Himself - Theologean:
The bishops have known that bishops, priests, and deacons have been sexually abusing children since the fourth century, and it's been a severe major, major problem, and they've never really been able to curb it. Basically, you have a sexualized priesthood, it's been sexualized for years, that looks at child sexual abuse no different than it does if you're having sex with a woman. Because it's all a violation of clerical celibacy.
Herself - Psychologist:
If all sex by definition was bad sex because you weren't supposed to be having it, then pedophilia is just another kind of bad sex.
Thomas Doyle:
Canon lawyer & historian, Father Tom Doyle: There is no basis in the scriptures for mandatory celibacy. It's not mandated by Christ. It's not justified anywhere in the gospels or in the life and times and sayings of Christ. All 12 apostles were married, with probably the exception of John. The first several dozen popes were married and had children. It's something that the institutional Church leaders began to think about and tried to impose at least from the fourth century. Married priests, when they died, their inheritance went to their oldest son. And so the institutionalized Church leaders, desiring to stop this practice, began to mandate celibacy so that when a priest's property had to pass after he died it would go to the bishop or to the Church.
Herself - Psychologist:
What we have to remember is a lot of the priests who have been reported as offenders went into the seminary at a minor seminary at ages 14, 15, 16. They may have been thinking about a vocation even earlier. And so they got stopped. They got literally arrested in their psychosexual development.
Thomas Doyle:
Canon lawyer & historian, Father Tom Doyle: They're nurtured in an attitude of negativity toward relationships, toward women, toward marriage, and toward sexuality, and they never really fully understand what any of these are all about.
Herself - Psychologist:
And so when these men became unable to be celibate or when their sexual urges overpowered them, they sought out victims who they experienced at some level as psychosexual peers.
