[quote]Brother Chris wrote:
[quote]Sifu wrote:
[quote]Brother Chris wrote:
[quote]Sifu wrote:
In order to disprove the hypothesis that celibacy is what is leading to the problem you will first have to explain why this problem isn’t just as rampant in other Christian denominations that don’t require celibacy.[/quote]
It isn’t? Do you have a source that shows that the rates are higher in the Catholic Church?
I don’t understand this comment, so I will refrain from comment.[/quote]
Well it is the catholic Church that seems to be getting all the bad press with these kinds of scandals isn’t it? Although I’m sure it probably does happen there as well because this kind of deviant behavior is part of the human condition, we don’t hear much about the same things happening in the Anglican Church. At least not on the same scale. Which would that there is some kind of factor that is causing a difference.[/quote]
Yes, it does seem like the Catholic Church gets all the bad press. That’s because it is one Church and possibly residual and actual anti-Catholicism.
Though I wouldn’t rely solely on media to determine who has more child abuse cases or whatever. John Jay College/University just came out with a study/report. There has also been past studies as well on it. It pretty much seems the Catholic Clergy is the same as other clergies. But, I’m not quite sure because those studies don’t necessarily differentiate between clergy and volunteers.
[quote]I’ll clarify the second quote for you. Because I know people who were abused as children, I’ve done some reading on the subject so I could better understand them. So I have learned a few things that are not widely known or understood.
One of the more surprising things I learned was the difference between a pedophile and a child molester. Those two terms are used interchangeably by most people, but they don’t mean the same thing. Not all pedophiles are child molesters and not all child molesters are pedophiles. A pedophile is someone who has a sexual attraction to children. A child molester is someone who sexually abuses children.
There are two important distinctions then. One is that not all pedophiles act out on their attraction by engaging in sex that is why they are not all child molesters. The other distinction is not all child molesters have a particular attraction to children that they are acting on. They are doing it for the sense of power they get from dominating someone and they don’t give a damn about the age of their victim.
So they are two different groups of people who can arrive at the same result through completely different motivations. It is important to know this distinction so you can understand what type of person we are discussing or if you ever encounter one you can understand what type of person you are dealing with.
The type of person I was referring to in that quote was someone who has an attraction to youngsters. I’m not going to make the distinction between a pedophile, hebephile or ephebophile as they all have an attraction to those who are younger than themselves. The thing to understand is that when they were in the age group that they are attracted to it was normal for them to have that attraction. The problem is they never grew out of it as they got older. This is why I say this is about development.
I believe a big part of it is dependent upon social skills. For example the ephebophile is one who is attracted to physically mature teenagers who are under the age of consent. Why not look for college age kids who look just as youthful but are legal? I think it’s because they don’t have the social skills to successfully interact with that age group.
Something that is important to understand about childhood development and adolescent development is that during those phases of life we develop social skills that can only be developed at that age by interacting with our peers.
So if you take an adolescent who isn’t well developed and you get them to cut themselves off from the interaction with their peers that is needed for them to develop it could cause a problem. That is why it makes sense to me that celibacy could have the potential to cause behavioral problems in certain individuals.[/quote]
I have done some studying myself (for personal reasons and debate reasons), but I have not seen a link between celibacy and child molestation or pedophiles. As I pointed out boyfriends, husbands, and fathers have a higher percentage than clergy.
So, unless I see evidence refuting the first piece of evidence I’ll have to assume that it is true.[/quote]
I’m not questioning whether or not clergy have a lower incidence of abuse than the general public. In a broader cross section of society you are more likely to have individuals who are more messed up.
An important point I was trying to make is child molesters are not all acting out on the same set of motivations. You can actually divide them up into sub groups with different motivations. So while something may cause serious problems for one sub group, it may not have any affect on another.
It has been demonstrated that abstinence programs have led to an increase in certain types of STD’s amongst young adults. So it’s not some wild theory that celibacy can also have negative consequences.