Similarly, most Americans have absolutely no idea the role that homosexual networks within the Catholic clergy, and rooted in seminaries, played in the sex abuse scandal. If you read the works of the late sociologist Richard Sipe, a former monk who had become the foremost expert in the sexual habits of the Catholic clergy, you will get a much clearer picture than you could ever hope to from the US media. Sipe was very liberal, but he was also a man of integrity who was more faithful to the truth than to ideology.
In 2002, Sipe told me on the record, as a journalist, that gay men should not be admitted to the priesthood, at least not then, not because they weren’t capable of being good priests, but because the predatory homosexual networks were so deep and extensive in the priesthood at the time, that a same-sex attracted man would face constant pressure to have sex. If he slipped up, even once, he was compromised, and against his will would be dragged into this corrupt system. It was certainly not the case that all, or even most, sexually active gay priests were abusers. That’s not how it worked, Sipe explained. The abusers were covered up for by the others because they were all breaking their vows of celibacy, and were bound together by an unspoken vow of silence. You may never feel tempted to have sex with a minor, but your liberty to have sex with other adult men depended in part on your willingness to keep the secrets of fellow gay priests who slept with teenage boys.
I have no idea to what extent that rotten system still exists. I can well imagine a lot of it has been cleaned up. Still, did you ever read any of that in the mainstream media at the time? Of course you didn’t. In conversation with me in 2003 about what frustrated us about our own Catholic tribe, regarding reporting on the scandal, a liberal Catholic reporter in 2003 complained to me that an honest look at the role of homosexual clerical networks in the scandal was absolutely taboo. (I told him that my conservative side was strongly reticent to consider the role that priestly celibacy may have played in producing the crisis; it was not that celibacy makes you want to molest kids, but rather the kind of clerical culture that the celibacy requirement creates.)
Leadingchurch.com 