As a way-lapsed Catholic and former altar boy, I'd be interested in more information on *when* the American church began to "recruit" gay men. One doubts it goes back a half century.

You'd better hope that coffles of bishops soon shuffle their way behind prison walls, because if they don't your claims about the all-devouring state are going to look really lame.

If they diddled boys they will be prosecuted, but no DA is going to prosecute a bishop for conspiracy or anything of the kind. DA's want to be governors or senators and you don't get there by accusing the Church of being a criminal enterprise.

Tonto - read "Goodbye Good Men" by Michael Rose. It started in the 60s, mostly. Surprising, eh?

Rose also deflates the "celibacy is driving down the number of priests" argument - before the 60s, the number of seminarians was consistently strong, but the numbers plummeted after that because the climate in the seminaries was comfortable only for those who bought into the gay agenda.

Overall, it is an unbelievably disgusting story.

Jeff -

I think the decline in seminarians happened for other cultural reasons ... it was the 60's, after all. Then the Church, desperate to repopulate the priesthood and unwilling to accept either married men or women, turned to gay men. Then, it just got worse.

Lawyer bashers may wish to consider these two paragraphs from the article:

"One of the reports, written by researchers at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, revealed that 10,667 children were allegedly abused by 4,392 priests from 1950 to 2002"

And:

"The finding that at least 4 percent of American Roman Catholic priests were involved in child sexual abuse differs markedly from the figure of "less than 1 percent" offered in 2002"

Aren't witchhunts fun?

When I lived in LA, the headline parishoner abuse story at the time was a priest abusing, and impregnating, teen age girls.

Better not recruit heterosexual priests, either.

Jeff:

You ever notice that despite your claim to being scientific minded you base all your opinions on your persoinal experience, from hating God because your Dad left to approving homosexuality because your brother's gay and so forth?

Exactly, Orrin.

If you wrap yourself in the robes of sanctity, you can get away with any crime.

It's not sanctity, just politics. If they did the molesting they'll be prosecuted, but not for being bishops while it went on.

Isn't that what we would expect, OJ? By definition, people who reject faith as a path to knowledge can only know what they experience directly.

David:

Of course we'd expect it, Jeff though denies it, even as he refuses to acknowledge any authority except for his own reason and conscience. He's a god in denial.

Imagine they were, let's say, football coaches, and it was their players doing the molesting. Otherwise, all the same.

In that case, they'd go to the slammer.

This is religion in action, you can run a continentwide child-rape organization and the all-devouring state will be afraid to touch you.

Who was the last coach sent to prison because the players he supervised were sex criminals? The last NEA official because of teachers? The last Scout official because of troop masters? Etc., etc., etc.

"Isn't that what we would expect, OJ? By definition, people who reject faith as a path to knowledge can only know what they experience directly."

Faith as a path to knowledge? This is an oxymoron David, it is either knowledge or faith. Another way to phrase this would be "imagined experience".

Robert:

What knowledge is not based on faith?

Prove to me that the color you know as "green" is the color that I know as "green."

David:

What difference does it make if you can tell the difference between what you perceive as green and what you perceive as any other color?

I know when to go at stoplights?

David:

You asked an irrelevant question. What difference does it make if the color you see in your head as green corresponds to the one I see in my head?

I dunno, Orrin. I am not aware of any institution, other than the Catholic church, that has ever run a continentwide sex ring aimed at children.

The NEA, the AFT, the Boy Scouts....

Any organization where men have access to boys....

oj:

You're claiming that when Boy Scout officials find a Scoutmaster abusing children, they assign him a different troop, and ask him not to do it again ?

Did

David:

You'd have better lucj explaining snow to a Bedouin.

OJ:

Ad hominem attacks are the sure sign of a bankrupt argument. Perhaps you can answer the question.

"Did." One or two more specifics would be nice to fill out the story.

The point I was trying to make, Jeff, albeit very cryptically, is that we can't make interpersonal comparisons and, because we can't, we take everything on faith. The basis for all civilization is to look at someone else and be convinced "that is another such as I." That is always a statement of faith and, frankly, one that Reason would suggest we should be skeptical of, as we so badly want it to be true.

David:

Apologies. I misunderstood--I thought you were going somewhere else.

I agree, in some, perhaps many, areas, we can't make precise interpersonal comparisons. But that doesn't mean one can't some very strong inferences based on past similar experiences.

Besides, Evolution suggests that routinely concluding otherwise than "that is another such as I" has not been particularly rewarding.

One element of Reason is that there is no privileged frame of reference, including my own.

Jeff:

You have that exactly backwards--Reason advances from "own"

Sorry, OJ, you have it backwards. Perhaps if you had taken more Physics, you would be more familiar with frames of reference.

Reason fails if restricted to one frame of reference.

Even if you are clinically schizophrenic you only have one frame of reference and it may be a lie.