Is Michael Wolff losing it?
Michael Wolff thinks priests get into the business to molest boys. I quote: “This was a driving motivation of priests joining the church: sex with boys.”
I’m not Catholic, and have no idea whether Wolff has any religious leanings. But it’s ‘read less know less’ to say the entire Catholic priesthood is a man-boy love society. It’s like Glenn Beck suggesting the ’social justice’ movement is the same as Communism and Facism (all those far right-wingers look alike, especially when they’re disguised as liberal churchgoers. Or Mormons).
First result on a simple search for statistics about homosexual priests collects a number of references to surveys and thumbnail estimates of the number of gay priests. The highest number suggested credibly is 50 percent. Another references 3,000 pederasty cases, a terribly high number (not that anything higher than zero wouldn’t be terrible). But wait — it estimates twice that many priests are in adult relationships with homosexuals, and four times as many are sleeping with adult women. That’s an awful lot of men acting out to disguise their real longings.
Wolff is a columnist and can’t be expected to temper himself. He’s too busy salivating over the stories breaking about European priest pederasty bringing down the pope. (I wonder what he’ll make of the news out of the Vienna Boys Choir.)
Let’s cry Wolff ourselves — he’s not really saying that only men who like boys become priests. He knows better than that, and knows we do, too. He’s saying all priests are gay, and all gay men want to sleep with boys.
Yeah, okay, I’m guilty both of a tired pun and twisting his words. Still, I wonder if Newser’s big enough for Wolff to get heat over his absurd generalization.