You continue to discount the possibility of a statistical artifact - that there may have been incidents of abuse not reported for later time periods, because they hadn’t “ripened.” I’d like a new investigatory panel to scrutinize chronologically cases reported after the initial explosion in the early 2000s.
But even in the late 70s, into the 80s, without any help from the scoundrel bishops, secular folks were beginning to wise up about child abuse.
I was in a clinical psychology program in 1981, and I remember the director of our program - a devout Catholic himself - telling us that starting in the late 70s, psychologists and DAs and law enforcement were coming to the conclusion that child sex abuse was worse for the child than had been believed before, and that “making it go away” wasn’t such a good idea, from the child’s perspective.
The prevailing orthodoxy for some decades had been:
1. Abusers are readily rehabilitated;
2. Children aren’t badly, or even always harmed by sexual abuse (we see an undercurrent of this thought even today);
3. There is more harm to the child in exposing the abuse;
4. It is better for the child if the abuse is minimized, as the abuse can be “put away” by the child.
This thinking was changing in the 70s, and by the time I was in graduate school in 1981, had fallen into bad repute. As such, more stringent mandatory reporting laws were being passed, which were controversial in some circles.
As a result, I personally saw a number of cases (though not even the tip of the iceberg) reported in the 1980s. In fact, the pastor of my then-future wife’s parish exposed in the early 80s. Sadly, he wasn’t prosecuted until a decade later.
But even before the explosion in the early 2000s, the secular society’s elite opinion was changing, and the noose around the child-abusing sodomites was beginning to tighten.
People, even sodomite priests, respond to incentives and disincentives.
As to whether seminaries are more homosexual now than 1978, all I can say is that the seminary in Lincoln, a supposedly conservative diocese run by one of the most conservative bishops in the US was still overrun by homosexuals into at least the early 2010s. And, forgive my cynicism, I figure we’ll find out in 2040 that the sins were continuing at least up until the 2020s.
So why would the currently abused, or those abused after the decline, not be partaking of the gigantic civil damages that can be awarded? Like almost all all the homo priests can restrain themselves now? I don’t buy it. Why is there a gap in the civil case payouts between the early 2000’s and now?
“I’d like a new investigatory panel to scrutinize chronologically cases reported after the initial explosion in the early 2000s.”
Me too, with info on when the allegedly abusing priests were ordained. Like the average age of a priest accused of abuse post 2000. I bet the abusers trend older and older.
Freegards
I don’t buy that there was any change in discipline. I think the bishops were happily doing the same the thing up until the media grabbed it. And all the changes after they were exposed and caught probably didn’t really make a difference either. I think it’s just that less gay men join the priesthood now, at least in western countries.
Is a US born priest more or less likely to be gay if he is over 60 years old, in your opinion?
Freegards