What is the true nature of the sex abuse problem?
In significant ways the media’s coverage of the scandal has been misleading or inaccurate. For example, the media reported the scandal almost exclusively in terms of “pedophile priests.” This is not correct.
According to the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-IV, pedophilia is sexual attraction to children who have not yet arrived at puberty (DSM-IV, 528). While there have been priests who were pedophiles, the overwhelming majority of cases involved a disorder called ephebophilia, a term that refers to sexual attraction to minors who have arrived at puberty (i.e., teenagers). But we shouldn’t give a false emphasis to the clinical term ephebophilia, because it masks the real nature of what is occurring: priestly homosexual activity with under-aged males.
Why the distinction between pedophilia and homosexual activity with minors? They’re both horrible.
They are, but the distinction is important because there is a qualitative difference between having sex with a seven-year-old and having sex with a seventeen-year-old. Both actions are mortal sins, to say nothing of the damage they inflict on the victims. But a seven-year-old is totally unprepared for sex, both physically and psychologically. By contrast, a normal seventeen-year-old either is able to handle the reality of sex, however much more maturing he may still need.
