Catholic Church Delivers Astonishing Pedophilia Rationalization in Geneva

By Ginna Green, Shakesville. Posted September 30, 2009.

Still defensive about the sexual abuse scandals that have rocked the Catholic Church in myriad diocese in multiple countries, the Vatican's permanent observer to the UN, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, read a ridiculously juvenile and bigoted statement following a meeting of the UN human rights council in Geneva during which Keith Porteous Wood, representative of the International Humanist and Ethical Union, asserted that the church had breached several articles of the Convention on the Rights of the Child by continuing to cover up sexual abuse of children.

The statement petulantly complained that other religions had problems with sex abuse, too (true, but irrelevant in terms of the Catholic Church's need to account for its endemic sex abuse), that Protestant churches' and Jewish communities' problems were worse than the Catholic Church's problems (probably not true, but also irrelevant), that "only" 1.5%-5% of Catholic clergy were involved in child sex abuse (there are about 1,500,000 Catholic clergy worldwide; "only" 1.5% of that is still about 2250 22,500 sex predators), and then let loose the unmitigated bigotry against gay men.

In a defiant and provocative statement, issued following a meeting of the UN human rights council in Geneva, the Holy See said the majority of Catholic clergy who committed such acts were not paedophiles but homosexuals attracted to sex with adolescent males.

…The statement said that rather than paedophilia, it would "be more correct" to speak of ephebophilia, a homosexual attraction to adolescent males.

"Of all priests involved in the abuses, 80 to 90% belong to this sexual orientation minority which is sexually engaged with adolescent boys between the ages of 11 and 17."

Okay, first of all, ephebophilia is not specific to people with same-sex attraction. Tomasi's implication that it's a uniquely "homosexual attraction" is patently false. The Catholic Church has been trying to blame its sex abuse problems on gay men since day one, in order to avoid its own responsibility for ordaining and protecting pedophiles, but that shit's been publicly debunked so resoundingly that the Holy See can't just scream "homo priests!" anymore.

 

              

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Melissa McEwan writes and edits the blog Shakespeare's Sister.

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