From CNN last week:
The Archdiocese of Dublin and other Catholic Church authorities in Ireland covered up clerical child abuse until the mid-1990s, according to a government-commissioned report released Thursday.The Dublin Archdiocese Commission of Investigation’s 720-page report said that it has “no doubt that clerical child sexual abuse was covered up” from January 1975 to May 2004, the time covered by the report.
The commission examined the histories of 46 priests, who were picked as a sample from 102 who had had complaints or suspicions of child abuse raised against them. Complaints from more than 320 children were leveled against the 46, the report said.
But it said that the number of children abused likely exceeded that.
“One priest admitted to sexually abusing over 100 children, while another accepted that he had abused on a fortnightly basis during the currency of his ministry which lasted for over 25 years,” the report said.
I recently posted a debate over the Catholic Church’s influence in the world. Those arguing that its influence has been negative hung their case on the sexual abuse scandals. That this was their main argument annoyed some people, including readers of this blog. The frustration seemed to be that the “sex abuse” argument is too easy and overplayed. But reading things like the article above make me less sympathetic to this complaint.
The John Jay report found that, between 1950 and 2002, “the problem [sexual abuse] was indeed widespread and affected more than 95 percent of the dioceses and approximately 60 percent of religious communities [in the US].” So given the extent of the abuse and their cover-ups, this issue ought to plague the Catholic Church.
Other religions would be wise not to throw stones, however. In 2007, the Associated Press revealed that three major insurance companies for Protestant Churches in America say they typically receive 260 reports each year of minors being sexually abused by Protestant clergy, staff, or other church-related relationships.
And of the LDS Church, Mormon Matters blogger Jeff Breinholt wrote:
The LDS Church has a problem, as do the Jehovah’s Witnesses. … In fact, the Mormons and the Witnesses are suffering from a similar trajectory. They are bound to keep their lawyers very busy over the coming years. It will probably get darker before it is light again.
The LDS Church is [currently] a defendant in 10 cases, which have given rise to 15 written opinions. Most are outside of Utah.
I happen to know of a couple cases in Utah, though. Within the last year, an ex-Bishop in Harrisville and the seminary principal at Lone Peak High were convicted of improper sexual relations with minors.
Now, I don’t present this information as evidence of religion’s falsity. Because while these supposed “men of God” should be held to a higher ethical standard, I also understand that they are fallible human beings. Their actions are not necessarily attributable to or reflective of their faith. Nor do I mean to suggest that the issue of sexual abuse is unique to religion. Still, I find child molestation by religious leaders particularly upsetting.
By virtue of the respect and trust they enjoy from their communities, religious authorities have a level of access to children that other adults do not — access that increases the risk for abuse. And when abuse occurs by a religious leader, it hurts more than just the victim; it affects the entire community, whose trust the leader betrayed.
Another troubling aspect about sexual abuse in religion is that it’s not always treated by the church as a crime, but as a sin. Consequently, even when higher-up church officials are made aware of sexual abuse, it doesn’t get reported to the police. Instead, the offending religious leader is asked to repent and, as was sometimes the case in the Catholic Church, was simply moved to another congregation.
Certain religious sentiments make it easier to blame the victims, too. Consider our own culture. BYU police office Arnie Lemmon told the Deseret News that most Provo residents are religious and have a tendency to stigmatize discussion of sexual assault and sometimes to demonize the survivor. Lemmon also shared a letter he received from one rape victim, which read “I’m a perversion to the good saints of my church” and expressed her wish to be dead. This may help to explain why an estimated 90% of rapes go unreported in Provo.
As you can see, it’s hard enough for adults to report sexual abuse, especially in conservative and religious cultures. But it’s all the more difficult when the abuser is an admired religious leader and the victim a child.
So again, my worry is that some are quick to ignore church-related sexual abuse scandals as tired and anecdotal. In writing this post, I hope I’ve made a case that this issue deserves our sensitive attention. It’s a case that really shouldn’t have to be made.
Just to be clear (as the token Catholic defender here), I think the scandal is a terrible stain on the Church. Even those members of the Church (the VAST majority of the lay and clergy membership) who had nothing to do with the scandal share in the shame. I would make these remarks:
1) The Church has everywhere and always taught that sexual abuse of any kind is a grievous sin.
2) Those that committed the acts should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Other than murder, this is the gravest evil I can think of. Those who worried more about the Church’s reputation than the welfare of children should be severely rebuked. Their reaction was inexcusable but, as it were, “all too human”.
3) The human part of the Church is populated by, well, humans. We are sinners, all. Being a member of a Church (even being a leader in a Church) does not make one immune from sin. This is not an excuse (see #2), just an observation. We should refrain from making hasty conclusions about Catholicism generally or religion as a whole based on such things.
My point here is that the sins of individuals (lay, clergy, even high ranking) has no bearing on whether Catholicism is true, whether her teachings on sexual ethics are true, etc etc. I am a Roman Catholic because I believe Catholicism to be true, not because I think all the priests in the world are really great guys or some such thing.
This is the only sense in which the scandal is overplayed — when people try to use the sins of Catholics to prove that Catholicism is false. Appealing to the sins of Catholics proves no such thing. At best, it proves that some Catholics are hypocrites. That is likely so. Of course, I think we are all hypocrites. The only way to not be a hypocrite is to be utterly unprincipled (since we all fail to live up to our principles).
Anyway, I am not one who wants to brush aside the scandal. I have grieved terribly over it. Were the involved churchmen to have lived up to their Catholic convictions, such a thing would never have occurred. This is a part of the tragedy.
“Appealing to the sins of Catholics proves no such thing.”
This is almost always true, but at some point can’t we judge a tree by the fruit it bears? Like were it the case that sex abuse uniquely or disproportionately occurred in the Catholic Church (and I’m not saying it is the case), wouldn’t that bespeak something wrong with Catholicism?
Yes, but:
1) I think the fruit is overwhelming good.
2) More importantly, I don’t think these wicked fruits are born of Catholicism. In other words, it is not their Catholicism that made these men child molesters. In fact, their Catholicism ought to have made them precisely the opposite. Really, I know of few religious or philosophical views with as total a commitment to the dignity of the human person as Catholicism. What we have here are some individual Catholics who have failed to live up to the dignity of the person as taught by their faith. The failure to live up to their faith bore some tragic fruits (both for their victims and for the souls of the wrongdoers).
Dr. Kleiner:
I agree that the child abusers didn’t do what they did because they were Catholic. I’m tend to agree when assert that the church teaches the opposite. However, your second post reminded me of something that I’ve been thinking about. How do we tell we an action is motivated by their religious convictions and when it’s motivated by something else? You mention that the fruit of Catholicism is overwhelming good, so I’m curious how we can decipher between that which actions were the authored by the church (and religion in general) and which weren’t. We recently discussed the Crusades on the this blog, and I asserted that the Crusaders Catholicism had little to do with their actions. Furthermore, I would submit that many crimes were committed in the name of Christianity, like the some of the imperialism of the 19th century, weren’t actually caused by adherence to Christian principles (far from it). But I think that cuts both ways. Surely, every good deed ever carried out by a Catholic isn’t the result of Catholicism. How do we tell the difference? I don’t know how to evaluate what’s going on inside of people.
Motivation is a complicated thing, as Mike says. I certainly grant Mike’s point, a number of the good things Catholics do might have some motivation other than Catholicism.
How to sort this out? Not sure how much we can, you’d have to work through a huge number of conditionals and counterfactuals and it would be really messy. I do think we can appeal to two things:
a) If Fred does X, but his faith (or whatever else) explicitly teaches him to not do X, then isn’t it safe to say that his X action was not the result of his faith, that it must have been motivated by something else?
b) There is tons of anecdotal evidence where people talk about their lives (and the way they act) being transformed by conversion. I consider myself an example of just this sort of a thing (I am not a cradle Catholic, I was raised atheist and am an adult convert). You often hear people say things like “Before I knew Jesus, I would have never done this or I would have done that …”. In such cases it seems reasonable to assign motivational power to the faith, right?
“This is almost always true, but at some point can’t we judge a tree by the fruit it bears?
While I agree with the statement, I think we can go overboard in believing it. For a Christian, the new testament is full of people who claimed to follow Jesus but didn’t live up to it. Judas betrayed his master. Peter denied him and Thomas doubted him.
This shouldn’t mean that the teachings or intentions of Christianity (be it Mormonism or Catholicism) are wrong, just the actions.
I agree with Jon when he says “As you can see, it’s hard enough for adults to report sexual abuse, especially in conservative and religious cultures. But it’s all the more difficult when the abuser is an admired religious leader and the victim a child.”
I think Christianity would be better off recognizing that their leaders can and do fail – yet at the same time respect the calling and position they are in.
As the ol’ saying goes “A church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints”
What fruit OUGHT to show in a religion is the attempts to bring such leaders to repentance and not justify their acts and then bring about as much restitution as possible. That I suppose shows the fruit that a church ought to bear.
Great comment, Eric.
“If Fred does X, but his faith (or whatever else) explicitly teaches him to not do X, then isn’t it safe to say that his X action was not the result of his faith, that it must have been motivated by something else?”
I don’t think it’s safe at all to say that. It’s pure human nature for someone to want what they cannot have, and to do what they’re told not to do. Taking a queue from the Simpsons, if a father tells his son to stay out of his “forbidden closet of mystery”, then his kid wants nothing more than to get the hell into that closet! If the father had kept his mouth shut, the kid wouldn’t think the closet was different from any other.
Since we’ve already established that priests/bishops/whatever are all imperfect, sin-prone beings like the rest of us, I don’t think it’s at all unreasonable to say that the celibacy imposed upon the Catholic priesthood played a major motivating factor in their rape of those children. Even if one’s faith doesn’t explicitly tell them to commit some atrocity (or even to just be a little rude), that in no way implies that the same faith doesn’t give one an increased desire to commit it. I wouldn’t flip that around by saying that all religious faith motivates people to commit sin, but there’s no denying that it can, and does happen.
I find it simply absurd to link celibacy with the sexual abuse of minors. People that have sex with children are not acting out of sexual frustration. My wife (a phd in counseling psych) tells me that in almost all cases there is a mental disorder (it is in the DSM). Why would sexual desires for pre-pubescent children arise out of being celibate? If priests were just sexually frustrated from celibacy, wouldn’t they just have a fling or hire a prostitute?
Do a test on yourself, Justin. Go 10 years without sex. See if you start desiring 8 year olds. I rather doubt you will.
The facts just don’t bear it out your claim about this alleged “major motivating factor”, either. Studies of sexual misconduct by Protestant clergy (not celibate) shows that a range of 2 to 3% of the misconduct involves pedophilia. Studies of Catholic (and so celibate) priests shows that the rate is between .2 and 1.7%. So the studies seem to show that the pedophilia problem is bigger with non-celibate ministers.
Finally, the notion that there is some “forbidden fruit” thing going on here, as if this happens of necessity, ignores the fact that almost all ordained priests live upright and holy lives in conformity with their vows of both poverty and celibacy. How could this be if it was just “pure human nature” to want (apparently irresistibly) what you can’t have and to do what you are told not to? I might remind Justin that the world is not populated by adolescents (who are prone to what he describes). College ends. Most people actually grow up.
With Jon, I second many of Eric’s thoughts.
In the interest of total disclosure-
Mormon youth worldwide are officially taught in their manuals:
“Victims of rape, incest, or other sexual abuse are not guilty of sin. If you have been a victim of any of these crimes, know that you are innocent and that God loves you.” (Strength of Youth)
Mormon Bishops are officially taught in their manuals:
“Victims of rape or sexual abuse frequently experience serious trauma and unnecessary feelings of guilt. Church officers should handle such cases with sensitivity and concern, reassuring such victims that they, as victims of the evil acts of others, are not guilty of sin, helping them to overcome feelings of guilt and to regain their self-esteem and their confidence in personal relationships.”
I know these official statements don’t sound nearly as dastardly, and I hope nobody on here loses their mind and takes a run at me for posting them, but they are the most relevant –and widely distributed– on the subject. I can’t imagine that they’d be unwelcome on this site, regardless.
PS- Yes, Jon. I know what’s coming. A little package I like to call the “Adams Grandslam”:
“This changes nothing!”
“ The onus is on you too…”
“ You can do nothing to rescue the LDS Church” (my personal favorite)
“What about God killing all the little babies?”
Jon, in his added remarks to the original post, says his aim is: ” I hope I’ve made a case that this issue deserves our sensitive attention.”
Of course I think unreported rape is a major issue (not just in Provo, my counselor wife tells me it is a BIG issue here at Utah State). And I agree that clergy abuse scandals deserve enormous attention. But, speaking from a Catholic point of view, the notion that the sex abuse scandal has not been given adequate attention does not accord with my reading of newspapers. Their has been incredible attention on the Catholic scandal. I don’t think I’ve read more than a handful of major stories on Catholicism (I am thinking in particular back to the Pope’s recent visit to America) where this was not mentioned (even if it had nothing to do with what was being reported). For some time now, it is almost as if you can’t write a story on Catholicism without mentioning this issue. Non-Catholics probably think this is the only thing that is worth discussing with respect to Catholicism, since it is very nearly the only thing they ever hear about (well, now they can read about the US Conference of Bishops pressing the health care bill and abortion amendments in an act of [alleged] theocratic meddling in politics).
I am not arguing that the attention is undeserved, but I think there has been some anti-Catholicism evident in the almost exclusive focus on the Catholic part of this issue. Archbishop Dolan of NY (a really bright fellow) recently made this argument recently:
http://blog.archny.org/?p=42
I know there are official teachings and there is official and unofficial procedure. I was sexually abused at two different points in my childhood, by two different people. The second time was over a period of weeks at the hand of a sibling. I suffered severe depression, suicidal thoughts and hearing the little snippets sitting in church about virtue and chastity being more important than life did nothing but steer me towards absolute loathing and hate for myself. It was after a long, difficult process of coming to realize I had no reason to believe in the LDS faith (my atheism came later and was another long process) that I started to regain self-esteem and the feeling I was worth something.
I finally had the point to tell my parents about my abuse (without revealing who) and my loss of faith in their religion. My father was my bishop at the time. His reaction to the abuse was to say, “But you’ve always been so happy, so it hasn’t affected you.” He then recommended counseling for my lack of faith and told me to read the Book of Mormon. My mother gave me the “Miracle of Forgiveness.” Denial? Maybe. The whole affair appalled me and I was even more hurt by the fact that neither of my parents cared to try and find out who or when. It was brushed aside and I was only recommended counseling for my faith.
My point in sharing this lies in the fact that yes clergy are people, but if they find out there are victims, they won’t always offer help or show concern. Some will protect their fellow church -goers, some will protect clergy. The abuses in Ireland certainly had to be known about by higher-ups in the Catholic Church to even a SMALL extent: why did they not report abusive priests to authorities? In my case, no perpetrator was ever asked for and I was given the distinct impression they did not want to know.
Until faiths own up to the fact that they possess imperfect clergy and stop protecting them, the abuse of innocents is a terrible, terrible scar on the good that religions do in building shelters, feeding and clothing people.
Anon, I am deeply sorry for your experience. Thank you for having the courage to share something so personal. It is easy for philosophers and bloggers to fall into the abstract when dealing with such things.
One thing I do not understand — how does being abused or raped have an effect on one’s virtue? (This includes chastity, which is a virtue, the opposite of which is lust). Of course the short answer is that it doesn’t. Virtues are the habits of character that are formed through repetitive VOLUNTARY actions. Being robbed does not make me a worse person (in terms of my virtue). Why would being raped?
The LDS church lines cited above (though I am not endorsing the one about burying your son) actually hearken back to Socrates. In the Apology, Socrates says “It is not difficult to avoid death, gentlemen of the jury; it is much more difficult to avoid wickedness, for it runs faster than death.” I think there is some profound truth in this.
Perhaps the problem is not with thinking virtue is more important than life. The problem is with thinking that involuntary actions (being raped) have any impact whatever on one’s character (virtue and chastity).
“Mormon youth worldwide are officially taught in their manuals…Mormon Bishops are officially taught in their manuals…”
You know full well that, as Mormon culture is concerned, popular teachings trump official ones. The church has been more sensitive toward the victims of sexual violence recently, but there is a lag between what the church teaches and what the members (and often even leaders) believe. For good or ill, most Utah Mormons still subscribe to the conservative Mormonism of McConkie, Benson, Kimball, etc. And that’s all that matters to my argument: that Mormons do believe those harmful teachings about preserving virginity at all costs, not whether they should hold such beliefs.
A tad bit of humor from an LDS version of the onion.- I apologize if it is inappropriate.
http://sugar-beet.blogspot.com/2005/08/lds-girls-preferring-death-over.html
“And that’s all that matters to my argument: that Mormons do believe those harmful teachings about preserving virginity at all costs, not whether they should hold such beliefs.”
- While I personally tend to agree with you – I can’t say that the opposite side is free of harm either. Your religious person is always going to have stronger feelings about sex – and sexual liberation and licentiousness can be equally viewed as just as harmful (actually they’d see it as worse) from the Mormon culture.
So while “preserving virginity at all costs” might painfully create a culture in which the raped leave feeling “unworthy” – This is the fault of the culture in its attempts to keep its members sexuality from being hijacked by “the world”- The Church is actually blameless as expressed by Ryan doing its part to counteract the negative effects of rape and abuse.
I also must express some disagreement with Kliener that “Virtues are the habits of character that are formed through repetitive VOLUNTARY actions. Being robbed does not make me a worse person (in terms of my virtue). Why would being raped?” – I think Jon’s point is that the culture usually impresses upon the raped or abused individual in such a way that their voluntary thoughts usually tend towards feeling unworthy in a way that being robbed does not. These voluntary actions then tend towards negative character changes. So in the end a rape can make a person worse in the end. -That being said I understand that it was a short answer.
I think I am in agreement with Jon — the culture ought not communicate that message. I was just trying to explain what was wrong-headed about the message the culture often sends to sex abuse victims. Jon is right, too often different cultures do impress on these victims the idea that their virtue/chastity has been undermined. That is just wrong-headed. But in impressing that wrong-headed idea, it might well lead the person to act in ways they otherwise would not have, and those later actions might impact their character.
As the scandal develops (and the media feeding frenzy continues), I thought it worth updating my thoughts on the matter:
The almost fanatical media focus on the Catholic scandal strikes me – and I think it should strike you – as highly suspicious. I saw this statistic today:
Hofstra University professor Charol Shakeshaft reports that 6-10 percent of public school students have been molested in cases of “educator sexual misconduct”. The number is around 290,000 between 1991 and 2000.
That is over just 10 years. Now, over the last 50 years there have been a little over 10,000 accusations against Catholic priests in the United States, of which about 6700 were confirmed. 6700 over 50 years compared to estimates of 290,000 over 10 in our schools. And now that the RCC has really changed the way it handles these issues (thanks largely to Ratzinger/Benedict), there were just 6 credible reports of abuse in 2009 in the United States (bear in mind there are 65 million Catholic Americans). Compare to the roughly 29,000 per year in our schools according to the Hofstra study. Even at the height of the Catholic scandal (70s and 80s), estimates are that about 1.5 to 4% of priests globally had sexual interactions with minors, which is considerably lower than the 8% that experts estimate is the level of the general population.
So can someone explain to me the almost fanatical focus on the sins of some Churchmen? How can one fail to conclude that there is anti-Catholic bias at work here?
I hope I don’t need to stress that this is not a dismissal of the very serious sins committed by some Churchmen, both in the abuse and in the cover ups (and the behavior by some people of authority, particularly Bishops Mahoney and Law in the US, was certainly sinful and potentially criminal). As I have said here before, the Catholic sex abuse scandal is tragic and nauseating and it deserves attention. I am not posting here to diminish the sins and crimes committed, nor am I interested in ‘explaining them away’. I think sexual molestation of a minor is the gravest possible evil next to killing an innocent. And the gravity of the evil is certainly compounded by the special kind of trust a child should have with their priest. But the same could certainly be said of child’s relationship with his teachers.
Point is, the Catholic scandal needs to be put in context. I think it is safe to conclude that there is a global crisis of sexual depravity (sex abuse of minors, trafficking, etc etc). Studies suggest that some 40 million Americans were victims of childhood sex abuse (about 20% of women and 10% of men). That is just so disturbing. Sadly, the Catholic Church has not been immune to this cultural depravity. But my point is this — the media coverage would lead you to believe that the Catholic Church is somehow the epicenter of this sordid business. But if people were really interested in the welfare of children, how come no one is paying any attention to the crisis in our schools, where children are being molested (according to the Hofstra study) at a rate of at least 30 times the rate in Catholic parishes?
For some thoughts on Benedict’s role this Times article gives, I think, a pretty fair treatment:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/29/opinion/29douthat.html?hp
I think that the reason it is focused more on the catholic church is because it is a religious institution. These men are supposed to be men of god, to be enlightened, to be a little more righteous than the scum of the earth. As such, (I imaging) people trust these men with their children more than they should. These priests are educated, provide counseling, and are respected more than most in their communities. Then they go and do this sort of thing.
Another huge reason is the active cover up by the church. In education, if someone cries abuse, the teacher is tainted for life. Nobody rushes to defend them, and regardless of guilt, their reputation is destroyed. Within the confines of the catholic church, the priests are protected. They escape any sort of punishment by the government and (sometimes) are simply moved to a new area where they may continue their abuse. This is why it is so terrible.
Kleiner, I think you should be wary of martyrdom complex in regards to your church. It’s one of the largest and most powerful organizations in the world. I think they can stand a little scrutiny. Actually, I think they should be under more scrutiny because of their power.
To be clear, I am not diminishing the simply terrible and tragic actions of some priests and the truly unconscionable cover-ups by some. Ben is quite right, society expects (not unreasonably) these men of God to be better than the dregs of society.
But the cover-up is not uniquely Catholic. I have looked around a bit and there is considerable evidence that sex abuse in schools is often not reported by fellow teachers who know about it. And only a tiny fraction of the incidents in schools are actually prosecuted. And there is recent evidence that the Boy Scouts have a scandal (abuse and cover-ups) of their own. Point is, the RCC is not unique in having failed to manage this well.
Anyway, I don’t have a “martyrdom complex” with the Church. I am just observing a fact – a fact that esteemed sociologists and historians have discussed for many decades – that there exists anti-Catholic bias in America. It has been called the “deepest bias” in the history of America and “the last acceptable prejudice”. And I am dismayed by the spectacle this causes with respect to the grave matter of sex abuse.
The Church deserves some scrutiny. And She will survive this trial (a trial brought on foremost by her own members, even if the wounds are being actively festered by an anti-Catholic media). The article I linked recounted this famous story:
“During a frustrating argument with a Roman Catholic cardinal, Napoleon Bonaparte supposedly burst out: “Your eminence, are you not aware that I have the power to destroy the Catholic Church?” The cardinal, the anecdote goes, responded ruefully: “Your majesty, we, the Catholic clergy, have done our best to destroy the church for the last 1,800 years. We have not succeeded, and neither will you.””
I agree with Ben. I’ve seen several examples in the news media of statistics cited showing “hey, abuse happens in other professions, and by other publicly trustworthy people including teachers, police, judges, etc.”. It comes off sounding like “well, everyone else is doing it too”. Also, consider the much larger general number of teachers compared to priests.
The comparison isn’t accurate anyway, as schools and other organizations will be quick to fire the perpetrators and cooperate fully with law enforcement. Not so with the Catholic Church.
Another factor in the media scrutiny is likely due to the fact that Catholicism as an institution claims to be some sort of objective source for moral superiority.
I didn’t expect this crowd to be all that moved by points about anti-Catholic bias. But if you are going to be moved by evidence, I think you should be considerably more sympathetic to my point. But I do want to offer a few clarifications:
Saying that this happens in other institutions is not a brushing aside of moral responsibility. It is simply an effort to put the Catholic scandal in context. Pretending that this scandal (the abuse or the cover ups) is unique to the Catholic Church is simply dishonest and it ignores the evidence. And it ignores the larger cultural causes of this sort of abuse, which people who care about child welfare should be keenly interested in working out. But saying this does not mean saying “hey, everyone else is doing it”, as if that fact absolves those responsible of their responsibility.
Statistics suggest that around 5% of public school teachers are involved in sexual abuse, as compared to around 2.5 or 3 % of Catholic priests. This is as a percentage so this controls for the fact that there are more teachers. But if you were to just watch the news about this, you would think that the problem was far more widespread in the RCC. No one even talks about the abuse in schools. Prof Shakeshafts’ study concluded that children are 100 times more likely to be abused in schools than in Catholic churches.
And the cover-ups are not unique to the RCC either, so this cannot be the explanation for the focus on the RCC. An AP investigation found “”deeply entrenched resistance toward recognizing and fighting that sexual abuse” in public schools with the result that “very few abusers get caught — and often are allowed to exit a district quietly, only to show up in another school district. That dynamic, says the report, is so commonplace that it has its own nicknames — “passing the trash” or the “mobile molester”.”
I am not, thereby, saying that the Catholic Church is not mired in a grave scandal and that the events are anything other than morally atrocious. But the fanatical media fixation is impossible to ignore for anyone who does not have an axe to grind against Catholicism.
Here is a bit of objective evidence: I looked at another study on the media done in 2002. That was when both the Catholic scandal broke in the US and when the US government got data about sex abuse in public schools from a large Dept of Ed report (the report was part of compliance with the new No Child Left Behind law). The 60 largest newspapers in California ran 2000 stories about the Catholic sex abuse scandal and only 4 on the bigger public school problem. Seriously, how are you going to explain the overwhelming media bias there?
Keep in mind also that the coverage of the Catholic scandal has concerned past allegations while the public school scandal is still ongoing. By any measure, the Catholic Church has been pretty effective in rooting this out. If you look at the statistic you will see that allegations of sexual abuse by priests has dropped from 8.5 allegations per 1000 priests in 1980 (the high point, just after JPII became Pope) to less than 1 allegation per 1000 priests in 2005.
Again, I am not condoning the cover-ups that did occur, much less the abuse. I am terribly scandalized and grieved by them. I am simply pointing out some facts that would lead, I would think, any reasonable person to the conclusion that there is some anti-Catholic bias in the way the stories have been reported.
Last point: Catholics do not claim moral superiority. Churches are hospitals for sinners, not museums for saints. The Church claims to have a clear moral vision of the truth of man (and she does argue that her moral vision is better than the reduced utilitarian crap of the culture at large), but she does not claim that her members live up to this vision any better than anyone else. I am not a morally superior person in virtue of being Catholic. Who would think such a silly thing?
“If you look at the statistic you will see that allegations of sexual abuse by priests has dropped from 8.5 allegations per 1000 priests in 1980 (the high point, just after JPII became Pope) to less than 1 allegation per 1000 priests in 2005.”
Yeah, when I read a similar statistic at the Catholic League’s site, it gave me some serious pause. As such, I have kept pretty mum on this scandal. There admittedly seems to be a lot of smoke, but no big fire. The big scandal involves a pederast priest from Wisconsin, whose offenses were committed in the 1960s. The police weren’t informed about the priest until the ’70s, and the Vatican not until the ’90s. When the Vatican found out, they began an investigation and referred the priest to counseling, but by that time the priest was an old man and died just two years into the Vatican’s investigation. If I have the facts of the case wrong, please let me know. But if those are the facts, I don’t see how they merit all the seemingly over-zealous headlines.