http://www.smh.com.au/national/counsellor-abused-molested-boy-court-told-20091201-k2yw.html

A Catholic brother is accused of sexually assaulting a boy he had been counselling after the youngster was molested by another man, a court has been told.

'nuff said.

Shadow Minister,

"In your link, initially the numbers seem the same, but when you look closer, the protestant cases are for all reported cases of preachers, lay workers and volunteers."

Since they don't give the breakup it is hard to know whether most were preachers or evenly balanced or lay people. But what I can point out is that it isn't for all protestant churches they insure 166, 000 of the 224, 000 + "several thousand" black Churches.

Further, it only deals with cases involving insurance not all credible allegations.

"This would imply that the cases for catholic priests vs protestant priests is still much much larger."

Would you agree that the raw numbers are bigger for a subset of a smaller group involving a subset of the types of allegations considered in the larger group. I'd add that anyone accusing a Catholic priest would immediately believed but the usual rule about not coming forward due to not being believed probably applies to the others. It is not cut and dried but overall it seems to suggest the opposite.

"Your sarcasm indicates that even in your mind catholic priests are synonomous with paedophilia."

In my mind that is the public consciousness yes. This is driven by the media approach such as largely ignoring the information that I cited. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,286153,00.html

"The minimum should also include external auditing, to expose cases without having to wait decades, immediate criminal prosecution of those involved, and dismissal of anyone involved in a cover up."

There has already been a type of external auditing because the Catholic Church is very interconnected and prosecutors who get a case use the opportunity to go on a fishing expedition with locating other offenders not an unknown result. If Collins is on the mark then most of what you say is already happening.

"Major reform would mean abolishing the requirement for unmarried priests."

You may believe that reforming the Catholic Church would involve allowing abortion, contraception, and married priests. But those 'reforms' would be unlikely to have an effect on paedophilia (doesn't it normally happen with relatives?).

Runner,

The next thing I note is:

There is nothing unscriptural about infant baptism and many protestants practice it, eg. Anglicans and Lutherans, and most protestants historically have practised it. Please let me know if you can find some scripture that actually prohibits the baptism of babies. Your denomination obviously makes inferences from the scriptures that only adults should be baptized. We make inferences from the scriptures that babies are suitable candidates. We may take different views on the meaning of the scriptures but that is no grounds to brand us unscriptural. Besides, who is to say that your denomination's interpretation has to be the right one when ours has been passed down as far back as we can tell in a Church started by Jesus and His apostles (who wrote the New Testament and were trained by Jesus)?

I am well on the way through your list and you haven't yet responded to anything. I'd be interested to read your denominations take on these things. It is all very well to say these things are unscriptural but for the reasons I've given it doesn't sound right as a bare accusation. Alternatively, if you don't think you can support your accusations then please stop bagging my Church. We are all Christians and we all believe in the Holy Scriptures and with all due respect ours is the Church of the Bible. You may not like what it teaches and you are entitled to choose something else but don't call it unscriptural.

MJPB,

In a church, there is one priest, and a number of staff and volunteers. A conservative estimate would be a ratio of 10 support person to one cleric. Secondly considering that Catholics are in the minority in the US this makes it even worse.

As soon as I see deliberate skewing of the figures by not comparing apples with apples I see a desperate cover up.

There has been external investigation forced upon the church, but no voluntary external audit. The failure to do so implies a fear of further exposure.

Abortion and contraception have nothing to do paedohilia, but "celibate" priests undoubtedly does.

Shadow Minister,

Summary of American sexual abuse of minors:

Protestant annual incidence: 260 (insurance claims only) plus an unknown proportion of 73 insurance claims from insurer who doesn't specify whether or not they are minors plus those from the 64, 000 protestant Churches not with those 3 insurers. This includes pastors and others in the Church.

Catholic annual incidence between 1950 and 2002: 228 including all credible allegations. This is solely from pastors and the Catholic Church is smaller in America (as you correctly indicated and which I had incorrectly assumed was larger).

I think the "desperate cover up" is in your imagination. The two sources of information are completely independent. Whenever they are brought together it is because they are the known facts and one gets widely reported the other doesn't.

"...no voluntary external audit. The failure to do so implies a fear ..."

Well now that you mention it. American Catholic Bishops invited the City University of New York to do a study and asked all their underlings to extend full cooperation. It investigated credible allegations of sexual abuse for people under the age of 18 by Catholic priests from 1950 and 2002. Sexual abuse was defined to include "contacts or interactions between a child and an adult when the child is being used as an object of sexual gratification for the adult. A child is abused whether or not this activity involves explicit force, whether or not it involves genital or physical contact, whether or not it is initiated by the child, and whether or not there is discernible harmful outcome". It would be interesting to know the numbers if they just looked at physical sexual contact with under 18s.

"Abortion and contraception have nothing to do paedohilia, but "celibate" priests undoubtedly does."

I have been celibate for periods of time without developing an inkling of sexual interest in young children so forgive my skepticism. Also, as a Christian, I don't believe Jesus would call for something that would lead to paedophilia. Undoubtedly is a strong word. Do you know someone who has shown that tendency?

MJPB,

In the article it was 260 reports not claims. For OH&S we had 20 reported incidents (cuts etc) and no claims, as all incidents need to be reported to the insurers to get our risk profile. The reports would include those credible or not.

Your review as in your last post is not an audit. For example company books are subject to an audit to test the validity of the accounts.

An audit would involve speaking to many of those that had not complained as well to detect if unreported incidents had been covered up. (as many of these incidents are only surfacing decades later)

I did not claim that celibacy caused paedophilia, only that the requirment for "celebacy" attracted paedophiles. If you can show otherwise I will stand corrected, but I doubt it.