What about Catholicism lent itself, specifically, to the abuse of young boys?

Great Debates
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Someone would seem to have to, if they believe the same logic applies to sexual abuse by authorities in the church.

I’d be shocked if they had. The question here also applies to not just sexual abuse, but the methods of combating, preventing, and otherwise dealing with sexual abusers and their victims. Has the church, through encyclicals and other methods of teaching, promoted insufficient or even counterproductive methods of dealing with those things? If Bishop Fred deals with Priest Bob’s crimes by moving him to another parish, would Bishop Fred be able to point to church messages or what he’s been taught to justify his decision, or is that purely a decision taken on his own cognizance?

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Charter For The Protection Of Children And Young People

CIRCULAR LETTER TO ASSIST EPISCOPAL CONFERENCES IN DEVELOPING GUIDELINES FOR DEALING WITH CASES OF SEXUAL ABUSES OF MINORS PERPETRATED BY CLERICS (CONGREGATIO PRO DOCTRINA FIDEI)

Magisterial Teachings on the Protection of God’s Children

From the Catechism of the Catholic Church

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I make no claims to extensive direct knowledge, only that I’ve paid attention over the years, and have reasoned about this carefully.

I agree that the question is wrong-headed. There isn’t anything “about Catholicism that lent itself, specifically, to the abuse of young boys.”

For one thing, “Catholicism” hasn’t been defined here clearly at all. Catholic itself just means something like “universal,” or “all inclusive.” The Catholic Church historically is not a SECT, it was started essentially as THE CHURCH. The EVERYTHING Church. On top of that, it has as a part of its heritage, that it was directly declared to be the representation of the real authority of the Roman Empire in the West, early in it’s life. In other words, it’s a lot more complicated on multiple levels, than just being a certain set of rules, or anything like that.

For another thing, as has been pointed out, abuses are seen in ALL institutions. In those where children are acted upon by the institution, child abuse occurs. Where it is other subgroups of humans, abuses of those kinds of humans occurs.

I have become what might be called a structuralist, as I’ve studied both history and day to day human behavior for over sixty years. I am convinced that it’s all similar to cooking, in a way, or to chemistry, or any other concept you like, where there are basic ingredients (humans, in this case), and processes (or organizational structures, in this case).

If you completely ignore or erase from the observation, the fact that a given behavior or action by the humans you are observing is enraging, repugnant, etc… and just observe it as a generic action, it’s much easier to recognize things such as

  • that humans take shortcuts, and those shortcuts often consist of the establishment of organizations and authorities;

  • that no matter how carefully one human designs a mechanism, another human will come along and find a way to use it to do something else entirely, and often that new something is the opposite or worse, than the original designers intentions;

  • that humans are prone to generate defective members repeatedly;

  • that any institution which establishes authority of one group of humans over another, is going to attract the kind of defective humans who want to ABUSE that authority;

And so in the end, I think we can write a sort of math-like formula which says that ***the primary cause of abuse of authority by humans, is the creation of authority by humans.

And since the creation of authority (organization)  is inherent to human behavior, the resulting inescapable conclusion to all of the above,  is that there IS no way to create an authority which will not and cannot be abused.  Therefore the only solution possible, is constant suspicion of all authorities, and constant vigilance.
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Thank you, I’m glad to know this. I notice that the first two date from 2006 and 2011 respectively (I don’t mention the dates of the others simply because they’re not dated); I note also that your second link refers to changes to make the procedure more serious begun in 2001 and 2003. Were the equivalents prior at some point to these lacking? That is to say, if we transpose Priest Bob and his Bishop back in time, is there a point at which the church’s teaching on this subject was insufficient? If so, how far?

That asked, I’m not 100% sure that your cites answer my questions fully. They do certainly look as though the church is serious about combating sexual abuse. But I’m not sure Bishop Fred wouldn’t still be able to say “Hey, I sent the guy to a different parish, that’s compatible with what I’ve been taught.” Perhaps you could quote a specific part of the links you’ve dropped to help me out in understanding that?

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In the first link, (the charter), there are links at the bottom of the page that point to the actual document. The booklet and full page links are the easiest to bring up to read. That document says that all reports are are to be evaluated by a panel of professionals composed of a majority of laypersons, that any legitimate report is to be passed to the civil authorities, that any cleric found to have engaged in such behavior is to be immediately removed from any duties, that no confidentiality agreement is to be arranged unless the victim requests it, and a number of other points.

This 2011 document builds on the 2002 document.

There was probably not something similar prior to 2002. I not yet found the terms of the 1985 declaration .
I suspect that there was not a similar document prior to 1985. However, it should be recalled that the public awareness of the problem was a gradual thing that was not discussed in public for any group–clerics, coaches, scout troop leaders, others–until the 1970s when it began building. It was always regarded in society as a rare event that did not really have many victims. (One victim is too many, but institutions never movefast.)

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Of course, such documents only are meaningful when they are implemented. It is striking to note that Archbishop Flynn, who was involved in drafting the Charter for the Protection of Children And Young People didn’t actually implement it.

I found most amusing the Archbishop Flynn’s remarkably poor memory of how he handled accusations of abuse. Yeah, great story, dude.

Also hilarious, in a despairing way, is the fact that the only person in the diocesan hierarchy who actually demonstrated a working understanding of morality and decency isn’t qualified to be a priest,since she’s a woman.

I don’t think that people who work for the Catholic Church are especially prone to this sort of crime, but reactions of their bosses to these crimes seem especially egregious, especially for people who otherwise seemed eager to make moral pronouncements about issues of seeming lesser importance, like civil gay marriage.

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I agree. It tends to be a human trait that people in authority often fail to carry out their duties. It may also be true that successive administrations tend to train their successors in bad practices. Flynn’s successor, Nienstedt was pretty universally loathed within his diocese for a number of similar actions.
I do note two aspects of the series of stories. All of the abuse reported and hidden appears to have occurred prior to the efforts at reform. There are certainly a number of men in the organization who continue to want to follow the “we don’t want scandal” mentality that prompted so much cover-up. (That accusation, unfortunately, has been leveled at guys who were part of the commission that Pope Francis called to investigate and change attitudes.). I am not aware that any U.S. bishops have been caught covering up abuse that has occurred since 2002 (although there remain people avoiding responsibility for cover-ups of abuse occurring prior to that). I hope that the actions of Pope Francis and the dying off of the older enablers results in a much cleaner institution.