Keeping the church safe….That was indicative of the value system that prevailed at the time. Institutions were regarded as much more important than individuals, especially if they were young. They protected the institution, considering it the greater good, despite what some of its more senior members got up to with the choir boys.
The same defensive attitude prevailed in many other institutions which encouraged loyalty and a reverence for the collective mission.
Those within the institution certainly knew exactly what was going on and ‘managed’ the situation by moving troublesome priests around, so they were the problem of some other parish.
There was a significant cultural change that took place in the 1980s that led to a loss of faith in major institutions and instead began to protect the individual and their rights.
At one time it was acceptable for institutions to beat the children in their charge. Then a few years later it was not, and the revelations of historic abuse began to be taken seriously.
Institutions are now on the defensive and campaigns for redress are not without consequences despite the attempts at cover up. There are trying to reform and introduce safeguarding. Institutions provide important structure to society.
Remember too, there were two types of offenders - those who had a moment of weakness, and those who were outright predators. The predators, of course, assured their superiors when/if caught, that it was a moment of weakness they would never repeat. (Or that they had succumbed to temptation for a while, but having being caught, had repented, I’m a changed man, yada yada).
Also, sexual content rarely made the main stream media. Even straight reporting like “the victim was sexually assaulted” was almost never reported. While for example, JFK’s proclivities may have been common gossip in Washington or political circles, it was not even tabloid gossip at the time. We can thank Monica for breaking that media barrier. Before that, it was only when it was completely “in your face” like a high profile court case that sex would get any significant media attention.
If straight adult sex was hard to report, gay sex, child molestation and other non-mainstream less accepted activities were even less reported. The lack of wider discussion of child molestation meant that any public mention had a much larger stigma attached. Most organizations - from the Boy Scouts to assorted schools, juvenile detention facilities, and churches, were as has been mentioned, more concerned about the bad publicity than acknowledging something had happened and correcting it. (Ode To Biliie Joe was later made into a movie which implied the suicidal young man was troubled by being raped by the local Baptist minister) Plus, many humans would rather ignore unpleasantness than have to deal with it, and also tend to blame the messenger at least in part.
There was a dam that burst in about the 1980’s when it became possible to discuss topics in the media, and a flood of held-back stories from the past decades became known at the same time, making it seem all the worse - and demonstrating why “sweeping it under the rug” is never a good strategy for any organization’s scandal.
Hierarchies are less important now and individual rights are more important. For at least the last century, perhaps more like the past several centuries, unshaken trust in hierarchies has been decreasing and recognition of individual rights has been increasing. This applies to all sorts of hierarchies. Clergy over congregation, management over employees, parents over children, husbands over wives, men over women, government structure over citizens, educational establishment hierarchy over students, and many others that don’t occur to me at the moment. What we’re seeing is continued decrease in the unshaken trust in those hierarchies, which means that previous violations are only now coming to be known.
Something certainly changed in the 1980s. Corporal punishment in schools was common place and accepted by parents. Then over the space of a few years attitudes changed and parents became more protective.
I am guessing it was due to the dramatic shift in the economy from industrial command and control and the rigid discipline it required to a service based economy which had an emphasis on much softer management styles. Tough love was out and helicopter parenting was in and this set the tone for a much more consumer focussed attitude towards institutions intended to deliver education or religion. Society went from upholding the interests of the greater collective good to upholding the rights of the individual.
This trend has probably been accelerated by the emergence of the Internet in the 1990s and the development of social media in the last decade. This has given voice to a great many troubled souls who were victims of abuse by predators embedded within institutions.
While this is cathartic, it had also encouraged dangerous moral panics to develop. Institutions, one after another, are being required to put their houses in order and introduce safeguarding where they are responsible for the welfare of the vulnerable. That must be a good thing. Plenty of good people in institutions knew about abuse, but were unable to do anything about it lest they be marginalised and have their careers compromised and lives made difficult. There were serious sanctions that could be imposed on whistleblowers. This is still very evident in today. The stories are still emerging after decades of suppression.
What dangerous moral panics? Do you mean like Q-Anon or just people who are suspicious of anyone being put on a pedestal and then given unsupervised access to children.
I always thought the fake Satanic ritual abuse scandal in day care centers had something to do with the actual sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic church. People who denied the latter usually seemed to believe the former was real, as if they were trying to pin it on the opposition.
I’m struggling to see the connection between actual abuse by members of organized in-groups (Catholic priests, Boy Scout leaders, Little League coaches, “orphanage” bosses) and imaginary abuse by the ultimate out-group that probably didn’t even exist (satanists).
The time-honored strategy of falsely accusing your opposition of the offenses that your side is in fact guilty of. As you note, the opposition (networks of Satanic cults) doesn’t even have to actually exist. (Not to hijack, but more recently, see Antifa).
In this case, it may have been subconscious on the part of people who were in denial about their church’s misdeeds.
This. What really blew the lid off was not individual bad actors but the realization that this was an endemic problem in the Church, which had responded by cover-ups.
What had changed in society in general between, say, 1950 and 1980, was a general change where the needs of institutions were no longer paramount and instead the needs of victims of institutions became paramount. This applied to lots of institutions, not just the Church.
Once that change in the direction of gravity was in place, the first time a sensational case broke the surface, the entire society reacted very differently. Then the toothpaste could not be stuck back into the tube as it had been so many times before.
The question is whether it was commonly thought that Catholic priests were child molesters - not that it was happening, or that the priesthood knew about it, or that someone rather extraordinary like Eramus alluded to it, but whether people in general assumed it was common the way they do now.
And it certainly wasn’t as commonly known as it is now. Priests used to be some of the most respected people in any community. This only started falling apart among people in general in the 1970s and 1980s.
And even more so, talking about priests as child molesters was VERY uncommon amongst Catholics themselves until fairly recently. Such cases as went to court were assumed to be extreme exceptions. The priest was the pillar of the community. In a large Catholic family, which many obviously were, it was a great honor to have one of your boys become a priest.
In Canada they came out with a based-on-real-events TV movie in 1992, “The Boys of St. Vincent,” which was about Church child molesters, and it was produced in part because these issues were finally, really coming to light. The inspiration was the Mount Cashel scandal, which had only come to light in 1989. The movie - which is a hard watch, as you might expect - was critically acclaimed but also socially acclaimed as a finally-we’re-talking-about-this moment.
There was once a day when people just did not talk about this stuff, and that day was not at all long ago.
I think it is mostly traced to the 60’s revolution, the social upheaval where the boomer generation came of age in an era of plenty, did not have to struggle to make a living, and rejected many of the accepted social values. (Some might use the term “spoiled”) The Vietnam War and protests against it probably accelerated this iconoclastic movement against authority. Question everything. Peer pressure from elders to conform and obey no longer carried the weight it used to.
I would date the change in the 70’s and 80’s - things like protectiveness, helicopter parenting, anti corporal punishment, etc. to when this generation started having children of their own but kept their distrustful attitude to authority. It also helped sweep away the attitude that many institutions should not be questioned or criticized.
My impression was that the abuse allegations were planted with leading questions by the authorities. Most children have no ideas of the urges and motivations of sexually mature adults (Freud notwithstanding). Children are not stupid, they can pick up on cues and will tell adults what they want to hear. When police suspect abuse, and untrained interrogators or those with certain obsessions began peppering children with leading questions, they got the answers the children could see the interrogators wanted. However, children had no idea about sexual activity - so asked about “bad” or “terrible” things by adults, they imagined what children think of as horrors - rituals in the dark, killing babies and eating them, draining blood, etc. rather than activity involving genitals.
Problem fixed eventually by using proper questioning by people who knew what they were doing to get real answers.
Makes sense, as to how childrens’ stories were obtained.
But I still think the public’s acceptance of such far-fetched claims may have involved a little subconscious projection of the misdeeds of RC priests (and possibly other trusted bad actors (scoutmasters, teachers, et al).
I should add that from what I gathered of news reports doing autopsies on all these satanic trials - the result was because someone somewhere had suspicions of child abuse, so inept authorities began to investigate. The children were encouraged and lead to tell interrogators about bad things. But!! They had no bad things actually happen to themselves, and faced with relentless questioning about “don’t be afraid, tell us about bad things you saw or experienced” they could see the interrogators wanted to hear about “bad things”. Wanting to comply, they made up stories about horrible things they could imagine.
The giveaway that it was fabrication was that they did not report sexual abuse, because there had been none. These incredulous accusations were believed by investigators who wanted to believe they were finding extreme abuse to justify the steps they had taken.
I consider myself at least moderately worldly but was quite surprised verging on shocked when I saw first saw statistics on the most popular categories of porn. Incest was at the top or near it.
That may well be part of it but another major part is a changing attitude towards, and probably of, the Catholic Church as a reliable social institution with as much or even more moral authority than the government and the criminal justice system. It was the arbiter of what was right or wrong, how wrong something was, how forgivable something was, and what appropriate punishments should be. The Church believed it, and believed in itself, and so did a large proportion of the population.
Having spoken to people who were perhaps one step removed from the people involved in what are now universally seen as “cover-ups” my impression is that they did not necessarily see it that way. My impression is they genuinely believed that they were an institution that had procedures and internal methods etc that were as valid as those of the police and the courts. Their views on the seriousness of the crime, and the appropriateness of the internal punishments they imposed etc were - they considered - as good as anyone’s.
In other words, in short, I think that it’s not just that the institution was seen as more important than the individual - it is that the institution saw itself as having an entitlement and an authority to deal with its own problems that it unquestionably no longer does (to the extent it ever did, which is of course highly dubious).
You see something similar even today (not sexual). I recall hearing about a case of one accountant who was discovered to be embezzling from the company by a substantial amount. They simply let him go, rather than cause the embarrassment to the company of admitting their procedures had been lax enough to let this happen. Further investigation showed he’d been let go from his previous job in possibly similar circumstances. IIRC the guy moved to a different province but took a job with a school board; being a government agency, they had to report the problem that time and he was charged.
The desire not to admit you’ve been a victim is strong, particularly for respected organizations. Also, it’s only recently that less negativity is applied to the victims of sexual abuse.