Religion
In reply to the discussion: Catholic Priest rapes another child. When are people going to stop supporting this church? [View all]Bradical79
(4,490 posts)It's the suggestion that celibacy leads to pedophilia that needs backed up here.
I think it's more reasonable to assume that these guys were pedophiles to begin with and surrounding themselves with young boys was either too big of a temptation for someone with their mental sickness (or a more sinister motivation could be that they purposefully did this to gain access to young boys on a regular basis). Anyway, pedophilia seems to be either something inborn or biological or the result of psychological damage early in life, so it's doubtful that the vow of celibacy has anything to do with whether or not a pedophile is going to rape a child.
Not a scientific paper, but a nice brief summary of the sickness:
http://www.minddisorders.com/Ob-Ps/Pedophilia.html#b