Morning Read: Is the priest scandal a product of the Sixties?
The Roman Catholic church is still reeling from the “pedophile priest” scandal, which damaged the institution’s credibility badly, while also culling a lot of desperately needed (but dangerous) clergy.
The Diocese of Ogdensburg is reconfiguring its entire mission in the North Country to account for a growing priest shortage.
Now a new study by researchers at the widely respected John Jay College of Criminal Justice has reached a startling conclusion:
The sex-abuse crisis wasn’t a side-effect of the Church’s culture, or of the chastity vow, but a product of the 1960s.
[M]ost of the priest-offenders came from seminary classes of the 1940s and 1950s who were not properly trained to confront the upheavals of the 1960s, when behavioral norms were upended and crime overall in the United States spiked, the researchers said.
“There’s no indication in our data that priests are any more likely to abuse children than anyone else in society,” said Karen Terry, principal investigator for the report, at a news conference where the report was released Wednesday.
The study is the subject of an Associated Press article that appeared today in the Glens Falls Post Star.
Terry argues that their research was conducted independently, without input of meddling by bishops. But critics of the church quickly blasted the report.
The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests dismissed the report as “garbage in, garbage out” because the bishops paid for much of the $1.8 million study, along with Catholic foundations, individual donors and a grant from the U.S. Department of Justice.
Some additional questions are likely in order here. If the sex-abuse crisis was a product of the 60s, why did it also erupt in parts of the world — Ireland, Mexico, Spain — that remained socially conservative?
But at the very least, this study will add to a meaningful discussion of the crisis that has wounded a cherished North Country institution.
It also suggests another important question: If priests weren’t being adequately prepared for the modern world, has that training improved?
Will the next generation of priests be better equipped to deal with the complexities and ambiguities of American life?
As always, your comments welcome.
Tags: religion
No.
This has been another edition of “simple answers to stupid questions”.
People are a product of the distillation of genetic information, complete with mutations, for over 3 billion years. With around 6 billion people inhabiting the earth, the drive to procreate is rather well established. The notion that this drive can be held back by a religious tenet flies in the face of reality.
A religion requiring celibacy from grown male adults through denying the predetermination of procreant genetic information handed down for millions and millions of years will produce a striking similarity to a scratch in an LP of a beautiful concerto being used to reproduce copies of the recording; namely, the flaw continues to reproduce. The flaw, in this instance, of course is the ugly scratch left in the psyche of those affected by perverted sexual acts perpetrated by priests unable to control sexual urges as old as the human race.
The damage done to society by a religion such as Catholicism promoting celibacy is immeasurable.
I’ve always felt the biggest problem for the Church was its response when someone came to it with a complaint. The response should have been and should be: “This is a legal issue and you should make your complaint to the police.”
As to – “There’s no indication in our data that priests are any more likely to abuse children than anyone else in society” – while probably true, it is irrelevant. It sounds too much like the response of a kid who says, “Well everyone else is doing it.”
Priests abuse children at no higher rates than teachers or coaches or the general public at large. This has been pretty well established so from that perspective this report is not new. The issue is how the Church and society at large responds to sexual abuse. This is what has upset the most people and for good reason.
I honestly don’t think the abuse scandal is about priest training, something wrong with the priests or the social changes of the 1960’s. The true scandal is at its core about corruption. This would apply to the Catholic Church, to Universities to public schools whoever acts to cover up sexual abuse in a wrongheaded worry over the reputation of the institution or just plain laziness or denial; in not wanting to deal with a very ugly problem.
The Catholic Church makes sure the clergy are disconnected from reality? I’m shocked. SHOCKED!
Though those trained in the seminaries of the 40s and 50s would also have been unprepared for another transformation of the 1960s: the reforms of Vatican II which brought the Church out of the Middle Ages and into the 20th… err, I mean, the 19th century.
Morning Reaction: Is this question a new low for In-Box headlines?
Sexual abuse of minors appears wherever authority figures meet the powerless in conditions of privacy, opacity and impunity. Witness the parallel native schools abuse history in Canada. It’s not the situation that has changed, but the public level of awareness.
Far from attributing the ongoing church abuse scandal to the inadequate mores and social controls of the Sixties, we should attribute our awareness of the abuse of authority to the climate that began in the Sixties–when authority became something to challenge, and the culture of impunity became increasingly difficult to maintain.
Dale, NCPR
I agree with Dale. There’s no reason to believe that this began only during the 60’s. In fact, the one thing we know for sure is that it is the social climate of the new millennium that has brought these abuses – which happened decades ago – into the light of day.
..so there were no sex abuse issues whithin the church prior to the sixties?
ya killin me!
I wonder what was external cause for the inquisition. And then there’s the Crusades. I’m sure with a few more million spent on studies they could find someone or something else to blame.
It brings to mine the old Flip Wilson character Geraldine saying “The devil made me do it”.
Dale’s assessment is quite correct and he is right to cite Canada. The infamous abuse of the “Duplessis orphans” took place in Catholic-run institutions primarily in the 40s and 50s, when the Union nationale and Maurice Duplessis’ cult of personality had absolute control of Quebec politics as well as a quite unholy alliance with the Church.
if it was all about external causes and the sixties,instead of plain old sexual perversions, then i personally vote to blame the brown acid.
Yeah, it must have been the LSD and swag weed everyone was smoking. It’s unbelievable how the Catholic Church continues to look for any excuse it can imagine rather than own up to the massive and decades long cover up its leadership has engaged in. I honestly wonder how anyone, whether a Catholic or not, can take these people seriously. I mean really, how can you take anything that comes from the Vatican serious after these shenanigans? After the lives they’ve destroyed how can they preach or dictate anything regarding morality?
When a young man suffers a constant bombardment of repetitious religious memes while studying for the priesthood, little does he suspect he is asking his DNA and RNA to deny its biological predetermination.
In his zeal to obey religious doctrine, he attempts to suppress sexual drives programmed deep within his makeup. The end result of course is to relieve the sexual urges without embarrassing the Church. Enter predatory sex with whatever gender is available with the least impact to the priest, personally.
This predation goes all the way back to the beginning of the transpicuous memes that began this perfidy against believers. When the fable was first created, wisdom should have prevailed and the meme of celibacy thwarted. Instead, we have Catholicism.
I, for one, loathe perfidy-birthing transpicuous memes.
“I, for one, loathe perfidy-birthing transpicuous memes.”
Bless you, Father!
What shocked me about the report out of John Jay:
1) As several others here have noted, it seems remarkable that this was laid at the feet of the “sixties generation.” I agree with Dale, all this has to do with the sixties is the climate of challenging authority.
2) For this study–and this study alone–the researchers arbitrarily decided that the age of 10 and under marked the point at which sexual abuse could be labeled pedophilia. The rest of the world uses the age of 14. Why did the study choose the age of 10? Perhaps because then the percentage of abuse that was unequivocally pedophilia dropped to well below 50%. For my money, anyone under the age of 16 or older (depending on the child) who is encouraged by a much older authority figure to engage in sex is the victim of pedophilia.
3) The study was very careful to make some convoluted argument that proved that even though the vast majority of abuse cases involved young boys, this did not indicate that priests were gay but simply that boys were more available (because of choir?). So, priests just engaged in sex with children randomly…gender didn’t matter? How does this help the image?
The first step in any 12-step program is to admit the bad behavior–and the addiction. I’m still waiting to hear the church take that step in a way that demonstrates self-awareness.
I doubt “the 60’s” had anything to do with the problem too. We had pedophiles in the 50’s and earlier also, but back then they were correctly labeled perverts and they were social outcasts rather than a group to be protected by the ACLU and others. That groups such as NAMBLA can even legally exist is an insult to anyone with a shred of moral fiber.
I am not Catholic but I can understand the Church placing the vows of celibacy on it’s leaders. It’s a challenge, a price to pay. While I don’t know this to be true, I would expect most young Priests fully intend to maintain those vows. I’m familiar with at least a few Priests who have had heterosexual relationships and a couple that left the position after seeing they couldn’t remain there and carry on their relationships. That to me seems the more correct way to handle things.
In fairness to the Catholic Church, there are still many good men serving as Priests to their congregation who’ve never failed their vows. As with so many things, the good gets lumped in with the bad. We should remember that.
I appreciate that these last two comments are a bit more levelheaded than most of those which precede them. I appreciate that especially as a young Catholic priest who is once again disappointed by the biases of his “open-minded” neighbors.
Many of the questions asked and critiques raised above are addressed within the actual report (http://usccb.org/mr/causes-and-context.shtml), though not in the headlines. Please take the time to check it out if you truly want to know more; the “Executive Summary” is a manageable read. The Church isn’t pinning all of this on the ’60’s (though a notable increase in abuse occurred during that decade); we’re well aware that this tragic reality has a much longer history. The “age range” for pedophilia is not so arbitrary, but calls for clinical distinctions which can’t be captured by sound bites (“ephebophile priests” just doesn’t have a very good ring to it). And as far as accepting responsibility and working for change: the Catholic Church is made up of imperfect people living in an imperfect world, but we’ve done a lot of public soul-searching and taken many concrete steps to protect youth in recent years. No, we can’t undo the past…but don’t we get a chance to try to make things right by those who’ve been hurt and keep working for a better future?
In the nearly 12 years since I made the promise, I’ve never thought of my celibate lifestyle (something I’ve freely, knowingly chosen) as being socially deviant or an offence to nature, as has been suggested several times here. (My celibacy damages society? Really?) Such charges seem particularly ironic in our highly–and often unhealthily–sexualized culture.
The Church is more than willing to take her licks when she deserves it. We’ve got a lot to repent of. But let’s not give in to easy generalizations, and let’s be sure to deal with the facts. I don’t think that’s too much to hope for.
Bret: quite the opposite. Right now we live in a climate where the mere accusation of pedophilia is the worst crime you can commit, even if you didn’t commit it. In those “good old days” you cite, molesters were protected if they were in the Church or otherwise had power or were linked to people in power. If they were really ostracized as you claim and not sheltered, then this scandal would not have erupted in the first place. It would’ve been snuffed out case by case.
I think focusing on celibacy, priests and priest training totally misses the point. Priests don’t molest at any higher rates than the general population including other professionals who come into contact with children in the secular world. A priest who molests does not molest because of his vow of celibacy, he molests for the same reasons that all other offenders molest.
What should be studied is how to identify potential pedophiles and molesters (they are clinically different) to weed them out before they are given access to children. This would be helpful for all professions who work with children not just priests. The second area is how as a society we should respond to sexual abuse allegations and how we expect our institutions to respond.
It is a hard hard area and also an area that is difficult to get a legal conviction. When all you have to go on are accusations it is a tough situation.
Brian, hogwash. Look up NAMBLA and the support and backing they have.
Actually, if anyone cares, most sexual abuse of minors is done by family members or close friends of the family.
Have you ever wonder why you always hear about someone being arrested for having child pornography but hardly ever hear about those who produce it being arrested.
I don’t know but would not be surprised to learn that most child pornography is made by parents of the child or other family members.
I’m not excusing priests. I’m just saying they are but the tip of a very slimy iceberg.