‘Culture of celibacy’ to blame for Catholic child sex abuse - study
A five-year study into sexual abuse within the Catholic Church has found that mandatory celibacy and a culture of secrecy within the entirely male-dominated clergy were “the major precipitating risk factor[s] for child sexual abuse.”
Former Catholic priest, Des Cahill, and co-author, theologian Peter Wilkinson, compiled information from 26 royal commissions and inquiries from Australia, Ireland, the UK, Canada and the Netherlands since 1985 in their report.
Cahill, now married but still a practising Catholic, began the research after he discovered he had lived and worked with several pedophile priests throughout his career in the priesthood.
He told Guardian Australia: “After the issue of abuse first became public, around 1978, I began wondering: ‘Why did this happen?’ I knew some of the priest perpetrators and I studied with them and I lived with one of them. And yet I was never aware while I was in the church. You have to understand, a priest offender is very secretive and doesn’t want to be found out.”
One of the most staggering and sickening of the report’s conclusions is that an estimated seven percent of the Catholic clergy abused children between 1950 and 2000.
While some nuns had abused children, the vast majority were male priests and bishops who maintained a culture of secrecy and non-disclosure, both as perpetrators and confidants aware of child sex abuse through the sacrament of confession.
Australia's royal commission recently called for the prosecution of Catholic priests who fail to disclose child abuse reported to them in confession.
https://www.rt.com/news/403362-catholic-celibacy-child-sex-abuse/