Celibacy. (Well, that’s an obvious thing to blame.)
No.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
The problem the Catholic Church now faces is being ignored and pushed aside by the Church hierarchy, its sympathetic laity, and Catholic apologists like Bill Donohue of the Catholic League. These groups are all ignoring several things.
1. Torture and rape of anyone (child, adult, or whomever) has nothing to do with sex; it’s about power and control. Sexual orientation has nothing to do with the situation, other than to give priestly asshats a completely irrelevant, easy-to-blame target.
2. The media has certainly laid a lot of attention on the issue lately. No one blames a reporter for what a corrupt politician does once the reporter reveals her/him. Blaming the media for reporting the truth is an old ploy of those in power.
3. The claim that “Zionists” are to blame is…well, anti-Semitic–a term I don’t throw around lightly. It’s a claim completely without worth or bearing. It’s not “Zionists” who are torturing and raping children–it’s Catholic priests.
4. The Church can find its way to quickly excommunicate priests who don’t toe the Church line. Why can’t they deal with convicted torturers and rapists as quickly, instead of just moving them to other areas where they can torture and rape again?
The Church is spending a lot of time and effort trying to deflect blame and responsibility for actions away from those responsible, including Joseph Ratzinger. All they accomplish is to bring down more of it upon themselves.
Here is an interesting article on something that could be legitimately blamed as a reason for torture and rape, at least in Ireland.
Everybody knows that homosexuals + the media = The Jews ***cue ominous music***.
Since the general consensus seems to be that pedophilia cannot be cured through therapy, and to keep children safe we need to keep pedophiles away from them, the course of the Catholic church (and other institutions where pedophiles lurk) seems clear: identify these people, and remove them from contact with children by both reporting them to the authorities and taking away the jobs that gave them access to children in the first place. Shuffling them from position to position within the same organization is a disaster. No priest or minister should be able to keep his pension and his position of respect within the community after being convicted of abusing children.
[...] of the family unit?” “The spread of dangerous, communicable diseases?” “Tears at the fabric of society?” (The total tipoff is, of course, “Homosexual behavior is contrary to the fundamental, [...]