priests and tens of thousands of workers employed in the Catholic Church.   Obviously, one case is too many anywhere, but the charge that the Church still has a huge problem, or that priests are pedophiles, is a biased and unsubstantiated assertion.

MORE FACTS:

Let’s push the envelope a little more and blow open the dirty little secrets that either people don’t know or wants to talk about:

– It is a fact that the majority of all sexual abuse takes place in the family!  Studies reveal that about 85% of sexual abuse takes place in the family.  The highest abuse rate comes from family members, then babysitters, then neighbors and friends.

– After families, the next highest perpetrator of sexual abuse is the public school system. These make up about 15% of all abuse cases.

– Toward the bottom of the abuse list comes religious institutions. And, within that category, non-Catholic faiths have an equal or higher rate of abuse than the Catholic Church. And this takes into account that the Catholic Church has more than 10 times or more the amount of people these much smaller churches do.  If celibacy, not allowing men to marry, leads to so many problems including sexual abuse, then how does one explain families being the biggest perpetrators. Spouses get married.  They have sex.  Yet the child abuse rate is extraordinarily lower among celibates.  The proof is in the facts.

Again, one case is too many, and the Catholic Church should be held to the highest standard more than secular institutions. However, it is a fabrication to state that the Church is the biggest perpetrator of abuse. That is not credible or honest. For all the people who yell, scream, protest, and complain that we need to crack down on the evil, corrupt Catholic Church in order to protect children, they ought to stop turning a blind eye to families and public schools where the abuse rate is 100 times higher and more than the Church. 100 times!  If these same people were really concerned about protecting children wherever the abuse happens (and not just hating the Catholic Church), they would work to crack down on all areas where the problem is truly rampant. Instead, they reveal their apparent anti-Catholic bias.

Remember, that nearly all priests are good, holy and faithful, and have been for the majority of church history. People like Jesus, St. Paul, Mother Teresa, and Pope John Paul II, to name a few, were all celibate and lived holy lives. Jesus himself (and also St. Paul) taught celibacy, also found in the Bible (Mt. 19:12; 1 Cor. 7:7-8). So, it’s not like the Catholic Church just made it up one day. People who have problems with the Catholic Church’s teaching on celibacy; do they  have a problem with Jesus and the Bible too?