Dr. Taylor Marshall is a Catholic theologian who is truly disturbed by the Pennsylvania grand jury’s report on the Church’s sex abuse scandal. He saw how more than 300 priests were implicated in crimes horrific to describe in detail.
A lot of people have been wondering how all this could have happened. Why were these predator priests allow to abuse children for as long as they did, in secret, without serious punishment?
Marshall knows why. In fact, he has a list of three reasons sex scandals occur in the Church:
1) The priests are secretly atheists or Satanists.
These clerics are secretly atheists, agnostics, or Satanists who see the Church as a social justice network that pays well and provides a lifestyle of insurance, income, retirement and unquestioned access to compromised men and vulnerable children.
That’s… the dumbest excuse I’ve ever heard to explain Catholic sex crimes. Why would atheists go through seminary and pledge celibacy for life all for the chance to have access to children? (There are easier ways to be around kids if that was truly the long game.) And literally zero people have ever joined the priesthood for the insurance and cash.
2) The priests are gay.
The 2004 John Jay Report publicized that 80% of priest abuse victims are male. The orientation of abuse was overwhelming homosexual According to James Martin and Larry Stammer, 15–58% of American Catholic priests are homosexual in orientation. Father Dariusz Oko of Poland has suggested that 50% of the bishops in the United States are homosexual.
This is the same pathetic excuse people give to explain away rape in prisons — as if the only explanation is that assaulters are gay. It’s not about sexual orientation. It’s about power and access. Remember: Girls were victims in Pennsylvania, too. The priests abused the people who were around them and who they thought would keep it a secret. There’s a reason they weren’t assaulting men their own age.
3) Churches are too big
Since 1900, the concept of the Catholic diocese has morphed into something that would not be recognized by Christians of the medieval period, and certainly not by the Church Fathers.
This is the bulk of what Marshall talks about. It’s the least crazy item on his list, yet the one he defends the most. It’s also bullshit. The crimes in the grand jury report occurred in churches that were not so large they couldn’t properly be overseen, and we know that because the paper trail involves bishops taking actions to protect the predators. In some cases, they wrote long memos about the situation. If they were too busy to manage the Church, then they probably would’ve been too busy to address the complaints at all.
Abuse occurs in “mega-dioceses” and megachurches. It also occurs in smaller churches where victims have no one in a position of authority to talk to or trust. Other nations have smaller ratios of Church leaders to congregation members, but abuse occurs there as well.
If these are the excuses given an “intellectual” Catholic, the Church is so screwed.
(Image via Shutterstock. Thanks to Kerri for the link)
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