As ThinkProgress noted yesterday, the conservative Catholic Leauge placed a full-page ad in the New York Times on Tuesday that claimed that the sexual abuse scandal currently roiling the Catholic Church is a crisis of “homosexuality,” not “pedophilia.” On CNN yesterday, Catholic League President William Donohue defended the assertion by pointing to a study that found that “three out of every four” of the male victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests were “post-pubescent, meaning that it’s homosexuality driven.” “It’s not a matter of my opinion to say that this is a pedophilia crisis. It’s been a homosexual crisis all along,” said Donohue. He then asserted that “there’s a connection between homosexuality and sexual abuse of minors“:

SANCHEZ: Well, let me just stop you right there, because immediately as you say that, there are people watching this show, and I can hear them saying this, Bill Donohue, shame on you. Are you saying all gays are pedophiles?

DONOHUE: As I said in the ad, which I wrote, most gay priests are not molesters, but most of the molesters have been gay. And I also said, that there’s no such thing as a — that homosexuality does not cause predatory behavior.

Let me give you a quick example. I’m Irish. Everybody who has half a brain knows that the Irish have a bigger problem with alcoholism than the Italians or the Chinese, for example. Does that mean because you’re an Irishman, therefore, you are driven to become an alcoholic? Of course, not.

What it means, though, if your group is overrepresented in a particular problem area, you ought to explore it. Yes, there’s a connection between Irish and alcoholism, and, yes, there’s a connection between homosexuality and sexual abuse of minors.

Watch it:

Later in the segment, when pressed to defend his views, Donohue proclaimed of gay priests: “They can’t keep their hands off the boys, don’t you get it?” In the New York Times yesterday, Maureen Dowd wrote that “Donohue is still talking about the problem as an indiscretion rather than a crime. If it mostly involves men and boys, that’s partly because priests for many years had unquestioned access to boys.”

Recently, the Catholic Church — and even the Pope himself — have been coming under increasing criticism for failing to appropriately discipline church officials who had sexually abused thousands of children. On March 24th, the New York Times characterized “Pope Benedict XVI’s latest apology for the emerging global scandal of child abuse by predatory priests,” as inadequate, noting that Benedict “made no mention of the need to discipline diocesan leaders most responsible for shielding hundreds of priests from criminal penalties by moving them from parish to parish to continue their crimes.”

The Catholic League responded the op-ed by running an ad in the New York Times criticizing the paper for its editorial and blaming the scandal on homosexuality:

The argument itself is confusing and contradictory. If “homosexuality does not cause predatory behavior” then why is is the “pedophilia crisis” a “homosexual crisis”? Most of the molesters were also over the age 30 but the Catholic League does not rename the “pedophilia crisis” an “older man crisis” or an “white older man” crisis or anything of the sort. But all this misses the point. What the Catholic League is trying to do is imply that there is a connection between homosexuality and molestation, just like segregationists once accused African Americans of raping white women, and Jews were accused of murdering Christian babies.

In reality, pedophilia has little to do with the gender of the child or the orientation of the molester; pedophiles are attracted to youth and control. “Accessibility is more the factor in who a pedophile abuses,” psychotherapist Joe Kort writes. “This may explain the high incidence of children molested in church communities and fraternal organizations, where the pedophile may more easily have access to children.”

Last night on Larry King Live, Catholic League President Bill Donohue tried to dismiss this argument by claiming that “it’s not a pedophilia” because “most of the victims were post pubescent,” as old as 12 or 13 years of age. Anything older than that is the fault of gays.

On his radio show recently, Glenn Beck controversially warned his audience to leave churches that care about social justice:

I beg you, look for the words “social justice” or “economic justice” on your church website. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice –they are code words. Now, am I advising people to leave their church? Yes — if I am going to Jeremiah Wright’s church. Yes! Leave your church! … If you have a priest that is pushing social justice, go find another parish.

Leading religious figures and organizations — including from Beck’s own Mormon faith — quickly condemned the hate radio host’s remarks. The progressive Christian group Sojourners has also launched a campaign responding to Beck. Some others:

– “My own experience as a believing Latter-day Saint over the course of 60 years is that I have seen social justice in practice in every L.D.S. congregation I’ve been in. … So if that’s Beck’s definition of social justice, he and I are definitely not on the same team.” — Kent P. Jackson, associate dean of religion at Brigham Young University

– “Could Beck’s claim be construed as “anti-Catholic?” Yes and no. I think if anyone else had made the remark it would have been hard to dismiss the anti-Catholic undertones. … Still, I’m curious to see how Beck’s loyal defenders will excuse his latest outrageous remarks. If we’re not supposed to take him seriously when he says stuff like this, when exactly are we to take him seriously?” — Joe Carter, online editor at the conservative magazine First Things

– “Glenn Beck’s desire to detach social justice from the Gospel is a move to detach care for the poor from the Gospel. But a church without the poor, and a church without a desire for a just social world for all, is not the church. At least not the church of Jesus Christ. Who was, by the way, poor.” — Rev. James Martin, an editor at the Jesuit magazine America

However, today, conservative Catholic League President William Donohue released a statement that did indeed defend and make excuses for Beck’s comments:

Many are hammering Beck for saying, “Am I advising people to leave their church? Yes!” A closer read of what he said shows he followed that quip with, “If I am going to Jeremiah Wright’s church. If you have a priest that is pushing social justice, go find another parish.”

Beck didn’t say Christians should abandon their religion. He recommended shopping around to find a more conservative parish if one is dissatisfied with hearing left-wing sermons. Nothing new about that. In the Catholic Church, there are priests who are stridently left-wing and stridently right-wing; many parishioners shop accordingly. Protestants shop by leaving one denomination for another. And so on.

Some of those who have criticized Beck have done so in a sincere way. Others are just phonies.

But what Donohue (who has said that “Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular. … Hollywood likes anal sex“) leaves out is that Beck also said that Christians should run from any church that mentions “social justice” or “economic justice” on its website. As Matt Yglesias has pointed out, those words are all over the websites of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Vatican, the Episcopal Church, the United Methodist Church, the American Baptist Church, and Beck’s own Church of Latter-Day Saints.