The certainly liked to report it .... there are many more
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The “credibility gap” caused by the Catholic Church’s “mismanagement of the clergy sex abuse crisis” has resulted in its “largest institutional crisis in centuries, possibly in church history.”—NATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER, U.S.A.
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“An Uncomfortable History”
“The Report of the Commission to Inquire Into Child Abuse reveals an uncomfortable history of Ireland,” says The Irish Times. According to the newspaper, this report uncovers a history stained by the systematic abuse of children in Catholic religious institutions, ranging from “beating children whose crime it was that lice had infested their heads” to sustained sexual abuse. The abuse was ignored because of misguided loyalty to “the absolute authority of the Catholic Church,” says the paper. “Shame on You, Government and Church,” said a headline in the Times, quoting the words of one who sympathized with the victims.
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Church Doors Closing
The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, U.S.A., has announced that it will close 65 of its 357 parishes—almost one fifth of the total. Some 60 churches and 120 related buildings will be sold. According to The New York Times, this restructuring is “caused partly by declining attendance and increased financial problems that were worsened by the sexual abuse crisis among clergy members.” The newspaper quotes R. Scott Appleby, director of the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism at Notre Dame University, as saying that “the scandal has put a drain on the financial resources of the archdiocese” to such an extent that it cannot “keep parishes afloat.”
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Catholic Dioceses Bankrupt
By the end of 2004, three Catholic dioceses in the United States had filed for bankruptcy. All three were forced to take this step because of the financial costs of clergy sexual abuse scandals. A number of dioceses have talked about the possibility of having to file for bankruptcy, but the first to do so was the Archdiocese of Portland, Oregon, in July 2004. That action halted two lawsuits in which plaintiffs were seeking a total of $155 million in compensation for molestation. According to the National Catholic Reporter, “the archdiocese and its insurers already have paid more than $53 million to settle more than 130 claims by people who say they were abused by priests.” In September 2004, the diocese of Tucson, Arizona, became the second diocese to seek bankruptcy protection from multimillion dollar claims being brought against it. The diocese of Spokane, Washington, became the third, in December 2004.
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Studies on Sex Abuse by Priests
“Two long-awaited studies have found that the [U.S.] Roman Catholic Church suffered an epidemic of child sexual abuse that involved at least 4 percent of priests over 52 years and peaked with the ordination class of 1970, in which one of every 10 priests was eventually accused of abuse,” reports The New York Times. “The human toll amounted to 10,667 children allegedly victimized by 4,392 priests from 1950 to 2002, but the studies caution that even these numbers represent an undercount,” as many cases have not been reported. One study, conducted at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, disclosed that “priests were accused of abuse in more than 95 percent of dioceses and about 60 percent of religious orders.” The other study, by a Catholic national review board, pointed to a culture in Catholic seminaries that “tolerated moral laxity.”
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Interest in the Priesthood Lost
Catholic parents are “no longer eager to say ‘my son, the priest,’” says The New York Times. “Catholic leaders . . . are well aware that a major factor behind the shortage of priests is a shortage of Catholic parents who are willing to coax their children to consider vocations to the priesthood.” Among the reasons given are smaller Catholic families, where “it is harder to accept an only son’s joining a celibate priesthood,” the article states. “In addition, the prestige of the priesthood has been shaken over the last decade with each news report about child abuse by priests, parents said in interviews.” A survey of Catholics most active in the church, commissioned by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, revealed that two thirds of the parents would not encourage their children to follow a career as a priest or a nun. According to Edward J. Burns, a priest and representative of the group, a young, unmarried couple at a family reunion would get no disapproving comments if they announced that they were living together. Yet, a young man contemplating the priesthood would be pulled aside by family members who would say, “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
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Abuse by Clergy in Africa
“Clergy sex abuse cases are beginning to surface in Africa,” reports the magazine Catholic International. To prevent such abuse, some Catholic bishops are recommending more rigorous screening and training of potential seminarians. Other areas of clerical misconduct that concern the African bishops include “misuse of alcohol, and involvement in activities that are unbecoming or alien to the priestly state and vocation, such as business or trade, politics.” Why have these cases only recently come to light? “A freer press and a lessening of previous Church control over the mass media,” answers Catholic International, adding that “initial attempts by some Church authorities in parts of Africa to prevent unflattering news . . . have failed.”
*** g97 4/8 pp. 13-14 Sexual Exploitation of Children—A Worldwide Problem ***
Religion Involved
A delegate of the Roman Catholic Church at the Stockholm congress declared that exploitation of children is the “most heinous of crimes” and a “result of profound distortion and the breakdowns of values.” Yet, the Catholic Church has been severely affected by such practices among its own clergy.
In the August 16, 1993, issue of Newsweek, an article entitled “Priests and Abuse” reported on “the worst clerical scandal in the modern history of the U.S. Catholic Church.” It stated: “While allegations have been lodged against an estimated 400 priests since 1982, some churchmen extrapolate that as many as 2,500 priests have molested children or teenagers. . . . More than money, the scandal has cost the church severe embarrassment—and some of its moral authority.” Other religions throughout the world are in the same situation.
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Shattered Trust
The tiny town of Chesterfield Inlet on the Hudson Bay in Canada’s Northwest Territories has been rocked by charges of widespread abuse of schoolchildren. According to Maclean’s magazine, an independent report recently released by the government found incidents of sexual and physical abuse of native Inuit children over a 17-year period in the 1950’s and 1960’s at the Sir Joseph Bernier Federal Day School and at an adjacent residence run by the Catholic Church. The police completed a 21-month investigation into 236 allegations of abuse and decided not to lay charges—in some cases because the statute of limitations had expired; in others because the alleged perpetrators were elderly or even dead; in others because some former students could not identify the offenders with certainty. Noted Maclean’s: “Although the passage of time has clearly made punishing alleged offenders more difficult, it has not erased the pain of the victims.”
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Victims of Pedophile Priests Speak Out
“DURING the past decade, some 400 Roman Catholic priests have been reported to church or civil authorities for sexual abuse of children,” according to U.S.News & World Report. Recently, a national gathering of survivors of such abuse was held near Chicago, Illinois. Many spoke openly of how they had been victimized by pedophile priests.
But NCR (National Catholic Reporter) notes that speakers sounded another theme repeatedly throughout the conference: “The first abuse is sexual; the second and more painful, is psychological.” This second abuse occurs when the church refuses to listen to victims of abuse, fails to take their accusations seriously, and moves only to protect the offending priests. “Fairly or unfairly,” NCR reports, “they portrayed Catholic clergy as belonging to an unhealthy and misguided group more bent on preserving privilege and power than in serving lay needs.” Several speakers made ominous comparisons to the Reformation, which split the church wide open in the 16th century.
According to Richard Sipe, a former priest turned psychotherapist and expert on sexual abuse by Catholic clergy, all this institutional denial reveals “a deep, desperate and knowing personal involvement in the problem.” He added: “The church knows and has known for a long time a great deal about the sexual activity of its priests. It has looked the other way, tolerated, covered up and simply lied about the broad spectrum of sexual activity of its priests.”
Not surprisingly, then, many abuse survivors are suing the church. NCR quotes one attorney who specializes in such cases as saying that there are pedophile-priest cases in each of the church’s 188 dioceses in the United States. He says that out-of-court settlements have run as high as $300,000 per case. U.S.News & World Report says that such suits have already cost the church $400,000,000, a figure that could surge to $1 billion by the year 2000. And the Canadian Press reported recently that some 2,000 survivors of childhood sexual abuse in 22 church-run orphanages and mental institutions in Quebec are suing six religious orders for $1.4 billion in damages.
Interestingly, though, the aforementioned U.S. attorney, who represents 150 victims of pedophile priests in 23 states, says that he has never yet had a client who was eager to go to court. Each one first tried to seek justice “within the pastoral context of the church.” NCR concludes: “Survivors go to the courts, it appears, not as a first resort, but as a last resort.”
