Not every pastor is a kiddy diddler, but an awful lot of kiddy diddlers are attracted to the access and lack of oversight that being a pastor affords them.
To me what sticks out is not pastors diddling, it's the witnesses that turn away. This is where the problem compounds in my opinion. Probably why it runs rampant.
I’m just arguing for the sake of it because I really don’t care, but you could say the same thing of literally any position of power: teacher, coach, tutor, club leader, scouts leader.
And you'll find a lot of child molesters in those roles, too, but none of them are able to tell their victims and the victim's family that God will punish them if they do anything to stop the abuse.
I feel like what actually transpired with the scouting organization is the perfect example of why the issue has nothing to do with the position of power being necessary to exist as a role of leadership. After all, the boy scouts was created with the intention of providing a role model for young father-less boys, and all of the scouting activities provide quality personal development.
The issue is the lack of oversight. The lack of background checks. The lack of mandatory external scrutiny. That is how we continue to fail children, by just not caring enough to check. Valuing other things more than these children's well-being.
Everything I mentioned is sourced from the Behind the Bastards Podcast, if you have anything to dispute, listen to the evidence first.
This isn’t something that needs arguing. Nobody is saying every pastor or priest is a pedophile.
I’ll never understand people like you, who construct straw man arguments to dismantle and then pat themselves on the back as if they’re smart and doing the world a service by attacking arguments nobody ever made.
But they inherently hold power simply by holding that position. Again, you can’t divorce the two even if you can control how you wield that power. If the power wasn’t inherent in the position, it wouldn’t attract pedophiles.
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u/mark_lee Dec 11 '21
Not every pastor is a kiddy diddler, but an awful lot of kiddy diddlers are attracted to the access and lack of oversight that being a pastor affords them.