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Figured it was some kind of online prank at first: A $1.8 million study by the highly respected John Jay College of Criminal Justice concludes that the sexual revolution of the Sixties and Seventies is to blame for Roman Catholic priests diddling altar boys and other assorted youth under their “protection.”
Sexual abuse by the men in black is an “historical problem” that has “no significant correlation with celibacy or homosexuality,” the study says. Rather, the clergy were — get this — swept up in a tide of socially acceptable “deviant” behavior. Billion-year-old carbon, caught in the devil’s bargain.
That’s right, all you former flower children, with your free love and free sex, with your bra burnings and bed-ins. From your seed, these weeds bloomed in the sacristy of history.
Sheesh. Why not blame it on the Bossa Nova?
Jerry DeMarco Publisher/Editor
Blame it on Rio.
Better yet: Blame it on Cain.
What’s next? Blaming the brown acid for Watergate?
(Inside joke: Of course, now I can’t get the first line of Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock” out of my head. I don’t think this is what she meant when she wrote it.)
But wait. There’s more: The faddahs were under great stress, the report says.
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. I hear those first few notes of the ‘Star-Spangled Banner’ and I don’t know. I just gotta stick my hand in some kid’s pants.”
I swear, this makes the burning bush, the parted sea and Lazarus’s actual-death experience seem like parlor tricks. Knocks the Sperminator right off the front page.
Any report that first hits you with the “complex interaction of factors” excuse is guaranteed to come to no good end. And once this baby gets into “social turmoil” turning priests “who had some vulnerabilities” into a horde of Uncle Ernies, as they fiddled about, well… I’m already feeling the phlegm rise.
Tens of thousands of innocent, terrified youngsters — stardust, golden — were raped and abused. And this is what a scholarly review of altar eros produces?
Celibacy? Homosexuality? Nah. Nothin’ to do with it.
In fact, the report claims, reports of sexual abuse by priests began flagging as gay priests “in noticeable numbers” were being frocked from the late 1970s through the 1980s.
You know what they say: There’s always a little bit of heaven in a disaster area.
On top of that, our criminal justice experts contend that the Church couldn’t have possibly had any inkling that such behavior was possible, given that these disgusting, loathsome molesters had no particular “psychological characteristics,” “developmental histories” or mood disorders that would identify them as disgusting, loathsome molesters.
Gotta hand it to the Catholic Church (no pun intended). Those guys must’ve said 666 thousand novenas, cause their prayers were certainly answered. Talk about getting by with a little help from your friends.
Think about it: Put it on the gays, and they got a big problem. Blame celibacy, and they may as well turn Vatican City into Splash Mountain. Hordes of single men would have to find real jobs.
Still …. Just when you thought this horrible joke had hit rock bottom, it turns into “The Aristocrats”:
The esteemed researchers also found that fewer than 5 percent of abusive priests exhibited genuine traits of pedophilia, which they defined as a “psychiatric disorder that is characterized by recurrent fantasies, urges and behaviors about prepubescent children.
“Thus, it is inaccurate to refer to abusers as ‘pedophile priests,’ ” the report says.
Oh, yeah. What shall we call them then?
This is not to demean the Church entirely — not with all of the good works it has done through the millennia. But many of us (c’mon: admit it) thought that the resistance to coming clean might finally be over.
Maybe it’s just the time of year. Or maybe it’s the time of man.
Y’know what I think? The world isn’t coming to an end in a couple days. Sanity is.
With apologies to Country Joe:
Gimme a “W.”
Gimme a “T.”
Gimme an “F.”
What’s that spell?
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