I want to register my feelings on this matter as well, in a very general way, and not simply as a criticism of an individual poster.
The matter of priests molesting children has been given a huge amount of publicity. Of course it is much more sensational to write an article about a priest molesting an altar boy than to write about a salesman molesting his daughter, an accountant molesting his step-son, a motor mechanic molesting his niece or a schoolboy molesting his younger brother. In fact, the charging of the priest will almost certainly make headline news, while the others might rate four lines in the local paper. This gives a completely false picture to the insidious nature of the sexual abuse of children. It makes it appear as if celibacy and child abuse are closely linked. In fact, children are more frequently related to the people who abuse them. Those people are often married and many are in apparently healthy sexual relationships with their partners.
Moreover, of those priests who commit crimes of a sexual nature, or who commit an offense which brings the ire of the church upon them, many of them are not celibate. Married Anglican and other Protestant clergy have also been charged with pedophile crimes, just like all the other married people who have been charged. All this means that many of the church bodies have held investigations, have taken a serious look at the pattern of clergy/church worker relationships with children/teenagers and have put in place training schemes, counselling schemes and checks. In many churches, for example, a lone adult is not permitted to drive home a number of children (after church fellowship, for example), if it means that at the end of the run, one child will be alone with the adult. This does not mean that the Christian adult is more likely to be an offender- it means that the church has looked at ways of preventing incidents of harm.
Another comment that I would like to make here is that among non-ordained people within the church (any church) there are often a fairly high percentage of people who suffer mental illness or a personality disorder. This is because the church provides an accepting place for troubled people of all sorts. This is the nature of Christianity.
Secondly, it is the nature of pedophiles (those who don't have an available related child to prey on) to place themselves where they have access to other people's children. Paid or volunteer work in church youth groups, the scouting organisation, games and video shops, as sporting coaches and music teachers all suit predatory people. Teaching is an ideal job for a pedophile, and many pedophiles are teachers. But all of us who have passed through formal education and therefore know a large number of teachers, will , I am sure, agree to this- while many pedophiles become teachers, in the larger scheme of things, not very many of the teachers we know are pedophiles.
I hope that this provides a better balance to the popular misconception that many Catholic priests are pedophiles.
"great minds think differently"
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