Former Pope Benedict XVI penned a lengthy letter that blames the “all-out sexual freedom” of the 1960s for ongoing scandals involving sexual abuse by priests.
Benedict, who resigned as pope in 2013, argued in a column translated for the National Catholic Register that social upheaval in the 1960s led to wider acceptance of pedophilia.
He wrote that “the question of pedophilia … did not become acute until the second half of the 1980s” and arose because of “the absence of God.”
“Among the freedoms that the Revolution of 1968 sought to fight for was this all-out sexual freedom, one which no longer conceded any norms,” he wrote.
“Part of the physiognomy of the Revolution of ’68 was that pedophilia was then also diagnosed as allowed and appropriate,” he added later.
Benedict, who will turn 92 next week, further claimed that concurrent with the sexual revolution, Catholic theology saw a “collapse that rendered the Church defenseless against these changes in society.” – READ MORE