Heaven knows I tried to avoid this issue, but conditions have made it impossible to do so. It’s all there is in the news, and the media portrayal is skewed at best. So after watching all the news shows in general and a particularly interesting episode of “The O’Reilly Factor,” I think maybe we ought to take five and examine what is going on.

So what, pray tell, is this issue I’m talking about? I’m talking about the recent pedophilia “investigations” that have created a scandal for the Roman Catholic Church. And the appearance as created by the media is that the church is full of perverse and maniacal predators, waiting to ambush children from deep cover.

Well, as is often my style I intend to debunk these theories, which are another example of the “Uber-PC” society that we currently inhabit. My intention is not to “defend the indefensible,” to steal a phrase from a recent guest on “The Factor.” But I think that we are once again losing sight of what the real issues here should be, and what we need to be doing to try and deal with it. As we have often seen, there is a tendency for the media to act as judge and jury, handing out sentences to people who haven’t been indicted.

One of the ideas propagated has been the idea that celibacy for Catholic clergy is related to the current problem. This sounds like Freud on acid – clearly the most ridiculous contention one could make in this situation. Some people believe that the removal of the celibacy requirement would open up the priesthood to healthier, more sexually well-adjusted people.

This is absurd coming from people who live in a society where 50 percent of marriages end in divorce. It is a pretty big leap to assume that allowing priests to be married is a guarantee that they will be “well-adjusted.” I guess we’ll just have to overlook the high numbers of married Americans dealing with marital infidelity.

In addition, let’s not forget that pedophilia is considered sexually dysfunctional behavior – a disorder. So it is in no way related to sexual frustration or anything of that sort. But we’ve built the news around twisting concepts and situations to make them newsworthy, so it’s no wonder that the media hasn’t treated this isn’t any differently.

Another thing I want to point out is the fact that this is as clear a case as any of what I like to call the “Bad Apple Principle.” The Catholic Church is a huge entity, consisting of well over 1 billion people. Priests account for a very small percentage of this population, and those involved in the scandal are an even smaller percentage. The positive effect of the Catholic Church around the world is undeniable, and that influence continues to grow. Just because you disagree with what the church preaches, doesn’t make it acceptable to disregard all of the good that it does in a secular capacity.

Yet another thing to consider is the fact that all of this scandal is occurring in the United States. Everyone who has been so quick to blame the church as a whole has neglected the fact that there are a lot of Catholics outside the United States. “Well, they’re all under the same leadership,” some might say.

This is true, but the people who have so far been implicated in most of this are priests and bishops in the United States, and each diocese (under its bishop) has a great deal of autonomy, so the assumption that the Vatican has been involved with cover-ups and whatever other wrongdoing there has been is inaccurate.

These issues are problems in the Church in the United States, and are not unrelated to the structure of American society. And it is really important to note that not all societies have these problems, so even though as Americans we like to believe that we are better than everyone else, this situation might cast some doubt on that. The reality is this: In most of the cases, any wrongdoings admitted or alleged, is or was more than likely committed by clergy in U.S. dioceses, with little or no information going past that particular bishop.

Why? Simply put, “plausible deniability,” to steal a phrase from the movie “Independence Day.” Catholic priests are just as human as everyone else (a concept we’d all do well to remember), and there’s always a human tendency to avoid reporting misdoings to our superiors.

Can you honestly say you’ve never “forgotten” to tell mom and dad that you knocked the family portrait off the mantle with your football, or that you threw a baseball through the neighbors’ window?

To avoid going on forever, let me just say this in closing. I believe all the hype in the liberal media is an effort by the supporters of abortion – “reproductive rights” to use yet another PC euphemism – to “bring down” the Church, who they associate with that issue in a negative manner. As I said earlier, I’m not trying to defend the indefensible, but I do think that we need to focus on what the problem is, on making it clear that U.S. Catholic leadership needs to let the law take its course in all these cases, instead of turning this into some kind of witch hunt, as ammunition to attack an organization whose positive influence is hugely significant.

The Church is very far from being all bad, and if we use this new scandal as an excuse to attack it, we are only going to succeed in hurting our society. Let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water.

Emeka Anyanwu is a senior in electrical engineering from Ames.