and you answered it. A position of trust in the community, especially with children. A church willing to cover it up if you caught, etc.

The Church doesn't turn priests into pedophiles, it turns pedophiles into priests.

And to extrapolate that further, IMO, it it wasn't for celibacy and the secrecy, more straight men would become priests and pedophiles would have to go elsewhere as their pedophilia wouldn't be kept secret.

become priests where they turn into the molesters? How many of those priests were themselves molested when young boys? Not to make excuses for any of them, they should know better than any others it is wrong.

Celibacy is not a normal condition for most humans. Yes, asexuality exists and some people aren't interested in it at all. But there are plenty of priests with normal sexual urges and they must constantly fight against them. That's a factor.

Personal intimacy (not just sex) is also incredibly important for most people. Not allowing priests to marry also denies them that intimacy.

But let's not take the easy way out here. Most really are into Catholicism. The journey to become a priest is long and challenging. If some dude out there wants to rape kids, he's not going to decide to spend several years becoming a priest just to do so. We can't assume that every child rapist in the church is faking their beliefs in order to get access to children.

and hope that "dedicating their lives to God" will somehow cure them of their urges, which at least some know to be abhorrent. When prayer and dedication to the Church doesn't cure them, many nonetheless find themselves in a position of power over and access to children, with the results we've seen and which are now becoming more and more clear. Who knows, some may even think it's "God's will" that these children are "given to them" as either temptation or solace, as sick as that may sound.

As I've posted before on these threads, another problem with celibacy, aside from the obvious denial of human nature, is that, like prohibition, it fosters a climate of secrecy and skirting the "law." I've heard that something like half of all priests enter into sexual relations at some point in their lives in the Church--and is this at all surprising? Many if not most of these relationships are with consenting adults, but they are nonetheless violations of Church strictures and grounds for punishment and even expulsion from the clergy. The resulting "corporate culture" thus includes a component of "if you keep quiet about my lapse, I'll keep quiet about yours." Not exactly conducive to the protection of abuse survivors, rather it accrues to the benefit of abusers.

Some maybe be faking, most probably aren't. Just as many abusive therapists probably actually believe having sex with their patients is somehow therapeutic, and that they are ethical practitioners helping their patients.

I believe many pedophiles are drawn to the priesthood because they believe religion will cure them of their lust for children. When they discover they still are sexually attracted to children, many use the cover the church provides for them to satisfy their pathological sexual deviancy. Sexual desire is a powerful force. Religion will not cure it. Pathological sexual urges lead to pedophilia and is a motivation for some serial killers. I suppose crazy is crazy.

It's also a real factor for some.

I was thinking the other day that the church might well attract all sorts of people for the wrong reasons. Incels, for example, or people who trend in that direction.

Why did so many who didn't molest children (as far as we know) cover for the ones who molested children? Maybe they identified more with the perpetrators than with the victims, and said to themselves, "There but for the grace of God go I."

Agree.

Celibacy has got nothing to do with it. If a priest has no issue with molesting a child, why would he have a problem breaking a vow of celibacy with a woman?

The celibacy argument/excuse/reason just covers up the other things the church doesn’t want to acknowledge - predatory pedophiles, homosexuality, etc.

By accepting that church priests must give up sex and intimacy, churches are holding onto a past where abuse went unpunished. Allow priests to marry and allow women priests, newer priests would be less likely to tolerate the behavior. Abuse hs been an ugly secret in the church for ever, only a new outlook will start to change it.

their wives inherited property and it cost the church money.

Celibacy put a stop to that.

But it is a factor and cannot be blithely dismissed. Not every instance is the same. Not every person reacts to the same stressors in the same way.

which is patriarchy--the notion that men are somehow spiritually and morally above women and children.

The whole institution is focused on and is supportive of male power, male superiority. Which almost inevitably leads to male entitlement,

than other clergy or members of the population at large?

How, for example, do sexual offense rates for Catholic priests compare to sex offense rates for Boy Scout leaders or public school teachers?

Seriously. If it turns out that there are more sex offenders per capita among public school teachers or Boy Scout leaders, does that change anything about the harm that the Catholic Church has done by protecting known child molesters?

to try to understand what "so many" signifies here

among public school teachers and Boy Scout leaders to prevent known child molesters from being discovered and prosecuted? Do public schools and the Boy Scouts have written rules that plainly instruct them to cover up such activity if it might the organization look bad?

You see, there's much more to it than just the raw numbers.

I doubt that they are more likely than any other group, but they know they are free to do what they want without consequences, where their behavior is tactly accepted.

23 hours ago
By Christian Boone, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

This past week a fifth former Boy Scout joined a lawsuit alleging sexual abuse by a disgraced Athens Scoutmaster suspected of predatory behavior dating back to the 1970s ...

Some would say it shouldn’t come as a surprise to the Boy Scouts, who kept a confidential file on Boland. The businessman and Army Reserve colonel was accused of sexual misconduct by at least a dozen Scouts over a period of 25 years ...

... there would’ve been no way for Doe to know he was just one of many boys allegedly victimized by Boland — and the apparent cover-up that followed — before 2012, when the Scouts were ordered by a judge to release ineligible volunteer files documenting more than a thousand alleged incidents of sexual abuse over a 20-year period (1965-85) ...

https://www.ajc.com/news/crime--law/three-things-know-about-the-boy-scouts-sex-abuse-cases/EalhiPsV8ipUyIQVcb8CmK/

There are other groups that are more appropriate for discussion of the Boy Scout sex abuse cases.

by posting unrelated stories that are irrelevant to the the topic of this thread.

since 1985. Imagine if all groups responded this way.

https://www.scouting.org/training/youth-protection/

Among those taken into custody were a Boy Scouts leader, a corrections officer, an army lieutenant colonel, and a member of a county ethics commission.

Author: WLTX
Published: 2:30 PM EDT July 26, 2018
Updated: 2:34 PM EDT July 26, 2018

Columbia, SC (WLTX) - A recent crackdown on child sex predators led to the arrest of 38 people, including prior offenders, throughout Richland County.

Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott detailed Thursday the results of Operation Full Armor, a four-day sting that lasted from July 10 through July 13 and brought in help from multiple law enforcement agencies across the state to help ...

https://www.wfmynews2.com/article/news/local/theyre-just-monsters-38-arrested-in-sc-child-sex-sting/83-577699268

Police went online offering underage prostitutes and arrested whoever showed up.

July 26, 2018
Gary Marx, Jennifer Smith Richards, David Jackson and Juan Perez Jr

The Chicago Tribune's reporting on predatory adults in its "Betrayed" series already has resulted in an overhaul of the Chicago Public Schools' child-safety programs as well as bipartisan state legislative support for new laws to protect students.

Now, in an examination of student-on-student sexual attacks, the Tribune found that Chicago students also were violated by classmates as employees failed to keep them safe.

In more than half of the cases the Tribune compiled, either the sexual-assault victim or the perpetrator was a student with disabilities, highlighting failures by CPS to protect and supervise these vulnerable children ...

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/watchdog/ct-chicago-public-schools-student-offenders-story.html

Your point, whatever it might be, is not made.

Lots of them offending, too. Whatabout those?

The part that’s lacking is how this in any way relates to an organization that systemically protected literally countless child rapists over decades, if not thousands of years, failed to comply with even legal reporting requirements, failed to implement any sort of meaningful protections for children, and continues to do so even after being exposed of the practice.

about such abuse, rather than attempting to convert the issue into a discussion of something else. The Catholic church is a large institution, just as the public schools form a large institutional section of society, and just as the Boy Scouts of America is a large organization. Large organizations have some common strengths and weaknesses, as well as developing their own individual dynamics. Such matters can certainly be constructively considered, by anyone concerned about sexual abuse. To my current knowledge, sexual abuse of individuals is not more common in the Catholic church, than in any other large group, and we should seek remedies that really address the circumstances of abuse, rather than merely posturing based on our individual prejudices. The fact that most abuse occurs with families suggests that secrecy and power without accountability contribute to abusive environments, and institutional reforms can reduce the opportunities for secrecy and for power without accountability

It’s just they are used to deflect from addressing the issue at hand.

If you want to use that tactic, you should expect to be called out for it, especially in the religion group where such irrelevant facts become that much more irrelevant. I’m not going to argue whataboutism other than calling out the fallacy as intellectual dishonesty.

Meanwhile it should be noted you failed to address a single issue I pointed out that makes the RCC’s complicity with child rape that makes it particularly egregious.

I think you’ll find a much higher rate of sexual abuse of children in those organizations. I’d go with that. “Vatican not as bad as Lord’s Resistance Army”.

Once the church decided that priests would not marry (so no families would inherit the wealth of the church), men who would not reproduce became somewhat valuable. Men who were attracted to children would be less likely to have children by accident and less likely to scandalize the church in the tried and true way of the old days ... out of wedlock children. Not producing children gave you an advantage, politically, within the church.

To the pedophile, the church was a good hideout. (I’m not deviant, mom and dad, I just love the lord).

On top of all of that, child abuse, wife abuse, slave abuse is as old as the hills, and quite common among Greco-Italian intelligentsia and many, many wealthy societies throughout the ages.

Add to this: no presence of women as a check on male behavior, perhaps even prison-type Licentiousness.

Finally, the obvious: Why do child molesters become priests? Because that’s where the kids are. A la scouts, boarding schools.

Catholics consider withholding donations amid abuse scandals

https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/catholics-consider-withholding-donations-amid-abuse-scandals/

Last month, Francis accepted McCarrick’s resignation as cardinal and ordered him to a “life of prayer and penance.”

Let's pause to consider that what the RC church has done has been to thoughtlessly and carelessly take actions to protect its investment in the training of thousands - hundreds of thousands of priests through the centuries.

It takes 6 to 10 years to educate and train a young man to be ordained a priest. And that training doesn't usually include basic sexuality development in young boys becoming young men.

Letting the young candidates figure out for themselves the mysteries of their developing sexuality and its impact on their lives and the lives of the members of the catholic communities entrusted to them after ordination doesn't seem to have worked.

Another group, the military, has the same problems as any other group of people enduring and negotiating sexual contacts by its members as they toil through their enlistments or their military agreements to serve in the armed forces of their nation.

The military has had a changing if not questionable process to regulate the treatment and disposal of homosexuals who have lied about their sexual orients at enlistment to sexual onslaughts in their units. But that's another thread.

It's not just this group. or that. It's about defining what must be done to protect young people from the onslaughts of predators anywhere and defining strict processes including timely prosecutions and appropriate and equitable punishments for offenders who cannot offer basic human respect and honor for each other and for the more vulnerable members of society.

As a priest you have:

1) Ready access to a pool of potential victims
2) An air of respectability that will invariably cause others to question accusations against you should they arise
3) An old boys' network that will trip over their own dicks trying to shield you from prosecution