More files were made public yesterday, more are yet to come, and the number of abusive priests and the extent of cover-ups by bishops and Cardinal Law is just staggering.
I hear reports of scattered problems in other places, but nothing to compare with Boston. So, does Boston have a disproportionate number of abusive priests? Or have bishops in other cities handled problems more responsibly? Or is the shit about to hit the fan in other dioceses?
My guess would be that it’s because Boston is one of the most Catholic cities in the U.S., ranking 7th behind three Texas cities, two Louisiana cities, and Providence, R.I.–
http://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/country/scus3.html
–and the fact that Boston is an archdiocese, and the fact that Boston has more priests than the next closest archdiocese, Newark (9th).
The Boston archdiocese had 901 priests in 2001, to serve a Catholic population of 2,069,225.
The Newark archdiocese had 550 active priests in 2001, to serve a Catholic population of 1,319,558.
http://www.rcan.org/planning/facts2001.htm
So Boston has nearly twice as many priests as the next archdiocese. Twice as many priests, twice as much potential for abuse.
My guess would be that as this goes more mainstream, we’ll see the shit hit the fan in other places. It’s possible that after people have seen the issue raised over and over and over again on various talk shows, they may be more willing to come forward.
However, the three Texas cities–Laredo, Brownsville, and El Paso–are also border communities, and there may be a lot of people who were abused but who are never going to come forward since they have shady immigration histories, and the less official attention they attract, the better for them.
Alot of people are blaming Cardinal Law for irresponsible handling of the abuse cases. It’s possible that Cardinal Law protected abusive priests to a much greater degree than was done elsewhere.
I do get the impression (from media coverage, which may not be entirely fair) that Cardinal Law was more negligent (to put it no higher) in dealing with this problem than many (most? all?) other dioceses. Priests of the diocese who were abusing may therefore have done so for longer, and affecting a greater number of victims, than they could have in other dioceses. I suppose it is even possible - but this is pure speculation on my part - that abusive priests might have sought to be transferred to Boston, believing that there offenses would go undetected, or ignored, for longer in that diocese than elsewhere.
On the other hand it could just be that the Boston Globe has been more thorough in researching and publishing on this issue than other newspapers, and this may give Boston a higher profile in our perceptions than the facts warrant.
I would have thought Chicago would rank higher than 19th on the list. Anyway, I agree with UDS, that people knew the higher-ups would turn a blind eye. I have a sneaking suspicion that the Cardinal knew even more than we know he knew.
In Atlanta:
The Cardinal in charge in the 80’s got into a lot of trouble when it was revealed that he was making payments to his ex-mistress using church funds. She had a couple of kids that she alleged may have been his and he had to keep her quiet, paternity issues aside. (I don’t think the kids turned out to be his anyway.)
A priest was indicted for child molestation and when they went to arrest him he was missing. The chuch claimed no knowledge of his whereabouts. Turned out they had spirited him away to England where he ended up working in a hospital in a children’s ward. Got extradited, the locals had to do some fancy footwork to avoid abetting a felon charges.
I don’t think the Boston church is any way unique or different from the rest. You just need a big enough snowball going downhill before it all blows up.