Could It Ever Be Enough?

[konradv]

No easy answers here for sure.

One answer would be to allow priests to marry. The present policy guarantees that a certain percentage of priests will fall into undesirable categories. Open up the pool of applicants and that percentage should lower dramatically.

While personally I think the 'no marriage' rule for Catholic priests and nuns is silly with little or no scriptural basis for it, I think that is a separate issue and is almost as controversial. After case after case after case and lawsuits involving pedophilia, the Boy Scouts have taken huge criticism and contempt for trying to deal with the problem by allowing only heterosexual, preferably married men to be scout masters.

The Boy's home/school I previously mentioned, to deal with the same problem, established the same rule that only married people would qualify as staff at the school. But the chaplain, married with kids, turned out to be a pedophile just the same.

And.....all such cases are not same sex molestation. Heterosexuals can also have this particular malady that makes them go after the young and vulnerable. And then there are the adult sex predators, not pedophiles, but who use people who are emotionally or mentally vulnerable in inappropriate ways.

Again such people are drawn into vocations or avocations where they have much increased opportunity to satisfy whatever lust or deviant behavior that possesses them. And it is always the most innocent and vulnerable who are the most damaged in the process.

No one said it would be perfect, just that a larger pool to draw from would lead to a lower percentage of bad actors. I don't feel it's a seperate issue at all, but that the severity of one is a consequence of the other, anecdotes notwithstanding.

 

[Foxfyre]

No easy answers here for sure.

One answer would be to allow priests to marry. The present policy guarantees that a certain percentage of priests will fall into undesirable categories. Open up the pool of applicants and that percentage should lower dramatically.

While personally I think the 'no marriage' rule for Catholic priests and nuns is silly with little or no scriptural basis for it, I think that is a separate issue and is almost as controversial. After case after case after case and lawsuits involving pedophilia, the Boy Scouts have taken huge criticism and contempt for trying to deal with the problem by allowing only heterosexual, preferably married men to be scout masters.

The Boy's home/school I previously mentioned, to deal with the same problem, established the same rule that only married people would qualify as staff at the school. But the chaplain, married with kids, turned out to be a pedophile just the same.

And.....all such cases are not same sex molestation. Heterosexuals can also have this particular malady that makes them go after the young and vulnerable. And then there are the adult sex predators, not pedophiles, but who use people who are emotionally or mentally vulnerable in inappropriate ways.

Again such people are drawn into vocations or avocations where they have much increased opportunity to satisfy whatever lust or deviant behavior that possesses them. And it is always the most innocent and vulnerable who are the most damaged in the process.

No one said it would be perfect, just that a larger pool to draw from would lead to a lower percentage of bad actors. I don't feel it's a seperate issue at all, but that the severity of one is a consequence of the other, anecdotes notwithstanding.

I'm not saying that your argument is without merit. Obviously the Boy Scouts, for instance, dropped the incidents of sexual bad acts significantly with their policy requiring heterosexual/married scoutmasters. Obviously the percentage of pedophiles among that group is significantly lower than it will be among the overall gay community regardless of the fact that the huge majority of gay men are not pedophiles and would not take inappropriate liberties with a child. The fact is that fewer married men, on average, will be pedophiles or sex offenders.

Evenso the policy did not 100% eliminate the problem among those organizations implementing the policy.

So that's why I see the issue of marriage as a separate issue from 'justice re sex offenders in the Church', but also recognize that there is merit in your point of view.