Written by: Tom Hoopes
Date: August 24, 2006
Publisher: National Review Online
The media have left many with the impression that sexual abuse is a Catholic problem — as if Catholic beliefs and customs make sex abuse inevitable.But it isn't.
Hofstra University researcher Charol Shakeshaft looked into the problem, and the first thing that came to her mind when Education Week reported on the study were the daily headlines about the Catholic Church. “[T]hink the Catholic Church has a problem?” she said. “The physical sexual abuse of students in schools is likely more than 100 times the abuse by priests.”Mediaskeptic: National Review might just be part of that problem of media disinterest when they note at the bottom of the article that Tom Hoopes is executive editor of the National Catholic Register and, with his wife, April, is editorial director of Faith & Family magazine and never follow up themselves as if he was just putting forth a defense of the Roman Catholic Church.
