prone to suggestion

By Diogenes ( articles ) | Mar 01, 2004

Two years ago a physician from the Washington area sent me an article published in a "special interest" magazine called The Advocate (July 23, 2002) . The essay, by one Mubarak Dahir, is titled "The Dangerous Lives of Gay Priests," and contains an instructive paragraph concerning the June 2002 USCCB meeting in Dallas. Interesting at the time, it has a new currency on light of the findings of the National Review Board:

"It [the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People] was almost anticlimactic for those of us expecting the gay issue to be a big battle," says Bill Mochon, an openly gay Los Angeles psychologist who has counseled priests accused of abusing minors. Mochon attended the bishops' conference as part of a panel of psychologists and psychiatrists. "Our job was to educate the bishops on the psychology of sexual abuse," he says. The fact that gay priests were not singled out in the adopted statement, says Mochon, "is a clear indication that the bishops finally got the message that sexual orientation is not an element of sexual abuse. Clinical studies prove time and again that being gay is not related to sexual abuse." Mochon says he believes this is "the end of the association between sexual abuse and gay priests for the bishops."

And you thought the bishops were poor listeners.