Pope blames the 70s for Pedophilia

Originally posted by 753
The thing is that paedophiles might be overrepresented in the church, either because they joined for the oportunities or because of their feelings of guilt, as an atempt to control their own urges or a belief that a religious life would help them transcend them or whatever. but yeah, celibacy isnt the root cause of it.

I was looking for stats on this earlier, but couldn't find anything (as speculative as they would be anyways). do you just assume the overrepresentation? or have you seen something on it?

further, we are ignoring the power/authority aspect of the priest/clergy relationship. those sort of social contextual positions can impact behavior in huge ways

Haven't seen anything solid on it, I think they might be overrepresented in the church because reports about it are more abundant in the media than for any other institution or profession. This may simply be a product of the media giving more atention to molestation within the church because it causes a bigger impact. Then again, I suspect medical professionals, social workers, school teachers, etc. would cause an equal or bigger uproar and we don't see nearly as much reporting on abuses in these fields, even though people in them have equal or greater access to children in situations in which they are implicitly trusted by both the children and their parents.