What is it about the Catholic Priesthood that attracts so many pedophiles?

Choir boys.

About the Priest in Rome had an undercover reporter who was a reporter for the news paper owned by a government official, his report ended with over 90% of the Priest in Rome where homosexuals, if they were removed the Catholic church would no be able to give the spiritual guidence for all the Catholics in Rome.

Right now in the state I live in there are over 300 cases against priest that have sexually molested young boys, since the Catholic church is a sovereign state these priest can't be convicted by law so the family's have to take them to civil court and the Catholic church is paying out millions because they loose in civil court!

Look it up!

The fact children are sexually abused by Catholic priests doesn't mean the Catholic priests are pedophiles. Nearly 90 % of child sexual abuses are committed by non-pedophiles and most pedophiles never abuse any child.

I think that the full answer to your question is very complex and may not be known for several years yet. However, it seems to me that by continuing to demand that priests remain unmarried and have no chance at normal, healthy sexual relationships is a contributing factor to this obviously far reaching problem. The human need for sex is nearly as strong as the need for food. To deny the satisfaction of that need to its clergy must have a profound effect on them which has possibly helped bring about the number of priests seeking an outlet in turning to young boys, who often have been taught that a priest should always be obeyed.

Another factor may well be the number of gay men who choose to enter the priesthood. Sadly, many of these gay men feel an enormous amount of guilt for being what, in my opinion, God created them to be. The Church takes a strong stance against the practice of homosexuality. Note that it does not say it is wrong to be homosexual in orientation, just wrong to act upon it. In response to this, I believe, many gay men turn to the priesthood as somewhere they can be with an almost built in protection from them acting on their sexual desires. Of course, as we have seen, the demand for chastity on the part of the clergy is not a guarantee that all will keep this vow.

In no way do I suggest that these few factors explain the problem. But they are a start at understanding what happened and hopefully doing whatever needs to be done to prevent the situation from continuing and even growing.

Finally, I would also like to point out that I'm not at all sure that there are such a much larger number of pedophile priests than in other walks of life. Men who volunteer their time to coach kid's sports have far too often been found to be molesting children. Another area not often mentioned in the media, yet also full of its fair share of pedophiles is medicine. We all would likely be shocked if the truth were ever told about the number of pedophiles who are physicians in the specialty of pediatrics. For obvious reasons pedophile pediatricians can go undetected for decades. It is not just a problem with priests.

It doesn't.

In every population of human beings are going to a few sick or evil people who commit horrible crimes, even in the Church.

The percentage of pedophiles in the clergy of the Catholic Church is actually less than that of society in general.

These few terrible people do not negate the faith, hope and love of over one billion Catholics.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families report "Child Maltreatment 2006" states that sexual abuse by Catholic clergy was less than one-half of one percent of all cases.

The report states that the perpetrators relationship to the victim was:

29.1% were Other Relatives

26.2% were Parents

24.4% were Others

6.9% were Unknown or Missing People

6.1% were Unmarried Partners of Parent

4.4% were Friends or Neighbors

1.8% were Child Daycare Providers

0.5% were Other Professionals

0.3% were Foster Parents

0.3% were Residential Facility Staff

0.1% were Legal Guardians

All clergy is a subset of Other Professionals and Catholic clergy is a subset of all clergy. http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/pubs/cm06/table...

Here is the complete document: http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/pubs/cm06/cm06....

The 2009 Annual Report prepared by the Catholic bishops identifies 14 allegations of childhood sexual abuse in the U.S. Catholic Church in the 10 years from 2000 to 2009. Please note that there were 65,600,000 Catholics in the U.S. in 2010. http://www.usccb.org/ocyp/annual_report/9_CH4.pdf

http://cara.georgetown.edu/CARAServices/requestedc...

The 2007 Associated Press investigation identifies 2,570 public school teachers who, from 2001 through 2005, had their teaching licenses "taken away, denied, surrendered voluntarily, or restricted" because of sexual misconduct with minors.

Here is George Weigel's column detailing the Media's feeding frenzy on the Catholic Church: http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2010/03/sco...

Here is Father Thomas Brundage's account (he was the judge) of the trial of Father Lawrence Murphy and the misreporting of the media: http://catholicanchor.org/wordpress/?p=601

Newsweek: Priests seem to abuse children at the same rate as everyone else. http://www.newsweek.com/2010/04/07/mean-men.html

With love in Christ.

I don't trust the mainstream media, lots of times it directs the attention to one particular subject in order to divert the attention to the underlying issues.

Catholicism gets a lot of bashing because it's a large group. It doesn't mean to say that there are no pedaphiles in other religious groups or careers, there are many but Catholics have a longer history of religious belief than any other group and it's also the largest which is probably why it gets the most attention.

Pedaphiles are attracted to any career that involves working with children.

Alot of that is propoganda. There are no more pedisphiles in the catholic religion than any other religion. In fact islam probably has alot more of it since sex is forbidden in moslem nations and they marry 10 year olds.

Obviously there is nothing particularly that attracts pedophiles to the Catholic priesthood. If there was then the Catholic priesthood would not be the least likely place for an adult male who is a pedophile to be, which it is statistically. Generally pedophiles are attracted to situations that bring them in close contact with children. Only 1/2 of 1% of priests have been accused of pedophilia where among some Protestant clergy the incidence of sexual abuse is as high as 15% according the the Southern Baptist Convention in Texas.

The highest incidence of these crimes are among teachers and family members. Almost all pedophiles are married. God bless!

In Christ

Fr. Joseph

Read and understand [1 Timothy 4:1-3]. If you believe in God's Holy Scriptures/Bible you will be able to crystallize in your heart and mind. To God be the glory!

Single men with access to children

First you need to demonstrate that there ARE "so many pedophiles" in the Catholic priesthood. Let's see your objective evidence that the percentage of pedophiles among Catholic priests is significantly greater than the percentage of pedophiles among the adult male population in general.