"Because
That's Where the Young Boys Are"
by Gary
DeMar
(Originally appeared in May 2002 issue of Biblical
Worldview)
When
Willie Sutton was asked why he robbed banks, an enterprising journalist
put these words in the mouth of the reformed thief: “Because that’s
where the money is.” In his memoirs, Sutton confessed that he never
said the well-known and often repeated line. This didn’t stop him
from using it for the title of his book Where the Money Was: The
Memoirs of a Bank Robber (1976). Sutton’s real answer was
even more enlightening: “Why did I rob banks? Because I enjoyed
it. I was more alive when I was inside a bank, robbing it, than at any
other time in my life. . . . To me the money was the chips, that’s
all.”
The Catholic Church is being heavily criticized for its “sex scandal,” as
it should be. In terms of percentages, however, less than two-percent
of priests are involved. The public schools have a higher percentage
of teachers who use sex as a tool for exploitation and pleasure,1 and
this says nothing about the easy access of drugs, reports of rape, sexual
liaisons in the classroom, counterfeiting,2 stabbings,
and murder that are almost a daily occurrence. It’s the Catholic
church’s failure to act swiftly and decisively on the matter that
has disillusioned and enraged church members. No one likes a cover-up,
especially religious devotees who believe the church is a means of salvation.
The Church must also come to grips with reality and admit
to itself that some priests, like the population in general, like to have
sex with other men. “Some church experts estimate that 20% to 50%
of the current 45,000 U.S. priests are homosexual.”3 The
priesthood is so dominated by homosexuals that Paul Wilkes, who studied
600 parishes for his book Excellent Catholic Parishes: A Guide to
Best Places and Practices, makes this telling observation, “If
we drove all the gay priests out of the priesthood, our Masses would
be on videotape.”4 What a
startling admission. The Church has made it easy for homosexuals to enter
the chicken coop. The homosexual-dominated non-denominational Metropolitan
Community Church (MCC) is a lesson in sexual political reality. “Two sociologists
who studied MCC in its formative years found magazines with ads for sex
next to devotional literature. One congregation member referred to its
youth ministry as ‘the Chicken Coop’ because it attracted
predatory older men, ‘chicken hawks.’”5 No
one criticizes a homosexual church for preying on adolescents.
I find it interesting that all the sexual abuse cases are done exclusively
by pedophiles, seemingly a heterosexual malady. Are we to believe that
not one case of sexual misconduct can be attributed to a single homosexual
priest? There are anywhere from 8,000 to 22,000 homosexual priests.
If the priesthood is made up of such a high percentage of homosexuals,
then it stands to reason that at least a high percentage of the church’s
so-called pedophile problem is really a homosexual problem. Since “homosexual
rights” is today’s badge of enlightenment thinking, who in
his right mind would point out that homosexuality is one of the Catholic
Church’s numerous curses?
A Sexual Red Herring
The church’s unbiblical, illogical, and irrational policy that
priests must not marry and remain celibate is being blamed for the sexual
scandal. Such an argument is off the mark. Has anyone noticed that the
priests aren’t, in 95 percent of reported cases, having sex with
teenage girls? The male priests are having sex with young male parishioners.
The problem of sex abuse is not because of celibacy; it’s homosexuality.
Homosexual men are becoming priests because that’s where young,
impressionable, and vulnerable boys are found. These men enjoy having
sex with boys in the same way that Willie Sutton enjoyed robbing banks.
Most adult homosexuals were first lured into the homosexual lifestyle
by men when they were boys. But who can say this in today’s ethically
paranoid society?
The Roman Catholic Church has had a difficult time recruiting men to
the priesthood. Homosexuals see this as an opportunity. Why not go where
there’s an almost unlimited supply of young men whose parents consider
priests to be god-like? Are we surprised that the Boy Scouts have also
become a target of homosexuals? Once again, it’s where boys can
be found for recruitment purposes. Liberals attack the Scouts for not
opening its leadership ranks to admitted homosexuals, while these same
critics attack the Catholic Church for giving homosexuals (“pedophiles”)
easy access to children of the same age. Of course, this says nothing
about the hypocrisy of the liberal establishment’s blind-eye to
the sexual misconduct of Bill Clinton. In an interview with Peter Jennings
prior to the airing of his ABC News Special Report on April 3, “Forgive
Us, Father, for We Have Sinned,” Jennings made told WABC Radio’s
John Gambling, “There are priests in many parts of the country
accused of sexual abuse who are still on the job.” When in 1988
Bill Clinton was accused of raping Juanita Broddrick, Jennings remained
strangely silent. During the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal, Jennings made
the following comments:
“This week there is no doubt that his administration has been
badly shaken by these stories of sex and cover-up,” he told his
audience. “Are they true? You heard [Clinton]. He says no.
And one of the things we must ask tonight is whether there has been
a rush to judgment. ...”
A little later in the same broadcast, Jennings cautioned, “This
may be about morals, this may be about ethics, this may be about
a great many serious legal questions, but this is certainly about
politics.”
By the way, Clinton kept his job through all the accusations and charges.
How to Take Over a Church
Don’t think it’s just the Catholics who have a homosexual
problem among their clergy. It just so happens that the Catholic Church
is the biggest and most despised target of liberals. I’m sure it
goes on among Protestant and Jewish clergy as well. Give the anti-Christians
time to get around to the others. The strategy for infiltration, demolition,
and eventual takeover is clearly in sight.
Legitimize the Perverse
The first step in the process of infiltrating the Catholic
Church was to “define deviancy down” by using the public
schools and the entertainment industry to indoctrinate young boys and
girls to believe the myth that homosexuality is a legitimate sexual
choice. Remove the taboo and the stigma of sodomy by an appeal to tolerance,
choice, and diversity, and the game is nearly won. This is being done
at a rapid pace. Homosexual propaganda pieces like It’s Elementary and That’s
a Family! have been specifically designed to desensitize children
to the abnormal nature of sodomy. Helen Cohen, the producer of That’s
a Family!, is unapologetic about her goal: “Now that we have
this [film], we have an incredible opportunity to reach millions of children
in this country through schools and community service organizations,
family service organizations, and many, many other venues.”6 For
an even more shocking propaganda push, see the article that appeared
in the Boston Globe and Massachusetts News that describes
a March 25, 2000, workshop sponsored by the Massachusetts Department
of Education that was held at Tufts University in which homosexuality—the
least of the perversions promoted at the conference—was depicted
as normal. The target audience? Teenagers. “One could see children
as young as 12 or 13 at the conference participating and receiving ‘information’ and
materials.” At one point in the workshop, a teacher “informed
her adolescent students that it is okay if an older man approaches them
for sexual gratification.”7 The
Massachusetts Department of Education condones the very thing for which
these priests are being condemned!
Move into Positions of Authority
The second step was to move into professions that carried
with them almost unquestioned authority by its leaders. Who could ever
believe that a priest could do wrong? Catholics are taught that priests
and nuns are spiritually special and set apart for God’s work. I can still
remember sitting in my fifth grade class at St. Germaine’s Catholic
School in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, when Father Hugo would enter the
class. Sister Mary Josephine would always ask, “Who wants to be
a priest when he grows up?” Only one boy, my best friend at the
time, Salvatore LaMarca, refused to raise his hand. Of course we wanted
to be a priest. Being a priest was a one-way ticket to heaven. It was
like getting a “Get out of Hell Free” card.
Devout families—and predator priests frequently chose their victims
from the most ardent parishioners—had been taught for generations
to exalt, respect and trust priests. Who could imagine dear Father Tim—who
came to dinner, played with the kids, counseled mom, acted like a dad—would
do something so sinful? Doubting the priest would cost you your spiritual
security.8
It’s no accident that early Hollywood designated the priest as
the most trusted of film characters. Spencer Tracy, Bing Crosby, and
Pat O’Brien made their careers with movies like Angels with
Dirty Faces, Boys Town, The Men of Boys Town, Going
My Way, and The Bells of St. Mary’s. Every parish
dreamed of having a Father Flanagan for its priest or a priest who just
looked like Pat O’Brien. Notice that almost in every case the priest
was a friend and confidant to young boys. It came with the territory.
Parents always knew their children were safe with a priest.
Film-making in the early years was nearly dominated by Jews, as Neal
Gabler describes in his highly informative book An Empire of Their
Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood. Even so, Catholic clergy were
almost universally depicted as decent and caring spiritual leaders. Louis
B. Mayer “was a close friend and a great admirer of New York’s
Cardinal Spellman, with whom he dined every time he visited New York,
and a large portrait of Spellman in his red vestments was the first sight
that greeted visitors to Mayer’s library.”9 It
was the church’s “respectability” that impressed Mayer. “If
a character appeared on screen wearing a clerical collar it served as
a sure sign that the audience was supposed to like him.”10 Thanks
to the new Hollywood, clergymen of all kinds have fallen on hard times. “Whenever
someone turns up in a contemporary film with the title ‘Reverend,’ ‘Father,’ or ‘Rabbi’ in
front of his name you can count on the fact that he will turn out to
be corrupt or crazy—or probably both.”11
Capture the Robes12
The third step was to capture the Catholic seminaries and fill them
with pro-homosexual professors who would look the other way when reports
of homosexuality surfaced. As Toby Westerman reports, “A gay
culture is growing among clergy of the American Catholic Church that
receives support from members of the hierarchy as well as from those
directly involved in the training of priests, according to a Catholic
priest-theologian.”13 The
Vatican has found it nearly impossible to police its seminaries. Much
of the problem is a lack of will and fear of a backlash from an already
depleted clergy. It’s also happening in traditionally conservative
denominations. Orthodox Presbyterian minister Lee Irons and his wife
are promoting homosexual marriages. Do you think I’m kidding?
Get a look at this:
Since the church believes gay marriage is wrong for
religious reasons, it is in the church’s best interest to support
gay marriage for civil rights reasons.
Wasn’t sure you heard me the first time? Then
let me be absolutely clear: Conservative Christians should support
gay civil marriage.
Why? Because the question of whether to allow civil
same-sex marriage is a civil liberties question, and maintaining
a respect for people’s
civil liberties in this country is always to the church’s advantage.
In fact, it is absolutely essential for the church’s survival
in a pluralistic society.14
All types of behavior claim their rights based on “civil liberties,” abortion
and assisted suicide are just two examples. In fact, following the logic
of the above quotation, any appeal to any type of consensual behavior
based on “civil liberties” would be legally justified. Polygamy,
inter-family marriages (incest), and pedophilia could all come under
the big and undefined umbrella of “civil liberties.”
Set Out the Red Herrings
The fourth step has been to redirect the focus from a discussion of
homosexuality to pedophilia, a nearly universally despised predatory
behavior, although this is beginning to change.15 The
charge of pedophilia is being used as a smoke screen by homosexuals to
fly under the sexual radar. While the general public excoriates the pedophiles
among us, the homosexuals go merrily along debauching young men in the
name of sexual tolerance.
In the April 1, 2002 issue of U.S. News & World
Report,
homosexuality is mentioned only once in the eight-page article on the
Catholic sex crisis. Rev. Joel Garner, pastor of a Catholic church in
Albuquerque, New Mexico, is quick to point out in the article that “the
pedophilia problem has nothing to do with celibacy or homosexuality.”16 Throughout
the article, the sex scandal is called a “sex-abuse scandal,” “youth-sex-abuse,” “sexual
misconduct,” “predatory sexual behavior,” but never
a homosexual problem. Author Marianne Szegedy-Maszak, confuses the readers
of U.S. News even more (on purpose?) when she reports, “Despite
the common image of a priest sodomizing a 9-year-old altar boy, most
of the priest abusers are technically ‘ephebophiles’—that
is, they abuse adolescents rather than children.”17 In
any other dictionary, the description of an ephebophile would be a practicing
predatory homosexual.
The article begs the question. It’s not just “adolescents” who
the priests are abusing, it’s adolescent boys. If pedophilia
is the problem, then why aren’t the priests having sex with young
girls in the church? The church is covering up its crisis to save its
reputation, and it’s no less true that these reporters are covering
up for the homosexual rights movement. John Leo, an editorial writer
for U.S. News, touches on the real issue when he writes that
true pedophiles are rare, and the super majority of the priests involved
in this sex crisis are not pedophiles. “But the church is reluctant
to mention the distinction,” Leo writes, “most likely because
opening up the issue of sexually active gay priests is itself explosive,
even apart from charges of abuse.”18
Charles Fiore, a Catholic priest for more than forty years, with degrees
in philosophy and theology, as well as clinical training at the Menninger
Clinic and the State Hospital in Topeka, Kansas, has been fighting
the infiltration of homosexuals into the priesthood almost since the
time of his ordination. The following comments, which appear as a part
of an interview in World Net Daily, tell the real story of the Catholic
Church’s “sex scandal”:
“The problem is not clerical pedophilia but homosexuality.” The
distinction is important, Fiore noted, because most victims of Catholic
clergy abuse are adolescents. “Strictly speaking,” Fiore
stated, “pedophilia is the sexual molestation of a pre-pubescent
child of either sex,” but the overriding problem is the abuse of
older children from 12 to 18. “More than 90 percent of the cases,” Fiore
observed, “involve the clerical molestation of teen-age young men.” In
reporting clerical abuse, “the grand taboo in U.S. culture is to
focus on homosexuality,” Fiore stated. “Pedophilia is done
only by an aberrant few,” but society “looks upon homosexuality
as an alternative way of life,” explained Fiore.
The homosexual lobby is so powerful and intimidating that almost no
one wants to suffer from its unbridled wrath. So for cover, the priests
are charged with pedophilia in order to hide the fact that homosexuality
is the real culprit.
Pedophiles are People Too
Why is pedophilia getting a bad rap? We’ve been brainwashed to
believe that homosexuality is innate and not learned behavior. Homosexuals
are pushing for the right to marry and adopt. Homosexuality, bisexuality,
and transgenderism are being taught in California schools as moral, normal,
and legal sexual practices so the stigma of abnormalcy will be removed.
Why can’t the same be true of pedophiles? In fact, “experts” in
the field of psychology are quick to tell us that there is no “cure” for
pedophilia. Maybe the reason there’s no cure is due to the fact
that people are just born that way. These pedophile priests are just
misunderstood. Pedophilia is not an abnormal sexual preference, rather,
it is, like homosexuality, a legitimate form of sexual expression based
on genetics. Some people are born heterosexual, some homosexual, transgendered,
some bisexual, and some pedosexual. Homosexuality had to shake off
the negative stigma attached to it by religionists, and pedosexuality
will have to do the same.
The Confession of Father X
Time’s article on the Church’s sexual scandal follows
a similar pattern of obscuring the facts. Some of the truth, however,
shines through in an article written by a former priest who was arrested
in the 1990s for child molestation. Now in his 60s, he must register
as a sex offender on his birthday each year for the rest of his life.
For obvious reasons, he goes by the pseudonym Father X. He describes
his normal upbringing, and then admits, “I think I knew I was homosexual,
on some level, but I would never really allow myself to say that about
myself.” While a priest, Father X was having sex with kids whose
ages ranged from 11 to 13. He had been charged with “one felony
charge of committing lewd and lascivious acts with a minor under the
age of 14 and one misdemeanor count of molesting a child.”19 He
didn’t consider himself to be a pedophile. He was a homosexual.
The way the law is written today, and the way homosexuals are pushing
their agenda and pressuring for legitimacy, once a boy turns 16, it’s
not called pedophilia anymore. If a boy wants to have sex with anyone,
there are no legal prohibitions. America’s tolerance of the homosexual
lifestyle has put all children at risk. Hopefully some brave souls will
finally come out and call what is going on in the Catholic Church by
its real name: homosexuality masquerading as pedophilia. This truthful
admission might be the very thing this nation needs to put the sodomites
back in the closet.
Notes
1. Chris Reinolds, “Student
testifies teacher chats led to ‘sexual stuff,’” Atlanta
Journal-Constitution (April 25, 2002), C1.
2. Four Marietta (Georgia)
High School students were accused of passing counterfeit money
at their school. David Burch and Jeffrey Widmer, “4 teens
charged in counterfeit money scheme,” Marietta Daily Journal (April 25, 2002), 1A.
3. Cathy Lynn Grossman, “Hot
under the collar: Gay Catholics angry, say they’ve been singled
out,” USA Today (April 25, 2002), 9D.These numbers are
confirmed in Jason Berry, Lead Us Not Into Temptation: Catholic Priests
and the Sexual Abuse of Children (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 188.
4. Grossman, “Hot under the
collar,” 9D.
5. Berry, Lead Us Not Into Temptation,
198.
6. Quoted by Beverly LaHaye, “Dear
Friend” letter, Concerned Women of America (March 2002), 1.
7. Brian Camenker and Scott
Whiteman, “Kids
Get Graphic Instruction in Homosexual Sex,” The Massachusetts
News (June 200).
8. Johanna McGeary, “Can
the Church Be Saved?,”Time (April 1, 2002), 31.
9. Neal Gabler, An Empire of Their
Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood (New York: Crown Publishers,
1988), 285.
10. Michael Medved, Hollywood
VS. America: Popular Culture and the War on Traditional Values (Grand
Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1992), 51. Roman Catholic and Episcopalian clergymen
(e.g., Life with Father and The Bishop’s Wife)
were most often chosen to represent the church because they were easily
identified because of their clerical garb, most specifically a special
collar. Most Protestant clergymen wear no special attire. They generally
look like businessmen.
11. Medved, Hollywood VS. America,
52, see pages 52–69.
12. Robes are symbols of authority.
Traditionally, three groups are distinguished by robes: judges, university
professors (Goodbye, Mr Chips), ordained ministers. See Gary
North, “Capturing the Robes,” Backward Christian Soldiers? (Tyler,
TX: Institute for Christian Economics, 1984), 59–66.
13. Toby Westerman, “Suffer
the Children: ‘Gay’ culture in Catholic Church grows Priest
says scandal really about homosexuality, not pedophilia,” World
Net Daily (March 24, 2002).
14. Misty Irons, “A Conservative
Christian Case for Civil Same-Sex Marriage” can be found at http://www.musingson.com/ccCase.html.
Please note that the author’s name and her association with the
Orthodox Presbyterian Church have been removed. For additional information
on this scandalous article, go to her husband's page at http://www.upper-register.com/irons_trial.html
15. Judith Levine, Harmful to
Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children From Sex (Minneapolis,
MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2002).
16. Angie Cannon and Jeffery
L. Sheler, “Catholics in Crisis,” U.S. News & World
Report (April 1, 2002), 57.
17. Marianne Szegedy-Maszak, "Chastity and lust: Is there a psychological link between sexuality,
celibacy, and predation?," 55.
18. John Leo, “Of rage and
revolution,” 12.
19. “The Confession
of Father X,” Time (April 1, 2002), 34.
Gary DeMar is president of American Vision and the author of more than 20 books. His latest is Myths, Lies, and Half Truths.
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