Are Priests More Likely To Molest?

I've been watching the coverage of the pedophilia crisis in the Catholic Church and here are a few observations.

First of all, I am Catholic. A convert, no less.

So I suppose there is some sort of built-in bias. The "calling-my-baby-ugly-syndrome."

But read on and decide for yourself whether this comes from bias or just common sense.

I think Cardinal Law woefully mishandled cases of pedophilia by priests in his charge for decades. I think he is obfuscating and deflecting responsibility in his testimony. I think he should resign.

I think a priest molesting a kid is probably one of the most abhorrent things I can imagine. After all, priests are in a position of authority. That's moral authority, by the way.

The abuse of that authority to fulfill some sick, prurient interest at the expense of an innocent child is beyond being morally reprehensible.

It's criminal.

Convicted priests should be punished to the fullest extent of the law.

And those who covered it up or shuffled priests around instead of getting them out of the church need to also be held accountable.

They have all lost their moral authority and have no business as leaders in the church.

I also think this "crisis" or "scandal" is receiving a disproportionate amount of notoriety.

From the outset, I wondered why "so many" priests were pedophiles. I wondered if the propensity for pedophilia was higher for Catholic priests than it was for protestant ministers, plumbers, doctors, newspaper editors or the general public, for that matter.

If you watch the news, you get the impression that an abnormally high percentage of priests become pedophiles.

Thomas Plante is an associate professor and chair of the department of Psychology at Santa Clara University and a clinical associate professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine.

He was director of mental health services and the chief psychologist at the Children's Health Council in Palo Alto. He is a diplomate in clinical psychology and a diplomate examiner for the American Board of Professional Psychology.

Plante is a psychologist licensing commissioner in California and maintains a private practice in Menlo Park.

He has worked with 40 to 50 priests facing problems with pedophilia and sexual abuse and edited the 1999 book Bless Me Father for I Have Sinned: Perspectives on Sexual Abuse Committed by Roman Catholic Priests.

Plante says that despite the high degree of publicity, Catholic priests are no more guilty of sex crimes statistically than clergy in other faiths, including Jewish rabbis and Protestant pastors.

(Frankly, I find little comfort in that.)

Plant says, "The best data we have is that approximately 5 percent of priests have a predilection toward minors. ... That seems consistent with other clergy who are not priests (such as Protestant ministers or rabbis)." Plante also says research indicates that among the general population, 8 percent feel sexually attracted to children - a higher percentage than among priests or other clergy.

The higher number among the general population only makes sense, since members of clergy have spent a great deal of time discussing and studying issues of morality.

Now, remember, the numbers Plante cites represent people who feel sexually drawn to kids, not people who actually act on those feelings.

There are 60,000 Catholic priests in the U.S. Approximately 1,500 of them stand accused of molesting children - about 2 percent. Are 2 percent of Catholic priests child molesters? Only if you assume that every one accused is guilty.

"There are 60,000 Catholic priests in the United States. ... Anytime you get that kind of group, there's going to be trouble. But the Catholic clergy is a juicy target because the celibacy and hierarchy are weird to people outside of the faith," Plante says.

The issue of celibacy seems to be drawing criticism and that is difficult for me to understand.

The politically correct view is that sexual orientation is a genetic predisposition, not a lifestyle choice.

Yet many who accept that view argue that celibacy in the Catholic church somehow drives priests to become pedophiles. If only the church would allow priests to marry, they say, priests wouldn't have the urge to molest young boys.

I don't get that.

That line of thinking seems to suggest that a priest - apparently genetically predisposed to homosexuality because of his urge to engage in sex with young boys - could somehow be sexually transformed into a heterosexual by marrying a woman.

My guess is that priests who molest little boys have no interest in women.

Also politically correct is the view that homosexuality and pedophilia are in no way related - that straight people are just as likely to molest children as gay people.

As it relates to priests, anyway, that view doesn't seem to be supported by statistics or anecdotal evidence.

Virtually all the victims of child-molesting priests are boys, not girls.

If celibacy caused this problem and homosexuality had no role, why wouldn't heterosexual priests target girls at least as often as their homosexual colleagues targeted boys?

It's true that Catholics are "juicy targets" as Plante says. The Catholic church is the largest organized Christian religion. If you have disdain for organized religion, who better to target than the Catholics?

In other churches, there is more local control - boards of voters or elders, for example - that are quicker to act on problems like these without involving a hierarchy.

And there's the issue of "love the sinner, hate the sin." Christians in general are taught to be forgiving and compassionate. I suppose most of these priests were allowed to remain priests because they were given the opportunity to repent and amend their lives.

Of course that is just wrong.

Priests who molest must be removed from the priesthood immediately and their cases adjudicated in a court of law.

The Catholic Church, in the end, will deal with the problems in its clergy and put its house in order.

My hope is that this episode will help the leaders of the church learn and grow, just as the church teaches its followers to learn and grow in the Lord.