If I grew up in a home in which I witnessed my father abusing my mother, might I, after I marry, likewise be abusive toward my wife? So many of our problems as adults stem from childhood experiences. While some people become alcoholics after being raised in a home where one or both parents were addicted to alcohol, other people, traumatized by that childhood experience, never touch a drop of alcohol. This pattern also applies to clerics, including popes, bishops, and priests, who were sexually groomed/abused before they were ordained, often in Roman Catholic seminaries.
I know two priests who are brothers, about five years apart, who were both sexually abused when they were young. One priest went on to abuse teenage boys, as he was abused around the same age, before later being reported and removed from ministry. His younger brother, although having developed a homosexual orientation like many sex abuse victims, would never even think of preying on teenage boys, as 73% of homosexual men report doing.
As I distinguished in my article, “Predator, Homosexual, or Both?” some clerics are predators who prey on minors and/or vulnerable adults without engaging in consensual homosexual relations with adult gays; some clerics are homosexuals who engage in consensual relations with other gay men without preying on minors and or/vulnerable adults; and some clerics engage in both consenual and non-consenual sex as both homosexuals and predators.
Continue reading at John Eighteen Thirty Seven