Catholic Church Continues it's denial of abuse problems

I read another article today on how incredibly stupid and ignorant the leaders of the Catholic Church are. They're now hiring criminologists to study what the root of its abuse problem is. Duh. Is it not obvious?

US Catholic Church seeks to find root of priest sex abuse

BALTIMORE, United States (AFP) - The US Roman Catholic Church has asked a criminology school to delve into the darkest pages of its history by probing the causes of a priest sex abuse scandal.

At a meeting due to end Thursday in the eastern city of Baltimore, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops voted to disburse 335,000 dollars to fund the first three phases of a study by New York's John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

"It will be a groundbreaking study, never done before in the US, nor in the world," Bishop Gregory Aymond, who chairs the Committee for the Protection of Children and Young People, told AFP.

"We don't know what would come out of it, but we are going to tell the truth," said Aymond, of Austin, Texas.

In 2002, the John Jay College of Criminal Justice had made a list of complaints and pedophilia cases in the US Catholic Church since 1985, when one of the first scandals came to light with the case of a Louisiana priest.

The university will now look into the "social and historical context" of sex abuse to see if such cases are more frequent in the Church than in the rest of society, notably in schools and youth clubs, Aymond said.

The Church wants to "look at what is unique" in the priest sex abuse crisis, he said.

The first part of the study would be completed in 2008 and made public, although the names of suspected priests would be omitted.

In the second part, the university will evaluate the Church leadership's response to sex abuse cases.

"We want to see where we failed and made some mistakes, and learn from those who handled it well," Aymond said.

The study will also paint a psychological profile of pedophiliac priests by reviewing cases in treatment centers.

The review will aim to show "to what extent is a priest sexual abuser profile the same as the psychological profile of the non-priests who are sex offenders," Aymond said.

The university will also interview abuse victims and examine education at seminaries over the decades.

The majority of priests accused of sex abuse were trained in the 1960s and 1970s in seminaries where psychological tests and sexuality education have since been introduced.

A final phase of the study will make proposals on how to prevent sex abuse and help victims.

"Our goal is to ascertain the causes of the clergy sexual abuse crisis and if we need to change any method we have now," said Teresa Kettlekamp, the executive director of the bishops conference's Office of Child and Youth Protection, which was created in 2002, in the wake of the sex abuse scandal.

But the study would also be useful to schools and youth groups, Church officials said.

"The pathology of abusing children isn't unique; it's a societal problem," Kettlekamp said.

"We are hoping it will be a big, big help to the society in general," she said.

I'm amazed how blind the church is when it comes to what's going on. Here's the issue: The church REQUIRES priests to be celibate. Hence, suppressing a basic human need in these men. The church also says being gay is a sin. Since being gay is NATURAL for gay men, this represents a painful conflict for gay men who are raised as Catholics. So, in order to "escape" being gay, they enter the priesthood. Well, human sexuality is a pretty strong, natural urge to suppress for a lifetime. So where do these conflicted men turn to? Vulnerable children, who won't tell on them.

If the church would get its collective head out of its ass and start recognizing REALITY it might not have this problem. Yet, it continues to hold onto this ass backward belief of celibacy (why can't a married man be a priest? WHY?) and continue to promote hatred of gay people it can never get to the root of its abuse problems.

I have little hope these closeted old men will admit this.