One of the chief reasons put forth by the Pope was the push by several prominent theologians for a relativistic perspective on morality where "there could no longer be anything that constituted an absolute good, any more than anything fundamentally evil; (there could be) only relative value judgments."
A report submitted to the General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops in Rome in 1971, called The Role of the Church in the Causation, Treatment and Prevention of the Crisis in the Priesthood by Dr. Conrad Baars, a Roman Catholic psychiatrist, and based on a study of 1,500 priests, suggested that some clergy had "psychosexual" problems.
[citation needed] Some bishops and psychiatrists have asserted that the practice of returning pedophile priests to their position in the clergy may have been due to the prevailing psychological theories of the time, which suggested that people could be cured of such behavior through counseling.
"[4] Robert S. Bennett, the Washington attorney who headed the National Review Board's research committee, named "too much faith in psychiatrists" as one of the key problems concerning Catholic sex abuse cases.
[9][10][11] Sexual Addiction & Compulsivity: The Journal of Treatment and Prevention (Cimbolic & Cartor, 2006) noted that because of the large share of post-pubescent male minors among cleric victims there is need to further study the differential variables related to ephebophile versus pedophile offenders.
[13] Rome's Congregation for Catholic Education issued an official document, the Instruction Concerning the Criteria for the Discernment of Vocations with regard to Persons with Homosexual Tendencies in view of their Admission to the Seminary and to Holy Orders (2005).
[14] In a statement, read out by Archbishop Silvano Maria Tomasi in 2009, the Holy See stated that the majority of Catholic clergy who had committed acts of sexual abuse against under 18 year olds should not be viewed as pedophiles, but as homosexuals.
"[19] Margaret Smith, a John Jay College criminologist who worked on the report, pointed out that it is "an unwarranted conclusion" to assert that the majority of priests who abused male victims are gay.
"[23] Another researcher, Louis Schlesinger, argued that the main problem was pedophilia or ephebophilia, not sexual orientation and claimed that some men who are married to adult women are attracted to adolescent males.
"[25] In an interview with CNN, James Cantor, Editor-in-Chief of Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment said, "It's quite solidly shown in the scientific literature that there is absolutely no association between being a gay man and being a pedophile.
"[27] She thinks that the Catholic inquiries are "somewhat naïve in respect of the history of paedophile promotion groups and gay activism in the seventies and, as a result, have denied that male-on-male child sexual abuse was in fact a problem and dismissed those who claim it was as blinded by prejudice against homosexuals.
According to this paper, "The Irish Church's prospect of a recovery is zero for as long as bishops continue blindly to toe the Vatican line of Pope Benedict XVI that a male celibate priesthood is morally superior to other sections of society.
[34] Expert witness at the Royal Commission, Dr Carolyn Quadrio said at the time that she did not believe celibacy drives child abuse, but rather men who see children as sex objects are drawn to the priesthood as a profession.
[35][36][37] Supporters of celibacy claim that Roman Catholic priests suffering sexual temptations are not likely to turn immediately to a teenage boy simply because Church discipline does not permit clergy to marry.