Surprising would not be one of them. This goes along with the whole rape defense strategy they use. Minimize, deflect and provide all the false equivalencies necessary to justify the unjustifiable.
I like how dismissive this article is.
Blaming “homosexuals” for unacceptable behavior with underage boys because of a legal technicallity is utterly dispicable.
It is dismissive of the pain that these children suffered, and it nicely allows us to avoid confronting the basic problems that infest the Catholic Church (as well as the rest of organized religion)
There are so many things wrong and ghastly about this article it’s hard to know where to begin.
The key things involved in sexual predation at any age are the (in)ability for the victim to give informed consent and a vast imbalance in power in favor of the perpetrator. Whether the perps are termed a pedophile, a sexual predator, a rapist or a thingamajig is almost not relevant.
It is just barely possible to argue that a 15 year old victim of sexual predation might be have less permanent psychological and emotional damage than a 5 year old; intuitively pleasuring oneself at the expense of a 5 year old seems like it should carry a heavier penalty but all that ignores the fact that in both cases it’s terribly wrong and terribly harmful and no good faith argument would split hairs about which is worse. It is all intolerable and therefore none of it should be tolerated.
