NCR Thread Today Mulls Over Abuse Crisis: Gays Remain the Problem No Matter What Any Study Proves to Contrary

So, in case you doubt the intent of a certain contingent of homophobic Catholics to keep alive the meme that the Catholic abuse crisis is all about gay priests abusing boys, regardless of the findings of the John Jay report and regardless of whether the topic of conversation is a priest sent to prison for producing pornographic pictures of little girls, I submit the conversation above. It's from the discussion thread following Dennis Coday's "Morning Briefing" column in National Catholic Reporter today. If you click on the picture, it should expand to make the dialogue readable.

Cestusdei begins the thread by stating that Pope Benedict wanted homosexuals banned from the seminaries to protect children. Bumblebee demurs, and Cestusdei then doubles down, stating,

The problem was that many homosexuals and liberal allies infiltrated the seminaries (see Goodbye Good Men). . . .  I am so glad that you support the ban on the ordination of homosexuals. That is why the number of new offenses is so low. 

Never mind that the John Jay study, the most extensive study of the abuse crisis in the American church to date, found precisely the opposite, as I noted this morning: it found that, in the words of Father James Martin, "the rise in the number of gay priests from the late 1970s onward actually corresponded with 'a decreased incidence of abuse—not an increased incidence of abuse.'" 

As Cestusdei tells Tim in the thread at the head of the posting, the John Jay Study had to say such things even though the evidence to the contrary is overwhelming. "We know better," Cestusdei says--better than the trained professional team of researchers with access to more data than the bishops (who are no slouches, many of them in the homophobia department) have made available to any other researchers.

Don't confuse us with the facts. We know better.

And when we intend to blame the gays, blame the gays we intend to do, no matter what any pope tells us about not judging those who are gay.

It's hard to find a more crystal-clear snapshot of that sickness of soul among some American Catholics about which I've been blogging in the past two days, isn't it?