Posted on 06/03/2002 7:17:42 AM PDT by Stand Watch Listen
Whole forests of trees have been sacrificed since February and countless gigabytes of cyberspace have been consumed with writing about the scandal of the Catholic Church.
Some would have the gullible public believe that every Catholic parish in the nation is a miniature Peyton Place. Perhaps these copywriters are genuinely ignorant of the facts, in which case I should accuse them merely of laziness instead of hypocrisy. Because it so happens there is some real data around, and it undermines the case against the Catholic Church.
Granted, reliable data about shameful and illegal behavior is by its nature hard to come by. And for even one homosexual priest to take advantage of one young man is despicable, to be sure. But the data that is available makes one thing clear: Catholic priests are not the only clergy who occasionally fall into sexual misbehavior. This is not just a Catholic problem.
Prior to this spring, there were stories scattered throughout the news media about scandals in various denominations and sects: Episcopalians, Jews, Buddhists, Jehovah's Witnesses, Hare Krishnas, LDS, Pentecostals. Since February, those stories have disappeared, and the headlines seem to feature the word "Catholic".
Anne Simpkinson of Beliefnet.net has reported valiantly on the problems in other denominations. A 1990 study on sexual harassment in the United Methodist Church found that 42 percent of respondents reported unwanted sexual behavior by a colleague or pastor; 17 percent of laywomen said that their own pastor had harassed them. How to understand these data? Methodists do tend to be liberal (abortion rights are highly respected by the UMC). In that denomination, it might be construed as sexual harassment if a pastor does nothing more than call a pretty young woman - or a female fellow-pastor -- "darlin'".
A 1993 pastoral care journal reported that 6.1 percent of Southern Baptist pastors admitted to having sexual contact with a person either currently or formerly affiliated with their church - but 70 percent said they knew pastors who had had sexual contact with a congregant. Maybe the pastors interviewed all knew the same 6% of pastors?
On the other hand, there is one denomination that keeps a great deal of reliable data about the conduct, sexual and otherwise, of its ministers. Only one denomination is centrally organized and keeps extensive, detailed records: the Catholic Church alone collects information about all its clergy.
What does that data show?
There has been only one actual study that looked for reliable data about sexual aberrations in the Catholic Church. It was a study done in 1992 by Joseph Cardinal Bernardin in Chicago. Chicago is a huge diocese, a liberal diocese. The survey examined every single priest - 2,252 in number - who had served in the diocese for the past 40 years. It reopened and reviewed every single complaint against every priest.
The standard of evidence was low. An accusation was counted in this study if a consensus existed that a particular charge was justified. A much higher standard would have been if it would hold up in a court of law.
If you think the recent headlines reflect reality, you're probably expecting to hear that something like 400 priests had charges against them.
The fact is by this very low standard, about 40 priests were deemed to be probably guilty of sexual misconduct with minors at some point in the 40 years studied. Out of 90,080 priest-years studied, credible evidence existed against 1.8% of priests.
Or, in the words of Philip Jenkins, a non-Catholic professor of history and religious studies at secular Penn State University: There is no evidence that the rate of sexual abuse and misconduct among Catholic clergy is any higher than the rate among clergy of non-Catholic Christian denominations, or among clergy of non-Christian religions, or among non-clergy professions involved with children, such as teachers and scoutmasters.
To put this matter into better perspective: Right now there is a universe of about 150,000 priests in the United States. If the Chicago data is reliable, we might expect 2% of those priests to have misbehaved. Thus far, about 1,000 priests have been indicted in the court of public opinion. So where are the other 3,000?
In other words, the data suggest that about one-half of one percent of Catholic clergy have had sexual misbehavior incidents in their past.
That puts the full-throated attack on the Catholic Church in a different light, doesn't it?
Connie Marshner is Director of the Center for Governance at the Free Congress Foundation.
Free Congress Foundation
Rod Dreher printed it in National Review, citing the Boston Globe.
I have to agree. Some Catholics don't want to talk about it or think about it, and some do. The ones who are facing it and accepting it as evil are the ones who will save their church. Denial doesn't help, and in fact already happened and made it worse.
This article, rather than calling for fewer attacks on the Catholics (this stuff NEEDS constant attack!), this writer seems to want to use the scandal to attack ALL churches.
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