Catholic Church Investigation Says Hippies
Made Catholic Priests Sexually Abuse Children

From Think Progress courtesy of Eschaton:

"Instead, the report says, the abuse occurred because priests who were poorly prepared and monitored, and were under stress, landed in the midst of the social and sexual turmoil of the 1960s and 1970s."

More here.

This info was presented on the left side of the blogosphere with a sort of understanding that it's total bullshit to blame the massive pedophile scandal on the sexual revolution, and of course, that is total bullshit. After all, hundreds of millions of Americans went through the 60s and 70s and did not become child rapists. Catholic priests, presumably the guardians of traditional Christian morality from a Catholic perspective, should have seen themselves as a bulwark against such social changes, rather than as the new sexuality's vanguard. Indeed, this kind of makes no sense. If the Catholic Church has always been opposed to sexual liberation, how, then, could priests celebrate sexual freedom by molesting defenseless boys?

On the other hand, this is an interesting thought in the way of explaining such vile behavior, rather than providing an excuse.

I'm forty three years old, too young to have really seen or understood what it was like before the sexual revolution, so I certainly have no way to compare the world today to how it was then. But I imagine the change must have been fairly profound. It happened fairly quickly, over the course of about a quarter century. First, explicit sexual imagery started to appear in the mass media. Then the birth control pill hit the market. Then everybody started getting divorces. Then disco and Three's Company. Like I said, I can only imagine what it must have been like to have watched it all happen, but some sort of dysphoria must have surely resulted in a not insignificant portion of the population. I mean, Protestant clergy wasn't exempt, either, lots of sex scandals for them, too, over the years. Human beings are, in the end, human beings, whether they claim to speak for God or not.

On the third hand, short of NAMBLA, I don't recall reading that there was a substantial pedophilia aspect to the sexual revolution. So this notion that the sexual revolution played a role in the ongoing scandal is, to say the least, incomplete in terms of providing an overall understanding. I just think the Bishops have a point worth considering, and that liberals shouldn't dismiss it with a bunch of elitist snickering.

As long as they don't use the sexual revolution as an excuse. Because, you know, there is no excuse.

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