Reader’s Write: Catholic church sex-abuse defense misleads

The Island Now

This is to respond to April 18, 2013 Rosanne Spinner’s statement, entitled ‘Sexual abuse not a Catholic problem’ on the following matter of statistics with regard to what she said as following:

“For example, 12 percent of the 300 Protestant clergy surveyed admitted to sexual intercourse with a parishioner; 38 percent acknowledged other inappropriate sexual contact in a study by the United Methodist Church, 41.8 percent of clergy women reported unwanted sexual behavior; 17 percent of laywomen have been sexually harassed.”

This writer would want to read the aforementioned studies.

My friend, Rev.  M. James Sawyer, professor of Theology in San Leandrom, Calif., as well, said as following: 

“I would want to see the studies.  I do believe that the fact that Protestantism is fragmented has kept Protestant clergy members out of the spotlight as opposed to Catholic priests.  The issue with Catholicism, more than the abuse is the structural failure of the institution to address and correct the abuse. I do know for a fact that the same thing happens in Protestantism but the statistics stated strike me as “made up” because there is virtually no way to compile the raw numbers.  There are 33,000+  Protestant denominations in the U.S. There is not to my knowledge any central clearing house that compiles statistics.

In the San Francisco Bay area where I live the percentage of  children molested sexually 20 years ago was about 1/3 before the age of 18 – and the numbers were significantly higher in the churches–of all faiths, i.e. whithout any denominational breakdown (including Catholics).

The statement about Protestant pedophilia is outright bogus: 

See the following link: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2729305/posts

The issue in the Catholic Church is child molestation, not affairs by the clergy, homosexual or heterosexual.  

I did find this somewhat dated quote about sexual behavior among Protestant ministers:

 Recently Leadership Magazine commissioned a poll of a thousand pastors. The pastors indicated that 12 percent of them had committed adultery while in ministry – one out of eight pastors! – and 23 percent had done something they considered sexually inappropriate. 

Christianity Today surveyed a thousand of its subscribers who were not pastors and found the figure to be nearly double, with 23 percent saying they had had extramarital intercourse and 45 percent indicating they had done something they themselves deemed sexually inappropriate. 

One in four Christian men are unfaithful, and nearly one half have behaved unbecomingly! Shocking statistics! 

Especially when we remember that Christianity Today readers tend to be college-educated church leaders, elders, deacons, Sunday school superintendents, and teachers. If this is so for the Church’s leadership, how much more for the average member of the congregation? Only God knows!

R. Kent Hughes

Disciplines of a Godly Man, Crossway Books, 1991, p. 21-22.

Also see :http://www.probe.org/site/c.fdKEIMNsEoG/b.4219465/k.CB69/Adultery.htm

 

Bing Tang 

Mineola

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