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  Church Should Focus on Pedophiles, Not Homosexuals

By Janet Bagnall
Montreal Gazette [Canada]
October 5, 2005

Whoever succeeded Pope John Paul II was going to get stuck with the problem of pedophile priests. What first surfaced as dark hints a quarter-century ago has become a scandal that will not fade, much less go away.

The church, especially in the United States, stands accused of shifting pedophiles from one parish to the next in the vain attempt to protect its reputation - all the while ignoring its duty to defend the innocent in its care. As many as 100 of the 43,300 priests in the U.S. are alleged to have sexually abused the children and youths they came into contact with. Their victims number in the thousands. The U.S. Catholic church faces having to pay hundreds of millions in legal damages.

Canada has also been affected. In Ontario, for example, the church and the province signed a $40-million package in 1992 to compensate 1,600 men who were abused as children at two training schools. Both church and government were aware of the abuse for years but did not act to end it.

Pedophiles, with their all but incurable sexual fixation on pre-pubescent children, seek out positions that put them in contact with the objects of their desire. They show up in summer camps, schools, after-school activities, daycare centres and, it should not have come as a surprise, in the Roman Catholic Church.

Pope Benedict XVI, John Paul's successor, might be stuck with the problem of pedophiles within priestly orders, but he seems to have a whole other agenda going on. The war he wants to wage is against homosexuality. News reports say the Vatican might soon refuse to ordain homosexuals, even those who promise to remain chaste.

The church is free, as a religious institution, to set whatever criteria it chooses for the priesthood. Obviously, pedophiles would be excluded.

A pedophile can be homosexual or heterosexual. Neither sexual orientation presupposes any tendency toward an inappropriate sexual interest in children. There is only one issue that matters here and that is whether someone poses a danger to children.

It is not right to assume a candidate with a homosexual orientation will be any less capable of the celibacy the church requires than a heterosexual candidate. Only nine years ago, Benedict acknowledged this. As John Paul's right-hand man, the then Cardinal Josef Ratzinger said that it was an "unfounded and demeaning assumption" that homosexuals could not maintain celibacy.

Until now, church policy condemned homosexual acts but not homosexual orientation. Why shouldn't this continue? Why ban homosexuals outright, the path that Benedict has chosen now that he is pope? There are ugly consequences to taking this road.

In the church's 2,000-year history, there have unquestionably been homosexual priests and nuns whose selflessness and devotion were exemplary and should not be thrown into disrepute. But this is exactly what Benedict is doing. The damage extends to the secular world.

As though that weren't enough, the new pope seems also determined to trample over the line drawn between church and state, threatening like some kind of medieval bully to excommunicate secular leaders who do not abide by religious doctrine.

Benedict's first synod, which opened Sunday in Vatican City, will debate whether politicians who pass laws deemed "immoral" should be refused communion. The "immoral" law he clearly has in mind is same-sex marriage. And Canada's Catholic prime minister, Paul Martin, is one of the politicians Benedict has in mind to deny communion.

This is a dangerous game to play, even for someone who is the head of one of the world's great religious institutions. It could result in people deciding they cannot afford to vote into power any person who holds religious beliefs.

Canada has the right, the duty, in fact, to pass legislation conferring full civic rights on a group of people, homosexuals, who have historically been denied those rights.

The church has a very real, very ugly problem - pedophile priests. Perhaps it should turn its attention away from homosexuals and get to work on the real problem - the pedophiles in its midst.

 
 

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