Daily Debunking: Pedophilia is Widespread Among Catholic Priests

Whenever the subject of the Catholic Church comes up, some wiseacre invariably makes reference to the sad cases of pedophilia among the Catholic clergy, painting the entire Church with the perversion brush. How widespread is pedophilia in the Church? From Wikipedia:

Prof. Philip Jenkins, Professor of History and Religious Studies at Penn State University, published the book Pedophiles and Priests: Anatomy of a Contemporary Crisis in 1996. In it, he calculated that approximately 2 [corrected from 0.2 by me] percent of Catholic priests are pedophiles or child molesters.[15] His 2002 article “The myth of the ‘pedophile priest’”[9] expresses his views. In contrast to Louise Haggett’s statement, Professor Jenkins states:

“My research of cases over the past 20 years indicates no evidence whatever that Catholic or other celibate clergy are any more likely to be involved in misconduct or abuse than clergy of any other denomination — or indeed, than nonclergy. However determined news media may be to see this affair as a crisis of celibacy, the charge is just unsupported.”

His numbers are likely to be low: the US Conference of Catholic Bishops commissioned a study which surveyed allegations of abuse going back to 1950, with the result that roughly 4% of the clergy had been accused of sexual abuse. Of these, approximately 6/7 are likely to be true, based on the results of other investigations.

Nobody knows what the percentage of child molesters is among the general population, though estimates of 2% have been tossed out. In schools, estimates as high as 5% of teachers have been put forth. The point being that while the Catholic Church deserved some abuse for trying to brush this all under the rug, characterizing the Church as riddled with pedophiles is neither fair nor accurate.

Full disclosure: I’m a lapsed Catholic.