BishopAccountability.org
	John Jay Report or Rock and Roll Made Me Do It Leon J. Podles: Dialogue May 19, 2011 http://www.podles.org/dialogue/ I will comment on the John Jay Report more after I get back from a therapeutic river trip down the San Juan. The report in correct that the cases of reported abuse following a bell curve. The unknown questions is whether there are unreported cases, especially form the 1950s. Victims may have died and files should have been purged. See the graphs at Catholic Sensibility. However, it seems there was a real increase in the 1960s. It is perhaps understandable that priests may have experimented sexually, but why were so many priests sexually involved with children? 60% of the reported victims were 13 and under. And why were 83% of the victims boys? The report said that priests had more access to boys. But priests have a lot of access to young women – the congregations are mostly women, 2/3 or more of penitents are women, and solicitation in the confessional has been a centuries-old problem in the Church. If priests wanted to experiment sexually, there were plenty of women available. So why did they prefer children? I think that not so much sexual pleasure as the pleasure of violation and sacrilege was the goal of the abusive priests. The Marquis de Sade has explained the attraction. And why boys? Perhaps because were available and don't get pregnant. Perhaps because they were the same sex as Jesus. But I think that the report had decided it would not blame homosexuality in any way, homosexuals, especially in the Church, being a protected class. From reading hundreds of cases I think that many abusive priests were immature homosexuals who were themselves frozen in adolescence, and that is why they were attracted to pubescent and pre-pubescent boys. Also, there are few young men available in church, and those might well react violently to sexual overtures. The priesthood is becoming a gay profession, and abuse of minors is declining. I think that the few men, including homosexual men, who are entering the priesthood are doing it at a later age and are more mature. They have decided ( I hope) to accept being celibate and chaste, whatever their sexual orientation.. However, a largely and obviously gay clergy (even if chaste) will be a further obstacle in reconnecting men to the Church.
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