DCSaints_Fan
Hall-of-Famer
Online
my guess is that it's a system that perpetuates the 'enemy'
1st you have an anti-homosexual position that becomes attractive to self-hating homosexuals who want to 'cure' themselves
and then "whoops' i'm surrounded by men for the rest of my life- and we all know abut the "gay for the stay" issue in prison priesthood wouldn't be much different
BUT
we also know that the real issue is pedophilia, so i see 3 possible (perhaps interconnected) aspects
1. priesthood just attracts pedophiles b/c easy access to the most vulnerable & until recently a complete safety net
2. abusers become abusers b/c they were abused
3. they 'become' pedophiles b/c there are many, many kids around and there aren't many other options (i have no idea is this is even possible 'biologically' but i'm just speculating)
1) is probably the best explanation. But I think it was rarely the case, that there was a conscious decision by pedophile men to join the priesthood so they could have easy access to children in order to rape them. Instead, I suspect that they somehow thought since they were deviants, that the priesthood was somehow their vocation and that it would help them deal with their disease in some fashion. The same process which probably led many ordinary homosexual men to join. (Not that I don't think homosexuals are deviants or diseases, but back in the day, alot of people thought they were)
3) Also lots of women around. A straight male priest doesn't just become a pedophile because he's around kids alot. Would the same thing happen with a man who coaches little league, or is a Cub Scout leader? Plenty of priests left the priesthood to marry. Ironically, in hindsight, those were mostly the good ones
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