UNITED STATES
Catholic League
Bill Donohue comments on the death of Fr. Benedict Groeschel:
Fr. Groeschel was one of the most courageous and honorable priests I ever met. His passing is a great loss.
His death has not occasioned the plaudits he deserves. No doubt it has much to do with his much misunderstood statements from 2012 where he commented on males aged 14, 16 or 18 who might conceivably take sexual advantage of a priest. His critics saw this as a defense of the abusive priest. Nonsense. He clearly hypothesized that this could happen to a priest who was having a “nervous breakdown.” In this same interview, he explicitly said that priests who are sexual abusers “have to leave.” Moreover, for decades he put his Columbia Ph.D. in psychology to good use working with troubled seminarians and priests in the New York Archdiocese; this is not the kind of thing apologists are wont to do.
If we are looking for real apologists, we don’t have to look too far. Last year atheist superstar Richard Dawkins defended what he called the “mild pedophilia” of a teacher who “pulled me on his knee [at a boarding school] and put his hand inside my shorts.” He added, “I don’t think he did any of us lasting harm.” Two years earlier at a B4U-ACT conference, mental health experts said such things as “Assuming children are unable to consent lends itself to criminalization and stigmatization.” Not surprisingly does B4U-ACT talk incessantly about “minor-attracted” adults.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.