Why would allowing priests to marry help the situation if there wasn't a rash of priests having consenting age-appropriate relationships?

The problem isn't really priests. In every institution where there are children (health care, camps, schools, various religions, etc.), there are pedophiles.

The problem is not that the Catholic church had more pedophiles than any other institution; the problem is that they didn't do anything about it and let it go on.

I don't buy that if priests were allowed to marry, there wouldn't be pedophile priests. If they were going to break their vows of celibacy, they could have done so with adults.

When you repress your natural urges, they manifest in dark ways.

Attacks don't happen overnight. They are a gradual progression.

First you deny yourself sex, then the urge builds. Then you start getting hornier and hornier, getting easily aroused by anything that moves as your mind starts to go mad with lust.

Then you gradually inappropriately touch the kids under your care, which is easy because they trust you. Maybe it starts with a hug, or a sit on the lap. Then it becomes rubbing their shoulders, or their legs.. and it keeps spiraling further and further, and the child is too young to understand what's happening (Hell, even adults who are subordinates often don't understand what's happening) and the priest is too mad with lust to stop it because they don't have an appropriate outlet to **consciously** pursue.

Of COURSE there are always going to be predators. I am not saying this would rid the world of pedophiles. The world just is not this black and white, and people need to stop pretending it is. Of COURSE the lack of appropriate relations isn't making all 100% mad with lust. But it INCREASES the odds.

And of course it doesn't just end there. The church needs to also punish those who commit those atrocious acts!

Oh, and don't tell me I'm "making excuses for pedophiles". I am looking for SOLUTIONS to decrease it, and I am in NO WAY saying, "hey let them off the hook, they couldn't help it". Urges are NOT a get out of jail free card for ANY crime.

Having sex, or even just masturbating are both known to reduce a male's free testosterone and sexual drives. If Priests were able to experience any form of sexual release, they would be much less likely to force themselves on children. Horny priests are a threat to those who are too innocent and trusting to resist their advances. Prolonged abstinence makes all adult males horny. It's just human nature.

The problem is not and never was marriage or sexual relations between consenting adults. The problem is pedophiles, molesters, and rapists. Married people can still be rapists, pedophiles, and molesters. To deem that allowing priests to marry would solve these criminal acts being perpetrated is false, foolish, and shows great ignorance about the causes.

By requiring young priests in training to be celibate lifelong, there is an artificial restriction against young and otherwise fine potential pastors that are married (or want to marry in time), as Peter was.

Celibacy is a special gift, but we all are unique, and only some have that gift, while other great pastors have other additional compensating gifts.

The resulting shortage of willing-to-be-celibate pastors/priest would tend to create lower entrance standards at seminaries, allowing those into the seminary who seemed not ready -- not on the right path in their own character.

*Exactly as happened* in some documented cases, where people warned about some individuals ahead of time, before they became priests.

Simple! Families wanting their son to become a priest keep their son away from girls. They then enter an all male training and banned from heterosexual linking.

homosexuality was rife in the Roman army because of the very long time they spent in an all male environment!

The very way they treat wannabe priests and train them is seen by psychiatrists as likely to turn them gay!

That's a stupid excuse. It has nothing to do with being married, gay or straight or any of thet. They are pedophiles. They use.their position of trust to molest kids. They should be executed.

Most of the children that are assulted by priests are boys, so it appears to be a homosexual driven issue.

People think changing situations changes people but it doesn't. Changing our minds changes us.

That church is beyond repair. It is criminal from top to bottom. All it does is promote criminality, and we already have more than enough of that. The celibacy rule is just one more atrocity. You can't remove nature from nature, and attempts to do so end poorly at best. Time to roll that foul church up with the carpet on the way to the garbage dump.