Exchange with Neil McKenty

Some years ago, when I was still in broadcasting, I got into an on-air discussion about the sex crisis in the Catholic church with a talk-show host in the United States.  He stated dogmatically that all pedophiles were homosexual.  I told him this was rubbish.  We signed off in considerable anger.

Recently the John Jay College  of Criminality in New York released a report on the R.C.  church scandals which deals with this very subject.  Karen Terry was the chief investigator for the Jay Report.

With regard to homosexuality being the cause of the crisis, Terry and her colleagues could not be clearer in their findings, which converge with well-accepted conclusions from other social science fields.  There is no correlation between a homosexual identity and the sexual violation of a minor.  Sexual abuse is a crime of opportun ity, not of sexual identity.  In fact, the period of decline in priestly sexual abuse corresponds with both the gaying and graying of the priesthood, although Terry does not make that connection explicitly.  In any event, no Catholic pope, bishop, priest or layperson can in good conscience identify gay priests as the primary source of sexual abuse, even of boys.

The Jay report concludes that few priets were pedophiles in the strict sense.  The sexual identity of their victims is not the primary factor.  The fact of  oppo0rtunity is the key.  This in no way minimizes their crimes:  These men were criminal sexual perpetrators who preyed upon the innocent and the vulnerale when the opportunity presented itself.  They would violate whatever was handy at the moment.

Is the assertion thaat  gays caused the sex crisis in the Catholic church a canard?

What do you think?