Pedophiles and Priests

Some years ago I was listening to a professor give a lecture on "The Passion", Mel Gibson's movie about Christ's crucifixion. He was somewhat resentful of much of the criticism of the movie and noted that there is a very large undercurrent of anti-Catholicism in American society. He cited a variety of pop culture references (like South Park, and the movie "Dogma"), and he also noted the disproportionate hostility towards the Catholic church for the recent number of child molestation cases involving Catholic priests. Certainly, any case of child molestation should be taken seriously; those found to be at fault should be let go immediately and/or arrested if the case warrants. Additionally, organizational heirarchies need to deal with child molestation cases appropriately when they come up. Every organization that deals with children needs to have clear policies that ensure the safety of the children they come into contact with, and they must ensure that those policies are monitored and enforced.

HOWEVER; attention and outrage IS disporportionately focused on the Roman Catholic church. For instance, protestant churches have a higher incidence of child molestation cases than Catholic churches, as does the public school system. There has been much less scrutiny of Protestant churches, and almost none of the public school system.

I'm not really interested in discussing why there was a disproporationate scrutiny, and I am not defending any wrong-doing on their part. However, I think that this kind of attention leads people to have a bad impression of the Catholic church, that it is somehow "worse" than other organizations, and that their is something "wrong" with the Catholic church that is not "wrong" with other organizations. This is not the case, and I think the public should be aware of it.

For some time I told people, "I don't know where this data came from, but I heard..." Well, now I know where the data came from:

Pedophiles and Priests, Philip Jenkins, Oxford University Press