The following are excerpts from an article by Bill Donahue of the Catholic League. He was addressing the Pennsylvania Catholic clergy abuse issue, but the principles apply to the Catholic clergy at large.

Myth: Over 300 priests were found guilty of preying on youngsters in Pennsylvania.
Fact: No one was found guilty of anything. Yet that didn't stop CBS from saying "300 'predator priests' abused more than 1,000 children over a period of 70 years." These are all accusations, most of which were never verified by either the grand jury or the dioceses.

Myth: The report was warranted because of the on-going crisis in the Catholic Church.
Fact: There is no on-going crisis—it's a total myth. In fact, there is no institution, private or public, that has less of a problem with the sexual abuse of minors today than the Catholic Church.

Myth: The priests "raped" their victims.
Shapiro [PA Attorney General]said that "Church officials routinely and purposely described the abuse as horseplay and wrestling and inappropriate contact. It was none of those things." He said it was "rape." Similarly, the
New York Times quoted from the report saying that Church officials used such terms as "horseplay" and "inappropriate contact" as part of their "playbook for concealing the truth."
Fact: This is an obscene lie. Most of the alleged victims were not raped: they were groped or otherwise abused, but not penetrated, which is what the word "rape" means. This is not a defense—it is meant to set the record straight and debunk the worst case scenarios attributed to the offenders.
Furthermore, Church officials were not following a "playbook" for using terms such as "inappropriate contact"—they were following the lexicon established by the John Jay professors.

Myth: The abusive priests were pedophiles.
Fact: This is the greatest lie of them all, repeated non-stop by the media, and late-night talk TV hosts.
There have been two scandals related to the sexual abuse of minors in the Catholic Church. Scandal 1 involves the enabling bishops who covered it up. Scandal II involves the media cover-up of the role played by gay molesters.
Let me repeat what I have often said. Most gay priests are not molesters, but most of the molesters have been gay. Not to admit this—and this includes many bishops who are still living in a state of denial about it—means the problem will continue. Indeed, there are reports today about seminaries in Boston and Honduras that are disturbing.
How do I know that most of the problem is gay-driven? The data are indisputable.
The John Jay study found that 81 percent of the victims were male, 78 percent of whom were post-pubescent. Now if 100 percent of the victimizers are male, and most of the victims are post-pubescent males, that is a problem called homosexuality. There is no getting around it.
How many were pedophiles? Less than five percent. That is what the John Jay study found. Studies done in subsequent years—I have read them all—report approximately the same ratio. It's been a homosexual scandal all along.

Conclusion:
The guilty should pay, and the innocent should not. This is a pedestrian axiom that is being trashed today when it comes to assessing priestly misconduct, something the Pennsylvania grand jury report has contributed to mightily.
No amount of compassion for those who have been violated by priests should ever be done at the expense of telling the truth, no matter how unpopular it may sound. To do otherwise is cowardly, shameful, and unjust.
What is driving the current mania over this issue is not hard to figure out. I am a sociologist who has been dealing with this issue for a long time, having published articles about it in books and international journals.
Here is what's going on. There are many vicious critics of the Catholic Church who would like to weaken its moral authority, and will seize on any problem it has to discredit its voice. Why? They hate its teachings on sexuality, marriage, and the family.
These very same people delight in promoting a libertine culture, one which ironically was the very milieu that enticed some very sick priests and their seminarian supervisors to act out in the first place.
There is nothing wrong with Catholic teachings on this subject: If priests had followed their vows, and not their id, we would not have this problem. Those who refuse to use the brakes God gave them, straight or gay, should be shown the gate or never admitted in the first place.

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