Pedophilia and the Priests


April 2002

Friends,
The cascade of reports about pedophilia in the Roman Catholic priesthood was long overdue, since members of the Roman Catholic clergy have perpetrated and covered-up child molestation for decades, if not centuries. At long last the victims of this outrage, the Roman Catholic laymen and their children, are making reports and filing lawsuits against the church leaders – as well they should. But it is imperative to understand the causes of this widespread outrage.

First, the Roman Church does not recognize any authority outside itself – not even the Word of God. In fact, the Roman Catholic Church claims that it wrote the Bible, and that it is the sole determiner of its content and meaning. When any institution thus claims to be a law unto itself, accountable to no man, and not even to the Word of God, it will produce untold sins and atrocities. Pedophilia is a small portion of the outrageous acts committed by the Roman Church over the centuries.

Second, since it claims to be the sole legitimate interpreter of Scripture, the Roman Church has disobeyed the clear Biblical requirements for church leaders: that they be married, heterosexual, family men. First Timothy 3:2-5, in the Roman Catholic Douay-Rheims translation, reads as follows:

"It behoveth therefore a bishop to be blameless, the husband of one wife, sober, prudent, of good behavior, chaste, given to hospitality, a teacher, not given to wine, no striker, but modest, not quarrelsome, not covetous, but one that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all chastity. But if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?"

The Roman Catholic rejection of the Biblical blueprint for the Christian church has led to a culture of leadership in which homosexuality and pedophilia have been tolerated, condoned, covered-up, and encouraged. Marriage has been forbidden; celibacy enforced. This reversal of the Biblical requirements for church leaders is the cause of the widespread homosexuality and pedophilia of the Roman clergy. Unmarried, pedophile priests are acting out some implications of Rome's Antichristian theology. Until that theology is rejected, the outrageous practices of Roman priests will continue.

John Robbins
The Trinity Foundation
April 11, 2002

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