# Priesthood, Pedophilia & Homosexuality

• At most 22 percent of catholic priests in the USA are homosexuals.
• Homosexual men in the USA, as a group, molest children at a rate at least 15 times higher than heterosexual men.

One  asteroid rubs Earth, a meteorite crashes on Russia and, a few days later, Pope Benedict XVI took the cosmic message and resigned. Nonetheless many people question the true reason for his resignation alleging that it has nothing to do with fatigue but rather with homosexuality networks within the Church (CNN guest claiming a 50% of homosexuals among priests) and unresolved pedophilia scandals. So I took a look at this percentage with our best friend when it comes to politically incorrect statistics; Bayes’ Theorem, and I got the results displayed above.

I know, I know, the numbers are pretty crazy, but they are based on data fetched from official sources and, before going into the details, let me play sociologist. Although homosexuals, as a group, molest children at higher rates than heterosexuals it is very important to realize that this does not necessarily mean homosexuals are more prone towards this behavior, assuming this might constitute an ecological fallacy, in this case it makes more sense that this outcome obeys to the fact that young boys are way less protected by parents than young girls and predators take advantage of this.

# The Calculations

To estimate the rate of homosexuals among catholic priests we will first estimate how much more likely are male homosexuals to engage in pederasty compared to male heterosexuals, then we will use this result join with the by gender percentage of children abused by catholic priests (81 percent of the victims were males in the USA) to calculate the final figure.

## Homosexual pederasty vs heterosexual pederasty

To see how much more likely are males homosexuals as a group to engage in pederasty compared to male heterosexual we need to solve:

$\frac{P( BoyAbuse | HomoMale) } {P( GirlAbuse | HeteroMale)} = \frac{P( HomoMale | BoyAbuse) P(BoyAbuse) / P(HomoMale)} {P( HeteroMale | GirlAbuse ) P(GirlAbuse) / P(HeteroMale)}$

We will consider bisexuals as part of the HomoMale group and that all abuses to girls are committed by heterosexuals, this way we will have a best case scenario favoring the HomoMale group.

According to official sources from the USA government we have that:

• P(Female | BoyAbuse) = 0.14
• P(HomoFemale | GirlAbuse) = 0.06
• P(BoyAbuse) = 1/6
• P(GirlAbuse) = 1/4

Which imply that

• P(HomoMale | BoyAbuse) = 1 – 0.14 = 0.86
• P(HeteroMale | GirlAbuse) = 1 – 0.06 = 0.94

And therefore

$\frac{P( BoyAbuse | HomoMale) }{P( GirlAbuse | HeteroMale)} = \frac{0.86 \cdot 1/6 \cdot P(HeteroMale) }{ 0.94 \cdot 1/4 \cdot P(HomoMale)}$

If now we consider data from the William Institute we have that in the USA P(HomoMale) = 0.038 (including transgenders) and, therefore, P(HeteroMale) = 1 – 0.038 = 0.962 which leads to the following result

$\frac{P( BoyAbuse | HomoMale) }{P( GirlAbuse | HeteroMale)} = \frac{0.86 \cdot 1/6 \cdot 0.962 }{ 0.94 \cdot 1/4 \cdot 0.038 } \sim 15.44$

Which means that homosexual men, as a group, engage in pederasty around 15 times more than heterosexual men.

## Percentage of homosexual priests in the Catholic Church

Since male homosexuals commit 15 times more acts of pederasty as a group than heterosexuals in the USA, and since we also know that, in the USA, 81% of children abused by priests were male, if we now assume that homosexuals and heterosexual predators  relative abuse rate does not change when they enter priesthood we have that

If we take $P(BoyAbuse)/P(GirlAbuse) = 0.81/(1-0.81)$ then

$\frac{P( BoyAbuse | HomoPriest) }{P( GirlAbuse | HeteroPriest)} = \frac{1 \cdot 0.81 \cdot P(HeteroPriest) }{ 1 \cdot (1-0.81) \cdot P(HomoPriest)}$

Therefore

$15.44 \sim \frac{0.81 \cdot P(HeteroPriest) }{ 0.19 \cdot P(HomoPriest)} \Rightarrow \frac{P(HeteroPriest)}{P(HomoPriest)} \sim 3.62$

And consequently, since we considered the best case scenario for homosexuals, the percentage of homosexuals priest in the catholic church is at most of

$\frac{1}{1 + \frac{P(HeteroPriest)}{P(HomoPriest)}} \cdot 100 \sim 21.63 \%$

# Discussion

Although the percentage of homosexual priests seems reasonable, the likelihood of homosexuals committing acts of pederasty being 15 times bigger than heterosexual might be surprising… and it is, but despite that I have considered other sources the numbers were always big, so at the end I have done the calculations with the more reliable data that I have found to avoid possible bias.

Even though the true figures can be discussed it seems incontrovertible the direction of the results, so I guess the lesson to be learned is that no only young girls need protection. Young boys tend to be wilder, more independent and troublemakers, a daring behavior that predators take advantage of.

It is important to remember that this ratio of 15 probably means how much easier for homosexual predators is to attack their victims rather than a measure of an inherent violent attitude from homosexuals towards children.

## 8 thoughts on “Priesthood, Pedophilia & Homosexuality”

1. nikosms says:

To continue on the sociologist path a litle bit.

Leaving aside for a minute the fact of patterning homosexual behavior as an intrinsic category.
The rest is a rather straight-forward derivation from the assumptions.

There was a post sometime ago on a site called “Less Wrong” http://lesswrong.com/lw/ji/conjunction_fallacy/.

i summarise here

Bill is 34 years old. He is intelligent, but unimaginative, compulsive, and generally lifeless. In school, he was strong in mathematics but weak in social studies and humanities.

Anyway, we are interested in the probability of the following propositions, which may or may not be true, and are not mutually exclusive or exhaustive:

A: Bill is an accountant.
B: Bill is a physician who plays poker for a hobby.
C: Bill plays jazz for a hobby.
D: Bill is an architect.
E: Bill is an accountant who plays jazz for a hobby.
F: Bill climbs mountains for a hobby.

[…]In a very similar experiment conducted by Tversky and Kahneman (1982), 92% of 94 undergraduates at the University of British Columbia gave an ordering with A > E > C. That is, the vast majority of subjects indicated that Bill was more likely to be an accountant than an accountant who played jazz, and more likely to be an accountant who played jazz than a jazz player. The ranking E > C was also displayed by 83% of 32 grad students in the decision science program of Stanford Business School, all of whom had taken advanced courses in probability and statistics.

[…]There is a certain logical problem with saying that Bill is more likely to be an account who plays jazz, than he is to play jazz. The conjunction rule of probability theory states that, for all X and Y, P(XY) <= P(Y). That is, the probability that X and Y are simultaneously true, is always less than or equal to the probability that Y is true. Violating this rule is called a conjunction fallacy.

The answer is of course that the students DID NOT probabilisticaly think of P(XY) at all, but rather of the probability P(Y|X) for which of course no conjunction fallacy holds since the relatiion P(XY) <= P(Y) is not in effect. So in other words the students were already taking for granted one of the propositions (lets say X) and all the rest were computed probabilisticaly against this initial pre-conception as conditional probabilities. In this sense the results of the students ratings are “perfectly correct”.

• Wow, thanks for the link Nikos, interestingly, that’s exactly what I talk about in the post Are Human Minds Statistical Machines, you might want to check it out since I have a different interpretation of what is going on.

Also

Leaving aside for a minute the fact of patterning homosexual behavior as an intrinsic category…

That’s why at the beginning of the post I bold the as a group, each individual is unique.

• Exactly i read that post and i agree. Actually i think we are saying th same thing, maybe a little bit differently.

The difference between P(YX) and P(Y|X) is sometimes a subtle one, and language. subtleties can make it even more so

The first measures BOTH happen, the second measures BOTH happen but one is ALREADY IN EFFECT. So every “measurement” is estimated on another “sample”
And we dont need very fancy quantum mechanics nor blame the students :))

Additionaly i say that this is similar to your other post of politicaly in-correct statistics https://aleadeum.wordpress.com/2012/12/08/racial_profiling_vs_description_of_the_suspect/ ::))

The part

Leaving aside for a minute the fact of patterning homosexual behavior as an intrinsic category…

is not about this post per-se but refers to the politico-social framework which encompases investigations of this kind

• nikosms says:

As a matter of fact, since you mentioned it, there are indeed formulations of quantum mechanics (and all the quantum composition formulas) which are derived SOLELY from conditional probabilities and is more “realist” interpretation of QM (or among other realist approaches which take into account Bell’s theorems and so on.). For this kind of approach check for example the work of Szabó et al

• QM… I dunno man, I cannot wrap my mind around it but, maybe in another universe I can 😉

• nikosms says:

Yeah, i understand, all the quantum world stuff and all that jazz.
Actually it is easier than some would like you to think.

In any case, just dont believe the hype :)))

h t t p s : / / www . youtube . com / watch ? v=9vQaVIoEjOM