Reply #15: Reasonable idea. However...

[Voltaire99]

That line of thinking is plausible.

Of course, you aren't accounting for the problem of married people being pedophiles. Marriage selects for an extremely broad group, structures sexuality in the relationship, and yet still fosters abuse. Do you have any evidence that Catholic priests are likelier than married heterosexuals to be pedophiles?

I suspect the celibacy requirement is part of a bouquet of factors that produces priest pedophilia, some of which you mention: secrecy, authoritarianism, the catcechism's sexual confusion and repression, the concepts of "sin" and "confession" that ritualize invasive priest behavior, and most importantly a hierarchical leadership that places its interests ahead of its own parishoners' safety.

Short of putting CCTV cameras in churches and rectories, I don't think the problem will end soon.