Thanks to Ryan for the link to this article.  That being said Ryan you may not agree with anything I have written here, but remember disagreement is the spice of life. 

____________________________________________________________________

This is all especially outrageous considering that the openly gay community has offered a model of honest and socially accountable behavior, while the Catholic Church--secretive and unaccountable--has provided exactly the opposite. In fact, the church's history of sexual abuse by "celibate" priests and nuns makes the case that the repression of natural impulses leads to, rather than discourages, sexual abuse. Is it too much to ask that a religious institution sporting such an abysmal record in dealing with these matters stop dictating the bedroom behavior of its millions of followers?

~ Robert Scheer, “A Hypocritical Church's Sex Lessons”

Can we jump to conclusions please? *please read that previous statement again and note the INCREDIBLE amount of sarcasm that was intended in it*

One of my greatest loves (and by loves I really mean things I cannot stand) are people who make statements that they cannot backup or for which they, either knowingly or unknowingly leave out important information in order to cloud the judgement of those who are listening to them.  Anyone who knows me will be able to pick out the exact statement in the above quote that has me in a tizzy, and for those who do not let me elucidate for you:  “The church’s history of sexual abuse by ‘celibate’ priests and nuns makes the case that the repression of natural impulses leads to, rather than discourages, sexual abuse.”  Well, let me tell you it is nice to know that Mr. Scheer performed an extensive SCIENTIFIC study of priests and nuns whose results illustrated that the majority of those who choose to become priests and nuns have no history of sexual abuse or molestation before entering the church and it is only after the repression of their sexual behaviour by celibacy that these behaviours develop and manifest themselves.  It is also nice to know that since he is reporting this information it has been independently confirmed.  I mean, the implications of these results are widespread.  One can assume from this then that all those who are jailed for any form of sexual abuse simply do not lead active enough sex lives.  I guess then that celibacy and abstinence can only lead to individuals who abuse others.  The solution as I see it then is to begin teaching our children that in order to maintain healthy sexual interests they should start having sexual relationships as soon as possible.  Wait that is crazy isn’t it?  Sounds like I may be going a little too far and stating an extremist point of view but clearly that is the only option.  I mean the answer cannot simply be that some individuals deviate from societal definitions of normal sexual interests.  Heck for that matter it seems too simple an explanation to say that maybe the seemingly high percentage of priests and nuns who have committed acts of sexual abuse entered the church as a means of covering up their penchant for something that society deemed inappropriate.  That is silly; of course individuals could not have chosen a path that they thought would provide them protection from the general population’s opinion of their [insert adjective here for example “immoral” “unnatural”] disposition.  Nope, we have to conclude that individuals go bad upon entering the Catholic Church, they become immoral sexual predators and as a result of this the Church in its entirety is not fit to guide its followers in their “bedroom behaviour.”

Phew, that being written maybe I can continue without the “subtle” undertones of sarcasm that can be seen above.  I find the final sentence in the above quote quite interesting as well, specifically the part about the “abysmal record” of the Catholic Church, clearly making reference to the number of priests who have been caught “with their pants down.”  In the article, and what drew me to read it (thanks Ryan) is a comment by the new pope.  The quote from the pope comes from a comment he made in 2002 and it reads:

In the church, priests also are sinners. But I am personally convinced that the   constant presence in the press of the sins of Catholic priests, especially in the United States, is a planned campaign, as the percentage of these offenses among priests is not higher than in other categories, and perhaps it is even lower.

Now say what you will but I personally do not believe in a conspiracy against the Catholic Church by the media.  However, the pope does have a point that is echoed in the mention of the Church’s “abysmal record” by Mr. Scheer: the media over reports the bad, skewing perception.  This is not only the case for the Church but this provides a good example of the behaviour I am referring to.  How many articles have you read about the priest who didn’t molest a child?  My count is zero, you?  Now how many have you read about the priest who did molest a child?  Far more than zero is probably the answer.  With or without a conspiracy against the Catholic Church there appears to be an “abysmal record” of priests who are molesting individuals; however, this is more than likely not the case.  We perceive there to be a dramatic rise in the number of sexually abusive acts surrounding the Catholic Church not because there are but simply because they are being reported.  This is not to say that sexual abuse in the church does not occur.  As a matter of fact believing that in any population there is a lack of what we would consider deviant behaviour would be an uneducated assumption.  Simple probabilities are going to indicate that a percentage of any population are going to deviate from “normal” and the Church is no different.  For example*, let’s say that .5% of a population deviates from the “normal” sexual desires.  This .5% of individuals are the paedophiles, bestialists (I am aware that I may have made up a word there.  These would be the people who engage in bestiality), etc. in a population.  Now say for example that there are 600,000 Catholic priests and nuns.  Probability says that in this population there should be 3000 individuals who deviate from “normal” sexual urges.  If we consider the argument that I was making above that the Church may historically have been seen as a safe haven for individuals who did differ from those norms then the percentage of individuals who will potentially demonstrate “unacceptable” sexual preferences increases, but let’s leave that out of it for now.  Let’s imagine for a second that 600 of these 3000 individuals act upon their urges even though they have taken a vow of celibacy.  Of those 600, 340 are caught and the media reports those 340 cases to the public.  The media does not mention the other 597,000 who do not deviate probabilistically, they do not mention the 2400 that may statistically deviate but have never acted upon their urges, nor do they report the 260 who have not been caught.  This means that 340 cases become the primary representative sample in the general public of sexual behaviour among members of the Catholic Church.  In other words, .0006% of the population becomes the representative sample that we base our “abysmal record” on.  Does this not seem a little skewed to everyone else?  That leaves 99.9994% of the population who we are judging based upon the reported actions of less than 1% of the population in question.  How can we make judgements of an entire population based upon such a small sample? 

* These numbers have been made up by me.