It seems the Catholic Church are keen to blame anyone other than themselves for the recent Ryan Report detailing endemic child abuse within Catholic run institutions. I’ve written on this subject previously, so I shan’t cover the same ground again. I will, however, point out something I said at the time this story first broke:
So how should the Catholic Church, and the Irish government (which funded many of the accused institutions) deal with the situation? They almost certainly should not sweep it under the carpet. They also shouldn’t bury their heads in the sand. Unfortunately, religion and “doing the right thing†has rarely gone hand-in-hand. Bearing that in mind, it would take a Catholic of immense arrogance, ignorance and insensitivity to go on the offensive at this time.
In the original post I spoke of the absurd, and deeply misjudged comments made by Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor and his attempt at switching the focus on to atheism, blaming it for the world’s problems. Surely one instance of this attempt at shifting the blame is unthinkable, but two…
Unfortunately, that’s exactly what we’ve had. They’ve had a pop at atheism, so what’s next? What other enemy of the Church can they try and shift the focus on to? Well, how about homosexuality.
These matters are so ghastly that people don’t want to look at them, they can’t believe these things are taking place within the orbit of a Christian church, perversion of Christianity.
Let me tell you of course before you go too far, most of the offences are being committed by homosexuals.
While that sinks in, I’d like to point out who John Owen is. He’s not some rogue church member, far from it. He’s actually communications officer for the archdiocese of Cardiff and a Catholic chaplain at Cardiff University (although the page containing information about him is mysteriously missing from the University’s website – Google cache version, including phone number and email address is still available). As a communications officer, he would have been well aware of what he was doing and saying. Just to back this up, when other panel members disputed this he told them to “be silent”. The panel included victims of the abuse.
This is a dangerous route to head down. When we look at the perpetrators of the abuse, we know one thing. 100% of them were Catholic. Even if the Father’s claims are true, and that a majority were homosexual, the number still won’t come close to 100%. Therefore, there were more Catholic child abusers than homosexual child abusers. Also note the way in which he made this statement: “of course” they were homosexuals, as if it was some obvious, indisputable fact.
Again, the Catholic Church has dodged and side-stepped the issue by trying to blame someone else. Anyone else. For Father Owen to do this in such a public forum, in front of victims of the abuse, who clearly disagreed with him, is just unimaginable. Instead of targeting and focusing on the minority of homosexuals associated with the Church, why aren’t they targeting the abusers?
The line about homosexuals being responsible for a statistically disproportional amount of child abuse has been pushed by anti-homosexual organisations for a long time. It’s usually based on poor statistics and flawed studies. I don’t have enough information to determine whether there’s a statistical link between Catholicism and child abuse, but the implications from recent, and not so recent, stories is clear.
Colm O’Gormon, who wrote a book about his own experiences of Catholic sexual abuse, Beyond Belief, told UK newspaper The Guardian:
{the comments were}…“ill-informed, ignorant, corrupt and dishonest”. He said: “The church has created a link between homosexual sex and priests who rape and sodomise children. It scapegoats someone else and creates a side issue. It removes the criminal aspect and the rape becomes some sort of consensual adult behaviour.”
I think he’s downplaying it. The comments are also in incredibly bad taste and indicative of the Catholic Church’s inability to focus the lens on investigation and accountability inwards. It all boils down to a lack of responsibility. They can see a correlation between homosexuality and child abuse but not a correlation between Catholicism and child abuse, despite there appearing to be a stronger statistical link.
He is right when he points out that the Catholic Church is looking for “scapegoats” and “side issue[s]”. This is classic distraction, and it’s just not going to fly.
While it might be true that some of the abusers where gay, isn’t a fact that that 100% of the perpetrators where Catholic?
The real problem is not the original abuse, though of course it is heinous. The real crisis is that the superiors of criminal priests conspired to cover up crimes, becoming accessories after he fact, that they re-assigned priests to new parishes where they could prey on a new flock, that the Church conspired to blame the victims.
My gosh, the IGNORANCE on this site.
The John Jay Criminal College- a NON RELIGOUSLY AFFILIATED college conducted research on the child abuse cases in the Catholic Church and concluded that 80% – 90% of the abuses were that of HOMOSEXUAL abuse of POST pubescent males.
The great majority of the victims of abuse were not PRE pubescent (between the ages of 10 to 17 years old)- therefore the abuses were not one of paedophilia but pedastry or ephebolia.
This problem is further exasperated as up to 40% of priests are thought to be homosexual, according to polls, therefore they are overrepresented within the Catholic Church.
It has escaped only the blind that within the MALE homosexual community, there is a fondness for YOUNG barely legal males, called Chicken hawks.
PS- There are homosexual ADVOCATE groups who have acknowledged the link between male homosexuality and child abuse in the Catholic Church.
Nicely written, so have you any other information on that, if yes, then please send it to me, I am hungry to read your next post.
How completely and utterly uneducated! Homosexuals and pedophiles are very different. A homosexual is oriented to prefer sex with an *adult* of the same gender. A pedophile wants sex with a *child* — some male, some female — but they want sex with someone who hasn’t reached sexual maturity yet.
Also, to poster Sarah, the great majority of victims WERE pre-pubescent in the study she cites. Yes, Sarah, talk about IGNORANCE — your own!:
http://www.bringyou.to/apologetics/PriestAbuseScandal.htm
“The largest group of alleged victims (50.9%) was between the ages of 11 and 14, 27.3% were 15-17, 16% were 8-10 and nearly 6% were under age 7. Overall, 81% of victims were male and 19% female. Male victims tended to be older than female victims. Over 40% of all victims were males between the ages of 11 and 14.”
uniquelyme, uneducated one- post pubescent is defined from the age of 11 or 12 years old and upwards- according to most developed countries.
Child molesters who prefer children PAST the age of puberty are NOT paedophiles- they are child abusers- yes- but are called ephebiles or hephebophiles.
The overwhelming majority of the victims were boys PAST the age of puberty. Up to 40% of Catholic priests are thought to be homosexual too, so it is no surprise the abuse took place.
That being said, Bishops covering up the abuse is untenable.