Pope Benedict Recognizes Need for Penance

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This is a step in the right direction.

Pope Benedict said on Thursday the sexual abuse scandal shaking Roman Catholicism showed the Church needed to do penance for its sins, in a rare public reference by the pope to pedophilia in the priesthood.

"Now, under attack from the world which talks to us of our sins, we can see that being able to do penance is a grace and we see how necessary it is to do penance and thus recognize what is wrong in our lives," the said pope at a mass in the Vatican.

This involved "opening oneself up to forgiveness, preparing oneself for forgiveness, allowing oneself to be transformed," said the pope, whose last public utterance on the scandal was his letter to the Irish people, made public on March 20.

But you have to wonder why it takes an "attack from the world" for his Holiness to recognize that the church needs to acknowledge its "sins." It implies an appalling lack of introspection.

BBC News has an analysis of the Vatican's poor media campaign. To sum up, the Church's communication has been entirely reactive, rather than proactive. Church officials have come off as defensive; shifting blame to the media, to gays, to Jews... to everyone but themselves. This is what I've been saying from the beginning. The lack of personal responsibility from Catholic leaders, including the Pope, has been sickening. Whom would Jesus blame? According to Christian teaching, Jesus took on the sin of the entire world and died for it; the whole world. The Catholic Church has been unable to take responsibility for rapists and torturers in their own employ. And they remain unable to even admit that they have enabled these abusers by concealing their crimes from the public and by shuffling them from diocese to diocese.

In an investigation spanning 21 countries across six continents, The Associated Press found 30 cases of priests accused of abuse who were transferred or moved abroad. Some escaped police investigations. Many had access to children in another country, and some abused again.

A priest who admitted to abuse in Los Angeles went to the Philippines, where U.S. church officials mailed him checks and advised him not to reveal their source. A priest in Canada was convicted of sexual abuse and then moved to France, where he was convicted of abuse again in 2005. Another priest was moved back and forth between Ireland and England, despite being diagnosed as a pederast, a man who commits sodomy with boys.

"The pattern is if a priest gets into trouble and it's close to becoming a scandal or if the law might get involved, they send them to the missions abroad," said Richard Sipe, a former Benedictine monk and critic of what he says is a practice of international transfers of accused and admitted priest child abusers. "Anything to avoid a scandal."

What we've heard from apologists is that the Church is now a model for how to handle abuse; that Pope Benedict has been vigilant in going after abusers and cleaning up the process by which these cases are handled. That may be true. I hope so. But it doesn't absolve the Catholic Church for past abuses. What we've all heard far too little of is full-throated apology. I sincerely hope this statement from the Pope marks a turning point in how the Vatican and other officials communicate on this issue.

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Graham Hancock on Reclaiming Our Consciousness

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In the first chapter of Supernatural, Graham Hancock recounts his early experimentation with psychadelic plants, under the guidance of indigenous shamans. Of his use of the healing plant Iboga he writes:

Was it really a supernatural realm that the ibogaine took me into, or just a crazy hallucination? As I've emphasized, this was not something I was yet in a position to judge; nor was it easy to disentangle cause from effect. But what was miraculous nonetheless was the dramatic turnaround in my mood that I benefited from after my ibogaine session. For months beforehand I had been intensely depressed and irritable, filled with morbid thoughts and gloomy anxiety. My guilt at what I perceived as my dismal failure of my father, and my grief at his loss, had been compounded by feelings of worthlessness and anguish so deep that I frequently saw no point in taking any further initiatives in life. It was better by far, I had persuaded myself, to withdraw from the world, abandon research, and avoid all new intellectual challenges -- which, anyway, I would certainly fail.

I hadn't expected ibogaine to make a difference, but it did. From the moment I woke up with my strength recovered, I knew that it had flipped some sort of switch in me, because I was no longer able to see anything in the world in the same negative and nihilistic way as I had done before. From time to time a morbid thought would still stray across my mind and try to drag my mood down; previously I would have dwelt on it obsessively until it made me miserable; now I found it easy to dismiss it and move on. I didn't feel so bad about my father either. I'd not been at his bedside, and I couldn't change that. But somehow, now, I no longer ached so much.

Whether this healing was achieved through contact with the spirit world, or whether it was just a beneficial side-effect of shaking up my brain chemistry, I felt grateful to ibogaine. Regardless of the explanation, or the mechanism, it had put me through something I would never forget -- something very much like a religious experience. It had swept away the cobwebs of ingrained bad habits and moods. And it had most persuasively demonstrated the worth of a hitherto neglected line of research into the spiritual life of the ancients.

A recent New York Times article explains that  some researchers are taking another look at the use of psychotropic drugs for the treatment of depression. Early results are at least as promising as Hancock's healing from depression and grief.

Scientists are taking a new look at hallucinogens, which became taboo among regulators after enthusiasts like Timothy Leary promoted them in the 1960s with the slogan “Turn on, tune in, drop out.” Now, using rigorous protocols and safeguards, scientists have won permission to study once again the drugs’ potential for treating mental problems and illuminating the nature of consciousness.

After taking the hallucinogen, Dr. Martin put on an eye mask and headphones, and lay on a couch listening to classical music as he contemplated the universe.

“All of a sudden, everything familiar started evaporating,” he recalled. “Imagine you fall off a boat out in the open ocean, and you turn around, and the boat is gone. And then the water’s gone. And then you’re gone.”

Today, more than a year later, Dr. Martin credits that six-hour experience with helping him overcome his depression and profoundly transforming his relationships with his daughter and friends. He ranks it among the most meaningful events of his life, which makes him a fairly typical member of a growing club of experimental subjects.

Hancock, no stranger to controversy, has become a vociferous advocate for the legalization of drugs that allow us to explore our own consciousness. In addition to healing from depression, Hancock has found tremendous value in the responsible use of sacred plants. As he explains in the interviews posted below, his reinvention as a fiction author was facilitated by the use of ayahuasca. The plot structure of his new novel Entangled was effectively dictated to him over the course of five ayahuasca journeys. (The book is currently only available in England and will pub in the US and elsewhere in October. Yes, I know. I'm frustrated and impatient over this, too.)

In a curious synchronicity, as I was compiling information for this post, my husband noticed a woodchuck running around our backyard. So I googled woodchuck (aka groundhog) medicine to see what that particular reflection could mean. As per the first page to come up... wait for it... altered states of consciousness.

A very difficult and powerful totem to have,

Groundhog is the symbol of opening fully to the dreamtime.
Of exploring altered states of consciousness more deeply and fully.
Dreams will have great significance.

Lessons associated with death, dying and revelations about its processes will begin to surface. Groundhog can teach its people metabolic control.
How to go into the great unconscious without harm.

. . .

This is often the totem of Shamans and Mystics.

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Mr. Deity Cliffhanger

Mr. Deity wraps this season with a cliffhanger. Jesse (aka Jesus) has been parsing the logical fallacies of "the script" and he's pissed. He's also hot. Have I mentioned that Jesus is hot? I did. I know I've mentioned this 1 or 10 times.

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Catholic Leaders Target Gays and Jews

Just when you thought the blundering stupidity from the Vatican couldn't get any worse, it does.

The Vatican's second-highest authority says the sex scandals haunting the Roman Catholic Church are linked to homosexuality and not celibacy among priests.

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican's secretary of state, made the comments during a news conference Monday in Chile, where one of the church's highest-profile pedophile cases involves a priest having sex with young girls.

"Many psychologists and psychiatrists have demonstrated that there is no relation between celibacy and pedophilia. But many others have demonstrated, I have been told recently, that there is a relation between homosexuality and pedophilia. That is true," said Bertone. "That is the problem."

I wonder what little bird "recently" told him this. Perhaps it was a carrier pigeon sent by ever-wrong Bill Donohue. It is, of course, fallacious. Many pedophiles don't even have a gender preference. They simply prefer children. The recently discussed Kiesle case comes to mind.

In another stunning turn of events, a firestorm has broken out over retired Bishop Giacomo Babini who may or may not have blamed Jews for Catholic woes.

A website quoted Giacomo Babini, the emeritus bishop of Grosseto, as saying he believed a "Zionist attack" was behind the criticism, considering how "powerful and refined" the criticism is.

The comments, which have been denied by the bishop, follow a series of statements from Catholic churchmen alleging the existence of plots to weaken the church and Pope Benedict XVI.

Allegedly speaking to the Catholic website Pontifex, Babini, 81, was quoted as saying: "They do not want the church, they are its natural enemies. Deep down, historically speaking, the Jews are God killers."

This could seriously damage all the bridge building with the Jewish community. There was real progress in healing wounds from things like the Inquisition and questionable ties to the Nazis during WWII. It could also damage all the bridge building with the gay community that has never happened ever.

Addenda: 
Andrew Sullivan has an excellent write-up on the Vatican cover-up of prolific, serial abuser Marcial Maciel which implicates both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. In addition to molesting many church youths, Maciel lived a double life. He took a false name and fathered children whom he then molested. The sickness is deep.

The New Yorker has just published a slick overview of “the largest institutional crisis in centuries, possibly in Church history.”

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The Vatican: Always a Day Late and a Dollar Short

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The Vatican announced today that it has made its peace with the Beatles and forgiven them for their "dissolute" lives and "Satanic" messages.

Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano paid tribute to the Fab Four in its weekend editions, with two articles and a front-page cartoon reproducing the crosswalk immortalized on the cover of the band's album "Abbey Road."

The tribute marked the 40th anniversary of the band's breakup.

"It's true, they took drugs; swept up by their success, they lived dissolute and uninhibited lives," said the paper. "They even said they were more famous than Jesus," it said, recalling John Lennon's 1966 comment that outraged many Catholics and others.

"But, listening to their songs, all of this seems distant and meaningless," L'Osservatore said. "Their beautiful melodies, which changed forever pop music and still give us emotions, live on like precious jewels."

Big of them... and only 40 years after the fact. I took them 350 years to forgive Galileo for that nasty business about his being right on the whole earth circling the sun thing. In an interesting synchronicity, today is also the anniversary of Galileo's trial before the Roman Inquisition.

And then there was Pope John Paul II's sweeping apology in 2000 for the church's entire history of persecution, torture, and warfare. So they're definitely getting better at being timely. Two of the Beatles are even still alive.

In another bold move, the Vatican has also posted guidelines on how to do deal with sex abuse charges on its website.

Official website www.vatican.va called it an "introductory guide which may be helpful to lay persons and non-canonists (referring to 'canon' or internal church law)" to rules for local churches on how to respond to sex abuse allegations. 

It made clear high up that bishops must report crimes to the police, saying "civil law concerning reporting of crimes to the appropriate authorities should always be followed." 

Bishops should probe every allegation, and any accusation with "a semblance of the truth" referred to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

So that should clear things up... and not a moment too soon. But it is heartening move in the direction of transparency and a departure from years of secrecy in the interest of protecting the church's reputation.

The Catholic Church's worry about the scandal sex abuse allegations will cause – often leading to their cover-up – reflects a deeply rooted legal principle that governs the church, a leading canon law expert says.

"The principal of scandal is very important in penal canon law," says Marco Ventura, a professor of religious law at the University of Siena, referring to the Vatican's legal code.

"Preventing scandals from taking place is crucial from all points of view. The bishop is in charge of determining how to fight against scandals which could affect the good image of the church," he added in an interview.

As a religion writer William Lobdell discovered early in the clergy abuse scandal in the US, some churches went to such great lengths to protect pedophile priests and the church's image that it meant throwing abused children under the bus.

While reporting the Harris story, I learned -- from court records and interviews -- the lengths to which the church went to protect the priest. When Harris took an abrupt leave of absence as principal at Santa Margarita in January 1994, he issued a statement saying it was because of "stress." He resigned a month later.

His superiors didn't tell parents or students the real reason for his absence: Harris had been accused of molesting a student while he was principal at Mater Dei High School in Santa Ana from 1977 to 1979; church officials possessed a note from Harris that appeared to be a confession; and they were sending him to a treatment center.

. . .


By this time, church leaders possessed a psychological report in which Catholic psychiatrists diagnosed Harris as having an attraction to adolescents and concluded that he likely had molested multiple boys. (Harris, who has denied the allegations, now stands accused of molesting 12 boys, according to church records.) But they didn't step forward to set the record straight. Instead, a diocesan spokesman called Harris an "icon of the priesthood."

Harris' top defense attorney, John Barnett, lashed out at the priest's accusers in the media, calling them "sick individuals." Again, church leaders remained silent as the alleged victims were savaged. Some of the diocese's top priests -- including the cleric in charge of investigating the accusations -- threw a going-away party for Harris.

Nothing like being revictimized by your own church. But this has been the unfortunate pattern regarding clerical abuse. The victims seem to the be the last people they consider. Who knows. Maybe they'll forgive them 40 or 50 years from now for having gotten themselves molested.

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William Henry on Egypt, Stargates, and 2012

This brand new Coast to Coast interview with William Henry is an absolute mind-blower. It actually reduced me to tears at a couple of points because it evoked such a powerful sense of memory.  I don't know where the image used by the video maker came from but there's that concentric circle shape again. For added fun, it also contains the "funny looking mountain range" I referenced here.

In a delicious Jungian synchronicity, I learned something new this morning. I have a feed gadget on my iGoogle page for this very helpful nutrition site. The food of the week this week is onions.

The word onion comes from the Latin word unio for "single," or "one," because the onion plant produces a single bulb, unlike its cousin, the garlic, that produces many small bulbs. The name also describes the union (also from unio) of the many separate, concentrically arranged layers of the onion.

The Pied Piper of the Oakland Diocese

One of the darkest fairy tales of childhood memory, the Pied Piper tells of a flamboyantly dressed stranger who lured the children of Hamelin to their deaths. That the now defrocked Rev. Stephen Kiesle self-defined as a mythical mass murderer of children is telling.

"He admitted molesting many children and bragged that he was the Pied Piper and said he tried to molest every child that sat on his lap," said Lewis VanBlois, an attorney for six Kiesle victims who interviewed the former priest in prison. "When asked how many children he had molested over the years, he said 'tons.'"

The picture of Kiesle that emerges from numerous news reports is of an unrepentant sociopath who thought of children as an exploitable commodity. The handling of his case by the Vatican is the latest embarrassment for Pope Benedict. Like so many of these cases, it languished for years, and involved perfunctory communication, directives to think of the church's reputation, and a misplaced file. That then Cardinal Ratzinger's signature appears on some of that perfunctory communication opens new questions about his involvement in foot dragging by the Vatican that left countless children at risk.

In the letter, Ratzinger says the arguments for removing Kiesle are of "grave significance" but adds that such actions required very careful review and more time. Any decision to defrock Kiesle must take into account the "good of the Universal Church" and the "detriment that granting the dispensation can provoke within the community of Christ's faithful, particularly considering the young age of the petitioner." Kiesle was 38 at the time.

In his earliest letter to Ratzinger, Cummins warned that returning Kiesle to ministry would cause more of a scandal than stripping him of his priestly powers.
"It is my conviction that there would be no scandal if this petition were granted and that as a matter of fact, given the nature of the case, there might be greater scandal to the community if Father Kiesle were allowed to return to the active ministry," Cummins wrote in 1982.

California church officials wrote to Ratzinger at least three times to check on the status of Kiesle's case. At one point, a Vatican official wrote to say the file might have been lost and suggested resubmitting materials. Diocese officials considered writing Ratzinger again after they received his 1985 response to impress upon him that leaving Kiesle in the ministry would harm the church, the Rev. George Mockel wrote in a memo to the Oakland bishop.

Worse, Ratzinger's letter calling for time and consideration was sent in 1985, nearly 4 and a half years after the defrocking request was filed in 1981. And what was there to consider? Kiesle had already been convicted of lewd conduct and had, himself, asked to be laicized. The details of his case make no one look good, including prosecutors who clearly plead him down to that lesser charge and, later, expunged his record. The crime itself was horrifying.

Kiesle had been sentenced in 1978 to three years' probation after pleading no contest to misdemeanor charges of lewd conduct for tying up and molesting two young boys in a San Francisco Bay area church rectory.

So the known facts were that a priest had terrorized and molested 2 children and still it took the Vatican 6 years and repeated badgering to decide to defrock him?! And the church apparently failed to keep him away from children in that time.

As Kiesle's fate was being weighed in Rome, the priest returned to suburban Pinole to volunteer as a youth minister at St. Joseph Church, where he had been associate pastor from 1972-75.

Since being defrocked Kiesle, unsurprisingly, has proved himself to be a serial predator. Following further convictions and jail time, he is currently living in a senior community, monitored with an ankle bracelet.

The Associated Press has put together a handy timeline of events pertaining to the Kiesle case.

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More Vatican Deflection as the Abuse Cases Pile Up

Well this just gets more and more sickening. After a Holy Week of insulting Jews and sex abuse survivors and blaming the media for doing its job, the Vatican is upping the ante on its relentless self-pity.

The Vatican heatedly defended Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday, claiming accusations that he helped cover up the actions of pedophile priests are part of an anti-Catholic "hate" campaign targeting the pope for his opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage.

Vatican Radio broadcast comments by two senior cardinals explaining "the motive for these attacks" on the pope and the Vatican newspaper chipped in with spirited comments from another top cardinal.

"The pope defends life and the family, based on marriage between a man and a woman, in a world in which powerful lobbies would like to impose a completely different" agenda, Spanish Cardinal Julian Herranz, head of the disciplinary commission for Holy See officials, said on the radio.

No. I'm pretty sure that criticism of both his Holiness and the church has to do with the avalanche of new reports of sexually abusive priests who were not properly dealt with. And am I the only one who sees some irony in claiming to be pro-family in the wake of a child abuse scandal?

Meanwhile the charges are piling up. Over Easter weekend we learned that the Vatican dragged its heels on defrocking 2 priests who were described by their own bishop as "satanic."

The abuse cases of two priests in Arizona have cast further doubt on the Catholic church's insistence that Pope Benedict XVI played no role in shielding pedophiles before he became pope.

Documents reviewed by The Associated Press show that as a Vatican cardinal, the future pope took over the abuse case of the Rev. Michael Teta of Tucson, Ariz., then let it languish at the Vatican for years despite repeated pleas from the bishop for the man to be removed from the priesthood.

In another Tucson case, that of Msgr. Robert Trupia, the bishop wrote to then-Cardinal Ratzinger, who would become pope in 2005. Bishop Manuel Moreno called Trupia "a major risk factor to the children, adolescents and adults that he many have contact with." There is no indication in the case files that Ratzinger responded.

The article notes that this case languished, in part, because the Vatican was revising its procedures, which resulted in the controversial 2001 letter from then Cardinal Ratzinger. Many interpreted this letter as calling for secrecy as the Vatican adjudicated these cases. Even after the changes implemented by Ratzinger, the process seemed unconscionably slow.

More alarming, the most recent case to come to light started in 2005, well after the new streamlined procedure was in place, and it has yet to be prosecuted.

A Catholic priest who fled Minnesota for India after being accused by two teenage girls of rape continues to serve as a priest in a Catholic school system five years after his case was brought to the attention of the Vatican, according to documents and testimony in a lawsuit against the Church.

The accused cleric, the Rev. Joseph Jeyapual, oversees the hiring of teachers for 40 Catholic schools in the diocese of Ootacamund, India, according to documents in the case.

. . .


In the first letter, Bishop Balke warned that to ignore the case "would be a shameful act of betrayal towards the women and girls in India to whom Fr. Jeyapaul could at present pose a risk."


In a response six months later, on behalf of Cardinal Levada, a deputy made no mention of disciplinary action against the accused priest but said he would "be monitored so that he does not constitute a risk to minors and does not create a scandal among the faithful."

Monitored?!!

The Vatican spokesman told the Associated Press the priest had been punished by being sent to a monastery for a year to pray.

So prayer and contemplation are punishment? For a priest?!! Isn't that what they do?

As with so many of these cases, Rev. Jeyapaul became a football, just punted from one diocese to another, and protected from law enforcement. In this case, he  returned to his native India, where the Bishop refused to follow a Vatican directive and defrock him. So let me get this straight: Only the Vatican can order a priest be defrocked, which has held up some of these cases for years, but a bishop can just refuse? Who's running this show? And how does this protect children? Meanwhile a second priest who was actually convicted and served time for molesting a 12 year old girl, remains in the priesthood in another Indian diocese.

If the Vatican can't see that cases such as these open the Catholic Church to fair criticism, there is something seriously wrong. It's always bad policy for leaders to refuse to take responsibility for failings in their institutions and blame everybody else. Where does the buck stop if not with the Pope?

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A Tale of Two Churches

I have to wonder if the Times isn't editorializing with the placement of images in this article. Archbishop Robert Zollitsch has made headlines for apologizing profusely for the failings of the church in the handling of abuse cases. He seems to genuinely believe that sunlight is the best disinfectant. Juxtapose that with signals from the Vatican, including the most recent embarrassing display of self-pity from the Pope's preacher, and you get what is graphically depicted above; the emotional contrition of an archbishop and a pope with his back to the world.

Archbishop Zollitsch said that the Church had committed serious mistakes and done too little to help the victims of priestly abuse. “The caring responsibility towards the victims was insufficient in the past because of our own disappointment at the painful failure of the perpetrators, and out of a falsely understood concern for the standing of the church," he said.

It was as close as the Church in Germany has come to admitting that it covered up crimes committed by priests

That, he said, was the "painful reality that we have to face up to". The Archbishop's words were notably blunter than those used by the Pope the previous day. 

This is a real step in the right direction as are signals from numerous dioceses.

More than 20 out of 27 dioceses had agreed to integrate the prayers into the service. The formula — openly acknowledging the victimhood of the children molested by priests — had been worked out by Stephan Ackermann, Bishop of Trier, the Church's expert on abuse. Last week he introduced a hotline for victims and found that 20 of the callers claimed to have been abused in his own diocese.

Far less encouraging are statements from Pope Benedict's personal preacher. The Vatican is struggling to distance itself from the homily in the wake of a firestorm of outrage.

At a solemn Good Friday service, Pope Benedict XVI's personal preacher likened the tide of allegations that the pontiff has covered up sex abuse cases to the "more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism." But within hours, facing a storm of criticism at the comparison, the Vatican felt it necessary to distance the pope from the preacher's remarks.

Both Jewish and victims' groups responded that it was inappropriate to compare the discomfort being experienced by the church leadership in the sex abuse scandal to the violence that culminated in the Holocaust. The Vatican has been on the defensive in recent days, saying the church has been singled out and collectively stereotyped for the problem of pedophilia, which it says is a society-wide issue.

Invoking any comparison with anti-Semitism was particularly sensitive on Good Friday, itself a delicate day in a decades-long effort by Jews and Catholics to overcome a legacy of mistrust. There was a long-held Catholic belief that Jews were collectively responsible for executing Christ, and a landmark achievement of the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s was a declaration stating the Jews should not be blamed for the crucifixion.

Thoroughly offending two groups of actual victims on Good Friday... I think that may be a new personal best for the Vatican.

I am somewhat encouraged to read that Pope Benedict has given the nod to the German church's approach.

The Pope listened "with keen interest, great sadness, and deep emotion" as the German prelate related the steps that are being taken to respond to the revelations of abuse. "The Holy Father was very satisfied with our decisions," Archbishop Zollitsch told reporters after the meeting.

The German hierarchy has announced that it will report all claims of abuse to law-enforcement officials, unless the victims ask for privacy. The German bishops have commissioned an independent investigation of the more than 100 claims that have already been made, and vowed to cooperate with any government inquiries. "We want to uncover the truth," Archbishop Zollitsch said.

The bishops have applauded the German government's decision to convene a national roundtable on the abuse issue, which will bring together religious leaders, teachers, and abuse victims. Pope Benedict has also indicated his support for the roundtable initiative.

If Holy Week services so far, though, are any indication, the Vatican and much of the Catholic Church still don't get it. There is nothing more offensive than whining about how victimized you are because you're being criticized, when there are people whose lives have been damaged, and destroyed in some cases, by mistakes you made. It displays a narcissistic indifference to the suffering of others. Not the message I'd think the church would want to send as it celebrates Christ's martyrdom.

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Bill Donohue on the "Homesexual Crisis" in the Catholic Church

Bill Donohue of the Catholic League has refined missing the point to an art form. Why anyone ever hands him a microphone is a mystery to me, but Larry King gave this bloviating gasbag plenty of opportunity to thoroughly offend Tuesday evening. And being Larry King, challenged him on none of it. His justification? The problem isn't pedophilia, it's homosexuality. Not a new argument for the Catholic Church, but Donohue can always be counted on to take obnoxious wrong-headedness to soaring new heights.

His most unintentionally funny line?

"You've got to get your facts straight. I'm sorry. If I'm the only one that's going to deal with facts tonight then that'll be it."

An amusing statement from one so wrong on fact... and grammar, but I'll let that go.

He outlined his argument in a recent missive:

The Times continues to editorialize about the 'pedophilia crisis,' when all along it's been a homosexual crisis. Eighty percent of the victims of priestly sexual abuse are male and most of them are post-pubescent. While homosexuality does not cause predatory behavior, and most gay priests are not molesters, most of the molesters have been gay.

Where to begin... For starters, and assuming his stats are accurate, what about the twenty percent who are female? Do they not matter?

Next: Homosexuality doesn't cause predatory behavior, but the problem is still homosexuality, not the predatory behavior... Huh?

But let's get to the meat of his argument: The majority of the boys were "post-pubescent." No, they weren't. Postpubescence is when puberty is over and in boys, since we apparently only care about boys, that can be as late as 17, even 18. Donohue would have you believe that postpubescence begins at "12, 13 years of age." But that's when puberty is just starting in the average boy. So, at best, we could say a majority of the male victims were pubescent.

Post-pubescent means beyond puberty. In other words you're an adolescent and that's what homosexuals do and most of them -- the molesters -- have been homosexuals in the Catholic Church.

No, Mr. Donohue, adolescence refers to the social and behavioral issues that concur with puberty.

In fairness, Donohue is right about one thing. Pedophilia refers to sexual attraction to prepubescent children. An adult attraction to pubescent children is hebephilia. Sexual interest in older adolescents is not considered a mental disorder, like pedophilia. Acting on it, however, is very often illegal. The age of consent varies around the world and in the US ranges from 16 to 18. (In Wisconsin, for instance, where as many as 200 deaf children were exploited by Rev. Lawrence Murphy and ignored by then Cardinal Ratzinger, it's 18.) It's called statutory rape. It's a crime. And if you can't count on members of the clergy to be law abiding, who can you trust?

If the sexual advances are unwanted, as they clearly were according to the many abuse survivors who've come forward, there's nothing "statutory" about it. It's rape. It's sexual assault. And few could argue that there isn't a significant power disparity between a priest, aged, on average, over 30, and a 14 or 15 year old kid. These were authority figures in their churches, schools, and communities. But Mr. Donohue would have us chalk all this up to an indiscretion to which homosexuality can, but does not necessarily, make one prone.

Mr. Donohue would like to misdirect us by focusing on what the scandal isn't. What about what it is? The physical and sexual abuse of minors. No amount of obfuscation or homophobia changes that fact. But Donohue is an old hand at parsing these crimes to dust and blaming the victims.

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