UNITED STATES
PolicyMic
James Banks
The big news with Catholicism this week is that the pope has chosen to retire. I should note that I am not Catholic. My family has been moving in and out of the Church for a few generations now, but my feet are still planted firmly on the South side of the Tiber. Therefore, I can understand why retiring is a perfectly sensible move for a guy who is 85-years-old given the contentious issues that the Church had to deal with in recent years weighing down on his shoulder.
The ambivalence with which some Catholics are greeting his abdication is understandable. After all, the pope is supposed to be the successor of St. Peter. That is not a job that people walk away from in the way that they walk away from being, say, the bean counter for Bethlehem Steel. As New York Times’ Ross Douthat points out, if God wanted a new ambassador on earth, He probably would have said so.
That being said, one should keep in mind the other recent major story regarding the Roman Catholic Church. This one was a story from North America that followed from the publication of documents suggesting that Cardinal Mahoney (formerly Archbishop of Los Angeles) participated in the cover up of serious cases of sexual abuse during his tenure.
Most of the journalism that covers the sexual abuse scandal, particularly from people who are not otherwise interested in the Church, misses the point. There is no real evidence linking celibacy or other characteristics of the priestly lifestyle to a proclivity for pedophilia. The average priest is probably less prone to sexually abuse an altar boy than a public school teacher is a student. There is absolutely no compelling evidence that the Catholic clergy has more perverts than any other religious or secular organization.
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.