As accusations of clerical sexual abuse continue to emerge, most recently in Ireland, Germany, Austria and the Netherlands, a conversation I had recently with a Vatican official offered a timely reminder not to forget what is often overlooked: the well-being of priests in all of this.
He pointed out that while each case must, of course, be treated with the utmost seriousness and justice be done, often innocent priests are the ones who have to bear most of the fallout. The perpetrators also receive precious little help or compassion from the Church.
“There has been such an overreaction that most priests are now warned not to even touch a child,” he said. “And I’ve not seen the slightest compassion shown by anybody to a priest caught up in this stuff.”
Stressing that while the crime is deplorable, he said a very small minority of priests are guilty of the crime. Furthermore, he reminded that the perpetrator is “a priest and a Christian and deserves some kind of help and respect ”“ they’ve almost been treated like dogs and it’s horrible.”
An overreaction? An overreaction? For years, priests, in large numbers in would appear, have been using boys for sex, and when caught at this practice, they have been shifted to other dioceses and protected by their bishops. And the seminaries have been used as safehouses for homosexuals. The evidence here is very clear. For years. And now, overreaction? It’s hard to make the pot white if the whitewash just won’t stay on. Larry
I was an Episcopal priest in 2002, when the allegations of sexual abuse started up here in the US. As an Anglo-Catholic, my usual clergy attire was a black suit and white tab collar.
One day I was at the grocery store in the town where I had ministered for several years. I was looking at canned vegetables and a small child was just on the edge of my peripheral vision, staring up at me. I looked over and smiled and said, “How are you?” He said, “Good.” I said, “You helping your Mom?” and he said he was.
At that, the mother–who had been just a little ways down the aisle the whole time–turned round, looked at my collar, hustled over and snatched her child up and said, “Never talk to a man dressed like that.”
I was, as I say, an Episcopalian. But that was the first of several such ‘little encounters’ like that I had over the years. I’m sure other priests on this forum have had similar experiences.
I have left TEC and am now a Roman Catholic. My pastor is a kind man, but has experienced the same sort of snap judgment, and is never sure how to handle it. One can hardly run down the aisle of the supermarket, yelling after a woman, “I’m not a pedophile!”
I think my experience and the experience of my current pastor are really more like what that Vatican official is talking about, Larry. I don’t think he’s trying to excuse anything. I think he’s saying that the clergy are being painted with a very broad brush, and one that doesn’t seem to get used for doctors and preschool teachers, who also have had pedophiles in their midst. There are more decent priests than pedophiles in the Church: that’s all he’s saying, I think. And as a person who was the recipient of such prejudice, I agree with him.
It is important to keep in mind the following when considering the issue of widespread child sexual abuse is the Catholic Church.
1. The number of offenders per 1000 priests is the same as public school teachers. Most regrettably, the RC abusers were not prosecuted and removed, but instead often received treatment, and then transferred to continue their predatory behavior. In essence, the Catholic church was inadvertently “stock-piling” sexual predators, instead of rooting them out and ridding the church of these people (in ministerial positions).
2. The Catholic Church has mishandled the crisis horribly,
a. by encouraging a situation where protecting the reputation of the institution was a higher priority than protecting children, and
b. by a basic (and self-serving) misunderstanding that preferential offenders are guilty of moral failures, when the actual reality is the hierarchy is dealing with a very serious, presently untreatable, pathological obsession, and finally,
c. by applying the laudable catholic understanding of sin and forgiveness to people who suffer from a terrible compulsive disorder. The doctrine of forgiveness still applies but the offenders also need to be permanently removed from contact with children.
Instead of simply demonizing the Catholic Church, and the abusers, we would be better served by learning from the egregious mistakes they have made.
#3
Funny you mention the public schools, which have been studied and which have a problem as great, or great, than the Catholic Church.
http://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/research/pubs/misconductreview/report.pdf
They shuffle teachers around as well:
http://www.catholicleague.org/specialreports.php?id=10
Moreover, the vast majority of priests with an allegation against have only one allegation, which suggests that they don’t have a “terrible compulsive disorder”, or “untreatable pathological disorder”. If you examine the entire body of offending priests, I think you will find that like any group of identified “sex offenders”, the real predators are relatively few.
And #1 – there are large numbers, but not on a percentage basis. There are simply a lot of Catholic priests.
Bother #1 and #3 would benefit from considering facts more than newspaper coverage.
# 4 I think if you actually read what I wrote you might see that
1. I agree that the percentage of RC predators is not more than other professions.
2. That I carefully used the term “preferential offenders,” which is to be distinguished from “situational offenders,” and that the preferential offenders (along with violent/indiscriminate offenders) were the ones that have proven to repeat their crimes.
3. You missed my point entirely.
Mr. Pentin,
I was responding to comments 1 and 3, not your article.