Catholics, Gays and Pederasts

[trailingvortex]

There has been much excitement in the last week or so about some high-up in dear old Mother Church claiming that gays had a tendency towards paedophilia (not to be confused with haemophilia, which incidentally does not mean being aroused by the sight of blood, or Philadelphia, whose founding ethos did not centre on brothers touching each other

Comments

[oxeador]

So, the solution to paedophilic churchmen may well be to preferentially recruit homesexual men into the clergy. Not only for the reason above, but also because they could have a sexual outlet in each other, rather than taking out their frustrations on innocent choirboys.I do not know how seriously you propose this but it is often said that gays are overrepresented among catholic priests, and there are always stories of those who had a very active sexual life in a convent or seminary. It is not entirely unreasonable: a man who has been indoctrinated into the Catholic dogma and who discovers he is not sexually attracted to women may misinterpret this as a call to priesthood

[trailingvortex]

Maybe so. The way the Church reacts to these things seems anomalous to say the least. I would suggest that that might be either due to a close-knit sense of mutual defense and support that churchmen feel ('my brethren good or bad') or possibly paedophilic tendencies may be so endemic that it is a matter of pederasts supporting pederasts. I suspect more the former than the latter. Or possibly, as you say, it's just rotten in more fundamental ways

[clarienne]

I don't know anything about paedophillia, so someone can perhaps correct me if I'm wrong, but I would guess that it's more about the passivity/helplessness/unthreateningness of a child as opposed to an adult sexual partner. So gay/straight wouldn't be an issue.

[trailingvortex]

That's an interesting idea, and one that I had not considered. You may be right. Although even those are stereotypically feminine traits