(Chicago Sun Times): The three companies that insure the majority of Protestant churches in America say they typically receive upward of 260 reports each year of young people under 18 being sexually abused by clergy, church staff, volunteers or congregation members.
The figures offer a glimpse into what has long been an extremely difficult phenomenon to pin down -- the frequency of sex abuse in Protestant congregations.
Religious groups and victims' supporters have been interested in the figure ever since the Roman Catholic sex abuse crisis hit five years ago. The church has revealed that there have been 13,000 credible accusations against Catholic clerics since 1950 -- 228 a year...
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THE CATHOLIC KNIGHT: There you have it folks. Annual sex-abuse in the Catholic Church = average of 228 cases a year. Annual sex-abuse in Protestant churches = average of 260 cases a year. Protestants got Catholics beat by an average of 32 reported cases a year.
"Protestants Beat Catholics in Sexual Abuse of Minors"
But you won't read that headline in the New York Times -- not tomorrow, not the next day, not ever. Now the purpose of posting this story is not to gloat. The difference between Catholics and Protestants on this issue is only an average of 32 reported cases a year. When you consider that both groups average over 200 cases a year, that's nothing to be proud of. It's a tragedy! And the difference between the two groups is just a drop in the bucket.
However, Protestants can breath a sigh of relief, because they are not the target of my rant today. I have no intention of maligning my Protestant brothers and sisters in Christ over this matter. Not only for the sake of Christian charity, but also for the fact that those who live in glass houses should not throw stones. Anyone who would use this kind of data to slander an entire religion is a scoundrel to say the least. Which brings me to the target of my rant -- the mainstream media.
In 2002 evidence of widespread sexual-abuse surfaced in the Catholic Church. To make matters worse, evidence suggested that a cover-up was going on in some large US Catholic diocese. The problem was large. But just how large? As the news broke, the numbers started to pour in. What was found as that over the last 50 years, some 3% of US Catholic clergy were in some way involved in sexual-abuse and cover-up. However, those same statistics revealed that 97% of US Catholic clergy were NOT involved in it. So out of 100 Catholic clergy, 3 were abusers, and the other 97 were not. But did we hear this on the news? No we didn't. Instead we were treated to hours upon hours of generalizations, vague associations, and grandiose speculations. This happened in the print media, the radio media, and especially in the television media. Real numbers and statistics were never given. The problem was not once put into proportion. Instead it was hyped, to the point were it looked like virtually all Catholic clergy were involved in it. By the time it was all over, many Catholic priests in this country were afraid to wear their clerical collars in public, due to the excessive pointing and whispering. Some priests were threatened with bodily harm. So for a couple years anyway, the clerical collar virtually disappeared from America, as priests tried to discretely hide who they were while in public. This in spite of the fact that 97% of priests did absolutely nothing wrong. All of this I attribute to the mainstream media, which recklessly and intentionally, tried to bring down America's largest religious institution.
Now we have the same problem in Protestant churches, but what does the media say -- virtually nothing. I doubt CNN will be doing a week long special on the "Sexual Crisis in Protestant Churches," as we were treated to similar titles during 2002. I doubt you'll see televised trials of sexually abusive Protestant ministers, as we were treated to when former Catholic priests took the stand.
What I'm pointing out here is an inconsistency. I'm pointing out an omission, which by itself, reveals far more than any kind of persistent smear campaign. The fact that the mainstream media went wild on Catholic sex-abuse, but virtually ignores a greater incidence of Protestant sex-abuse, proves one thing beyond the shadow of a doubt. The mainstream media is not really all that interested in tawdry sex-scandals involving minors. No, that's just the bait to get you watching and listening to them. What they're really interested in is an agenda, and that agenda involves deconstructing organized religion in America entirely. To do this you must first deconstruct, slander and destroy the largest Church in the United States. That would be the Roman Catholic Church. Once the "big boy" Church (Catholicism) is knocked down, the rest of the "little boy" churches (Protestantism) will scatter to the wind. If it was really about the sex and the ratings, the mainstream news media would be all over this Protestant sex-abuse story. But they're not that interested in it. They pound the Catholic Church over and over again, but then they virtually ignore Protestant churches with the same problem. Why? Because if you just take down one Protestant denomination, it won't effect much. Other denominations will step in where the first once stood. But if you can manage to take down the Catholic Church, the largest organized religion in America, it will send shock waves throughout all of American Christianity. That's what they want.
The mainstream media isn't going to waste much of their time on sex-abuse stories that don't further their insidious agenda. Though sexual abuse of minors is far more prominent in public schools than any church, we won't see much reporting on this sweeping crisis. Instead the media will focus in an a few anomalies here and there. They'll report about the pretty teacher who sleeps with teenage boys, with the focus of their story centering not on her perversion, but on "how complicated these things are." Meanwhile sex-abuse of minors runs rampant in our public schools, mostly by teachers not so pretty as those featured on television, as much of it is covered up by school administrators, abusive teachers are transferred, and families of victims are bought off in legal settlements. (Your tax dollars hard at work there.)
The moral to this story is this. Sexual abuse of minors is not a "church problem." It's not a "religion problem," and it's certainly not a "Catholic problem." Sexual abuse of minors is a SOCIETY PROBLEM -- it's our society that's the problem! When you have a society problem, it effects all the institutions of that society, including schools and churches. Our society is a decadent society fixated on sex. Our kids are bombarded with sexual images in advertising, television, magazines, and the Internet. Our clothing and fashion trends reflects the attitudes of an over-sexed people -- less is more and tighter is better. Everywhere we turn we see sex -- more and more of it. In the United States, pornography is a protected industry. Couples are paid high dollar to engage in sexual activities while on camera, and somehow that's NOT considered prostitution? Couples living together, without marriage, is the status quo. While homosexuality is considered "normal." Children are "educated" in how to use a condom in public schools. Abortion of unwanted pregnancy (a consequence of reckless sexuality) is a sacrosanct "right" guaranteed by our nation's Supreme Court. Gay men kiss in public, and this is socially allowed. Straight couples make out in the parks -- and that is considered okay. And somehow in the midst of all this sexual PERVERSION, we are surprised when a small segment of our society goes off the deep end and turns into sexual predators? Somehow, after we've allowed perversion after perversion to take place, we are shocked when the perverts we helped create turn on our children? Oh, but rather than blame our own lax attitudes, and the permissive behavior of our society, we instead look for the scapegoat, somebody else to blame. So when the sexual perversion of our society finally hits the Church, we blame the Church, rather than our society. At least that's what the media would like us to do. They play on our refusal to take responsibility for ourselves. They report the sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, as if the Catholic Church invented sexual abuse! They blame the priests and the bishops, even though only 3% were responsible, and cast a shadow of suspicion over the whole Catholic religion. The public buys into it, because it's easier to blame a Church than to blame ourselves. But I submit to you that the media's real agenda is to discredit organized religion in general, and that means the Catholic Church simply must be taken down. Why? Why would they want to do this? I think the reason becomes self-explanatory when you look at statistics of those running the mainstream media. They are nearly 80% Liberal. Most of them are Secular Humanists? And a majority of them don't believe in organized religion. Enough said.
