I won’t argue with you there. I’ve always been a fan of having a healthy dose of skepticism. It’s simply the number that people with far more knowledge than I seem to converge on. My personal opinion is that it’s likely statistically similar for all male abusers. Maybe a little higher in some regions, a little lower in others, roughly though similar. Of course, my opinion and a nickel will get you a cup of coffee 60 years ago.
As for punishments, most of the issue is that the accusations are long past the statutes of limitations. More recent accusations do go into criminal courts, but the vast majority of these accusations are from the 70s (why the 70s? Who knows? Maybe 50 year olds are just comfortable about talking about them.) and are well past the point of provability. A large portion of the accused aren’t even alive anymore, so punishing them is kind of futile.
Institutionally, the Catholic Church has faced a great deal of retribution. They’ve paid just in settlements somewhere around 2.5 billion dollars and total costs incurred due to sex abuse are estimated to be north of 4 billion. That’s not peanuts to any organization.
Another thing about the size and the centralization is that many Catholics say “Oh, of course there are a handful of bad apples, but you can’t extrapolate to the RCC as a whole!” where if you have an independent church there may not be a church “as a whole” other than what’s immediately before you. When you have that sort of handwaving possible, coverups might make more sense, systemically. If parishioners won’t hold the church accountable, why should they behave well?
My school did get a priest who’d been moved after assaulting students at the previous school, but they did inform the new school. The new school was chosen to be one whose students had a reputation for biting the head off the wolf before even crying out, and the priest was set to work with a different age group in hopes this would help him resist temptation, and within that age group to two class groups which had a reputation above and beyond the general one. This didn’t prevent him from assaulting several of us, but we did bite, hit, kick and scream.
The attacks appeared to have been triggered in part by a mid-life crisis; students who got him after my class will swear he’s “the sweetest old guy ever”. Mine still thinks he’s a git with or without the sexual assault, he’s syrupy oh yeah but also a really bad teacher.
Whether general priests or teaching ones, and whether general teachers or those in religious orders, I think there’s two issues:
predators (male or female; sexual or not) being attracted to professions which make their desired targets easily available, and
the coverups.
And not just pedophilia but all forms of abuse from alcohol to taking advantage of people/adults through counseling to whatever. Heck – one parish over the priest even ended up named in a murder investigation as part of the whole DMX/Mon-Valley stuff when the mills were closing. And in the pre-internet days it was a little harder for people to get info.
Before the one priest was transferred into the parish, another priest was floated as probably getting the nod coming from the Scranton area. Heck, my family is all from around there and while we were historically part of the Orthodoxy many of us belonged to Papist/RC parishes as well. Dad made some calls back home, calls were made around other families in the parish, and instead of that priest (also named in the report) we got -------- a lush. He was a great priest in many ways and I still remember him fondly and how the Bishop treated him is a big part of why I am Lutheran today. But he was a drunk and he really just got left to heal himself or not in his “personal relationship with God”. The thing I think funny is that the priest I knew best on the list was the one who replaced him. :smack: But if it wasn’t for family contacts and everything else a serious abuser rather than an enabler would have been on the altar several years sooner.
My family was active in the parish beyond simple worship and membership. I was an altar boy and my brother the organist. Dad and our mother were choir, Sunday School -------- the whole nine yards. I have no doubt I would recognize names of victims in additions to the priests in the report. Is the report and the AGs release a little grand-standing and sensational? Sure. But its also mostly true or at least possible and at least IMHO the former and current bishops of Pittsburgh need serious investigation. Not just for children but across the board; almost a full-blown RICO investigation. Will it happen? Nah; look in the report about how civil officials in Beaver County assisted in the cover-up — the RC church probably still has that kind of power in political circles especially in this county. But a lot there needs a good hard look one way or another.
Moreover, according to an article on the question in today’s NY Times, the Catholic is fighting a proposal to eliminate (or at least suspend temporarily) the statute of limitations, both criminal and civil, for sex crimes. I can only suppose that, as an institution, the church is still in cover-up mode.
I think it will be easy to tell when the RC Church is no longer in cover-up mode. It will be when long lists of previously assumed “clean” cardinals and bishops are named by their colleagues as conspirators in protecting abusers, or named as abusers themselves. It will really be real when new young seminarians hear nervous whispers all around them, “Abusers in the Church are mercilessly hung out to dry, the bishop will go to the police before the victim does, watch your back”.
Partly because ‘sexual abuse’ is a soft term, and the numbers are subject to a kind of ‘chinese whispers’ effect. I found that really irritating when I was looking at a different kind of child abuse number: percentage abused by a friend or family member, where the catagory managed to inflate to include anyone the victim had ever seen before, or heard mentioned before, or that anyone else known to the victim had seen or heard of, and 5% in the original report becomes 95% in the college lecture.
The RC church has known structural and theological problems with dealing with pedophiles: that’s one part of the reason why the church lost the legal right to handle prosecution internally, in church courts, and also one of the given reasons for the reformation.
The only person I’ve ever know personally who was convicted for under-age sex offenses with boys was a scout leader. I think it’s fair to say that he didn’t join the scouts to offend, and that being a scout leader didn’t force him to offend. Still, having said that, as I recall Luther’s position was that the priesthood turned men towards sexual abuse, and if you’re a young catholic man who likes boys better than young women, an unmarried life working with boys wouldn’t be automatically excluded by other interests.
I’ve always held the belief that there was a higher incidence of pedophiles in the Catholic clergy because they were men that believed it was better to be completely celibate than act on their dark sexual preferences, and then found just couldn’t help themselves. And maybe some entered with intent as it is easier to pull off when in a position of authority. I do not believe the incident is the same as the general population (preying on same-sex children). Not everybody is going to report this shit, especially if they are going to be shunned because a priest is high profile and beloved, and even moreso if the organization actively protects them and shuffles them around so they don’t get caught. Your everyday child molesting garbage man doesn’t have that luxury.
I think making clergy exclusively celibate was a very, very bad idea.
Who in this thread will stand up and say that never in their life have they ever touched another person inappropriately sexually? Any one under the age of 18, excreta?
By definition, does that make you a pedophile?
I will not raise my hand, will any of you?
IMO, it is not any one group, but humans in general and the fanatical hatred I see in these type threads over and over by many of the same people who seem to be drawn to them to repeatedly proclaim their disgust and hate always show up.
Are you trying to argue that these priests didn’t do anything that bad because you have touched other people inappropriately? Maybe I just can’t read today.
Does the second question ask if we touched shit or urine willingly once we knew what it was? Because I certainly didn’t. One of my toddlerhood’s BFF’s sisters would run after us with shit in her hands, but she was already a bitch at age 4.
And as far as I know, I haven’t touched another person in a sexually inappropriate way, no. Unless you’re counting something like “grabbing your mother’s boob while suckling, age under 2yo”.
This is but a single anecdote. But a junior high school teacher whose English class I was in ca. 1973 was busted around 2004 for having sex with a fourteen-year-old boy. He spent years covering it up and trying to destroy his accusers - he’d risen to the position of county schools superintendent. In the wake of the investigation, it was revealed that he had left quietly (with no notification to law enforcement) at least once after allegations of abuse. These incidents occurred in West Virginia and New York state.
I heard an interesting theory that had to do with the celibacy requirements for priests.
Celibacy is not a natural human condition and priests are human. This commentator argued that most priests have broken their vow of celibacy. While most of these transgressions involved consenting adults, they were still transgressions. And this makes those priests less likely to report the transgression of another priest - either because they feel they have lost their moral authority due to their own sins or because they are afraid of having their own behavior exposed.
Which is really screwed up and leads to my own personal theory. Which is that once you draw the line as “All sex is wrong”, it’s easy to lose perspective about stuff that happens on the wrong side of the line. And not enough distinction is made between behavior that is a little bit wrong and behavior that is deeply and horribly wrong.
I’m not Catholic, but when the stories first came out, many years ago, I was really surprised at how many of my Catholic friends had a story about a priest. While none of them was actually abused, most of them ad been the subject of some sort of overture as teens- a hand on the thigh, a hug that went on for too long…and they all felt if they had reacted differently something would’ve happened. Most of the incidents happened in the ‘70’s and involved the “cool” priest — remember that guy?
I don’t get the question, but I’ll raise my hand to say I’ve never inappropriately touched another person sexually.
And I don’t get the excreta question, but I’ve helped with the caretaking of terminally ill friends and family and sometimes it gets messy. I’m not squeamish anymore.