Lead damages impulse control. Where is environmental lead highest? In the urban "ethnic" areas where the generation of priests who formed vocations from the late 1950s on would disproportionately have grown up. Throw in a disinhibiting culture, and you have a mess.
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I am specifically rejecting only the "homosexual influx into the seminaries caused this" theory. The timing is all wrong for that theory to work.
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And you can't get around it by lagging the data, because the phenomenon peaks *before* the alleged homosexual subculture is reported to have arisen at some seminaries. It just won't work.
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Replying to @asymmetricinfo
I'm a strong socialcon, so I'm slotted to believe "gay priests", but I think that in the real world problems always have a dozen causes. Lead exposure, cultural permisivity, less supervision, less fellowship, more loneliness, THE CHANGE THAT CREATES IN THE SELECTION of priests...
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Replying to @MorlockP
Oh, we haven't even gotten into my theories about what Catholic use of contraception, and therefore the change in family desire for vocations among their shrinking number of children.
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Well, that's going to shift the composition of the clergy in important ways, perhaps leaving you with a concentration of pedophiles. Not that most priests are pedophiles, by any means. But the rate may be higher as normally sexually attracted vocations fall away.
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Replying to @asymmetricinfo @bdunbar
100% agreed, and something I've been saying for decades. When there's no contraception, families are "too large", so you have excess sons who need to be shipped off, so the priesthood is a cross section of 4th and 5th sons. A totally normal cross section.
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In the 20th c when you have birth control you get MOTIVATED joiners. c.f. a draft military vs an all volunteer military. Who chooses to join the priesthood 100% voluntarily? No matter what your answer is, it's going to be different than the base population.
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I'd expect an increased rate of: * beta males * gay men * emotional social-worker types * quiet / lost men etc. Father Mulcahy from M*A*S*H is going to make up a smaller group than before.
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Your "only child" theory seems valid, but denying the selection bias effect I propose seems... well, I just can't understand why one wouldn't embrace it. Care to elaborate?
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