CofE 'would shut down' without its gay clergy, says +Gene.

Andrew Collier, a freelance journalist based in Scotland, has just interviewed Bishop Gene Robinson in London. We have reported in online. This is the bit I liked best: 'I think the thing that is the most mystifying to me and the most troubling about the Church of England is its refusal to be honest about just how many gay clergy it has – many of them partnered and many of them living in rectories. I have met so many gay partnered clergy here and it is so troubling to hear them tell me that their bishop comes to their house for dinner, knows fully about their relationship, is wonderfully supportive but has also said if this ever becomes public then I’m your worst enemy. It’s a terrible way to live your life and I think it’s a terrible way to be a church. I think integrity is so important. What does it mean for a clergy person to be in a pulpit calling the parishioners to a life of integrity when they can’t even live a life of integrity with their own bishop and their own church? So I would feel better about the Church of England’s stance, its reluctance to support the Episcopal Church in what it has done if it would at least admit that this not an American problem and just an American challenge. If all the gay people stayed away from church on a given Sunday the Church of England would be close to shut down between its organists, its clergy, its wardens.....it just seems less than humble not to admit that.'

I also enjoyed this, towards the end: 'As a matter of fact I’m more evangelical than almost anyone you would run into in the Episcopal Church.'   

Entire transcript below, with Andrew's kind permission.

'I think most gay people sense early on that they are different even if they are not exactly sure how they are different. That was certainly true for me by age 11 or 12. You have to remember that when I was that age, gay was not a word that was being used to describe homosexual people. There was very little discussion of it. There were certainly no role models like we have today of successful and productive people who were gay, so it was not something easily admitted to oneself, never mind the world. But very early on – I’ve probably told the story of friends of mine getting hold of a Playboy magazine and realising that they were very much more interested in these pictures than I was. And not only that – being aware of my attraction to other boys and finding that such a despicable possibility, given what the church had taught me and what scripture seemed to be saying about  this – you just pray it’s a phase you’re going through, something you’ll outgrow. It was certainly something from the very moment I sensed I was ashamed of and fearful about – fearful for my own safety. I grew up in a world where that sort of thing was not remotely tolerated. It was in middle, southern America, which is still perhaps the most conservative place around these issues.'

Q . Did you assume you would just grow out of it?

'Yes. And then when I didn’t, by the end of college and the beginning of seminary, I got into therapy twice a week to rid myself of this horrible thing. I felt if I couldn’t change it outright, I could at least put it aside. I very much wanted to have a wife and family...'

Q. Why did you want that?

'I’ve always been a very family oriented person. I think the most important things in life happen in families. As painful as they cam sometimes bed, they are also perhaps our greatest hope for learning about community and about self less love and all of that. I’ve always loved children and I very much wanted that for myself, and so my entering into therapy was an attempt to make that possible for myself. By the end of that time I felt myself ready for a relationship with a woman.'

Q. Did you feel it (the therapy) had worked, or did it just put you in denial?

'It didn’t work, and it almost never works for people who attempt it. I guess I did think it had worked. I suspect it didn’t make the same sex feelings go away, but it certain worked in that I felt ready emotionally and spiritually and physically for a relationship with a woman, so it certainly made that part of myself possible. And so when I entered into a relationship with the woman who became my wife, it was full of integrity – I wasn’t pretending to be something that I was not.  And yet within a month of meeting her, I shared that all of my primary relationships had been with men, that I had been in therapy to make a heterosexual relationship possible, and that I felt I was in a good place to do that.'

Q. And she was quite happy with that?

'Yes, she seemed to fully understand that. And then some 10 or 11 months later, just about a month before our wedding, I became fearful again that....I believe I used the word that this might rear its ugly head at some point in the future.Q. So you were completely transparent about it, and she was quite happy?
Yes. What she said at the time was that we loved each other very, very much and if something like that happened, somehow we would deal with it together. And oddly enough 13 years later we did. I met her between my middle and third years of seminary.'

Q. What drew you to Anglicanism?

'I grew up in a very evangelical tradition, very Bible-oriented. Quite conservative, perhaps bordering on fundamentalist. By the time I finished High School.  I had an English literature teacher who got me reading Paul Tillick and some other popular theologians. I had begun to question the narrowness of the church I had grown up in and one of the things that particularly irritated me was that I would ask some difficult questions and would often be told ‘there are certain questions you shouldn’t ask’.  While I thought there were some questions that didn’t have answers – or easy answers – I didn’t think there was any question that shouldn’t be asked.'

Q. So it was Anglicanism’s spirit of broad enquiry that appealed?

'Yes. I go off to college, which quite coincidentally happened to be owned by the southern dioceses of the Episcopal Church and met an assistant chaplain there. When I raised my questions again, instead of telling me that I shouldn’t be asking, instead he congratulated me on asking all the right questions and said he didn’t have all the answers, but I was welcome to come in and let’s look for those answers together. I remember being struck at how undefensive he was about his religion – that Anglicanism seemed to be big enough and broad enough to allow and even encourage those kinds of questions.  It had its own answers, but it existed to help me come to my own answers. I remember thinking ‘gosh, that seems to me to be the way religion ought to be’. So I was very encouraged by that. One day when I was ranting and raving about how much of the Nicene Creed I didn’t believe, he said ‘well, when you’re in church, just say the parts of the creed you do agree with. Be silent for the others. We’re not asking you do so something against your integrity’. And again I thought whew, that’s what one would hope for from a religion – honesty and integrity. And I guess that’s a theme that has carried throughout my life in Ministry – that God wants us to be honest and full of integrity.'

Q. What shifted you from being an enthusiastic convert into ordained ministry?

'Very early on I felt a call to ordained ministry. Even growing up in this evangelical background, I took church very, very seriously. I think I got up to something like 14 or 15 years of perfect attendance every Sunday! So the church had always been important to me and very central to my life. The other calling that I struggled with was that I always had an interest in being a paediatrician, but when I got to college I realised that it was not the science of medicine that I was drawn to, but the people. – ministering to people. Ordained ministry became very much my focus, and I think when I finally said yes to God’s call to ordination, it felt like gears not meshing but grinding. It’s as if when I finally said yes to ordination, those gears suddenly meshed and inside I became very peaceful and at rest. That felt like an inner confirmation of that call from God. And so off to seminary I went.'

Q. You didn’t find a gay culture at seminary?

'At seminary I did, yes. That was in New York. I went to seminary in the fall of 1969 and only three months before in June were the Stonewall riots, which was supposedly the beginning of the gay liberation movement. So even in New York it wasn’t something terribly much talked about, though of course New York being New York there were gay people there who were more open than you would have experience in most other cultures.'

Q. How did that manifest itself?

'Well, I had a relationship with someone, and it was a very positive and negative experience. It felt very positive to be falling in love with someone, to have them falling in love with me, and to experience this kind of bond, and at the same time it was horrifically awful because – oh my goodness, maybe this isn’t a passing phase. Maybe I am this way. Oh my God, what am I going to do?'

Q. is that what pushed you to therapy?

'Absolutely. Absolutely. And knowing that if I were this way, the chances were almost complete that I wouldn’t be ordained.  So there was a lot at stake and I wanted to do this right and well, so I got into therapy, to change that, and the desire for a family were perhaps the two guiding principles. It was the last two or three years of the 13 years we were married that this began to just impress itself in my thinking and my wife and I began to talk about this more and more. We were each in therapy and we were together in therapy, trying to discern what was the right thing for us to do. '

Q. So it was a very long and considered process?

'Oh very, very much. It was a wonderful marriage and as a matter of fact almost everyone we knew was devastated by the announcement we were getting divorced. We were the marriage everyone hoped for. We were the ones people pointed to and said ‘if only we can have what they have’.  And yet beneath the surface there was this other very painful thing going on.'

Q. And yet you’ve managed to keep the family, haven’t you?

'I was just visiting my wife two weeks ago. She has become quite a national expert in the area of horseback riding for the emotionally and physically handicapped. She was beginning a new phase of this programme, she invited me down and I said a prayer and a blessing over this new effort with her board....we’re still very, very close. I just saw her on Saturday at our grand-daughter’s birthday party.  We are very very close and we talk often.  The thing that has hurt me most in the press – and there have been some awful things said – but the most painful is the charge that I ‘abandoned my wife and children to move in with another man’. First of all, there wasn’t another man – I didn’t meet my partner until two months after my wife was remarried. I never abandoned my wife or my responsibilities to her and I never abandoned my children. As a matter of fact they joke about that all the time. We talk nearly every day and they will often joke they’re the abandoned children. We tried to do the dissolution of our marriage in a holy way. We took a priest with us to the judge’s chambers for the divorce decree and went back to his church and in the context of the holy Eucharist released each other from the vows we had taken, asked each other’s forgiveness for ways in which we might have hurt one another, pledged ourselves to the joint raising of our children and gave our rings back as a symbol of the vows we no longer held each other to. It was one of the most healing moments of my whole life and I think that’s partly why our relationship has continued. To be so good and why our children were affected as little as possible in a family break-up.'

Q. You made a remark about how your girls sometimes go to your partner now rather than you?

'Yes. You know it’s very interesting – sometimes parents are the last people you want to talk to and you feel you can’t get any objective advice from them because they are too bought in. So they often go to him for the kind of objective voice they suspect they can’t get from their real Mom and Dad. They’ve always thought of him as one of their Dads. They were five and nine when I met him, so he was very much a part of their growing up. He’s just wonderful with them. They adore him and he them. I would say I’ve been blessed. I’ve really had the best of both worlds. I had a wonderful relationship with my wife and I have a wonderful relationship now of almost 20 years with my partner. I feel much blessed.'

Q. is that perhaps partly why people have been gunning for you? That there’s a jealousy there? It doesn’t quite fit the model – they can’t compartmentalise you in gay culture.

'That’s right. I don’t fit all of those stereotypes. I’m not a misogynist. I don’t hate women. I have wonderful relationships with women. I had a wonderful marriage. For people who would very much to criticise me...it’s difficult for them to do so in ways which might be the most easy and obvious ways.  I wasn’t duplicitous with my wife.  I continued to care for her and our children after our divorce.  At our daughter’s wedding, my partner walked my wife down the aisle while I walked my daughter down the aisle and the three of us sat together. It really was quite lovely.'

Q. And you must have been helpful to her through her second divorce as well?

'That’s right. Absolutely. Our love for each other continued right through that time and I think she still considers me a confidante and companion on the way. In that sense I think marriage is for a lifetime, even if you get divorced.  It is a lifetime relationship.'

Q.  Were you really aware when you were ordained as a bishop of just how schismatic it was going to be and how much pressure was going to be put on you?

'No.  Did I think it would be controversial? Of course.  Did I have any idea that the furore over my consecration would be as broad or as deep as it was? Absolutely not. We took seriously the voices that were coming our way and we knew this would be a shock in many quarters. On the other hand I think the Episcopal Church is trying to do ministry in its own context and our context. Gay and lesbian people have become active and open members of our congregations and active and open members of the clergy. This was just a next logical step for us. It’s important to remember that the consents to my election were done separately with the laity, the clergy and the bishops and all three of those consent votes were by about a two thirds majority. It was not a narrow margin. '

Q. But the sheer scale of the venom you could never have expected...

'That’s right. That’s right.'

Q  ECUSA ordains gay priests but has a problem with bishops...

'That’s right. It’s very interesting. As I look back on this – and perhaps it has something to do with the theology of the episcopate – ECUSA has been ordaining gay priests for many, many years. Not every bishop will do that but many do. I will and have. Many make a requirement that the person be celibate, but many do not make such a requirement. It’s interesting that the wider Anglican Communion has either not known that or has not chosen to make an issue of it before now. I understand that a bishop is understood to be ordained for the whole church, although that’s true for the priesthood as well. One is a priest of the church and provided they are a priest of good standing, they can exercise their ministry anywhere in the world. It’s just a surprise to me that this issue did not become an issue until a gay and lesbian person became elected bishop. If it’s wrong for one (bishop and priest) it ought to be wrong for both. Bishops have a certain importance, but it’s just an importance that the church has given them. It’s not an innate importance. So it either ought to be wrong for all orders of ministry, or for none.
Q. There was a real danger at your ordination?
My partner and I wore bulletproof vests. We had to spend some $100,000 on security for the event. It was not only me we wanted to keep safe, but all of the participants. We did have a contingency plan at if shots were fired or a bomb sent off, if I was still alive there was a separate location and I was to be taken there. Three bishops – it takes three bishops to lay hands on you to ordain you - would be there and a photographer to prove it happened, so that at the end of the day if I was still alive, the consecration itself would not be thwarted.'

Q. Have you ever really felt in danger?'

I had a conversation with my daughters the afternoon of the consecration as I was putting on my bulletproof vest. They were of course very concerned. It gave me the opportunity to have the conversation with them that death is not the worst thing. If there is a reward to Christianity it is that we need not fear death. It certainly wasn’t anything that I wanted, but I said to them that if something terrible happens today I am following God’s call as best I can discern it and that makes me very happy. So if at the end of the day I am dead you know I died happy and I died trying to do what I discern to be God’s will and for some purpose. That is a blessing.'

Q. How do you feel when you read some of these comments from other provinces of the church? From your fellow bishops?

'The pain comes less from the fact those statements are coming from fellow bishops than that they are coming from fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. That is now how we are meant to treat one another in the body of Christ. Frankly as an act of self protection I pay as little attention to those as possible.  I have important and serious work to do in my own diocese and I am so grateful to have those people. I love those people. I love them. If I were to pay overly much attention to all of those comments coming my way I would be so distracted from the real work and ministry I have been given to do. It would paralyse me. I pay as little attention to them as possible. Some of them are so hateful and vile and inaccurate that I get frustrated and angry, but for the most part I feel so close to God...'

Q. Can you forgive them?

'You know, I can.  And here’s why. They only believe what the church has taught them to believe, and I believed those same things myself for a very long time. This is what a gay person has to contend with. We’ve been taught the same things everyone else has. It took me 39 years to claim who I really am as a child of God and as a gay man. How can I expect someone who has never met anyone openly gay who struggled with those themselves to so easily change their minds about this? So while I don’t welcome that kind of hatred coming my way, and while I don’t believe the church teaches us to hate, certainly the church has taught us all to condemn homosexual behaviour. I would argue it has taught that mistakenly, but I can certainly understand why people feel this way so no, I don’t have any trouble forgiving. '

Q. Have you ever had a crisis of faith?'

Not since I was 20 years old perhaps. I believe it is in God’s plan to include all of God’s children in God’s church. I don’t know if it was in God’s plan for me to somehow play a key role in that for gay and lesbian people. I do believe in free will so if I had not said yes to God’s call someone else would have. Indeed for many years I didn’t know if I would play a role in that, or if I would play a small and insignificant role and someone else would stand on my shoulders and do this thing and I was quite as surprised as anyone else that it seemed to fall to me to be the one elected and to be something of a focus. But we are told over and over in scripture that we will pay a heavy price for doing God’s will. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake. I don’t know why it comes as a surprise to Christians that there is always a difficult price to be paid. I can’t imagine Desmond Tutu being surprised that his journey has been difficult at times – that he has had death threats. It certainly was true for Our Lord in his life and it’s all over the scriptures. I think we don’t want to believe it because who could wish for such a thing? But when it comes why should it be a surprise?'

Q. Has Desmond (Tutu) been supportive?

'I have never met Bishop Tutu. I presume (Rowan) still holds the views he was quite public about prior to his appointment of Canterbury and that coming into that position and feeling he needed to be Archbishop of Canterbury for the whole church and the communion. I choose to believe him – that he has set his personal views aside in order to fulfil that role. I think that must be a very difficult place to be and I don’t envy him that role at all. When he did consent to meet with me he did not meet me there (Lambeth Palace). It was very private and I was eager and willing to accommodate him and when he asked me not to function liturgically or to preach I was saddened by that but I want to help him as much as I can. I’m limited in what I can do and I won’t step down, but other than that I am eager to try and help him any way that I can. I certainly would not do so (celebrate or preach) without his permission.'

Q. Are there bishops in the Church of England who have backed you?

'Yes there are. I won’t name them – I don’t know how public they want me to be. I have received huge support from the Church of England both from the clergy and from the pews. Hardly a day goes by never mind a week that I don’t receive encouraging words of support. I think the thing that is the most mystifying to me and the most troubling about the Church of England is its refusal to be honest about just how many gay clergy it has – many of them partnered and many of them living in rectories. I have met so many gay partnered clergy here and it is so troubling to hear them tell me that their bishop comes to their house for dinner, knows fully about their relationship, is wonderfully supportive but has also said if this ever becomes public then I’m your worst enemy. It’s a terrible way to live your life and I think it’s a terrible way to be a church. I think integrity is so important. What does it mean for a clergy person to be in a pulpit calling the parishioners to a life of integrity when they can’t even live a life of integrity with their own bishop and their own church? So I would feel better about the Church of England’s stance, its reluctance to support the Episcopal Church in what it has done if it would at least admit that this not an American problem and just an American challenge. If all the gay people stayed away from church on a given Sunday the Church of England would be close to shut down between its organists, its clergy, its wardens.....it just seems less than humble not to admit that.'

Q. Turning to the Scottish Episcopal Church.....

'I don’t know a lot about it except that I feel grateful for your ordaining Samuel Seabury!'

Q. Was [the Bishops’ Statement] helpful?

'Absolutely. Before there can be acceptance and celebration of something there at least has to be toleration of something. That’s a big step. I think the Episcopal Church is not looking for agreement, only for permission to live out its life and ministry in the context in which we live. It is not asking the church in Nigeria to raise up gay and lesbian priests and bishops. We are only asking to be allowed to do so because it seems to be where God is leading us in our context. What I take from the Scottish Episcopal Church’s statement is an acknowledgement simply of that. It lets us be what I have always understood us to be in the Anglican Communion, which are autonomous provinces.'

Q. So you found it supportive?

'Very much so. Very much so. And grateful for it. As you can imagine, statements like that are few and far between at the moment in the Anglican Communion. What I like about it is that it was a refusal to draw a line in the sand and I think there is way too much of that going on right now in the Anglican Communion, whether that be the Primates Communiqué making demands on the Episcopal Church or whatever – I don’t think that helps us right now.'

Q. Is there a risk that there will be a cost for the Scottish Episcopal Church in this? Could it suffer the same potential consequences (as ECUSA) of being put out of communion?

'Let me say two things about that. One is the whole notion of punishment being meted out to provinces of the Anglican Communion that are somehow non-compliant is somehow antithetical to the whole Anglican tradition, positing some sort of centralised Curia that has the ability and the authority to do such a thing, is about as un-Anglican as you can imagine. After all, our church was founded in resistance to a centralised authority in Rome. And so to pose the possibility of such a centralised Curia with those kinds of authorities seems to me to be as un-traditional as it could be. But within that context I would say that one of the things we are called to do in scripture is to stand with the oppressed and the marginalised and the Scottish Episcopal Church in its statement and in refusing to criticise and condemn the church for what it has done is in some sense standing with us and so if indeed the Episcopal church in America is to bear some sort of punishment it would not seem unlikely that all those who have stood with us might be so punished. I don’t believe that will happen. I pray that it won’t happen. We very much want to be part of the Anglican Communion. We will never walk away from the Anglican Communion. It would be sad beyond belief if somehow an attempt was made to expel us. I don’t know of a liberal person in ECUSA that wants to be rid of the Communion, that would willingly walk away. '

Q. But what happens if they do put you out of Communion. Do you just carry on as before?

'Well, we’ve never operated that way before, so that history would have to be written. Of course we would carry on. I think we would be diminished by that lack of connection to the church in the rest of the world. It’s what helps us remember that the whole world isn’t like our context, that the whole world doesn’t share the kind of resources we are blessed to have. It keeps us human; it keeps us connected to the rest of the world. The other thing that needs to be said is that we have deep and abiding roots in Africa and in Asia and in South America and no matter what happens to the Communion we will keep up those connections. As you and I sit here right now there are I think 40 bishops from Africa and 40 bishops from America meeting in Spain. These are bishops who have had connections between America and Africa for many many years and I can’t imagine that change in status would destroy those connections.'

Q. Will an accommodation be reached?

'It’s impossible for me to know what the conservative churches and leaders will do. For myself and the Episcopal church, we are absolutely committed to the Anglican Communion and intend to stay and contribute and invest ourselves personally. I pray every day that the rest of the Communion will welcome our presence, as problematic as it might be. I think we need each other. We need to learn and grow with the presence of each other. I think it would be a terrible loss to all of us.'

Q. Lambeth is coming up next year. As I understand it. They haven’t invited you.

'That is correct. I believe every bishop in the Episcopal Church has received an invitation except for me.'

Q. That must be quite hurtful.

'Yes. But it’s not over. This is a story still waiting to be written. I have great hopes that a way can be found for me to be present and for the most conservative provinces of the Communion to be present.'

Q But can we realistically presume that whether you are invited or not, you will be around Canterbury at that time?

'I have not made that decision yet. I have great hopes that I will be officially included in some way or another. '

Q. There is a very real risk, is there not, that the whole Anglican Communion will come to pieces, with Rowan ending up effectively forced out?

'If that should happen, I would have to say that something else is at work beyond my consecration. We have faced many divisions before – the ordination of women, the consecration of the first woman bishop – all sorts of things. If the destructive forces are so strong as to cause that sort of dissolution, then something much larger than the issue of homosexuality is at stake here. The people that we find on the Conservative end of this issue are generally the same people who opposed liturgical reform, the ordination of women and so on. These people have been unhappy for a very long time. I think in some ways my consecration was just an opportune event on which to hang this larger struggle. Personally I think George W Bush had it in his mind to attack Iraq and 9/11 became a wonderful excuse for doing so. It’s like that.'

Q. Where do you see yourself positioned in the church?

'As a matter of fact I’m more evangelical than almost anyone you would run into in the Episcopal Church. I come out of evangelical roots and see my ministry as one of evangelism. When I speak to gay and lesbian groups I don’t talk to them about gay rights, I talk to them about their souls. My goal is to get them to church and bring them to Jesus. I speak that language and believe it with my whole heart. I believe that Jesus is standing at the doorway to our hearts every moment of the day and my mission is to encourage people of all stripes to open that door and let Jesus in.'

Q. What do you think Jesus would make of all this?

'I think Jesus is terribly disappointed when we close the door on anyone – when we make it harder for anyone to access God’s love. Looking at this debate I think Jesus both understands how hard change is and for me I believe Jesus thinks the debate and the pain of it is worth it in the end. It was either Gandhi or Dr Martin Luther King who said the ark of history bends inevitably towards justice. I may be wrong. Only time will tell. But I do think this has to do with the ark of history bending towards justice.'

Q. Are there any nuggets from the Bible that sustain you?

'The sixth chapter of Isaiah is where he describes his call. It’s very important to me. The scripture I use with all of my candidates in the ordination process is where Isaiah has a vision of heaven and of God’s love, realises his own unworthiness and the unworthiness of all of us, experiences God’s touching his lips with the hot coal and removing his sin, and then God says ‘who will go for us? Whom shall I send?” Isaiah says here am I, send me. That’s where my sense of call comes from. The other interestingly also from the Hebrew scriptures but read by Jesus in his own home town synagogue is also Isaiah 61: ‘Where the spirit of the Lord is upon me and has called me to preach Good news to the poor, release to the captives to bind up the broken hearted and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour’. I believe that is the passage that Jesus discerned his ministry out of and I think that’s why it’s recorded that he read that passage from Isaiah. I think he was discerning his own call at that point, and his ministry went on to embody that. That’s the scripture I used in my first major address to my diocese after being elected because I felt that if it was good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for us and that our ministry ought to be about those same sorts of priorities.'

Q. You have become famous – almost a celebrity. How do you handle that?

'It’s bizarre and it’s surreal. I was in New York not too long ago, dressed not in clericals but in regular street clothes. What looked to be a homeless person stopped to ask for money. I was on my cellphone, my partner gave him something and he was walking off. He turned around and pointed to me – I was still on my cellphone – and said: ‘I saw you on TV the other night and you were awesome’. He then walked off. It’s not anything I want or expected or was in many way prepared for, but it’s an opportunity for evangelism and every opportunity I get I try to use for God.  When I travel outside the diocese it’s amazing the people who stop me in the street or at an airport, mostly to thank me for what I’m doing or to tell me a story about themselves or a relative who has felt encouraged by what I’ve been doing. People have been simply wonderful to me. '

Q. You must wish in a way you could just talk about important Christian issues.

'It would be wonderful. I would love to be just another bishop. It seems to me that God has called me to this particular time and this particular ministry in which 95 per cent of my time I do get to spend just being a bishop in my diocese where this is simply not an issue. But there is this other ministry which God has given me to incarnate this issue for the church and for the world. It is a daunting calling, but one that I am trying to do to the best of my ability and in it all not to point to myself but to God who made all this possible for me to be elected, but that God somehow got through to me that I am loved for who I am and the confidence I got from knowing that I am one of Christ’s children led to my election, not that God rigged the ballot box.'

Q. The Catholic Church still retains an anti gay stance, yet it has huge issues with its own gay priests....

'I shouldn’t matter at all to anyone in the Roman Catholic church because as the Pope reasserted only a couple of days ago, they are the only one and true church and so as far as they’re concerned I’m just playing church, as is the Archbishop of Canterbury I might add. But last summer I led a retreat for 75 gay Roman Catholic priests. I don’t know that I have ever been with people in such pain and again it is the same issue for the Church of England, it is one of integrity. I believe there are no barriers to God’s love for us. How difficult it must be to preach God’s love to a congregation and serve an institution that refuses to extend that love to you. It must be enormous.'

Q. Have you any message for the Scottish church? Have you ever been to Scotland?

'Yes indeed. I’ve been to Iona. Glasgow, Edinburgh, Inverness and the north. I love Scotland. It’s been a while and I would love an invitation to come back. I’d encourage the Scottish church to do what they did 200 plus years ago – to stand with their brothers and sisters in Christ in the United States and to offer their support.  Not necessarily their agreement even, but their support of our being a constituent member of the Anglican Communion trying to discern God’s will for us at this time. I think that the size of the Scottish church matters not. It’s the moral voice that is needed and will be appreciated by many Americans and Canadians and Australians and others. The world needs what the Anglican Communion has the opportunity to provide.  In a global village we have to find a way to live together while we disagree about certain things. If the world doesn’t learn that soon we’re going to destroy ourselves. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the Anglican Communion could provide a model where we could disagree about many things and yet still hold together as a community?  I think we have an opportunity to be a sacrament – a sign pointing towards treating each other with such infinite respect that we can transcend our differences and respect one another without having to agree. I think the world desperately needs to learn how to do that and we have a great opportunity in the Anglican Communion to exhibit and be a model for that and that’s what I hope we will do.'

Q My own church, Old St Pauls – any message for us?

'I’d say that I celebrate the embrace of diversity that Old St Pauls exhibits. I believe therein lies the hope of the future for the church. In that embrace a congregation becomes more Christ-like than in anything else it can do.  If Jesus stood for anything it was the embrace of all, especially the marginalised, and to welcome all is the greatest tribute to Christ there could be. I would love to visit and be a part of that community someday. (It would be terrific to receive an invitation to preach).That would be wonderful.'

Comments

[Hugh]

I’m back! Sorry for delay: work-related, no reflection on the quality of debate.

JP: “The more salient point, as outlined by Hugh M, is that - in theory - the Church (and its adherents - of all hues, I'm not interested in the internecine bickering about whether RC's are less abusive than Protestants etc etc yadda yadda) should - according to the never ending stream of moralising that we get from said institution and individuals therein - never suffer from any cases of abuse whatsoever. In theory, according to the moral standards it demands of wider society, the Church should be morally untouchable. Yet it is patently as morally degraded as any other institution within society.”

JP, I’m particularly interested in questioning your thesis which posits an asserted link between celibacy and sexual abuse. But to address the wider canvass you’re working on: I fail to see what the degree of “moralising” by the Church on sexual issues considering the uptake of her members on this point has to do with the Her credibility on denouncing sexual abuse. I mean, the Church has uttered pronouncements against all SIN from Her inception, yet the bally thing still happens, unfortunately, - as even I myself can testify in my own case. The fact that Her adherents fall into the trap of sin does not of itself compromise Her insight that this is indeed a trap.

[As is often observed, Jesus chose twelve and one of them was a thief and traitor. Another disowned Him readily. Two in twelve, or one in six !! Is that a comment on Jesus?]

Some further points:

1. You seem to be objecting to the “never ending stream of moralising” against sexual abuse coming from the Church? Do you think perhaps The Church should tone it down a bit? Perhaps She should only object in her official pronouncements against sexual abuse only every few years or so? Or, in the case that many of her members have been caught exhibiting this vice, perhaps she should shut up about it altogether ? IE: just let this happen, and ‘get on with it’? Somehow, I’m not convinced.

2. “In theory, according to the moral standards it demands of wider society, the Church should be morally untouchable. Yet it is patently as morally degraded as any other institution within society.”

Er, even if so (as yet – as to the latter proposition - unproven), so what? To repeat: Are you suggesting that the Church, so “morally degraded” as you allege, should stop its magisterial nagging cant that sexual abuse of children is always and everywhere evil? How might that improve things? Will other institutions arise to take up the call? But where are they now? I refer you to the free ride NAMBLA has had in secular circles over the last few decades. [Perhaps you yourself have been a fulminating opponent of this society?]

3. On a purely empirical point of view: According to your unfavourable view of Christian celibacy, Christian celibates, cet. par., should be found offending at higher rates than Christian non-celibates. I’m certainly not dismissing this outright, but: data welcome.

[Bill Channon]

+Robinson states that the CofE would should down without its homosexual priests and bishops. Is this a threat or a bit of 'subtle' blackmail.
In any event, from an orthodox/reasserter/tradionalist position, the CofE perhaps needs to stand up for what it purports to believe in and take that risk. It would help those of the active homosexual persuasion as well since they would not be living a lie, being consecrated despite their vows/or keeping their fingers crossed as they say the creeds, make their vows, etc.
I doubt that the CofE would shut down.

[David Smith]

Hugh Manitas to David Smith:
'Judging others? What about.........people encased in boxes do not want to hear.'

My last two posts to you, HM, were, amongst other things, about negatively judging others by yourself. And I gave 4 pieces of concrete evidence of your doing this to support my allegation.

Despite your choice of opening words, you then actually go on, and mostly in sweeping generalities, to talk about something quite different. Your message is really quite simple, although I think you say it in rather a complicated way.

Essentially it amounts to this: 'There are people who view life from a different perspective to me (especially those in whose thinking the unseen spiritual realm is, for them, a real factor), and who hold different opinions to me on various issues. They aren't in the same mental 'box' as me, but, like me, they want some say in the way wider society is run. No matter how much I bang the table, or them, they will not see things my way. I find such people absolutely infuriating.'

Sometimes, HM, I too would love it if everyone would jump straight into my 'box', and we could together put the world to rights my way! So you have my sympathies on this.

To be fair to you, you actually say a bit more than this - namely that you object to people who use religion to control and manipulate others, and who don't practise what they preach. Well I do to, and have said so repeatedly on this blog.

But the way to get inside other people's boxes, I think, is to pursuade them argument for argument on the issues, rather than by generally verbally beating them on the head just for being inside them. Otherwise you are not only likely to make little headway, but also liable to fall foul - in your efforts to get them to see and do things your way - of a charge of being no better than them.

[David Smith]

Geoffrey Smith to David Smith:
'A Johnny-come-lately like you.. You have no authority to interpret the Scriptures, but you have taken it upon yourself to tell the Church, the originator and guarantor of the Bible, what her own book should mean. Such conceit! Such arrogance!'

Excuse me, Geoffrey, but I thought that God was the originator of the Bible. (See e.g. II Timothy 3:16,17)

I know I'm treading over long-cherished ideas, and I'm sorry. But I have to say that it seems to me that, in your understanding of early church history and the origins of the Bible, you have swallowed Rome's own propaganda hook, line, and sinker.

(Did you know, by the way, that we owe the very word 'propaganda' - in its commonly used meaning - to Rome itself. It comes from the Vatican body of Cardinals set up to spread Rome's false version of Christianity - The Congregation for the Dissemination of 'The Faith'. The word for dissemination in its Name in Latin being 'propaganda'.)

And who says (apart from Rome, that has always wanted to tell us, for its own status, convenience, power, and profit, that it alone can tell us what the Bible 'means') that I can't tell by myself what the Bible says? The Bible itself (aka The Word of God) certainly does not.

That I can read the Bible for myself, and see, amongst other things that there is no Pope there and no transubstantiation, but rather a God to whom I, through Jesus, can have direct access for forgiveness and restoration and inner nourishment - whenever I want, is empatically not down to Rome. Rome's and its agents did their very best to make sure that it was never translated in an unadulterated form for the likes of me to read - translator William Tyndale, who was imprisoned without trial for 18 months, starved and tortured, and then strangled and burned in 1536, and just for doing this, being just one of their most notable victims.

'Johnny-come-lately'? I may not have been around as a Christian for as long as Rome has been plying its sinister trade, but I thought the Christian attitude to the new convert, according to Jesus anyway, was something more along the lines of there being 'more joy in heaven over one sinner that repents than over ninety-nine just men.. '?

Such conceit! Such arrogance! I agree. But Rome's - and yours, on its behalf, Geoffrey. Not mine.

[Hugh Manitas]

Geoffrey, stop being nasty to David. He takes himself very seriously.

'Johhny-come-lately?','Conceit?' 'Arrogance?'. Even if you think that David, heaven forbid, has got something wrong for once, there is no need for 'ad hominem' comments between the faithful surely? You haven't been setting people up as 'straw men' and attacking them for saying nothing of the sort have you? (No wickedness intended - much needed attempt at levity!)

[Hugh Manitas]

Judging others? What about the sanctimonious within faith groups who judge others continually against their own glorious standards, creating a hierarchy of worth; specifying human value and gender - the moralisers who from a lofty position of their own making pour viscous guilt over other people's sexuality, choice of sexual partner or degrees or types of personal commitment? What about those who judge by making biased pronouncements, either on their own behalf, having judged their various churches to be lacking, or who speak through their one-dimensional leaders? What about those seeking to judge others over a multiplicity of human issues from birth control and abortion to the ludicrous apportioning of celestial blame for severe weather? (People of Tewkesbury, you have been judged and have had to undergo unimaginable suffering, death and discomfort, because there are gods who wish to remind us all that the morally decadent will burn in hell on the day of judgment - notwithstanding that we are all flawed.)

What about those who judge others from a religious perspective and stone them to death or behead them?

What about those who live by their own interpretation of texts and relics of their own choosing, but who fully expect to tip their dogmatic policies into the social structure, which they adjudge urgently needs them, infecting it with a supernatural dimension based on their own constructed ideologies.

You cannot 'argue' with these people from a position based on a human understanding of rationality. Some are so precious they seize on every form of rhetorical prose and spend hours deconstructing it into component parts. Others swerve around and obfuscate perfectly clear issues, painting all facets the same colour in the hopes that salient but morally uncomfortable or criminal issues, such as sexually devient clergy, will blend into a muddled background of piety.

For some fundamentalists, the judgment of others allows one set of rules for the profane and no rules for them; others are so hidebound by dubious rules and selective codes they admit absolutely no interpretation whatsoever. How can you have a debate over social routes when one party is on rails and always going backwards into the cave?

There may be gods, but I susbscribe to J Pearce's school which defends freedom from the attempts by religious lunatics to subdue and control others on a grand scale, making socio-political policies as if their own chosen god was a proven reality. Unfortunately it involves making suggestions that some people encased in boxes do not want to hear.

[Geoffrey Smith]

"Starting about 300 years after Christ's death, having set up its own hierarchy and bureaucracy, Rome began to propagate its own version of Christianity".
- David Smith, 15 August 2007, 21:52:52

Long before then, Mr Smith! About 300 years before then. Starting in Jerusalem on the first Pentecost, St Peter, the first Pope, preached the very first address to the first Jewish converts, about 3000 in total (Acts 2:14-47). No Protestants at that time, Mr Smith. No evangelicals. No Orthodox. No Anglicans. Only Catholics, doing what they had been commanded by Jesus to do, namely preach the Gospel to every creature. The Catholic Church alone can trace her ancestry right back to the Twelve Apostles. From those Apostles and their converts she obtained the New Testament, which she added to the Old Testament to create the Bible (Carthage I, 397 and Carthage II, 419). The Catholic Church , therefore, preceeded the Bible by at least 350 years. A Johnny-come-lately like you depends on the Catholic Church for the content and authenticity of the Bible. You have no authority to interpret the Scriptures, but you have taken it upon yourself to tell the Church, the originator and guarantor of the Bible, what her own book should mean. Such conceit! Such arrogance! You would do well to remember the words of Newman: "To be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant". Or, one might add, an evangelical.

[David Smith]

J Pierce;
'Really? Are we talking about the Catholic Church here? Assuming this is true, why does any Christian pay any attention to what the Church hierarchy has to say at all?!'

A good question, 'J'.

Starting about 300 years after Christ's death, having set up its own hierarchy and bureaucracy, Rome began to propagate its own version of Christianity. In this version, a key element is its own apparent indispensibility to men's salvation and spiritual well-being - a very convenient idea if its power, jobs, and money that you want to secure!

Also in its version, becoming and staying a Christian is by (human) rituals, which...yes, you've guessed it... only Rome's employees are qualified to perform!

Rome, whose child the C. of E. still is - albeit that it has been a bit rebellious and gone walkies for a few centuries, has done a very good job of claiming and proclaiming that Christianity is what it say it is. Thus an awful lot of mostly good people, who have been very interested in the loving, healing Jesus of the Bible, and found a lot of what He taught about how life should be lived and heaven obtained, have been mislead... and still are being to this day.

[David Smith]

Hugh Manitas to David Smith:
'You are only interested in scoring cheap verbal points aren't you.. ?'

' ..to bully others is your way of dealing with people who disagree broadly with some positions you adopt... '

'You, of course, are too busy determining rules by which dissenters like me.. address you.'

No HM. Wrong, wrong, and wrong again.

I just want the unfounded personal abuse, straw man creation, and personal judging-of-others-by-yourself to stop, and to make way for proper, honest arguing.

[Hugh Manitas]

David Smith:

Still spending your time avoiding the arguments by castigating those who do not come up to your own definitions of worth then. What do you get out of this? You wrongly accused me of implying that you were consumed with hate.

You were not big enough to acknowledge the apology I made when I wrongly addressed you, but continued to denigrate me as if I hadn't made one.

Defining 'homosexual' in my view was pointless rhetoric.

You are only interested in scoring cheap verbal points aren't you; ignoring any arguments that do not fit your own narrow definitions?

Your 'straw man' accusations which, I note you also apply to others who try to reason with you does not stand up.

If to bully others is your way of dealing with people who disagree broadly with some positions you adopt, then there is no room left for any cogent discussion.

Like many others on this forum, I find the position that some sanctimonious Christians adopt over the rights of homosexuals and a raft of other humanitarian issues absolutely appalling. You, of course, are too busy determining rules by which dissenters like me, J Pearce and others should address you.

[J Pearce]

"But, again, do remember that you are talking about a largely false Christian church here, which is why the Bible predicts its ultimate destruction."

Really? Are we talking about the Catholic Church here? Assuming this is true, why does any Christian pay any attention to what the Church hierarchy has to say at all?!

[Hugh Manitas]

It is very obvious Hugh that you are attacking me by keeping up a loud spurious pretence of not being able to understand what I am saying. Pseudo 'academic' decontextualising, in order to misinterpret isolated points simply will not wash.

Because there are no meaningful statistics linking celibacy with abuse you are asking me to provide them. I have not suggested such a link exists. You are using one of the (much vaunted) 'straw man' arguments.

I did not endorse the Jason Berry investigation or his statistics. I said that for the purposes of answering your turgid rhetoric they were inadequate.

The fact that you imply that it is 'accepted' that priests, are only human and have weaknesses (the corollary is that some will abuse children) is different from suggesting that this is 'acceptable'.(Which it clearly is not) This is obvious so why do you persist in raising it?

If you are finding what I am saying difficult, or you think that my posts are foolish or groundless then don't comment on them.

Clerics who abuse children are playing their part in deconstructing the core elements of their various faiths. You no doubt roundly condemn them. If a causal link was found between celibacy and abuse, would your position change, or would you simply dispute the science? If you think that my last was 'shrill' you must be overly sensitive.

[David Smith]

Hugh Manitas to David Smith:
'Your reply over the definition of 'homosexual' was.. patronising.. '

My words were simply an attempt to politely impart some information to you, since you did not seem to know what homosexual actually means as a word.

In contrast, this is you, HM.. to Hugh:
'Hugh. Well done on the honours degree. We all have to start somewhere.'

I wonder what you think that is, if it is not patronising?

Here are three more recent quotes from you, HM:
'Mr Smith['s] recent announcements.. obviate the need for anyone to bother to argue with him any longer.'
'Hugh,
I can't really be bothered to argue with you.'
'Do you really think that I am going to bother to engage with someone who.. '

Since you continue to argue and engage with both me and Hugh at considerable length, haven't these shown themselves as just expressions of a hugely patronising attitude IN arguing, rather than of any genuine boredom that would lead you to stop?

In your last post to me of getting on for 50 lines there was still not one actual quote from my previous posts to substantiate your continuing personal abuse and speculative assessments of my positions on both God and homosex, but there were still more straw men.

So, HM, all in all it seems that to your using unjustified personal abuse and straw men, we now need to add judging others by yourself.

[Mephostopholis]

Andrew: I have no quarrel with you, or any other academic re. Marlowe. I have neither expertise nor interest in the period.

Unprovable, unreferenced statistics and opinion asserted as fact, caught my attention. Ergo the choice of moniker.

The archaic spelling is deliberate - a parallel to archaic opinion. A humorous allusion! Oh well.

Gentlemanly 'defence' in the context of Mary Shelley's record of personal, derogatory hounding of others strikes me as puzzling. In comparison, 'do keep up' is a very 'lightweight' riposte.

In conclusion, that is of no consequence. I have lost interest in the debate.

While the topic offered a prospect of illumination, its hijacking, by fanatical religious personalities, has reduced it to impenetrable obfuscation - despite best efforts by sensible, informed contributors. Harold Pinter's 'Birthday Party' comes to mind.

[Hugh]

Moreover, HM, I'm interested on another level, if you, an endorser of the Jason Berry investigation and statistics, also support his thesis:

"They(Berry & Co) blame the Church's sexual doctrines-particularly the rule on priestly celibacy, which, they contend, HAS DRIVEN AWAY HETEROSEXUAL MEN AND FOSTERED A PATHOLOGICALLY LIBERTINE "GAY PRIEST CULTURE" AT SOME AMERICAN SEMINARIES". The result is an atmosphere of silence and hypocrisy that simultaneously condemns and tolerates both homosexuality and priestly sexual abuse, in which an authoritarian Church hierarchy, reaching up to the Vatican, protects pedophiles, and buries accusations in labyrinthine legal maneuvers."

????

[Hugh]

H.M: You are also playing with words Hugh if you confuse levels of abuse as 'acceptable' with what you are both insisting is an 'accepted' fact i.e. abuse, appalling as it is is present in the Catholic church at a certain level.

???? With the greatest respect, HM: How in the blazes can you still be in the dark about what I mean? Read my post above, which I repeat, for your benefit, below. I give up!

SOS: does anyone else, whether they agree or disagree with my position, have H.M.'s difficulty in understanding what I'm saying ?? Please, I'm grateful for any response - I want to be able to communicate, even if you disagree with my position! Then meaningful debate can resume!

****

HM:“…comments proposing that a disgraceful but 'accepted' level of abuse exists…”

HH: Who said anything about “accepted” levels of sexual abuse? Not me, if that means “acceptable”. As I said, true Catholics deplore any sexual sin, let alone sexual abuse. They know for one that, unrepented, it leads to eternal damnation.
******

[Hugh]

Can anyone explain what Hugh Manitas' issues are? I have great difficulty sorting out what he is saying.

HM:"The issue is that you are both wriggling on this one and using the lack of facts surrounding any possible causal link to your own advantage."

"Lack of facts"? Why wouldn't one use a LACK OF FACTS to "one's own advantage" if one is accused of systemic criminality (via celibacy) and one doesn't believe that to be the case?

I've been very polite to Hugh Manitas in the last post. This last shrill and barely comprehensible post leaves me dumbfounded.

[David Smith]

J Pierce:
'Ah, no, just on a short holiday.....As far as I can see, the Church does not offer anything positive to humanity whatsoever.'

Welcome back 'J'! The break seems to have done you the power of good. In the main, a veritable 'tour de force' overview critique of 'the Church', as many have experienced it.

But, again, do remember that you are talking about a largely false Christian church here, which is why the Bible predicts its ultimate destruction.

[Andrew]

Meth (and apologies to RG again for not only going off-post but staying there..!)

Just to put the record straight - the A text of Faustus is written by Marlowe and one or more collaborators. The B text is cobbled together years after Marlowe's death, using Marlowe's material as a base, by a motley crew including Birde and Rowley. Whoever wrote the MS that went to the printer, characters' names and all, it wasn't Marlowe. This is not the lunacy of 'Shakespeare didn't write Shakespeare' conspiracy theorists, but entirely conventional scholarly wisdom.

I'm afraid I just thought it was rather precious to insist on the Mephostopholis spelling (especially when rubbishing Mary Shelley for not 'keeping up'), when that spelling is the creation of one or more jobbing play-wrights (or simply a lazy compositor); rather than the 'Mephistopholes' which the rest of humankind humbly agrees to denote the name of the ingenious and compelling character imagined by Marlowe. The choice has a reek of 'gosh I'm so different - and so clever!' about it. No doubt unintended, but there you go. It is your pseudonym, and I leave you to it, with best wishes.

[Hugh Manitas]

I am so sorry Hugh and Mary. I was under the impression that this is a public forum, open to all to comment on the topics suggested in the various headers. I had no idea that I had no right to 'refuse to supply data' when told to do so, or that other contributors could 'require me' to supply data which I had already suggested should be sought, but so far as I am aware didn't exist. Perhaps I might make it quite clear that if you are requiring a monograph or thesis on this subject I am unwilling to supply one.

Moreover Hugh, I also failed to grasp that because J Pearce had implied a causal link between celibacy and abuse, your replies to him would be addressed to me.

The 'statistics' that Ms Shelley has supplied are woefully inadequate as statistics and are not properly referenced. Quantifying known offenders over time is unreliable, misleading and almost certainly inaccurate.

I could urge you to read Professor Freda Briggs, Russell Hawkins or Mary Williams, or a resume of work carried out by the The Eros Foundation. I might quote the journalist Jason Bearry who carried out a study in which he claims allgedly that 15% of all US priests had sexually molested children in their care. There are reports in the American media stretching back several years which began by asserting that priests dying of aids was four times that of the general population. But then as primary sources these are also partial and woefully inadequate.

The fact is that a causal link between celibacy and abuse (which you appear to be loudly defending against J Pearce - methinks thou protest too much) has not so far been proved. But then I have never once said that it has. I remain convinced however that to demand celibacy from priests is bizarre and implies an element of religious 'otherness' which is designed to sepatare clergy from laity but which is possibly unsustainable in human beings. They do not 'choose' to be celibates. It is a requirement if they wish to be Catholic priests.

The 'horse' I referred to is the one which has thoroughly escaped into the public domain; despite the best efforts of prelates; despite the 'slam-shut' apparatus urgently erected and designed to maintain pontifical secrets and despite those trying to arrange tortuous diversions and ecclesiastical mazes by producing an assortment of red herrings.

My posts have centred on the appalling hypocrisy within various faith groups - who on the one hand maintain this veneer of hieratic holiness, which then turns out not to warrant the trust of minors. You are also playing with words Hugh if you confuse levels of abuse as 'acceptable' with what you are both insisting is an 'accepted' fact i.e. abuse, appalling as it is is present in the Catholic church at a certain level. The issue is that you are both wriggling on this one and using the lack of facts surrounding any possible causal link to your own advantage.

[Mephostopholis]

Andrew re. Marlowe. Many thanks for that update.
The essential point, of course, is the commonly accepted existence of different spellings of the name of said 'devil'.

There are indeed many scholars who argue against Marlowe as author of Folio B and, even some who "have for some time agreed that", Shakespeare "was not written by" Shakespeare "at all", but by Marlowe!

Areas, I would posit, of fascinating academic endeavour but, outside my period of interest. That said, I am always open to well-researched findings on any topic.

[J Pearce]

"J Pearce has rather suddenly and inexplicably vanished from the conversation. (Another mystical intervention, perhaps?) Perhaps he’s hard at work desperately trying to google some sort of statistic."

Ah, no, just on a short holiday I'm afraid, Hugh. Even us Defenders of Freedom Against Religious Extremism (DoFARE) have to take a break sometimes! As for my shouty postulations, I appear to have stirred the proverbial nest a bit. I'm afraid I don't have the stats to back up my beliefs - although it would make an interesting study. I just have a gut feeling that celibacy is an unnatural state of being to force upon the majority of people and, given the repressive environment of the Church, I can readily accept that it has the potential to warp accepted norms of behaviour, such that priests are prepared to engage in what wider society regards as deviant behaviour.

The fact that the Church has been prepared to institutionally ignore or cover up the majority of abuse cases within its ranks appears to demonstrate that it must somehow consider such behaviour as "the norm". Astounding.

The more salient point, as outlined by Hugh M, is that - in theory - the Church (and its adherents - of all hues, I'm not interested in the internecine bickering about whether RC's are less abusive than Protestants etc etc yadda yadda) should - according to the never ending stream of moralising that we get from said institution and individuals therein - never suffer from any cases of abuse whatsoever. In theory, according to the moral standards it demands of wider society, the Church should be morally untouchable. Yet it is patently as morally degraded as any other institution within society.

My pet theories notwithstanding, this renders any pretence to moral superiority by the religious utterly redundant. There is absolutely no basis whatsoever, to take the moral posturing of the Church seriously in any form, given that on an institutional and individual level, the Church suffers from the same "moral malaise" as wider society apparently does.

Bluntly, the Church manifestly fails to lead by example. The fact that it refuses to engage with wider society in shared moral and legal norms (i.e. "This does not always equate to handing the clerics in question over to the state, but then the Church has no duty to do any such thing.") belies the institutional arrogance and wilful ignorance inherent within the Church and its devotees.

By definition, the Church as an institution is inherently anathema to a cohesive society - it creates conflict, fans the flames of absolutism and extremism and assumes to place itself beyond the laws of the land. It actively fosters the conditions in which abuse can occur and then refuses to address the issue, choosing instead to scapegoat others or deny the problem exists entirely.

As far as I can see, the Church does not offer anything positive to humanity whatsoever.

[Mary Shelley]

PS..This blog is filling up with importance. We have both humanity and Mephostopholis[sic], a devil..OK the devil seems not to be able to spell his name, or at least not signed anything since Elizabethan times and missed Germany & Goethe's masterpiece (how could any devil miss Germany?), but evenso a creditable duo.

All we need now is God.

[Mary Shelley]

Andrew,

I've never met a devil in the real world but there are swarms of them in virtual reality. And this Mephostopholos [sic] I've met before--as anti-Catholic in her old guise as she is in her new. Consistent to the last! Unlike her wily namesake, Mephistopheles.

Give the most recognizable spelling, for God's sakes, Kate! (Oh wait, shouldn't apply to God, should I?)

[Mary Shelley]

Humanitas—you write well but why am I unhappy with your proposition?

Firstly, you used a rhetorical technique-- going from the specific (child abuse in the Catholic Church which you charge is linked to ‘unnatural’ celibacy) to the general (“the overall lack of trust”)—in lieu of facts. Two: you supplied no facts. Hugh asked you for studies which you refused to provide. I supplied data, which you then rejected categorically, giving us a mini-sermon on the scientific process (which we already knew ) and calling for “change measurement”—which the 2006 report from the John Jay College of Criminal Law actually *provided*.

Now I am all for rhetoric and reason, but on a social issue, I would take statistics—such as they are--over rhetoric any day. Dancing around the issue, however ‘brilliantly’ done, satisfies the ego but is really just another trick of rhetoric: an argument from authority, the authority of Humanitas—well, styling oneself as humankind is bold indeed!—but where does it lead the analysis? (Assuming analysis is possible in a blog).

(I like your moniker as well, although I think it presumptuous. You are not humanity, only one human being.)

[Hugh]

Hugh Manitas,
I do apologise if I have offended you in my tone of reply.

1. You write:
“The central issue for me is not in seeking to prove whether or not celibacy leads to abuse, although I would suggest that celibacy is a meaningless life choice.”

But, HM, it IS the central issue behind MY own entry into this discussion. I was, you will recall, responding to a persistent theme in the blog, culminating in this statement from J Pearce:
“This obsession that the Church has over celibate priests directly results in the manifestation of clerical abuse against minors. As far as I’m concerned, there is a direct correlation between Christian religious dogma and child abuse.”

It seems to me that accusing an institution of being the cause of systemic sexual abuse is a fairly serious charge. Indeed, it may be grounds for action in libel if made rashly, in certain circumstances. Don’t you think that that accused institution has a right to see good evidence grounding this assertion?

What did we get from J Pearce? This:

“ I don’t have the “proofs” you are avidly trying to get out of me.”

Might I suggest that the level of one’s condemnation of the Church be relative to the degree of one’s certainty that She is in fact the culprit?

2. HM: “In most healthy adults there is a strong urge to fornicate.”

I don’t know what you are getting at here, but I’ll take it you mean “copulate”.

3.HM: “Moreover, there is no evidence of gods or that the claimed existence of gods affects that drive. Therefore those who choose not to have sex, do so with no evidence that their choice will alter or remove the human urge to do so.”

HM: I am really puzzled by this – I and all who know anything about Christian ascetism are in complete agreement with these statements of yours. But they are not news! With respect, you seem have completely misunderstood my last post on this point. I was making exactly the same point: fasting doesn’t take away the urge to eat, and celibacy doesn’t take away the sexual urge. The Church has always held this to be so.

4. HM; “Expecting [celibates] to remain celibate because of the mystical element within their vocation is therefore unrealistic.”

My comments:

a. Note first, that by “mystical element” you mean some sort of divine intervention which turns down or wipes out altogether, the sexual urge. As I said in point 3 and in previous posts, the Church has never, ever, suggested this was the case. On the contrary: the whole point of the discipline of celibacy (and fasting) in Christian spirituality is that one accepts and indeed celebrates these (and all) natural drives as gifts from God, but chooses for certain reasons not to act on them.

Of course, there are more and less intelligent ways of going about this. When one fasts in Lent, it’s unwise to spend time drooling over cookery books or hanging around bakeries and restaurants. When one is obliged to be celibate – temporarily or permanently – it is, among other things, strategically imprudent to indulge in pornographic movies or web sites, or to go out late drinking heavily in singles bars with pole dancers in view. But that being said, there is no suggestion that carefully avoiding such occasions in which one’s resolve is severely tested will eventually lead to the condition that the underlying natural urge is permanently eradicated. Nor, I insist, is this the goal of celibacy and self-mortification in Christian asceticism.

As I said before, HM, you have been poorly briefed in what Christianity really teaches in this area. I don’t mean to be impolite. I’m just stating the case. Try to see it from our point of view. Christians are people too, and find it deeply offensive when such ridiculous caricatures of their positions are held up as the genuine article.

b. This statement (4. above) is beside the point.

The debate I’ve taken up with JP is whether celibacy leads to sexual abuse. What you have to show, then, in the context of that argument, is that committing one’s life to celibacy increases one’s chances of being a sexual abuser.

Now it is well known that celibacy – the choice not to follow one’s sexual urges – is and has always been a difficult path to live out. Some – perhaps many – who take up that path will stumble along the way by indulging in their natural drive in one fashion or another. Of these, a portion will pick themselves up, and recommit to that path. Other stumblers will decide to be dispensed from their vows.

But here’s the point. It has not been proven, to my knowledge anywhere, - and certainly not on this blog - that those voluntary celibates who so stumble, giving in to their sexual urges, tend do so in the direction of acts of sexual abuse any more than do non-celibates who indulge their sexual urges.

5. HM “There is plenty of evidence to show that healthy people for whom meaningful sex is not a reality can display altered patterns of behaviour.”

Two clarifications:
By healthy I take it you mean ‘sexually’ healthy? Many sick people still retain sexual urges and, deprived of normal sex might well alter their sexual behaviour.

By “behaviour” I take it you mean “sexual behaviour”? I mean we’re not interested in whether, eg, they drink more coffee.

Now:

We must distinguish between a. those who are involuntarily deprived (by prison, personal injury, etc) of the ability to engage in “meaningful” (= straightforward sexual intercourse?) but who nevertheless choose to indulge their drives in any other available way, and b.those who, whether normal sex is possible or not, CHOOSE to refrain from indulging their sexual urges and who believe that any sex other than normal, marital intercourse is morally impermissible.

I require you to supply me with data re. the altered sexual behaviour of group a. which data is relevant and applicable to the behaviour patterns of group b.

An analogy: People who don’t believe in the right to property will, when desirous of a particular item, say, a TV, find ways of fulfilling their desire in certain ways, some of which might involve theft. Other people who a. believe strongly in the right to property and b. although acknowledging the enjoyment of T.V., nevertheless commit themselves to a lifestyle of resisting all desires to have a T.V., will, when faced with that desire, will also behave in certain ways. To suggest that a study of the responses the property rights non-believers to a strongly felt desire to watch T.V. can lead to predictions about the responses of the property-rights believing, sworn non-TV watchers face with the same desire, would be very poor science.

The point here is that most people today don’t believe that gratifying one’s sexual urges in certain ways other than through normal sex, is wrong. (Of course, they may still hold that certain ways are wrong, like sexual abuse or rape.) Only a small number of the population (I’m one) think that, outside of normal sex within marriage, no sexual gratification is morally permissible. So behavioural studies which don’t distinguish between these two sets of subjects, when they are involuntarily deprived of normal sex, may not be relevant at all when considering the behavioural response of those who a. choose not to have sex of any kind for themselves, and who b. think that only normal sex within marriage is permissable to anyone anyway. In which case your projections from studies might not be relevant to the thesis that celibacy and sexual abuse are causally linked.

As a footnote: routinely indulging one’s sexual desires doesn’t make the “itch” go away. Human wisdom going all the way back to Plato and Socrates suggests that constantly gratifying that (or any other pleasurable) desire tends to make it stronger, and to be less easily satisfied in each instance. There is a vector toward the novel, the ‘kinky’, the abnormal, in order to obtain the same level of pleasure or to get more. Sexual killers such as Ted Bundy willingly testify to this.

6. Your next paragraph regarding the uselessness of certain statistics to prove causal links between celibacy and sexual abuse intrigues me in two ways.

a.Wasn’t it you said that “there’s £300 million on the table – so to warble on about causal links really is shutting the stable door after the horse?”

I took it at the time that the “horse” was the link between celibacy and clerical abuse and that this payout was “damning evidence”. Have you changed your view?

b. The subtle argument you’ve undertaken here really goes to the point that correlation can never be made to amount to causation. It works both ways: even if the number of sexual abuse cases among celibates was far lower that non-celibates the causal link could still be suggested. One could argue that the rate would have been even lower, had not celibacy been adopted. If, for example one identified a community of strongly committed Catholics (or Amish or whatever) in which there was little or no sexual abuse, evidence of celibates from that community abusing at a rate significantly higher than that community’s but lower than the national average, might point to a link between celibacy and sexual abuse.
Be that as it may, there should be at least some prima facie evidence to accompany the gravely serious assertion of a causal link between celibacy and sexual abuse, and I even as a Catholic would accept that significantly high rates of sexual abuse among celibates relative to non-celibates, would warrant a further inspection. What is notable is the lack of such prima facie evidence.

7. HM:“…comments proposing that a disgraceful but 'accepted' level of abuse exists…”

Who said anything about “accepted” levels of sexual abuse? Not me, if that means “acceptable”. As I said, true Catholics deplore any sexual sin, let alone sexual abuse. They know for one that, unrepented, it leads to eternal damnation.

8. I see nothing “risible” about interfaith comparisons, if all the relevant factors are distinguished and the data is good. We’re discussing clerical celibacy, and non-celibate populations are a plausible control. If interfaith comparisons sort on this criteria, there might be very good evidence forthcoming. What problems do you see with it?

[Andrew]

Apologies in advance for going off-post, but I couldn't help observing that Mephostopholis' (sic) wonderfully precious defence of his chosen pseudonym and his spelling of it failed to mention the fact that most scholars have for some time agreed that the B-text of Dr Faustus - character names and all - was not written by Marlowe at all.
As you say, Meph, do keep up.

[Nike Olafimihan]

If I may returnb to the interview? Bishop Robinson says, “I think integrity is so important”. Good. Christianity is a matter of conviction. You either subscribe, or you do not. The Bishop informs us that he signed up to the priesthood without believing all the articles! That type of integrity is strange to the meaning of the word, and explains all his actions and his readiness to divide the church for his own brand of integrity. He should not explain his actions with the word

As for celibacy, I personally know many in the Christian community, men and women who are celibate for the sake of Christ. The fact that one does not subscribe does not mean that one should deny it. It is a reality, and whether the celibates are happy or not is surely a matter for themselves. alone . After all, it is not unique to Christianity; they exist in Buddhism, so why does it become impossible for CoE members?

[Hugh Manitas]

Hugh,

I can't really be bothered to argue with you. Not because I have nothing to say, but because your arguments are flawed, your 'academic' tone is patronising and your rhetoric borders on being abusive. The premises surrounding your example of short periods of fasting as a co-relative are non sequitur. In most healthy adults there is a strong urge to fornicate. Moreover, there is no evidence of gods or that the claimed existence of gods affects that drive. Therefore those who choose not to have sex, do so with no evidence that their choice will alter or remove the human urge to do so. The maintenance of their choice rest with them. Expecting them to remain celibate because of the mystical element within their vocation is therefore unrealistic. They are not choosing to give up sex for a token period. People choosing permanent starvation will die. There is plenty of evidence to show that healthy people for whom meaningful sex is not a reality can display altered patterns of behaviour.

Moreover those who are busily posting that to prove a causal link between sexual abuse of minors and celibacy, it is sufficient to show that there is a HIGHER incidence of offending from celibates, are mistaken. The issue is more complicated. Testing empirically involves measuring change; showing that, against a backdrop of perceived sexual normality, those sexually active people for whom normative sex is denied or becomes adapted for whatever reason, (e.g. prison, personal injury, illness etc,) are more likely to modify their sexual habits, even offending in varying ways. It must then be established whether or not otherwise 'normal' sexually active people choosing to be priests are equally likely to change their patterns of sexual behaviour (including becoming offenders at an average rate) compared with living a life with this factor removed. It is too simplistic to insist that an arbitrary measurement showing a higher rate of offending amongst celibates proves a causal link.

Whatever others have posted on this forum regarding a lesser or greater likelihood of celibates molesting minors, comments proposing that a disgraceful but 'accepted' level of abuse exists only serve to underline the hypocrisy surrounding the claimed moral position of the various churches. If the level of corruption by the religious, clergy or laity, within these institutions reflects the national average, then, in this area the spriritual dimension of the institution is hollow and unremarkable. It removes the occult factor of 'holiness' as a meaningful paradigm, confirms human frailty and deconstructs an overall state of grace. (Social moralising on the one hand, whilst claiming the defence of human weakness on the other will no longer wash.)

Accurate measurement of abuse remains extremely difficult, but a dearth of meaningful statistics does not illustrate add weight to claims that celibacy is wholly benign. Attempting to make interfaith 'comparisons' with the figures quoted are risible.

The central issue for me is not in seeking to prove whether or not celibacy leads to abuse, although I would suggest that celibacy is a meaningless life choice. It is the overall lack of trust, which remains whatever figures are placed on this, and which is evinced by the grudging willingness of faith groups finally to acknowledge their own histories through compensating numerous known victims.

[frank, sydney]

If one side in a gangland war kills fewer people is it more righteous? Of course not. Why try to assess which denomination has abused children, adolescents, men and women more than the others? All abuse is abhorrent.

It may be an interesting sociological exercise, and there may be lessons in there somewhere, but the data it is based on is essentially useless for comparison purposes. Different eras, different reporting practices, unquantifiable incidence and prevalence rates, unknown variations in the likelihood that abuse would have been reported for a host of reasons, variations in what was counted as abuse etc.

There are too many variables to allow a percentage reported in one area, group and time to be easily compared with another.

That is why in medical science more weight is given to prospective, blinded trials, than to anecdotal reports made by scouring for variations and surprise findings from past databases, which may carry a lot of useful information, but are often unreliable statistically, and more so when different databases are compared.

[Mephostopholis]

Mary Shelley. Such transparent nit-picking in your attempts to impress and influence, is comic.

In Marlowe's 1611 'B' text the spelling is:
Mephostopholis.

In the 1604 'A' text it is: Mephastophilis.

Do keep up. I think you may be confusing the original with the film - Mephisto. Neither of the original Faustus texts use: "Mephistopheles".

Mephostopholis’s motivations are ambiguous: while he actively attempts to dissuade Faustus by warning him about the horrors of hell, he appears at the same time to be intent on winning the doctor's soul for Satan!

However, back to substance! Caught out and moving the goal-posts again! May I jog your memory. Your post - 4% Catholic abusers, 9% Protestant, was challenged as clear evidence of unsubstantiated prejudice.

You have now read the links I provided and realise that the RC establishment is busy exculpating offenders by drawing a distinction between paedophiles and the abuse of teenagers.

You now ignore your previous assertions and quote Catholic professors as though this is what you have been asserting all along. Nothing you have said, including questionable calculations, prove your original point.

My general comment re. homosexuals was made in the context of conflation up-thread! Reliable, independent, academic statistics on child abuse identify the vast majority of child sex abusers as heterosexual family members or others known to the child. Homosexuals constitute a minuscule proportion of child abusers.

IF, as you now seem to be arguing, the majority of RC priests guilty of sexual abuse have been identified by RC researchers as homosexual, you are yet again engaging in obfuscation by making comparisons with statistics on Protestants and Jews.

From my reading, it is certainly not the case that the majority of Protestant clergy (or Jewish rabbis) accused of "sexual crime" have been identified as of homosexual orientation. In any of the reliable research available, no clear distinction is made - between individual "sexual crimes" - in Protestant or Jewish sources.

Rather, all "sexual crime" is lumped together i.e. those who have abused adult female parishioners, those who have engaged in extra-marital affairs, homosexual relationships, or those who have abused children.

This fact alone makes nonsense of efforts to 'prove' higher percentages of child sexual abuse in other denominations.

In reality, what your latest posts reveal is an inherent 'need' to absolve proven RC offenders on grounds of media exaggeration or "discrimination" against Roman Catholics. Failing all that, you seek to scapegoat homosexuals.

The Mother Superior "aunt" with the "steel-hard glare" ... the "tough" woman ... whom you so clearly revere as a role model explains a great deal. Perhaps you have missed your vocation.

[Martin]

"Martin is wrong when he says that the Church has acted "strongly" against it - the opposite is, in fact, true."

1) The Church has acted strongly against paedophilia in the clergy under Canon Law. This does not always equate to handing the clerics in question over to the state, but then the Church has no duty to do any such thing. It has the right and the duty to try its own clergy.

2) I suggest you read the Nolan and Cumberlege reports.

[Hugh Manitas]

Hugh. Well done on the honours degree. We all have to start somewhere.

[Hugh Manitas]

David Smith: I do not know if you hate yourself or not. Your reply over the definition of 'homosexual' was as patronising as it was misleading. In your posts on the SORS thread find me one scrap of evidence that you were referring overall, or equally to gay women, or that the spirit of the discussion centred on lesbians as well as men. The commonly understood definition of 'homosexual' is that it refers to men. And since your 'argument' appears to consist of identifying precise semantics, 'homosex' is not a word traceable in the Oxford English Dictionary, nor is it in regular parlance.

The 'ultimate truths' which you seek to discuss Mr Smith are based on guesswork. 'What is ultimately right or wrong' is the rigid preserve of totalitarian people who cannot recognise that society is fluid and changeable and who will not admit compromise and interpretation.

Why did you re-iterate your opening quote about hating women and homosexuals? I apologised to you for mixing up your name with the other Smith. Its fairly poor not to accept an apology.

I have never suggested that you hated anybody. You lumped me in with 'Timothy' on that one.

Do you really think that I am going to bother to engage with someone who states nebulously that 'We are all flawed to the roots of our being'? Indeed opposing anything you say appears to lead to charges of personal attack. From where I sit, you are attempting to control arguments from both sides; on the one hand making assertions based on thin air, that others will challenge, and on the other arguably wasting your time writing reams of script attacking those who disagree with you. A large proportion of the content of your posts is actually all about you.

The 'denigration' of homosexuals I refer to is based upon the inescapable position you adopt; that of marginalising them as human beings by constantly IMPLYING that they are flawed and need to be converted. If you do not think that this is regarded as offensive, then you have ignored the hundreds of posts that have also challenged you over it.

My 'general approach to arguing', which you constantly urge me to adapt, is based on the premise that the human rights of homosexuals as worthy human beings cannot be interpreted through dubious religious faiths that exclude them. I have argued this consistently. There are those who believe through religion that homosexual sex is 'wrong'. I will always argue that this is a false position. Religious groups that assert it should not in my view be allowed to affect the structure of communities by seeking to impose their beliefs over this, and a raft of other issues, upon society or to affect legislation. Hold the views by all means, that's your right and nobody is challenging that.

[Mary Shelley (OK, REALLY Last Post)]

Here is the Anthony Stevens-Arroyo full quote in an article in the Washington post about media coverage of religious affairs. He is quoting discrimination against Catholics in US press coverage of the sexual abuse crisis:

“State facts out of context. For instance, rail against Catholic priests as sex offenders, but don’t mention any other religion. *In the statistics I’ve seen,* about 4% of all priests have been formally accused of a sex crime. But 8% of Protestant ministers and 11% of Jewish rabbis make similar violations. By focusing on only Catholic priests and omitting the context that the priesthood actually has a cleaner record than similar clergy or professionals like doctors, dentists and teachers, the media can condemn only Catholics. This is the meaning of discrimination.”

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/anthony_m_stevensarroyo/2007/03/patterns_of_prejudice/all_comments.html

Now he sources none of the stats but note he was exactly correct about the Catholic statistic, and he is similarly precise about Protestant and Jewish figures. Also the insurance claims for Protestant churches

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/16/us/16protestant.html?ex=1186891200&en=4a62bd5f26f4d413&ei=5070

were released in June and Stevens-Arroyo wrote in March, he could not have used that source..still, the numbers we have certainly don’t suggest higher rates of sexual offending amongst a clergy required to practice celibacy than amongst a clergy permitted marriage. If I had a better data base I could probably flesh out Prof’s SA’s statistic, but he is the CUNY prof not me!

Anyway, non statistically speaking, I actually think, despite all the hoo-hah, there are probably many celibate homosexuals amongst the Catholic religious (not diocesan) orders. Why shouldn’t there be? Celibacy is what’s required not a particular sexual orientation. I recall a mother superior from my youth who could stop the most murderous teen-aged yabbo in his footsteps...with just a steel-hard glare, although she probably packed a mean punch as well! Christ, she was tough. Probably she'd be a unconscionably rich CEO today, but she dedicated her life and her considerable ability to the service of the Church. And a wonderful woman she was, my aunt.

[David Smith]

David Smith to Hugh Manitas:
‘I have neither denigrated nor expressed any hatred of women or homosexuals. I suggest you.. try to provide even a single verbatim quotation to support these allegations about me. Until you have, I think it fair to treat them as being entirely without foundation.’

Hugh Manitas:
‘ ..your post of August 3rd suggests that for the church not to promote practising homosexuals, because it recognizes that they are 'all imperfect', identifies it as a sin along with all other selective 'sins'. If this is not offensive and denigratory along with describing someone patronizingly as an object i.e. 'a work in progress', I don't know what is; other than a 'one-size fits all' interpretation directed at other people. You devalue homosexuals and marginalize then as 'other’.’

In my post of 3rd August I said:
'We are ALL flawed to the roots of our being.. If a church’s official position of.. promoting to leadership people.. is about acknowledging that ALL are imperfect and, as far as holiness is concerned, a work-in-progress.. ‘

I did not single out ANY specific group for denigration or hatred. Or are you really saying that, by suggesting that not one single member of the human race is perfect, and that there is room for improvement in us all, I am denigrating and or hating everyone, myself included?!

‘On one level you discriminate against women by only addressing the argument of homosexual orientation, erasing lesbians from your concerns.’

If you look up the word ‘homosexual’ in your dictionary, Hugh, you should find that it is defined as having attraction to or sex with the same sex. ‘Homo’ or ‘homos’ in this word means ’the same’ and not ‘a man’ - as in our word ‘homogenous’. So homosexual can apply to men or women who are same-sex oriented.

No one is being discriminated against or ‘erased’, as you put it.
You claim to have read my previous posts. If you have, you will have seen that I refer to people of both sexes whose return to heterosexuality I have personally witnessed.

This is a religious blog, Hugh. Surely you would expect issues of morals, ultimate truth, and what is ultimately right and wrong to be standard fare in a place like this, including, specifically, in relation to different kinds of inter-personal (including sexual) behaviour.

I and others have said here that we believe that homosex (and many other things) are wrong. Millions of other sensible, non-extreme, people- and peace-loving individuals down history have held similar views. If you do not agree, rather than insulting us personally (Yes, Hugh, ‘ad hominem’!), or concocting views that are not actually our own and then placing these into our mouths and attacking these, how about sticking to challenging actual points of view you do not agree with by putting forward your positive arguments for your position? This would, I think, be much more interesting and constructive.

‘ ..the denigration of homosexuals has been apparent in your posts either expressed or implied.’

‘On other threads you have strongly intimated.. ‘

This is more conjecture, Hugh, and straw men – the product of your own creative mind. This is NOT quoting ME.

I am not going to spend more time responding to the rest of what you say in this post. What I said last time I addressed all the specifics in a post of yours to me, on July 25th on the ‘Of Biblical proportion’ thread, applies to the rest of this one, too.

This was, inter alia:
‘None of this is true. But if you want to maintain it, perhaps you would like to give us some concrete evidence in support of these ideas that you have about me. Since all you know about me can only be through the things I have said on this blog, that means precise quotes of things I have actually said that support them.. This is not what I have said… again, if you want to maintain it, quotes please... By all means ask people to see what I write in the light of what I have already actually said. But please don't ask them to do this in the light of your imaginary version of this.’ (Sound familiar?)

The specifics at issue may have changed, but your general approach to ‘arguing’ them has not. How much longer, I wonder, do I have to go on repeating myself on this?

[Hugh]

Do admit, Hugh Manitas (I like my name too, btw!), you’re being very naughty – or just very, veeerrrry thick.

Catholic priests may or, unfortunately, may not choose be guided by God from one moment to the next. Hey, that’s just like everyone else. There’s this ancient pesky thing called temptation and sin, you see. Read the bible. But I really suspect you have, and are just trying to be difficult.

On the other hand, the NEXT bit which you are so careful to overlook is just 100% bilge:
Catholic priests are “essentially different sexually through mystical intervention”? Please I’m totally at a loss here. Where on earth did this idea come from?

Just in the remote case you’re not playing games, and ARE just incredibly thick, let me explain the situation. The whole point of Christian celibacy is that one has the same drives as anyone else, but CHOOSES not to act on them!

It’s the same with fasting, HM. The discipline of fasting does not entail that, in, say, the season of Lent, one is “essentially different” in one’s digestive metabolism and drives through divine intervention. The point is one IS still hungering after those yummy delicacies, but CHOOSES not to act on them! If one were altered mystically so as not to be desirous of food during Lent what would be the merit? Where would be the “self-denial”, if there are no desires issuing from the self to deny? Ditto with celibacy.

I should have thought this was perfectly obvious, being standard Christian ascetical theology for the last, oh, say, 2000 years (not to speak of the Jewish tradition before then). Does anyone else out there have a difficulty with this?

Oh, and I’ll let you in on what, to you, must be another dastardly secret. The Catholic Church expects not only hapless celibate priests and vowed religious, but, yes, ALL unmarried persons, young and old, to abstain from sexual intercourse and its surrounding behaviour as long as they are unmarried!! Shocked?? Even worse! It requires married couples to abstain from sexual intercourse and its attendant behaviour from every person in the world, except for each other !! How jolly lowdown is that!! So this ‘mystical inertness’ as you intriguingly call it, is demanded of probably half the human race, not just priests of the Roman Rite.

Someone has obviously done a job on you, HM. Let me tell you about Confession. It’s a sacrament of the Church. Now only Catholics can avail themselves of the sacrament of Confession. Of course, anyone can avail themselves in principle – but only if they become a Catholic first. The point is that Confession presumes sin. So the Catholic Church presumes we Catholics are, unfortunately, sinners. Now the Catholic Church is diametrically opposed to sin. It exists to wipe it out, time and again, until the end of the world. But, I hear you say, “how can there be any sin in the Church if it is diametrically opposed to it?” It’s the same as saying “How can there be any illness in a hospital if it’s diametrically opposed to it?” The question is absurd.

One doesn’t expect priests to commit any kind of sin. One hopes and prays they’ll commit none. But one isn’t surprised when they do. After all, EVERY Christian – not just a priest - solemnly vows not to sin, when they take their baptismal vows (C: Do you renounce the devil? R: I do renounce him. C: And all his works? R: I do renounce them. etc) But one is not surprised at subsequent falls from grace. Priests stumble and fall, and go to confession just like everyone else.

Now, let me just walk you very carefully through the central point of contention. The thesis of J Pearce was that there is a causal link between the rule of celibacy for priests and the incidence of sexual abuse cases.

Do we agree that that was what was asserted?

Since J Pearce was soooo confident about this link, I suggested he share with us his doubtlessly hard data. Isn’t that a modest proposal?

Let’s be very clear about this because you’ve overlooked the point a couple of times now. To prove the contention that there is a causal link between the rule of clerical celibacy and sex abuse cases, one must show that, other things being equal, celibates sexually abuse at a higher rate than non celibates.

J Pearce has rather suddenly and inexplicably vanished from the conversation. (Another mystical intervention, perhaps?) Perhaps he’s hard at work desperately trying to google some sort of statistic.

But in his absence, we have yourself, throwing up hands in horror and disgust at the number of priests that have been found guilty of sexual abuse and the moneys being paid out by the Catholic Church, as if that’s enough to prove the case.

It’s not, and you know it. As I said before, orthodox Catholics are equally – if not more - disgusted at the deeds of these men than you are. But as a matter of logic, what we know will give J Pearce’s case legs is if there are studies proving that celibate priests abuse at a HIGHER rate than non-celibates.

If you really can’t see the significance of our request, HM., then have faith. I have an honours degree in philosophy, with formal logic being one of my chosen fields.

Needless to say, after several days, there has been NO hard data at all proving a higher incidence of sexual abuse amongst celibate clergy than the general population. So far the J Pearce thesis is empirically unverified.

Meph., I inferred from your attack on M Shelley’s data that you actually were beholden to the J Pearce thesis. If I’m wrong, I’m sure you’ll understand that in the context of this thread, it is an understandable (if incorrect) inference. Cheers.

[Hugh Manitas]

Mary, what is the earthly use of providing figures that vary possibly by one percent, other than to attempt to underpin some sort of point scoring system? This is not addressing the issue; it is an attempt to lessen the guilt or to shift some of it elsewhere. (Where I agree, some of it belongs) You seem to express an academic denominational interest in levels of abuse, rather than to agree that the abuse itself is wholly unacceptable - celibacy as a causal factor or not.

Even 2% of 60,000 is 1200 too many priests, and these are the ones allegedly caught with their trousers down. (I make the unqualified assumption that all the others have not ticked the 'yes' box, prior to having been dragged into the spotlight.) And what methodology was used to arrive at these statistics? And what biases were there? The American Catholic, Arroyo-Stevens, hardly sounds impartial. This is a notoriously difficult area to test empirically amid the lies, damn lies, all-round clerical opacity and statistics.

[Mary Shelley (Last Post)]

Better sources: two recent releases by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY, based on data gathered from all US Catholic dioceses and religious institutions.

To give the old devil his due: Mephistopheles (correct spelling) did a quick google, alleging my “lifting” from a 2002 CS newspaper article & an article by the Catholic league (both cited), charging “manufactured” statistics before concluding: “As such, it confirms the well-documented statistical fact that child abuse has little or nothing to do with homosexual orientation.”

Note the jump our fiddle-playing prankster made from the particular—child abuse in the Catholic Church--to the general—child abuse in society at large. Child abuse in the former was very much a homosexual phenomenon, if we assume that homosexual men are more likely to molest teenage boys than teenage girls. Table 4.3.1 “Gender of alleged victim” 81.1% of 10,667 incidents of children alleging sexual abuse by Catholic priests were male, 19.1% female.

http://johnjay.jjay.cuny.edu/churchstudy/_pdffiles/incident3.pdf

This 2004 study was enhanced further by the publication of a 2006 supplementary report by the same school. (It is from this report Prof Stevens-Arroyo obtained his number of 4.2% of child-abusing Catholic clergy.) it begins: “In the 2004 report on the data gathered from all Catholic dioceses and religious institutions in the United States about the extent of sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests and deacons. [They] reported information on 4,392 individuals who had been the subject of at least one allegation of sexual abuse while serving in an ecclesial ministry between 1950 and 2002. We found that this count of priests with allegations was 4.2% of all diocesan priests in that time period and 2.7% of all religious priests in ministry priests in ministry in the same period.”

http://www.usccb.org/ocyp/JohnJayReport.pdf

Figures from agencies that insure Protestant churches against allegations of child abuse give us a number of 260 (or 333) claims a year:

http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2007/06/18/80877.htm

A back of the envelop calculation assuming these claims were constant over time gives us 260*52=13,520 or 333*52=17,316. The Evil One mitigates these numbers with the 1999 survey showing 42% of the abusers were ‘volunteers’ (what does that mean?), but in the absence of more detail from the insurance companies we are in the dark. (Smelling the sulphur, of course, but in the dark.)

There is a wealth of detail in both John Jay reports and I would urge JPearce and the Human Stain (Humanitas) to have a look before spouting more of their usual anti-Catholic cant. (We all know Mephistopheles speaks with a forked tongue.)

But this will be all from me.

[straight but so what]

There is evidence that there are small differences in brain make-up between men and women, such as women having a larger hypothalamic nucleus INAH3 in the medial preoptic area, a relatively larger corpus callosum interconnecting the two hemispheres, and other variations in other nuclei, as well as differences in function and regions showing activity during certain tasks. Homosexuals may have some structural and functional differences to heterosexuals, which may reflect genetic differences, or developmental changes from other factors such as maternal levels of testosterone, and other hormonal and metabolic influences in utero.
Homosexuality for many may be a natural expression of structural and functional brain and body activity, and no more abnormal than being left handed or having red hair, and a common variation of normal.

[Christopher]

I have just come across an article from the Sunday Times when the Vatican's istruzione on the ordination of gay men to the priesthood was first in the news. I sent it to Barbara Kralis of the Jesus Through Mary Foundation in Texas in 2005. In view of some of the assertions that have been flying about on whether ordination would 'take' on gay men I thought it might be interesting to revisit Brenda Powers's article. I do not have the URL, only the text of the article, so with Ruth's forbearance, I paste it here.

"The Sunday Times - Ireland
December 04, 2005

Comment: Brenda Power: Pope’s instruction is perversion of truth

Imagine the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association announcing that, from now on, it would only be accepting members who didn’t drink wine. Those who didn’t drink spirits, on the other hand, would not be welcome. And those would-be pioneers who mostly didn’t drink wine but occasionally didn’t drink spirits would have to prove it had been three years since they’d even thought about not drinking a Bacardi Breezer.

This, in effect, is what the Vatican has said about homosexuals and the priesthood. All priests are required to be celibate. So why is the Pope issuing instructions about the precise nature of the intimate relations from which potential clergymen must undertake to abstain? Either they’re willing to pack it all in or they’re not, and if they are, then it shouldn’t matter what their practices or tendencies or preferences used to be. If they’re not, then their being homosexual is no greater threat to the integrity of the Catholic church than if they were perfectly mature heterosexual sadomasochists. In fact, it would probably be less so, since the evidence from several residential institutions suggests that the worst sex abusers appeared to take particular pleasure in inflicting pain and humiliation on their helpless victims.

All homosexuals are not paedophiles and all paedophiles are not homosexuals.

But it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that this new Vatican instruction is aimed at scapegoating homosexuals within the Catholic church for all the scandals. If only we’d done this years ago, runs the text between the lines of the controversial istruzione, we’d never have had all that bother. Such a worrying mistrust and misunderstanding of human sexuality, in which almost medieval superstition and prejudice is dressed up as scientific truth, augurs poorly for the church ’s ability to address the cause of past atrocities.

The Ferns report expert group unanimously concluded that the priestly vow of celibacy contributed to the problem of sexual abuse in the church. While this pronouncement is surely hurtful to the many who managed to honour their celibacy vows, it stands to reason that there are some who find that sacrifice more difficult than others — not because they’re gay or straight, but because they’re human and biologically programmed with sexual responses.

When Woody Allen’s analyst asked him if he thought sex was dirty he replied: “It is if you’re doing it right.” Pope Benedict seems to take the view that it is if you’re doing it at all. Because what lies at the root of this profoundly regressive Vatican instruction on homosexual priests is an almost wilfully obtuse attitude to the diversity of intimate human behaviour.

This is because the Pope believes, and has consistently stated, that homosexuality is a disordered inclination towards moral evil. Couple that with the evident view that, because this inclination lacks the biological imperative of procreative heterosexual relations, gay people are more carnal and promiscuous, and you can instantly understand the Vatican’s extraordinary antipathy towards them.

At least when dealing with the rest of us, the church can point to its ban on artificial contraception and feign a presumption that all heterosexual couples are desperately trying for babies. But with gays there is undeniable evidence they just do it for fun. How much more evidence of objective disorder and moral evil do you need?

For generations, the Vatican was guilty of anti-semitic pronouncements and nuances that ultimately provided a tacit moral authority for the Holocaust. For this, the German-born Pope Benedict has quite properly expressed regret. He seemed to understand that an authority such as the Vatican simply can’t go on condemning a huge chunk of humanity as morally evil and genetically inferior without implicitly approving the oppression or, in the extreme, the elimination of those people.

It’s hardly a coincidence that neo-Nazi groups persecute gays as viciously as they do Jews, and such types don’t need a helpful Vatican istruzione to paint a big pink bull’s eye on their targets. It’s even possible that young gay men, in particular, may be conducting their very own mini-Holocaust to spare the neo-Nazis the trouble. Confusion about sexual identity is believed by many experts to be a factor in the alarming rate of young male suicide in this country, and the evidence that their “disordered inclinations” are even less likely to be acceptable in Pope Benedict’s reign won’t reverse that trend.

In a nutshell, the Vatican believes that homosexuality is a perversion that is treatable, reversible and, given the then Cardinal Ratzinger’s description of it as an “intrinsic moral evil”, freely and wilfully chosen by licentious degenerates. And if in future such immoral and disordered types might hang themselves, or have their heads kicked in by drunken but otherwise upstanding heterosexual members of the community, it will be a challenge for the Catholic church to work up a convincing head of indignant steam.

Almost certainly there are many citizens of this country who privately share the Vatican’s opinion of gay people. They can’t legally do it publicly, though, because of laws that take a dim view of incitement to hatred and discrimination. Our equality legislation makes it a crime to disqualify any person for a job or a promotion on the grounds of sexual preference. The civil law in this country is based on the opinion that homosexuality is not a manifestation of evil but a legitimate sexual identity.

The Vatican holds the entirely opposite view, and has just expressed it in trenchant terms. If, say, a large American multinational issued the same edict to its staff in this country regarding the private sexual preferences of the Irish nationals they could hire, the gardai would have some interesting questions for their executives.

The Vatican has a view on the merits and morals of a proportion of our population that is at odds with both our legislation and our constitution. The papal nuncio is the Vatican’s ambassador to this country. If we set any store at all by our democratically empowered legislative authority, and if we truly believe that our gay friends and relatives are good people who deserve respect, and if we refuse to accept a cynical bid to shift the blame for decades of child abuse from where it really lies, then maybe it is time he was called in for a little chat."

[Mephostopholis]

Hugh: I am not sure what you have inferred from my post that leads to such a request.

I have no particular interest in debating RC celibacy. What caught my attention was unsubstantiated assertions, inflated figures and a premise, that could not, without verifiable statistical evidence, be proven. I just like accuracy. Sorry to be so dull!

[Mephostopholis]

What flusters you get yourself into Mary Shelley! Mephostopholis is NOT "the Devil". Merely one of his 'tempters'!

Fight prejudice with accurate statistics! Quite. You still haven't managed it.

Never mind, in the light, on this forum, of such a record of unsubstantiated assertions, no surprise.

I have NOT "misquoted" - the charge is comical in the face of your original partisan inaccuracies. The quote reference again is:
Mark Clayton, “Sex Abuse Spans Spectrum of Churches,” Christian Science Monitor, April 5, 2002, p. 1.

The link to the Catholic League article I referenced is:
http://www.catholicleague.org/research/abuse
_in_social_context.htm#_edn21

The link to Philip Jenkins, Pedophiles and Priests is:
http://www.catholicleague.org/research/pedophiles
_and_priests.htm
I suggest those interested should read it and note your selectivity. The specific Catholic League review of the Philip Jenkins book states:

"The first problem with conventional thinking on this subject is that almost all of those priests who have been charged with pedophilia have been charged with the wrong offense: the term pedophile refers to adult sex with youngsters who haven't reached puberty. Because the vast majority of alleged so-called pedophile priest cases involve teenagers, it is inaccurate to slap the term pedophilia on them."

It then goes on to compare and contrast what little is KNOWN of "sexual misconduct" among Protestant ministers in America.

Accuracy Mary, accuracy. Your original post, which I challenged, dealt specifically with "paedophiles".

At no point have I stated or even suggested "Protestant child abuse doesn’t count". What an extraordinary extrapolation.

My interest is with verifiable evidence. Facts. You asserted that 9% of Protestant clergy - as opposed to 4% of Catholic clergy (your figures) - abuse children. This required referenced data.You have not produced that data.

What is discernible, from three rather garbled posts, is that you have now read another source; have reduced the number of RC priests found culpable, and are comparing these with a new group designated "Protestant paedophiles".

This, together with statistics on religious affiliations in the USA, is presented as a logical proof of your original premise? I think not.

a) What happened to the 9% abusing Protestant clergy?

b) Are there any reliable independent statistics - as opposed to inferences - on numbers of child abusing Protestant clergy?

c) Your original (flawed) premise was that 'something' could be proved by comparing married Protestant clergy and celibate RC clergy? In support of that you offered data but no verifiable sources.

There is no suggestion, anywhere on this thread, that Protestant clergy are all innocent of child abuse. However, selectivity of sources and the inaccuracies evidenced in your reporting must lead one to question your logic.

Focus on RC clergy abuse in America, where Catholics are a minority faith - whilst convenient to a partisan agenda - ignores all reports from predominately Catholic countries - Latin America, Spain, Ireland? Which group will you seek out to exculpate the guilty in those countries?

It is an unfortunate fact, that no reliable statistics - as opposed to those available on Catholic priests - exist to date on offending Protestant clergy.

Failing that evidence, your contributions look too much like an infantile game of one-up-man-ship i.e. more of 'theirs' are abusers, ergo ours are absolved.

[Hugh Manitas]

Hugh: (I don't like the name btw and I think you should change it!)

Shock horror! You heard it first here! Catholic priests are NOT guided by God and to say they are is 'utter bilge'. Well who the hell do you believe is guiding them then Hugh?

AND the fact that the Catholic church expects them all to be sexually inert is in no way different from the rest of us? What drives them to abstain from the strongest human urge to fornicate then? It must be mystical because it doesn't apply to anyone else! (with exceptions)

We are not discussing relativism here Hugh. My 'case' is not based on it. We are discussing the appalling fact that a large number of PRIESTS have been identified as child molesters. What is the matter with you?? (Oh 'ad hominem'! screams D. Smith, leaping to Hugh's defence!) As for the lunacy of those trying to establish through rule of thumb statistics that their own particular whacky brand of faith has fewer child molesters than another, well, words fail me. The rats must be lining up to desert the ship; as the homosexuals queue for biblical engineering! Meanwhile at St Onan's academy for celibates...

Ok, so even allowing for your spin on what I said about dentists etc, you now appear to be saying that alcoholics should attend counselling sessions fully expecting their condition to worsen through having gin forced upon them by wicked attendants, and far from receiving loving care, a substantial number of hospital patients can now fully expect to be murdered? This is consistent with the argument that youngsters attending religious institutions seeking love, kindness and understanding - should register absolutely no surprise to be consistently buggered by priests! (Because in your view child abuse apparently is NOT the diametric opposite of what the church stands for). The 'sinners' it welcomes should not be the priests Hugh.

Yours is a cracked logic. I assume that either you are being satirical, or that you write regularly for Mad magazine.

(Ad hominem, ad hominem, mumble mumble....lesbians? What are they? Thumb, thumb...where does it say....?)

[Mary Shelley]

Well, I don’t want to break my own rule of “when you’re in a hole stop digging”, and I certainly hope Ruth doesn’t post my two previous posts, as I dashed them out (please!). Anyway, here is better data.

My first assertion was vague: it came from an American Catholic professor, (Anthony Arroyo-Stevens) who normally checks his assertions, but I did not do a search on it myself.

The Catholic league article (citing Philip Jenkins, Pedophiles and Priests, NY Oxford University Press) puts the numbers of Roman Catholic paedophile priests at .2 to 1.7 % (of 60,000 Roman Catholic priests) versus Protestant paedophiles at 2 to 3% (of a far higher number of clergy). Affiliated Protestants outnumber affiliated Catholics in the US by a factor of about 2 to 1 (US Catholic 24%, Protestant 50%, estimated Secular/Agnostic/Atheist, 20%, Jewish 2% Other 4%) , so this would tend to corroborate Arroyo-Stevens assertion that the * number* and frequency of child-abusing Protestant clergy was greater than their Catholic counterparts.

These figures would thus negate our devil’s assertion that Protestant child abuse doesn’t count because they were not clergy but ‘volunteers’, since Jenkins concentrated only on Protestant and Catholic clergy respectively.

Fight prejudice with statistics!

[Mary Shelley]

Sorry--there are figures for 1999:

"42 percent of alleged child abusers were volunteers – about 25 percent were paid staff members (including clergy) and 25 percent were other children."

Doesn't add up as you can see.

[Mary Shelley]

The article merely said "more likely" and doesn't supply numbers--you have misquoted, but then who would trust the devil for accuracy!

Unfortunately,I was unable to access your Catholic league linking at all.

Here is the Christian science link for anywho would care to look.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0405/p01s01-ussc.html

About the only concrete number is 3,500 allegations of child abuse annually amongst Protestant churches.

[Hugh]

1. Hugh Manitas (I like the name, btw)
"The issue surrounds the hogwash peddled by the Catholic Church which asserts that priests on the one hand are guided by God and are essentially different sexually through mystical intervention;"

Complete and utter bilge, Hugh M - have you been watching too many Monty Python spoofs? PLEASE: document this c*** from Catholic sources or we shall promptly dismiss it for what we suspect it is. My hunch is: sack your briefing team.

“There is not a vast undercurrent of trauma or crowds of abused adults lining up to sue response units like the AA because their mechanics won't leave stranded motorists alone. No-one is saying en masse that dentists overall cannot be trusted with children.”

Er, have your powers of reasoning abandoned you entirely? Let’s do it by the numbers …

The reason no one has singled out AA members/mechanics from the set of mechanics overall vis a vis stranded motorists is because there hasn’t been demonstrated a statistically significant proponderance of AA member mechanics, compared with the rest of the population, to leave motorists stranded. (For the sake of argument, let’s assume this to be the case.) Ditto dentists with children.

Now, the key phrase I’m using here is: “a statistically significant preponderance”. It’s very important – scientific, even!

Likewise: until you can furnish evidence of “a statistically significant preponderance” of celibate priests against the rest of the population to engage in sexual abuse, your case fails.

“The natural assumption should be that there is LITTLE or NO child abuse within the church, because it is the diametric opposite to what it stands for.”

How on earth could you reach this absurd conclusion? It’s tantamount to saying that there are no alcoholics in AA because it’s the diametric opposite to what AA stands for. Or that there are no sick people in a hospital because sickness is the diametric opposite to what hospitals stand for!

I think you’ve fundamentally understood what the Church is about! I refer you to Christ’s words: “I came to call sinners, not the just.”

2. Malcolm, very subtle distinctions here:

“However, I don't think the issue is celibacy per se, but rather a policy which demands celibacy from those who may not (arguably) be called to a celibate state.”

Indeed. But is there any evidence on the data that this mistake has been made? I mean, it may be true (and my guess is that the 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s is the best place to look – in comparison, of course, with other eras) … but how does one establish this (let’s say, in Popperian terms)?

The alternative is, of course, that they were called to a celibate state, but that, humanly speaking, institutions failed them. A la teams and coaches.

“There is also a potential correlation in that demanding celibacy of those not called to celibacy COULD contribute to an institutional culture in which pathological sexual behaviour or inclinations are more common.”

Assumptions granted, yes. Food for thought!

“However, the real issue here isn't celibacy. It is an institutional culture which responded to incidents of abuse by seeking to protect the institution ahead of seeking to deal with the problem. And that failing was common to many denominations, not just Rome.”

Exactly. Which, of course, should give no comfort to Rome (inter alia).

3. Mephistopholis: that's all very well, but could you supply stats that definitively show that celibate Catholic priests sexually abuse at a higher rate that non-celibates? I'd like about 5 independent references please.

[Mephostopholis]

Mary Shelley's logic is flawed. The 'statistic' she quotes on Protestant 'abuse' (9%) is invalid in the context of the ongoing discussion. It does not refer to Protestant clergy but to lay members working as Church volunteers. See:
http://www.catholicleague.org/research/abuse_in_social_context.ht

As such, it confirms the well-documented statistical fact that child abuse has little or nothing to do with homosexual orientation. It is endemic in all authoritarian cultures.

The research referred to by Mary Shelley is lifted (by the Catholic League) from, and referenced to, a Christian Science Monitor Report:

“Despite headlines focusing on the priest pedophile problem in the Roman Catholic Church, most American churches being hit with child sexual-abuse allegations are Protestant, and most of the alleged abusers ARE NOT clergy or staff, but church volunteers.”
[my emphasis]
(Mark Clayton, “Sex Abuse Spans Spectrum of Churches,” Christian Science Monitor, April 5, 2002, p. 1.)

"Fight prejudice with statistics!" Hmm! Manufactured statistics? Ah well.

"In May 2001, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and later elected Pope Benedict XVI on the death of his predecessor, sent a letter to all Catholic Bishops declaring that the Church's investigations into claims of child sex abuse were subject to the pontifical secret and were not to be reported to law enforcement until investigations were completed, on pain of excommunication."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Catholic_sex_abuse

[Malcolm+]

Correlation is not causality. Therefore, even if celibate Roman priests abused children more often than non celibate non-Roman clergy, it would prove nothing in and of itself.

However, I don't think the issue is celibacy per se, but rather a policy which demands celibacy from those who may not (arguably) be called to a celibate state.

There is also a potential correlation in that demanding celibacy of those not called to celibacy COULD contribute to an institutional culture in which pathological sexual behaviour or inclinations are more common.

However, the real issue here isn't celibacy. It is an institutional culture which responded to incidents of abuse by seeking to protect the institution ahead of seeking to deal with the problem. And that failing was common to many denominations, not just Rome.