At least eighty percent of clerical abuse cases are about a priest abusing a boy around fifteen years. It is male on male abuse. But in all the frenzy about Catholic priests in Australia abusing boys, none dare broach the subject of homosexuality. It is now open information gleaned from research and investigation, that the rate of sexual abuse rose in tandem with the entry of homosexuals into the male religious orders, not just priests. The sexual abuse was not the only result of homosexuals’ admission to the priesthood and male religious orders. In America, it is recorded that hundreds of priests died from AIDS. Fr Paul Shaunghnessy wrote about it on Catholic Culture online.
AIDS has quietly caused the deaths of hundreds of Roman Catholic priests in the United States, although other causes may be listed on some of their death certificates, the Kansas City Star reported today. The newspaper said its examination of death certificates and interviews with experts indicates several hundred priests have died of AIDS-related illnesses since the mid-1980s. The death rate of priests from AIDS is at least four times that of the general population, the newspaper said. Kansas City Bishop Raymond Boland says the AIDS deaths show that priests are human.
Astonishing, when you think about it. The paragraph above comes from an Associated Press report on a series of newspaper articles by Judy L. Thomas that appeared in January of 2000. It is too much to say Catholics were “rocked” by the attendant media hype—the scandal threshold has been raised pretty high in recent years—but among the laity the articles occasioned, if not a gasp, at least a general sigh of exasperation. From almost all sides one heard the complaint “Why doesn’t somebody do something?” Why not indeed.