Why were there so many paedophile clergy in the Catholic Faith?

Question

If the Bishops were aware of their misconduct, why did they relocate them to congregations not privy of their history, only to continue the abuse? Instead they should have been defrocked immediately and placed under mental intervention. Other religions have scandals of their own, involving one or two pastors, but the Catholic Church outdoes the notoriety just by the sheer numbers of sexual offenders existing in clergy.

Answer 1

I think they were pedophiles first and looked around for an environment that would be above reproach where they could hide and do their damage. It doens't have anything to do with their religion. It's a horrible abuse because those families trusted the church. I think the bishops who were aware should go to jail.

Answer 2

I don't have an answer for why the bishops relocated the clergy offenders. It greatly troubles me, but I have faith that in time I will find the answers.

As far as your question, the actual statistics bear that there really are not that many cases of pedophilia in the Catholic Church. We only have about 2% of our entire clergy that has done this. This is 2% of roughly a few hundred thousand clergy (probably something like 6,000 out of 300,000). This is vastly smaller than the national average for the entire country, which I last heard was about 6%. If my numbers are correct, that means there are 16,800,000 offenders nationwide (6% of the entire population of America - 280,000,000). That 6,000 is barely a drop in the bucket.

Does that make it okay? Of course not. Those numbers should be 0, across the board.

Another reason is the media. The Catholic Church is a unified church, and therefore it is easy to track whatever statistics you want because everything is concentrated and recorded in one place. It's not the same with the protestants. Most demonimations are nothing more than a small congregation with one or two pastors. Plus, there's no real effective way to track pedophilia amoung protestants because of the lack of unity and information.

At a broader glance, the Catholic clergy has been sterotyped as sexual offenders. This completely ignores the facts that pedophilia is not a "Catholic" problem. Pedophilia is a human problem. Are there not Jews or Muslims that are sex offenders? How about atheists? Even women have lately been charged as sex offenders. Pedophilia knows no race, age or gender.

Given this, we must pray and work toward ending this sin. We must depend on God's grace for everyone to be healed.

God bless.

Answer 3

The short answer is there are fewer sexual abusers among Catholic clergy than any other ecclesiastical group. Why is that?

The longer answer is that the Catholic Church gained notoriety on this issue because it chose to be charitable. They turned to the psychiatric community for help for their clergy who had offended in this way. The psychiatrist assured the Church that these offenders coulld be cured and the Church put them in treatment. The psychiatrists declared them cured and they were again assigned as pastors. This was an error that we learn from hindsight but the Church was a victim too of bad advice that led to bad judgement. The fact is that the mental intervention is what caused the continuation of the problem.

You are grossly incorrect in your assumption that the numbers among Catholic clergy are the highest when the truth is just the opposite. It is the lowest. the Southern Baptists as an example did a study and found that there were in excess of fifteen percent of their clergy who have been guilty of sexual abuse and have sworn to a policy of stopping such abuse. The figures of Catholic priests who are sexual abusers is even lower that this and lower than the figure for school teaches. The rate of abuse among Catholic clergy is only about 2 % compared to the the 15+% of Baptists and 6% of school teachers. The fact is that the Catholic Church does have the notoriety but not because the offenses are more numerous.

In Christ
Fr. Joseph

Answer 4

The vast majority of Catholic priests are normal, well adjusted celibates. The number of paedophiles among the clergy has been very small, but the subject obviously gets huge press and the legal consequences of the incidents and their administrative handling are enormous.

The bishops were naively stupid. They believed in redemption and forgiveness, and they foolishly thought that removing the priest from local temptation would solve the problem. They didn't realize that the problem was with the priest, not the situation. And victims avoided coming forward because their trauma was all knotted up with their understanding of faith and the role and character of priests. It was a perfect setup for the abusers because their actions were unbelievable and unmentionable. Physical evidence was too embarrassing and scandalous to present. Accusing witnesses were reluctant to come forward because of shock, shame and lack of support.

There were not more abusers because they were "Catholic priests". The problem simply became amplified because of 50+ years of denial. Once victims found their legal voices and people were willing to listen, the financial damages to the irresponsible dioceses woke the bishops from their casual complacency. As the old wrongs are painfully redressed, parish and diocesan policies have been revised and now vigilantly monitor pastors, staff and volunteers to avoid future incidents. A casual allegation can get a pastor suspended for a month while it is investigated. It has happened in parishes in my area. Even seminary formation is changing. Students are screened more closely and made aware of the psychology of pastoral abuse.

Catholic clerical sexual abuse is always the bigger story because the Catholic church is a bigger, more organized institution than other Christian denominations, and because priests vow celibacy, unlike their fellow ordained ministers. So the scandal is naturally greater. But under the circumstances, abusive priests are isolated and secretive, carefully cultivating their circumstances to prevent revelations. They don't compare notes. There is no conspiracy. Even on a cynical PR basis, no bishop or Chancellor would harbor such behavior anymore. Any priest under suspicion is now removed from ministry and investigated. If there is substantiation, then restriction, counselling, prosecution, or laicization results as necessary. Bishops have learned from their mistakes, as have their flocks. The subject is no longer forbidden, so the chances of an abuser avoiding exposure are now very small.

The impression that it's primarily a Catholic problem is a result of backlogged prosecution. As the current cases are brought to settlement, the number and egregiousness of new cases will be isolated and rare.

Answer 5

A study was recently performed that found that the relative frequency of paedophilia in the Catholic church is actually less than that of many other social groups. The reason the Catholic church appears to have more of a problem with this is that the media, which is anti-Catholic, reports Catholic incidents more frequently than it does incidents involving other faith groups. They also found that incidents involving non-Catholic clergy were often reported as involving "priests" rather than "ministers', thus linking the Catholic church to paedophilia committed by non-Catholics.

Answer 6

Let's see. The Catholics make ridiculous demands of priests, and expect sufficient numbers of god-fearing people to jump at the opportunity. For some reason, most of the responders are power hungry, or sexual deviants, or they hate themselves. Where is the surprise? The only surprise is that the Catholic church figures that this is better than the alternative, getting rid of the pedophiles and thinking about the people they are hurting.

Answer 7

The Catholic church has scads of clergy:
http://www.bishop-accountability.org/reports/2004_02_27_JohnJay/index.html came up with about 4% of catholic clergy are abusive, as opposed to about 5% of secular schoolteachers.

By the way, I'm not a Catholic, but I do believe this shows the Catholic church is just like every other huge organization.

Answer 8

There are "so many" because the media LOVES pedophelia and bringing down catholics/christians. You're bound to find pedophiles in EVERY social group, but you're not going to see anything in the news about a child-molesting Muslim or Buddhist because doing so would look like a "racial attack" for some reason.

Answer 9

i think of the respond on your first question is it quite is the end results of the Catholic Church's doctrine that its priests could be celibate. they do no longer seem to be allowed to marry or have sexual kin of any sort. it quite is an quite unnatural concern to impose on someone and leads to unnatural sexual behaviour. priests might see infants as a mushy targets for sexual intercourse that they does no longer smash out with with adults. As for the 2nd question - Ratzinger grow to be merely a infant whilst he grow to be forced to connect the Hiltler youthful human beings. He probable had no selection interior the priority. lots as i do no longer merely like the catholic Church or the assumption of a Pope, i do no longer have faith he does carry severe desirable wing political comments.

Answer 10

well as you may know the catholic church has been critized throughout history. and can we blame the people?? no. they have their reasons.... but the law did not do a good job with these abuses. that is not our fault. as a catholic i feel like things like this happen everywhere. and is it our fault???? no. because we have a strong faith and nothing can make us change our mind.