Well well, so the church has found some educated idiots at John Jay College of Criminal Justice to come up with the loony Woodstock excuse. It makes more sense to blame the sex abuse of altar boys on the mothers who gave birth to the church’s pedophile priests.
‘BLAME WOODSTOCK’: BISHOPS CITE 60S TURMOIL FOR ROMAN CATHOLIC SEX ABUSE SCANDAL
Mail Online
May 18, 2011
Neither the all-male celibate priesthood nor homosexuality caused the Roman Catholic Church’s sexual abuse crisis, according to a five-year study commissioned by bishops from the faith.
It says the abuse occurred because priests who were poorly prepared and stressed landed amid the social and sexual turmoil of the 1960s and 70s, The New York Times reported yesterday.
The ‘blame Woodstock’ explanation has been floated by bishops for years but the study was likely to be regarded as the most authoritative analysis of the scandal in the Catholic Church in America, the paper reported.
Widespread abuse scandals involving Roman Catholic priests in Boston has led to the U.S. church making settlements totalling some $3billion (£1.8billion).
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops planned to release today the report by researchers at New York's John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
The researchers concluded that it was not possible for the Church, or for anyone, to identify abusive priests in advance, according to the newspaper, which obtained an advance copy of the report.
The study concluded that many more boys than girls were victimized, not because the perpetrators were gay, but simply because the priests had more access to boys than to girls, the newspaper reported.
The Vatican has for years been struggling to control the damage that sexual abuse scandals in the U.S. and several European countries have done to the Church's image.
On Monday, the Vatican told bishops around the world that they must make it a global priority to root out sexual abuse of children by priests.
The Roman Catholic Church said in a letter that bishops should cooperate with civil authorities to end the abuse.
The clergy sex abuse scandal first erupted in the United States back in 1985 when Louisiana priest Gilbert Gauthe pleaded guilty to the molestation of young boys.
It reached a crisis point after former Massachusetts priest John Geoghan was accused of sexual abuse involving 130 boys.
He was defrocked in 1998 and sent to jail for ten years in 2002 for indecent assault and battery.
He was later murdered in his cell by a fellow inmate.
The Geoghan scandal led to the resignation of Boston's archbishop, Cardinal Bernard Francis Law, and the direct intervention of the Vatican, which printed guidelines on dealing with pedophile clergy and stated that Rome would oversee all future cases.
The latest scandal in the U.S has seen the archbishop of Philadelphia, Cardinal Justin Rigali, suspend 21 priests accused of sex abuse, following a two-year grand jury investigation.
The cardinal said he was 'truly sorry' for the harm done to the victims and community who suffer as a result of this 'great evil and crime'.
He added: 'I know for many people their trust in the Church has been shaken.
'I pray the efforts to address these cases of concern and to re-evaluate our way of handling allegations will help rebuild that trust in truth and justice.'
The jury's two-year investigation into priest abuse in the archdiocese resulted in charges against two priests, a former cleric and a Catholic school teacher of raping and assaulting young boys.
Protesters have been distributing leaflets about sexual assault outside the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul in Philadelphia.
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