Nancy Pelosi loves Jesus. She believes she must pursue public policies “in keeping with the values” of Jesus Christ. Hillary Clinton recently said “the Bible was and remains the biggest influence on my thinking.”

But this hasn’t stopped them from supporting causes that Jesus would abhor and the Bible would condemn.

Then we heard from Elton John that Jesus would be all for same-sex rights and homosexual marriage.

Now old rocker Tom Petty has something to say about Jesus and Christianity. He’s critical of the Catholic Church and its sexual abuse cases. “A song off of Tom Petty’s upcoming album ‘Hypnotic Eye’ will reportedly criticize the Catholic Church’s handling of its decades-long sex abuse scandal.”

This is something that’s easy to be upset about. You’d have to be in support of same-sex sexuality with children not to be outraged. Just to remind readers, there’s a lot of that going around as a logical extension of the ‘gay rights’ movement. I wonder if Petty is willing to point his guitar at the LGBTers.

It’s the LGBTers who have argued that Jesus would be OK with same-sex sexuality. If that case can be made from Jesus and the Bible as they claim, then I bet you that they could make a case for sex with children based on a passage like Matthew 19:14: “Let the children alone, and do not hinder them from coming to Me; for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” One perversion makes the next one so much easier.

The Catholic Church has been heavily criticized for its sex scandals, as it should be. In terms of percentages, however, less than two-percent of priests are involved. The public schools have a higher percentage of teachers who use sex as a tool for exploitation and pleasure,1 and this says nothing about the easy access of drugs, reports of rape, sexual liaisons in the classroom, counterfeiting,2 stabbings, and murder that are almost a daily occurrence.

It’s the Catholic Church’s failure to act swiftly and decisively on the matter that has disillusioned and enraged church members. No one likes a cover-up, especially religious devotees who believe their church is a means of salvation.

The Church must also come to grips with reality and admit to itself that some priests like to engage in sex with people of the same sex.

“Some church experts estimate that 20% to 50% of the current 45,000 U.S. priests are homosexual.”3 The claim is made by some that the priesthood is so dominated by homosexuals that Paul Wilkes, who studied 600 parishes for his book Excellent Catholic Parishes: A Guide to Best Places and Practices, makes this telling observation, “If we drove all the gay priests out of the priesthood, our Masses would be on videotape.”4

In addition to his mostly justified comments about the Roman Catholic Church, Petty went on to say that religion “seems … to be at the base of all wars.”

I’m not sure where Petty is getting his information. The two World Wars, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War were not based on religion.

The following is from The Blaze:

“A college professor is taking aim at singer Tom Petty’s charge that ‘religion seems … to be at the base of all wars,’ claiming that, based on his analysis of 400 years of conflict, this simply isn’t the case.

“Professor John A. Tures, a political science instructor at LaGrange College in LaGrange, Georgia, told The Blaze in an email that the majority of world conflicts over the past four centuries — even in the post-9/11 world — have had nothing to do with religion.

“‘Religion is still less likely to be a source of conflict than natural resources like oil, or questions of governance, or even good old fashioned territorial disputes,’ he said.”

Petty is justified in his remarks about the cover-up in the Roman Catholic Church regarding sexual sins, but he needs to take a look at the way same-sex sexuality has contributed to the justification of the practice. While “[a]n Australian judge has incurred the wrath of child protection and gay rights advocates after stating that incest and pedophilia may no longer be considered taboo – just as gay relationships are now more accepted than they were in the 1950s and 60s,” the logic of the outrage cannot be maintained for long.

Check out the logic in the Law and Order episode “Hardwired.”

1. Chris Reinolds, “Student testifies teacher chats led to ‘sexual stuff,’” Atlanta Journal-Constitution (April 25, 2002), C1. [↩]
2. Four Marietta (Georgia) High School students were accused of passing counterfeit money at their school. David Burch and Jeffrey Widmer, “4 teens charged in counterfeit money scheme,” Marietta Daily Journal (April 25, 2002), 1A. [↩]
3. Cathy Lynn Grossman, “Hot under the collar: Gay Catholics angry, say they’ve been singled out,” USA Today (April 25, 2002), 9D. These numbers are confirmed in Berry, Lead Us Not Into Temptation, 188. [↩]
4. Grossman, “Hot under the collar,” 9D. [↩]