Excerpts:
How much of a role did homosexuality play in all this? There is of course a vital distinction to be made here between sexual orientation and sexual abuse, and between being gay and being a pedophile, hebephile, or ephebophile. Many gay priests are fine and honorable servants. It horrifies me they are tarred by association, by some of the more reactionary voices in the church. It’s also true that one reason young men and boys were targeted was that they were far more readily available to priests than girls.

But it remains true that the overwhelming majority of Catholic abuse cases are between men and boys, or men and men, not men and girls, or men with women (although that happened too). And the way in which homosexuality has been treated by Catholicism — the only option for all gays is a life of celibacy and emotional repression — is not likely to lead to healthy homosexual lives, let alone priests.

Homophobia may also have increased the proportion of priests over the centuries who have been gay, because the priesthood has always been a reliable cover for not dating women. And these closeted, fucked-up gays are the ones who may well have internalized many of the slurs against gays in the past, hated themselves, never come to terms with themselves, and seen no real difference between sexual abuse and sex. So gay priests may well have covered this stuff up for aeons, or formed cliques that perpetuated it, or developed personae that could create some campy subculture to make the awful contradictions and cruelties of sexual repression and self-loathing bearable. When no form of sex is allowed, all forms of sex can seem equally immoral. And if your celibacy has ever slipped, you sure don’t want to snitch on someone else, do you?

It’s a vicious, destructive, evil circle. Which is why, it seems to me, that the clerical closet has to end. Secrecy and shame abet sexual dysfunction. Openness and self-respect are the cure. If a priest is celibate and openly gay, he is in no way disqualified for the priesthood — the church teaches that being gay is in itself no sin — so why can’t he be out? The stricture against this kind of honesty and transparency has only compounded the fucked-upness of it all. Allowing married people and women to be priests is also a no-brainer. We have long discovered that secretive, hierarchical cabals of single men are usually trouble in any context and I have a feeling that a female priest would not react to the news of an abused child with concern for the abuser. The church’s moral credibility is now close to zero. All the more reason to throw open the doors and let the light in. […] Andrew Sullivan writer at The Atlantic

One State down Forty-nine to go. All of this must come to light. All of it must be dealt with. These victims break my heart. It sickens me inside to see what a vile fashion these degenerates treated those who were taught to trust them the most. Particularly unsettling are stories of children who came forward only to be disbelieved and then beaten in their homes by their parents. How could anyone endure such an existence. For each assault, and each blow, justice must come. Both putative justice and a justice that forbids and prevents anything such as this from ever happening again. Anywhere. […]

All that time, I had nothing but enormous respect for the clergy. The whole Boston sex scandal was like a giant tidal wave. This is another, and it feels as if the entire Church is made of sand now. It’s not just the horror of the crimes, but the horror of the covering up and covering for these wicked predators.

While I’ve been a “bad Catholic” in terms of neve “getting” much of the catechism, I’ve always loved the Church, nonetheless. This feels almost like a divorce some how.

All we can really do, I suppose, is just use this as a painful teaching that even the Church is worldly, and not to confuse it with God himself. And in humility, just ask God to fill us and use us in this brief life. […]