Earlier this year the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, said he dealt with issues of child sex abuse on a daily basis and he anticipated that more "bad stories" would emerge. He said: "I would love to say there weren’t, but I expect there are." He told the BBC that it was "becoming clearer and clearer that for many, many years things were not dealt with as they should [have been].” Well, he has one consolation: the issue will not be clouded and confused, as it has been in the Catholic Church for years, by the non-issue of the marital status of the clergy involved. Most of them are married. In Australia, a report by something called the Truth, Justice and Healing Council (groan) has found (as in the Church of England) that “some [Catholic] Church institutions and their leaders turned a blind eye to what was going on for years”. The “Council” gave a possible reason for its clergy’s aberrant behaviour: they weren’t simply doing something inherently bad and sinful (and for which there is NO CONCEIVABLE EXCUSE): they were under a particular pressure. Guess what?
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Clerical child sex abuse has nothing whatever to do with celibacy
It’s just as bad in the Church of England, and worse in society at large
William Oddie

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