Of Priests and Pedophiles

I confess I'm getting awfully tired of child abuse among the Catholic clergy being blamed on homosexual priests and on celibacy. Homophobic Catholics want to blame all the "fags" who somehow managed to get into the priesthood, and -- to my surprise -- there are gay activists who claim the celibacy rule is responsible for the abuse. Say what?

By this thinking, the vow of celibacy is responsible for priests molesting little boys [and on occasion little girls]. But think about it: if a priest is going to break his vow of celibacy anyway, why do it with a child? There have been plenty of cases of priests having affairs with women and other adult males -- I remember one news program did a report on a priest who'd fathered about a dozen children! -- which seems to prove that even priests will go with their instincts. A hetero priest [all two or three of them] wants sex with women; a gay priest wants sex with men ...

And a pedophile priest wants sex with children.

Because, apparently, there have been more cases of abuse among boys than girls, the gay priests have been blamed for the epidemic of abuse. But any sensible person knows that there is a big difference between a homosexual and a pedophile, and that supposedly homosexually-inclined individuals are no more likely to molest a child than their heterosexual equivalents. There have even been cases where some men have had sex with boys but have no interest in having sex with adult males. And cases where men are attracted to both boys and girls, the youth being of more importance than the gender.

I firmly believe that most of the priests doing the abuse are pedophiles first and priests second. They are attracted to the priesthood the way other child molesters are attracted to other vocations because they know they will have access to young people and will also be in a position of trust. Child molesters are sexual predators, and we all know -- or should know -- the lengths to which sexual predators will go to claim a victim. On the surface it may seem absurd that a man would become a priest just to have access to children, but sexual predators are consumed with thoughts of their prey and how they can get their hands on them. Many of them seek jobs which would place them in close proximity to the very ones they want to victimize.

In any case, these priests are not gay men [hardly Out and Proud gay men in any case]. They are pedophiles. And even if they were allowed to marry or didn't have to take a vow of celibacy, they would still spend most of their waking hours scheming how to get their hands on their victims. Even the ones who honestly -- if that's the word for it -- felt the "calling" to the priesthood did so because they knew their sexual desires were verboten and placed them outside the norm. They had no problem taking a vow of celibacy because they had no real desire either for men or women. And they probably fool themselves into thinking that their actions with children don't constitute true "sex" -- in that they're right, as molestation/rape etc are not healthy sexual acts -- so they haven't broken their vows.

Moving from pedophile priests to homosexual ones, these are men who are so full of self-hatred, so ashamed of their natural desires, that they'd rather have no sex for the rest of their lives than have sex with another man. They not only have no problem taking a vow of celibacy, but indeed hope that it will help keep them "pure" for the rest of their lives -- while they go about like capons making sympathetic noises to troubled members of the parish and doing whatever it is priests do. Including denouncing the gay lifestyle and spreading homophobia.

But when they do break their vows and have sex, it isn't with children -- it's with grown-up guys.