Feiten

De Italiaanse socioloog Massimo Introvigne heeft een interessant artikel over de eigenlijke feiten van de huidige kerkvervolging. Enkele citaten (voor het gehele artikel klik hier):

"To understand how from a tragically real fact one passes to a moral panic we must ask how many priests are paedophiles. The largest body of information has been collected in the United States, where in 2004 the US Conference of Catholic Bishops commissioned an independent study by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York. This is not a Catholic university and is unanimously recognised as the most authoritative academic institution of criminology in the United States. [Voor het gehele rapport, klik hier]

This study concluded that from 1950 to 2002 4,392 American priests (of over 109,000) were accused of having sexual relations with minors. Of these, just over 100 were convicted in the courts. The low number of convictions is due to various factors. In some cases the true or alleged victims reported priests who were already dead, or for whom a statute of limitation barred the action. In others, the accusation and even the canonical sentence did not involve any violation of the law: such is the case, for example, in various American states where a priest has sexual relations with a consenting person over the age of 16."

"So, does the John Jay College study tells us then, as one often reads, that 4 percent of American priests are paedophiles? Not at all. According to the research, 78.2 percent of the accusations involved minors who had advanced beyond puberty. Having sexual relations with a 17-year-old is certainly not a beautiful thing, and much less so for a priest, but it is not paedophilia. Therefore, only 958 American priests were accused of true paedophilia over 52 years, 18 per year. There were only 54 convictions, a little less than one per year"

"According to studies by Jenkins [hij verwijst naar dit boek], if one compares the Catholic Church in the United States to the major Protestant denominations, one discovers that the presence of paedophiles – depending on the denominations – is from two to ten times higher for the major Protestant denominations compared to Catholic priests. The question is important because it demonstrates that the problem is not celibacy. Most of the Protestant pastors are married.

In the same period in which about 100 American priests were convicted for sexually abusing minors, the number of gym teachers and coaches of junior sporting teams – also mainly married – who were convicted of the same crimes in the US reached about 6,000. The examples could continue, not only in the US. And above all, according to regular US government reports, two-thirds of sexual abuse against minors does not come from strangers or educators – including priests and Protestant pastors – but from family members: stepfathers, uncles, cousins, brothers and, unfortunately, even parents. Similar facts exist for numerous other countries."

"While it may hardly be politically correct to say so, there is a fact that is much more important: over 80 percent of paedophiles are homosexuals, that is, males who abuse other males. And – again citing Jenkins – over 90 percent of Catholic priests convicted for sexually abusing minors have been homosexual. If a problem has sprung up in the Catholic Church, it is not due to celibacy but to a certain tolerance of homosexuality in seminaries, particularly in the 1970s, when most of the priests later convicted for the abuses were ordained. This is a problem that Benedict XVI is rigorously correcting. More generally, a return to moral principles, to ascetical discipline, to meditating on the true greatness of the priesthood are the antidotes to the real tragedy of paedophilia. The Year of the Priest must also help."

OREMUS PRO PONTEFICE NOSTRO BENEDICTO

Dominus conservet eum, et vivificet eum, et beatum faciat eum in terra, et non tradat eum in animam inimicorum eius.