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In Reply to: Re: To whom it may concern: marina, ssam, etc. posted by ssam on June 15, 2002 at 20:25:26:
As an observer of both groups, I'd say you are right about the Family being worse, since they did direct people to abuse children.
In my experience, he is correct about the unusual number of homosexual Priests.
As part of my job, I come in contact with a large number of Priests. I also happen to have a degree in Theatre, so you may guess that I have been around a lot of homosexual men during my years of performing on stage here in Southern California. I was talking about the Catholic vs Family abuse scandals with a former member a few months ago, and I made the comment that I believe that approximately 80% of the Priests I meet are not only gay, but flamingly gay.
The person I was telling this told me that I must be exaggerating. But, I told him that this was my experience, especially amoung the very high up diocesan Priests that I deal with.
A few weeks later, I was reading the local Catholic newspaper and saw an article written by a leading Priest that said that if they targeted gay Priests, that they would lose "75%" of all active Priests. This in THE official newspaper of the Los Angeles Archdiocese!
I emailed it to the ex-member, and admitted that I probably did exaggerate by 5%.
The current line of thinking within the Church is that the problem isn't Pedophelia, it is an attraction to young male teenagers. They have a name for it, I had never heard before, and can't think of off the top of my head.
Personally, I think the material that is coming out of the Bishops' Conference is pretty weak. L.A. Cardinal Roger Mahoney has been pushing for actual zero tolerance, but the national Bishops have been pretty closed to the idea of simply turning an offending priest over to the police, which is what I think should be done.
