Setting the record straight

It goes without saying that even one pedophile priest is one too many. The same can and should be said of other clergy. But when two Jewish leaders, one a rabbi and the other a cantor, were recently convicted of sexual acts with minors, the press reported their stories differently from the way in which they reported the corresponding crimes of priests. Not only were their stories buried in the inner pages of the newspapers, rather than on the front page, but the convicted men were portrayed simply as individuals who had betrayed a trust. And so indeed they were. But the news stories made no connection between their crimes and the religion they both represented and betrayed. No voices were heard blaming the congregations that had employed them.Their marital status was not alleged to be a cause of their behavior, as is typically the case when a celibate is accused of the same crime. In all this, the reportage was objective and without inappropriate editorializing.

It seems also to be the case that the hierarchical structure of the Catholic Church, especially in our anti-authoritarian culture, provides a tempting target. The local bishop can easily become a lightning rod in a way that the leaders of other, less hierarchically structured religions do not. In other words an unfortunate or mistaken assignment by a Catholic bishop is likely to be criticized not only because it is unfortunate or mistaken, but simply because it was made by a bishop—one man—and not by a board or congregation. While one may be critical of a given assignment, it is a different story when it comes to being critical of the bishop’s right to assign his priests.

The media and the public in general seem to treat accused priests differently and to hold them to a higher standard than they do other ministers. If so, then their focus on “pedophile priests” (bolstered, perhaps by the alliteration of the phrase) actually pays the Catholic priesthood an implied (and perhaps backhanded) compliment. The Church needs to rise to the challenge posed by her own high standards and the public’s high expectations of her clergy. Our standards for the screening of candidates for the priesthood and our procedures for handling accusations against priests should be tightened where they may be too loose and, above all, consistently enforced. While the so-called “zero-tolerance” policy recently announced for the Archdiocese of Boston is a step in the right direction, such policies have long been in place elsewhere, including in the Diocese of Savannah. In this way, with God’s help, those whose pathologies make them a threat to children will be excluded from the priesthood.

It is clear that there is now a consensus among the experts that the particular obsession that drives pedophiles is not curable by any method available today, although it may be controlled in certain circumstances. Pedophiles seemingly cannot be fully rehabilitated. But as recently as a decade ago, this consensus did not exist and there were experts who offered courses of rehabilitation for such offenders. It was not negligent at that time for Church leaders to hope for rehabilitation and to commit offending priests into the care of therapists who held out this hope. It was not negligent for our leaders to believe these therapists when they certified a man as rehabilitated. But that was then, this is now. Given the state of knowledge now, it would be negligent to do so. Then, it was perhaps merely naïve.

The propensity of Church authorities to keep secret the sinful behavior of priests or anybody else is deeply rooted in Catholic spirituality and practice. One basic Catholic conviction is that sins can be forgiven. Another is that the seal of the confessional is inviolable. Still another is that “washing dirty laundry in public” is rarely good for the individuals involved—including victims—or for the institution.

And the right of every human person to a good public reputation is also upheld by Catholics, although not by the world. What may seem to be an undue secrecy stems from a desire to avoid scandal, of course, but also from two other important considerations. First, “the public’s right to know” has abolished the privacy of many adult victims of crimes in this country who have suffered the glare of publicity; how much more so the suffering for a child. Second, the rush to equate allegation with guilt has led to many injustices, up to and including wrongful executions. In the light of those elements of fairness to accuser and accused, handling cases confidentially is perhaps more comprehensible than the media allow. Reasons other than sheer callousness account for many aspects of such responses.

Given all these factors, what should Catholics think about the present scandals? First of all, they should realize the facts: that very few priests have betrayed their trust by abusing children; that the bishops who have mistakenly reassigned supposedly rehabilitated priests may have been naïve, but were acting in accordance with the received wisdom of the time; that the deep-seated impulse to avoid scandal, while it may now be seen to have constituted part of the problem, is part of a spirituality that is otherwise quite praiseworthy.

Nevertheless, times have changed and a more vigorous and forthright approach to this syndrome must now be adopted—and is being adopted. The welfare of our children, the morale of the vast majority of priests who feel betrayed by their erring brethren and the future trust of the Catholic people for their clergy depend greatly on it.

Father Douglas K. Clark is the editor of The Southern Cross and a priest in residence at the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, Savannah.

Another is that the seal of the confessional is inviolable.

What seal in what confessional. These Cardinals were made aware of the problem by the parents not in some confessional. And sexual molestation of juveniles is a crime

The propensity of Church authorities to keep secret the sinful behavior of priests or anybody else is deeply rooted in Catholic spirituality and practice.

What BS
Ain't nothing spiritual about it at all

They are no different than the FBI that covers up for its agents, big business that covers up defective products, politicians that cover up for members in their parties etc etc etc.

This whole article is out of it

Did the Synagogue hide their pedophilia?

Did the men get transferred to another synagogue or did the men get arrested right away?

Did the High Prest of the local synagogues in the area know of this, and did he hide their crimes?

Those are honest questions when asking why their is excessive media on what happened in Boston, and recently in the last week, Connecticut, too.

The Catholic haters will scream, but this article has many good points.

I thought the Church once saw to it that such priests ended up in monastery ,strictly supervised, spending the rest of their lives in prayer and labor.Like the original idea of penitentiaries{sic} were supposed to keep the criminal sinner from preying and instead find correction through praying.

As other Priests have pointed out, the problem is not pedaphilia. It is homosexuality. Very few of the abusees are actual pre-teens. They are teen-age BOYS.

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