I’ve posted this elsewhere:
There is absolutely no evidence that Catholic men (or more specifically, Catholic priests) are more likely to be pedophiles than anyone else.
The only person who I’ve ever heard try to put statistics onto this is the Anglican writer Philip Jenkins (
Pedophiles and Priests) who puts the rates at similar to prevailing rates in society. Something like 0.3% for the incidence of pedophilia among priests, I believe. So, when we’re talking about very young children, which pedophilia is, it is extremely uncommon. Ephebophilia is what most of the problems have been, i.e., adults to teenage boys. I believe he finds that the incidence is 2%, which is supposedly comparable to the rate of the same incidents among married men.
The difference is also in the structure of the Catholic Church. It is centralized, things get reported. Protestants are highly uncentralized. Since this information implicates the rate among Protestant clergy, I read
this (in a review of the book):
Notwithstanding the difficulties that such data comparisons hold, the available information on clergy sexual misconduct shows that the problem is bigger among Protestant clergy. For example, the most cited survey of sexual problems among the Protestant clergy shows that 10 percent have been involved in sexual misconduct and “about two or three percent” are “pedophiles.” With regard to the “pedophile” problem, the figure for the Catholic clergy, drawn from the most authoritative studies, ranges between .2 percent to 1.7 percent. Yet we hear precious little about these comparative statistics.
It’s not as if people are putting these abuses in context. My point isn’t to rag on Protestants, just to say: this isn’t a Catholic problem. Whenever adults regularly come into contact with children, I can imagine rates of these horrible things are comparable.
The issue is framed around the idea that it is a problem deriving from celibacy. That’s probably why Protestants are ignored. Anyway, the idea of celibacy being the problem is
nonsense,
celibacy does not drive you to become a pedophile, certainly, nor for a male priest to molest an altar boy.
Pedophilia and ephebophilia are disorders, not lapses of self-control.
Others have drawn the strong prevalance of the abuse among male altar servers (I’ve seen 85% quotes) to argue that these cases of epebophilia are a result of problems deriving from homosexual clergy. I can’t say I’m totally convinced, but I have to say, it’s an interesting piece of information to
consider.
And in any case,
most churches being hit with sexual abuse allegations are Protestant churches,
or so a study has found, notes the Christian Science Monitor.
Despite headlines focusing on the priest pedophile problem in the Roman Catholic Church, most American churches being hit with child sexual-abuse allegations are Protestant, and most of the alleged abusers are not clergy or staff, but church volunteers.
These are findings from national surveys by Christian Ministry Resources (CMR), a tax and legal-advice publisher serving more than 75,000 congregations and 1,000 denominational agencies nationwide.
Dr. Shupe suggests the 70 allegations-per-week figure actually could be higher, because underreporting is common… Nearly 4 percent said they had been victims of sexual abuse by clergy. Child sexual abuse was part of that, but not broken out, he says.
James Cobble, executive director of CMR, who oversees the survey, says the data show that child sex-abuse happens broadly across all denominations– and that clergy aren’t the major offenders.
“The Catholics have gotten all the attention from the media, but this problem is even greater with the Protestant churches simply because of their far larger numbers,” he says.
Of the 350,000 churches in the US, 19,500 – 5 percent – are Roman Catholic. Catholic churches represent a slightly smaller minority of churches in the CMR surveys which aren’t scientifically random, but “representative” demographic samples of churches, Dr. Cobble explains.
And if you’d like compiled news sources on sexual abuse by *Protestant *clergy, then
please go here.
As always, use the information wisely.
