Everyone else does it?

Like Greta Christina, I was furious at this clueless "everyone else does it" defense of child abuse by Catholic priests, but she explains why better than I could:

Brown's analysis of the child rape statistics are appallingly ignorant, both of statistics in general and of these statistics in particular. There is every reason to think that child rape among Catholic priests occurred -- and for all we know, is still occurring -- at a much higher rate than in any other field where adults have access to children and authority over them.

But as far as I'm concerned, that question is only tangentially relevant. And for Brown to focus on it so fixatedly shows that he is completely missing the point.

What makes the Catholic Church child rape scandal so morally repugnant, and what is making it have the effect of turning people away from the Catholic Church, is not the rapes themselves. Of course the rapes themselves are morally repugnant. And of course we need to be looking at whether there is some institutional force that makes Catholic priests more likely to rape children than other people in positions of trust and authority: such as the celibacy requirement for the priesthood, or the Church's fear and loathing of sexuality as a central part of their theology, or the special power that priests have because they purport to have a special line to God, or religion's veneration and armor against criticism which makes people less comfortable making accusations against it. (Indeed, it's fair to look at whether it's even true that Catholic priests rape children at a higher rate than other trusted authority figures.) But it is certainly the case that child rape does occur in other fields where adults are in positions of trust and authority with children: teachers, coaches, etc. Brown's not wrong about that.

That is not where the depth of the scandal lies. What makes the Catholic child rape scandal so morally repugnant, and what is giving it the effect of turning people away from the Catholic Church in horror, is the way the Church handled it.

The Church knew about widespread reports of priests repeatedly molesting children... and instead of acting to protect the children, they acted to protect the priests, and themselves. Thus deliberately and knowingly putting more children in the way of known child rapists, solely for their pure self-interest.

Repeatedly. Time and time again. In every part of the world. As a cold-blooded matter of Church policy.

That is the scandal.

As I noted earlier, the cover-up involved threatening children with excommunication for reporting the rape, while considering child rape itself as a lesser offense. Apparently, the church still doesn't understand how very wrong this is.