Posted on 05/19/2011 7:00:15 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The American narrative of the Catholic Church’s struggles with the clerical sexual abuse of the young has been dominated by several tropes firmly set in journalistic concrete: that this was and is a “pedophilia” crisis; that the sexual abuse of the young is an ongoing danger in the Church; that the Catholic Church was and remains a uniquely dangerous environment for young people; that a high percentage of priests were abusers; that abusive behavior is more likely from celibates, such that a change in the Church’s discipline of priestly celibacy would be important in protecting the young; that the Church’s bishops were, as a rule, willfully negligent in handling reports of abuse; that the Church really hasn’t learned any lessons from the revelations that began in the Long Lent of 2002.
But according to an independent, $1.8 million study conducted by New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice, commissioned by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and released on May 18, every one of these tropes is false.
One: Most clerical abusers were not pedophiles, that is, men with a chronic and strong sexual attraction to pre-pubescent children. Most of those abused (51 percent) were aged eleven to fourteen and 27 percent of victims were fifteen to seventeen; 16 percent were eight to ten and 6 percent were younger than seven. Males between eleven and fourteen account for more than 40 percent of all victims. Clerical ephebophilia (a sexual attraction to adolescents, often boys) was clearly a serious problem. But to label this a “pedophilia crisis” is ignorant, sloppy, or malicious.
Two: The “crisis” of clerical sexual abuse in the United States was time-specific. The incidence of abuse spiked in the late 1960s and began to recede dramatically in the mid-1980s. In 2010, seven credible cases of abuse were reported in a church that numbers over 65 million adherents.
Three: Abusers were a tiny minority of Catholic priests. Some 4 percent of Catholic priests in active ministry in the United States were accused of abuse between the 1950s and 2002. There is not a shred of evidence indicating that priests abuse young people at rates higher than do people in the rest of society. On the contrary: Most sexual abuse takes place within families. The John Jay study concludes that, in 2001, whereas five young people in 100,000 may have been abused by a priest, the average rate of abuse throughout the United States was 134 for every 100,000 young people. The sexual abuse of the young is a widespread and horrific societal problem; it is by no means uniquely, or principally, a Catholic problem, or a specifically priestly problem.
Four: The bishops’ response to the burgeoning abuse crisis between the late 1960s and the early 1980s was not singularly woodenheaded or callous. In fact, according to the John Jay study, the bishops were as clueless as the rest of society about the magnitude of the abuse problem and, again like the rest of society, tended to focus on the perpetrators of abuse rather than the victims. This, in turn, led to an overdependence on psychiatry and psychology in dealing with clerical perpetrators, in the false confidence that they could be “cured” and returned to active ministry — a pattern that again mirrored broader societal trends. In many pre-1985 cases, the principal request of victims’ families was that the priest-abuser be given help and counseling. Yes, the bishops should have been more alert than the rest of an increasingly coarsened society to the damage done to victims by sexual abuse; but as the John Jay report states, “like the general public, the leaders of the Church did not recognize the extent or harm of victimization.” And this, in turn, was “one factor that likely led to the continued perpetration of offenses.”
Five: As for today, the John Jay study affirms that the Catholic Church may well be the safest environment for young people in American society. It is certainly a safer environment than the public schools. Moreover, no other American institution has undertaken the extensive self-study that the Church has, in order to root out the problem of the sexual abuse of the young. It will be interesting to see when editorials in the New York Times and the Boston Globe demand in-depth studies of the sexual abuse of the young by members of the teachers’ unions, and zero-tolerance policies for teacher/abusers.
So: If the standard media analytic tropes on clergy sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in the United States have been proven false by a vigorous empirical study conducted by a neutral research institute, what, in fact, did happen? Why did the incidence of abuse spike dramatically from the late 1960s through the mid-1980s? The John Jay researchers propose that the crumbling of sexual mores in the turbulence of the sexual revolution played a significant role. As the report puts it, “The rise in abuse cases in the 1960s and 1970s was influenced by social factors in American society generally. The increase in abusive behavior is consistent with the rise in other types of ‘deviant’ behavior, such as drug use and crime, as well as changes in social behavior, such as an increase in pre-marital sexual behavior and divorce.”
This is not the entire picture, of course. A Church that was not in doctrinal and moral confusion from the late 1960s until the 1978 election of John Paul II might have been better armored against the worst impacts of the sexual free-for-all unleashed in the mid-1960s. A Church that had not internalized unhealthy patterns of clericalism might have run seminary programs that would have more readily weeded out the unfit. A Church that placed a high value on evangelical zeal in its leadership might have produced bishops less inclined to follow the lead of the ambient culture in imagining that grave sexual abusers could be “fixed.” All that can, and must, be said.
But if the Times, the Globe, and others who have been chewing this story like an old bone for almost a decade are genuinely interested in helping prevent the crime and horror of the sexual abuse of the young, a good, long, hard look will be taken at the sexual libertinism that has been the default cultural position on the American left for two generations. Catholic “progressives” who continue to insist that the disciplinary and doctrinal meltdown of the post–Vatican II years had nothing to do with the abuse crisis might also rethink their default understanding of that period. The ecclesiastical chaos of that decade and a half was certainly a factor in the abuse crisis, although that meltdown is not a one-size-fits-all explanation for the crisis and the way it was handled.
The John Jay study is less than illuminating on one point, and that is the relationship of all this to homosexuality. The report frankly states that “the majority of victims (81 percent) were male, in contrast to the distribution by victim gender in the United States [where] national incidence studies have consistently shown that in general girls are three times more likely to be abused than boys.” But then the report states that “the clinical data do not support the hypothesis that priests with a homosexual identity or those who committed same-sex sexual behavior with adults are significantly more likely to sexually abuse children than those with a heterosexual orientation or behavior.”
The disconnect, to the lay mind, seems obvious: Eighty-one percent of the victims of sexual abuse by priests are adolescent males, and yet this has nothing to do with homosexuality? Perhaps it doesn’t from the clinicians’ point of view (especially clinicians ideologically committed to the notion that there is nothing necessarily destructive about same-sex behaviors). But surely the attempt by some theologians to justify what is objectively immoral behavior had something to do with the disciplinary meltdown that the report notes from the late 1960s through the early 1980s; it might be remembered that it was precisely in this period that the Catholic Theological Society of America issued a study, Human Sexuality, that was in clear dissent from the Church’s settled teaching on fornication, self-abuse, and homosexual acts, and even found a relatively kind word to say about bestiality. And is there no connection to be found between the spike in abuse cases between the mid-1960s and the early 1980s, with its victimization of adolescent males, and the parallel spike in homoerotic culture in U.S. Catholic seminaries and religious orders in that same period? Given the prevailing shibboleths in the American academy (including the Catholic academy), it may be that no clinically or statistically demonstrable linkage will be found, but it strains credulity to suggest that there wasn’t a cultural connection here, one that bears serious reflection.
Empirical evidence is unlikely to shift the attention of the mainstream media or the plaintiffs’ bar from the Catholic Church in this matter of the sexual abuse of the young. If would be a good thing for the entire society, however, if the defenders of the sexual revolution would take seriously the question of the relationship between their commitment to lifestyle libertinism and this plague. If the John Jay study on the “causes ands context” of clerical-sexual-abuse problems in the Catholic Church prompts a broader public reflection on the fact that the sexual revolution has not been, and is not, cost-free, and that its victims are often the vulnerable young, then the Church will have done all of American society a signal service in commissioning this study that looks into its own heart of darkness.
— George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of Washington’s Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he holds the William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies. His book on the abuse crisis, The Courage To Be Catholic, is available from Basic Books.
i agree, interesting graph.
but, “not a problem of homosexuality” ?!? what are they smoking? ...how can you ever truly solve a problem, if you don’t understand (or refuse to admit) the cause?
it is insane to have those study statistics, and conclude this has nothing to do with homosexuality.
81 % of victims are boys?
i admire the church for being honest enough, to take responsibility, and for studying the problem.
(unlike schools, were the abuse rate is 100 times greater!
yet the liberal media ignores that. and schools are immune from the big money lawsuits...)
...again, look at all the Protestant churchs, that now are accepting homosexual clergy, and condoning gay lifestyles, ignoring the Bible.
what will be the future of those churches?
sadly, i worry what their abuse rate will be, a decade from now...
An interesting article on sustained, long term multiple child sexual abuse by a school teacher is posted this morning:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2722096/posts
Apparently in all the public schools, the police are not routinely notified.
“There is only a focus on the Catholics alone, by all the others. I wonder why it is so difficult to understand that?”
I was drawn into these threads by one attacking Baptists.
As for support against the allegations...that could be true. It could be the congregation is deceiving itself, or it could be they know both parties and have a good idea who is telling the truth.
When applied to financial bad judgment, I’ve seen both - pastors accused who had clean records (and the check stubs to prove it) and pastors who did wrong that their congregation didn’t want to believe. My own pastor freely admits he once invested much of his money in a venture because he trusted the pastor running it, only to lose everything - every penny he had saved to go to seminary. And he admits that many years later, he still finds it hard to believe the pastor cheated him.
But in a congregational model, the damage is also congregational. If the congregation is deceived, it pays the price both in wrongdoing and in any legal actions.
“Each wants to think that theologically or organizationally it is immune to the problems Catholics are dealing with.”
Baptists DO sexually abuse their trust sometimes, just as the financially abuse their trust sometimes. But since any such abuse drags the name of Christ thru the mud, I think the church has an obligation to hold their pastors (or priests) to a HIGHER standard, not a lower one. The only case of sex that I know of involved a deacon and a young woman in the choir, and he was forced to resign before the next church meeting that Sunday.
Not sure why you deleted my post. If one can’t refer to a theoretical pedophile as a degenerate, things have really changed around here.
Baptists DO sexually abuse their trust sometimes, just as the financially abuse their trust sometimes.
Yes, as do all denominations.
But since any such abuse drags the name of Christ thru the mud, I think the church has an obligation to hold their pastors (or priests) to a HIGHER standard, not a lower one.
On this I agree 100%.
The only case of sex that I know of involved a deacon and a young woman in the choir, and he was forced to resign before the next church meeting that Sunday.
Of all the priests and nuns involved with my family, including my children, my nephews, from 35 years ago to the present day (and my kids and grandkids go to parochial schools, and one son to a Jesuit HS) I know of no instance or accusation at any parish or school by anyone. I do know of two music ministers/choir members sexual activity, but that was in protestant churches, and I only found out because my husband was a visiting musician. Nobody in those instances resigned or left the church.
Campion, why did you fail to post the rest of that sentence?
“...according to an independent, $1.8 million study conducted by New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice, commissioned by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.”
Odd that you left out who paid for the study...
Posts containing potty language and refereneces to potty language are automatically removed on the Religion Forum. It had nothing to do with the substance of your post.
Why not read the report instead of just assuming what it says? Just because it concludes that Catholicism is not the reason for abuse does not mean it is a white wash. It showed very clearly that the consequences of disregarding constant Christian moral teaching on the matters of sexuality lead to the crisis.
The Church did not write the report. You must have missed where the report showed that the Church’s response was typical of all institutions during the time most of the abuse occurred. They relied on so called secular experts on how to handle abusers.
Also how the heck is 4% of the priestly population over a period of 30-40 years evidence of a systematic tolerance of abuse.
The inability of anti Catholics to examine data without their prejudices blindning them always puzzles me. To harbor such hate that facts are repugnant to one is certianly not a Christian virtue.
At a study last Saturday, one of the topics discussed was knowing your weakness and taking steps to prevent it from bearing fruit. I asked our pastor, who is about 60, if he would consider counseling a beautiful 25 year old woman alone in his office, or an 18 year old, or a 15 year old. He was a bit startled, but his response was “Absolutely not!”
The point was that doing so opened him up to false accusations, and worse, opened him up to temptations that still exist.
He mentioned a guy he knew who had been very promiscuous when young, who converted, but still found it tempting to watch porn while on business trips. He had asked some of the men to call him every night he was on the road, because he was less likely to give in to temptation if he knew a friend would call him.
I posted on this thread because the guy was making excuses rather than facing the problem. It’s “Ephebophilia”, not pedophilia or homosexuality. But that doesn’t face the problem head on. Saying the boy was 14 so it is ephebophilia is hiding from the obvious. And when a Catholic does that, it hurts Baptists as well - all sexual and financial wrongdoing is a huge stain on the name of Jesus.
The non-christians I’ve met don’t distinguish between Catholic priests and baptists - they just say Christians are hypocrites and use that as an excuse to reject Christ. They probably would reject him anyway, but I would prefer they had less ammo...
Not leas disgusting but the way in which you keep homosexual abuse from happening would be different from how to prevent pederast abuse. It is much harder to screen and keep out the latter. But if the majority of abuse victims were post pubescent boys making sure that homosexuals are barred from seminary will do a great deal to keep such abuse from happening.
You might not like it but there is a medical definition of pedophilia which applies in this study. The medical definition of pre puberty does not always match the legal definition. Which is fine as you certainly could have an 11 year old girl who had her first menstrual period. This would mean she was indeed post pubescent but certainly any one sexually abusing her should be regarded as a pedophile for legal purposes as in every other aspect she is still a child.
The report however is not concerned with how the legal system responds to abuse but the causes of the crisis and how to prevent such abuse in the future. That is why knowing that the majority of victims had entered puberty is so important.
The report he is commenting on was done by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
You must not know the gentleman’s body of work or you would never make that claim.
Wonderful response, and again, my thanks.
Actually, there is a definite difference between ephebephilia and pedophilia, and certainly both are illegal. Homosexuals who are attracted to sexually mature or maturing teens are rarely the same as pedophiles, who are attracted to the immature. Further, even though no one would dispute that a 13-15 year old is a child, they are more aware of sexual interaction than a pre-pubescent, and less vulnerable to exploitation. The young males in my family certainly were, as was my husband growing up.
Thanks for discussing the measures your church is taking to protect parishioners. I doubt those measures are ubiquitous in the denomination, though — as is required in the Catholic Church.
Your last paragraph is outstanding, and one of the reasons I appreciate your posts:
“The non-christians I’ve met don’t distinguish between Catholic priests and baptists - they just say Christians are hypocrites and use that as an excuse to reject Christ. They probably would reject him anyway, but I would prefer they had less ammo...”
May God bless you in all you do, and thank you for today’s conversation.
Mr. Weigel does not support that contention.
Just because the facts presented do not meet your perceptions does not mean they are not facts.
Would I like to see another report outlinging exactly the errors and outright criminal behavior of bishops and even lay law enforcement in covering up the abuse? Yes I would. Would I like it to be a no holds bar report showing clearly how so many failed to protect victims? Yes I would. Was that issued addressed by this report? Not in enough detail and it should be a separate examination.
Modernist Weigel lauds the Masonic takeover of the Papal states:
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/262329/italy-150-george-weigel
Deck chairs on the Titanic.
Oh if we have to include unknown, unreported cases that is different. Do you also require that police do the same?
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