The relentless repetition of how many Catholic priests are involved in scandals needs some balance. This excerpt is from an article that appeared in PhillyNews, today:
“‘In 1988 alone, the Department of Justice estimated that 103,600 children had been sexually abused in their schools,’ she says. That figure trumps by tenfold the number of children estimated to have been abused by U.S. Catholic priests over five decades.”
Read that sentence again, and see if truth doesn’t cry out from the cross on which it’s continually crucified.
Remember the headlines you’ve seen about Catholic priests. Then, remember that, in the past fifty years, ten thousand children may have been abused by a handful of rogue priests. That’s a rate of 200/year. Compare that 200 abused children to the hundred thousand children abused in just one year by teachers, mostly in the public schools. Teachers are 500 times more likely to abuse children than priests.
Since the rate of abuse is five hundred times greater in the schools than in The Church, why aren’t there five hundred times more headlines about abuse by school personnel? Why aren’t media newsreaders providing us with 500 times more accounts of teacher-abused children?
Obviously, those in the culture of death are vastly more interested in attacking The Church than in telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. But, selective news helps us see who’s on which side.
The article continues: “Some of the cases (of student abuse by teachers have been horrific. . . . .Jeremy Bell, a West Virginia boy who was sexually abused and then murdered in 1997 by his school principal, Edgar Friedrichs, a former Prospect Park, Delaware County, principal who silently slithered to West Virginia after being accused of sexual misconduct here.”
Turns out that the public schools hide their abusers and let them transfer to other districts. It’s so bad that most child-abusing teachers have abused children in three different districts before being caught and charged.
Child abuse is a terrible thing. By hiding the fact that the biggest numbers of abusers are in the public schools, while relentlessly focusing on the tiny numbers of children abused by a handful of bad priests, more children end up being abused. That, of course, is what the other side wants. Otherwise, they’d include in the “news” that teachers are 500 times more likely to be child abusers than priests.
Some love their neighbors and truth. Others hate both. There’s one good thing about selective news. It helps us see how badly many people lie. Realizing how horribly the culture of death twists truth brings many to a greater love of God.
