Report Says 1960s, Not Celibacy, Made Priests Abuse Kids
LatestA new report claims that “social factors” — not forced celibacy — caused the upswing in abuse by Catholic priests in the sixties and seventies. But not everyone is convinced.
The AP reports on a study by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, which concluded that since celibacy had always been a requirement of the priesthood, it didn’t cause the rise in abuse. The study also refutes the claim that accepting gay men into the priesthood caused increased molestation — the authors note that as the number of gay priests went up, the number of assault cases was going down. They also say priests who committed abuse showed no common “psychological characteristics” or “developmental histories” — not even pedophilia. According to the study, only 5% of priests who abuse minors were technically pedophiles.