http://abcnews.go.com...

This guy was NOT celibate. OK, so, if it is not celibacy that is leading to all of this abuse, what is it. Is it something fundamental to Catholicism (again, outside of celibacy of priests)?

What is it about the religious doctrine that is leading priests to take advantage in such great numbers?

From the article:

A prominent Catholic priest, praised by Pope John Paul II as "an efficacious guide to youth," Father Marcial Maciel, sexually abused not only young seminarians under his control but also abused his own children, according to a lawsuit filed today in Connecticut by a man who claims to be Maciel's son.

In an interview to be broadcast Monday evening on ABC News Nightline, the priest's son, Raul Gonzalez, 30, says he thought his father worked for the CIA or an international oil company, until he saw the priest's picture in a 1997 magazine article detailing allegations of sexual abuse.

"My mom said, 'Is that you?' and my dad said, 'No, it's not me' and my mom said, 'Yeah, it's you,'" recalled Gonzalez in the interview, conducted by Jason Berry, an investigative journalist who first reported on widespread sexual abuse by Maciel at the Legion of Christ and writes for the National Catholic Reporter.

What percentage of men sexually abuse children?
What percentage of men are catholic priests?
What percentage of catholic priests sexually abuse children?

I need that data before I can hate Catholicism for this.

What percentage of men sexually abuse children?
What percentage of men are catholic priests?
What percentage of catholic priests sexually abuse children?

I need that data before I can hate Catholicism for this.

Working on a project in school on this. Here's some notes



Prevelance of Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church
• Over 100,000 victims of clergy sexual abuse have come forward in the US alone, and it is estimated that more than 80 percent of sexual abuse victims never report their abuse.
• 10% of the graduates of St. John’s Seminary, which supplies the vast majority of the priests in the West coast of the US, have been accused of pedophilia ( Los Angeles Times)
• The Catholic church’s way of dealing with the issue has been controversial: as an example, the case of Priest Oliver O’Grady
Catholic Church and Oliver O’Grady
• Father Oliver O'Grady is the most notorious pedophile in the history of the modern Catholic Church. He’s an Irish Roman Catholic priest who raped, molested and abused many children in California from 1973 onwards. The youngest being a nine-month baby. He wrote a letter of confession in 1976 to Cardinal Roger Michael Mahony, O'Grady's supervising Bishop at the time and CURRENT Archbishop of Los Angeles. Rather than booting O’Grady, and turning him over to the police, Cardinal Roger Michael Mahony simply moved O’Grady from church to church from 1976-1993.
• Throughout those years, O’Grady would befriend families, so that spending time with their children wouldn’t seem strange. He used the argument of righteous authority to rationalize the actions he was going to commit before he did it.

• There are church documents that show many people within the church who knew what was going on, and did nothing about it.
• The night before O'Grady was scheduled to provide testimony regarding Roger Mahony's awareness of his history as a child molester and rapist, Mahony's attorneys went to O'Grady's jail cell and cut a deal with him. The deal exchanged O'Grady's silence for a financial annuity — an undisclosed amount of money, that the Diocese of Los Angeles will start to pay him once he turns age 65 in 2011.
(Check out the documentary Deliver From Evil, where the interview O'Grady through the film for more info)

How the Church deals with molestation

- Crimen sollicitationis (Latin: the crime of soliciting

The document's title, "Instructio de modo procedendi in causis sollicitationis" (Instruction on procedure in solicitation cases), indicates that it was composed to indicate how to carry out a canonical investigation into accusations of solicitation. It described the procedures to be followed in each phase: reception of a denunciation; the course of the investigation, summoning the accused, sentencing, and the possibility of appeal.
The result of the investigation could vary:
• if the accusation appeared to be unfounded, this was stated in the record and the documents containing the accusation were destroyed;
• if only vague evidence emerged, the case was filed away for use if fresh evidence appeared;
• if the evidence was strong but insufficient for arraigning the accused, he was given an admonition and the records were preserved with a view to any further developments;
• if the evidence was strong enough, the accused person was summoned and a canonical trial took place.
- It's very clear, that the Catholic Church set out strict guide lines for covering up molestations and sexual assaults
-It was meant to silence allegations of sexual abuse by priests and it was enforced for 20 years by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger before he became the Pope
- This Vatican "Instruction" orders complete secrecy in cases where priests are accused of misusing Confession (Penance) to solicit sex (see Sections 1, 71 and 73). "To be diligently stored in the secret archives of the curia as strictly confidential nor is it to be published nor added to with any commentaries."


Pope Benedicts role

-Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, was from November 25, 1981 Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,
- As a prefect he over saw major cases regarding the raping of young boys and girls by priests, and evidence has been shown that he not only knew of many of the abuses, but purposely moved around priests, conspired, and covered up sexual abuse in the US.
- In 2001, while he was a cardinal, he issued a secret Vatican edict to Catholic bishops all over the world, instructing them to put the Church's interests ahead of child safety.
The document recommended that rather than reporting sexual abuse to the relevant legal authorities, bishops should encourage the victim, witnesses and perpetrator not to talk about it. And, to keep victims quiet, it threatened that if they repeat the allegations they would be excommunicated.

- When Ratzinger began to be investigated, the Vatican requested George W. Bush for immunity, which Bush granted.
- Pope Benedict XVI was accused of conspiracy to cover up sexual abuse in the United States. At the Vatican's request, President George W. Bush granted the pope immunity
from prosecution.

It's not so much the quantity/rate of molestation, more the systematic cover-ups.

I would like to put forth this idea...

The preisthood doesn't create sexual deviants, but attracts them. In many ways it is the Catholic version of a sexual deviant getting a job working at a summer camp. It is an ideal place for them to hide in plan sight. It grants them a certain level of trust, and respect from the community at large. It grants them free access to the children, and automatic authority over them. All which makes the children easy to manipulate and take advantage of. And with no spouse to hide your behavior from. If someone wished to prey on children, how could one ask for a more ideal situation?

Seems like there should be some "Is your child being molested?" pamphlets in with the "You're going to hell" pamphlets.