Ex-Pope Benedict XVI has published a letter in a German magazine making one of the most distasteful, poorly judged and ill-informed claims I've ever heard. He blames clerical sex abuse on the sexual revolution of the 1960s. The social changes of the 60s and early 70s resulted from improvements in and availability of contraception. This enabled consenting heterosexual adults of all ages (and near-adults) to express their sexuality with little fear of unwanted pregnancy. No doubt the increased financial independence of women over the preceding twenty-five years was also a factor. Neither of those drivers changed attitudes towards paedophilia or rape. (Except maybe women's increased independence made rape even less acceptable.) Indeed, fifty years on those things are still taboo in the wider society. Benedict claims that the sexual revolution led to paedophilia being "diagnosed as allowed and appropriate". Well, not outside of the Catholic Church it didn't!
Simon Dobson's occasional musings, invectives and miscellaneous nonsense