Stand Firm

[RC] Irish Church Child Molestation Coverup on “Astonishing Scale”

The police in Ireland cooperated in the coverup by referring cases back to the church hierarchy.

Not so much that *I* am repelled, but that pagans and the lost and the searching are repelled by such actions.

My problem is not that this church grew lax in accepting men into their ranks who preferred boys—[and that has very little to do with celibacy].

It’s an issue with the leadership who intensified, increased, and escalated—by their own horrible actions—the sexual abuse of boys by others.

It makes “Come Home to Rome” all the more appealing for disaffected Anglicans.

Physical, mental, and sexual abuse. More than 2/3 of those sexually abused were boys. Jesus wept.

The Romans have all the same problems that everyone else has. In fact, if the primacy of Peter is to be accepted, one might argue that Rome invented homosexual clergy. Certainly, they’ve nurtured that, and so much more.

Actually Pope Benedict has put in a directive that those with homosexual inclinations are to be denied entrance into the process of entry to priestly orders. Whether the “lavender mafia” that exists in the RCC follows that is still anyone’s guess.

There was a time when no young man who had ever been molested could become a Catholic Priest. That was a very sound practice since most adults who molest children were themselves molested as children…“they are just passing on the blessing”. Frances Scott

One notices that the victims are all described as ‘children.’ None of the provided links gave any details about age and gender. We know for a fact that in the US an equivocation on the word ‘children’ was used to hide homosexual relationships between priests and post-pubescent adolescent boys. Has a similar equivocation be employed here? Is the media hiding the true nature of the offense? Certainly in the US, the parallel crisis was triggered by a large influx of homosexuals into the priesthood. These individuals sought out and seduced vulnerable teenage boys into the gay lifestyle. One suspects a common etiology in all these cases - located as they are in liberalizing western nations. Time will tell.

Of course, the connection between homosexuality and the abuse crisis is ‘the connection that must never be allowed.’ Something must be employed to distract the observer lest he reach the wrong conclusions. The focus on the credibility of the RCC thus serves a dual purpose for the purveyors of the new morality. It attacks a bulwark of traditional morality in the culture. It also deflects attention away from the dangers of introducing homosexual men into authoritative and mentoring relationships with teenage boys. So long as the conversation can be focused on how terrible the RCC was to cover up the offense, there can never be any conversation about how irresponsible the RCC was to allow these men such access in the first place. That’s not to say the cover-up wasn’t terrible. But you can’t fix the problem unless you correctly identify the problem. Pedophiles pursuing eight-year-olds is a much different problem than homosexual men pursuing teenagers.

Yeah well… Homosexual activists will typically make a (false) distinction between homosexual child molestation and ‘grown-up’ homosex. They’ll claim that the former is a completely different orientation. I’ve seen this thinking applied to other ‘brands’ of homosex - the public restroom kind, the adult bookstore kind, e.g.. It’s as if they’ve got this garden, and they feel that once they take away the weeds, the pure and good form of homosex will remain. Problem is, remove the weeds, and nothing at all is left in their hypothetical garden.

Not reporting (or emphasizing) the gender of the abused is probably the press’s way of shying away from the argument.

Although the statistics are still to come, I suspect with Carl that most of these abuses will be homosexual in nature. The media will be encouraged to portray this as “A Church Crime” (which it is) but not as “A Gay Crime” (which is also is). Two groups need to address this: The Church (underway - can’t happen fast enough, heads must roll) and the Gay Community (deafening silence).

I have to wonder if this follows similar patterns of the sex abuse scandal in the U.S.. Were the majority of these cases actually about pedophilia or were most of the victims adolescent males?

Not that it excuses the behavior of the church hierarchy or government officials but screaming pedophilia when it is not makes it rather difficult to be honest about the cause and solution to the problem. I am also curious as to the overall percentage of priests so accused.

And I have a feeling that most institutions secular or religious would if subject to such an investigation would yield very similar results. I am thinking specifically about schools.

And it has to be remembered that in all these cases the priests and bishops were violating both Canon Law and Catholic Moral teaching. That is why it so important now that the Church speak out against those who do so now. She shut her mouth one time to avoid the appearance of discontent within the ranks and to protect her image. She did so at great cost to the innocent. And at great cost to the mission of the Church which foremost must be the Gospel.

I think we are seeing a great upheavel right now which will not only leave the Church smaller but leave her more concerned with the souls of the faithful then with her standing in the world. Bringing this scandal to light is in my mind a gift from God. For He chastises those He loves.

Instead of attempting to split hairs, why not read the appalling litany of abuse yourselves, as detailed in the Part 2 of the Murphy Report. A ‘representative sample’ of 46 cases from 1975 onwards. From one diocese. Those abused were both male and female. Many were very young children.

This scandle has been known for a number of years and the Irish people have known it. It is amazing that it has taken this long to be brought into the spotlight. My Irish friends tell me that unlike a few years ago when the RCC churches would be packed, now the people, especially the youth are doing something else on Sunday. Some of this is true all over the world and some is due to the fairly recent prosperity in Ireland. There has always been a smoldering resentment in Ireland because the church of Patric and the Irish was taken over by the Romans. One RCC Irishman told me that in each village the most powerful man in town was the priest and he was the most hated. I’m sure that was not universally true. Yes, there is pleanty of guilt to go around, but the important thing to watch is to see what the RCC is really going to do about it now. In the US most RCC members that I know relate how the church winks at abortion and divorce in the local congregations. Also, in their universities. I also know some very conservative priest with integrity and they say there is a tightening up from the top down. As the liberal bishops are replaced, then more can be done. Lay members tell me if there is any significant tightening down then the membership will walk, since it is so American to do your own thing and not let anyone tell you what to do, especially the Gen Xers. I hope the RCC stands up and lets the chips fall where they may. IMHO

I occasionally look at a Catholic website of websites (New Advent), and other sites. The current pope has, as nearly as I can make out, identified the overall problem as homosexuality run rampant, and is taking steps to prevent that—catching huge load of flack along the way for that, I might add. Carl’s analysis certainly not only has “legs,” but seems to have been seconded by at least one of the key figures in the RCC…(B16).

“Although the statistics are still to come, I suspect with Carl that most of these abuses will be homosexual in nature.”

In my town, the Roman Catholic Archibishop assigned a Priest with a prior history of child molestation accusations to be the Priest in charge of a large Catholic parish without informing anyone of the history. This was less than ten years ago. This pattern was repeated throughout the US. It was a betrayal of huge propotions to the faithful, and in our case did incalculable harm to the church and drove many away. It also suggests a deep systemic problem in the Priesthood and governance of the church. I love many aspects of the Roman Catholic church, and know several wonderful and faithful Priest and Bishops. But these revelations continue to shock.

Where are the candle-light vigils? How many more people will vote with their feet this Sunday? Shall we not hear a comment from the Bishop of New Hampshire? Do you think anyone who is entertaining the prospect of the Apostolic Constitution will give it a second-thought because of this scandal? I hardly think they shall bat an eye. Were I an Ulster-man I would be out beating my Lamberg Drum until the cows come home. Dr. Paisley said it so well, “there’ll be a wailing and gnashing of teeth and for them that haven’t, teeth’ll be provided!”

Carl - what are you getting at? Is it worse if the kids are boys? Or is it worse if the kids are older? I can’t think of anything worse than assaulting a little girl. Just asking. I probably didn’t understand you.
I only knew personally a couple of priests who pursued teen and pre-teen girls. And a lot of gay seminarians, who never molested me, but I didn’t think of myself as a kid at the time.

My beef with the New England catholic clergy in my teenage years was their sanctimonious arrogant vulgar bullying tyranny. Damien Thompson in his paragraph (linked above) expresses my feelings exactly. I share his estimate of the RC clergy in Ireland, and the RC church in the USA has not been completely free of that culture, since the time of Dublin Cardinal Cullen in the mid 1800’s at least. The abuse has been known and tolerated by RC clergy, laity, hierarchy, police, local government, health providers, schools, and not just in Dublin and Cloyne. I was always taught when a kid that if you said no to a priest your left arm would shrivel up. Thompson thinks Catholic boys were warped by Jansenism, the RC version of Puritanism. IMO also by an absolutely lunatic degree of sexual repression and imposed ignorance (fortunately no longer possible in this time of omnipresent pervasive information). I certainly was brainwashed by these forces before my brief (inglorious) career in an RC seminary.

I feel ashamed for the Roman Catholic Church. Every RC should feel ashamed, and should stay ashamed, not try to talk their way out of it, to others or in their heart. Just stay in that state. The situation is as it is.

Carl is right, male sex with any male in any circumstances is homosexual. Why gild the lily? Most homosexuals don’t abuse children, but some do. Same with straights. Homosexual organizations try to spin, but that is just politics as usual. The “homosexual community” says nothing in particular but there is no such actual institution.

As Carl points out, the solution is to fire all gay RC clergy. And not to ordain any gay men. This could be done tomorrow, and it should. It probably won’t though. At the risk of disagreeing with Carl, I think it should be applied to straight child abusers as well, and equal opportunity pedophiles. Raping a six year old girl is not less heinous than raping a 16 year old boy.

Also, contrary to some opinions, I think the individual priests bear the primary guilt for their crimes. They are the ones who did it and they didn’t have to. The bishops would have been very glad for them not to do it. But of course the negligence and dereliction of duty of the hierarchy makes them accesories, and their repeated false witness makes them liable to the millstone and sea. They came up through the same perverted chain of command. I am ashamed. I am looking at the blank wall of a dead end.

One doesn’t have to read very far into The Decameron to gather that corruption of the clergy is far from a new thing.

Two things struck me (well not only two things) when I read some of the report. The first thing is that the cases are a textbook example of how predators seduce their victims. Especially those guilty of pedophilia. A great deal of “grooming” (the reports term not mine) when into victimizing the child. And a very large portion of that was spent in earning the family’s trust too.

The second thing was how many victims a single pedophile can have over the years. The case I read cited 200 victims. Much higher than the number of victims of homosexuals who are attracted to adolescents. So you can have a minority of the offenders being actual pedophile while the majority of victims are young children. That is very, very scary.

It also raises alarms in me over the increasing attempt to sexualize children through certain sex ed programs or by lobbying for age of consent laws to be changed. It is hard enough for a child to challenge an adult who is abusing them when they have been told such behavior is wrong. How much more difficult would it be if children are encouraged to explore sexual feelings? And yes many current and proposed sex ed programs do just that.

And I am angrier over later cases when the recidivism rate of sexual abusers was better understood (zilch I believe is the medical term). Also in recent years we have rejected of the idea that the abuse was usually a case of the priest having an obsession with a specific child. So there was no excuse for thinking shuffling the priests would stop the problem.

And I do not think this problem is unique to the Catholic Church. But a combination of factors brought about not only the horrible sin of abuse but the added sin and scandal of the cover up. Those factors are probably unique to the Church.

I am an Irish-American and former Roman Catholic Priest who crossed the Thames for this very reason. I was told my whole life how so many “took the soup” and now I wonder why. Mandatory celibacy is a joke.

It would seem to me worse - much worse - for a man to target and corrupt a pre-pubescent boy. Such a boy is much more vulnerable, and much less aware. But that isn’t the typical case for the abuse crisis in the RCC. The vast majority of abuse victims were vulnerable post-pubescent teenage boys. Homosexual priests identified, desired, targeted, seduced, and corrupted these boys into homosexual acts. Gay activists and their allies have a vested interest in separating the ‘mainstream’ homosexual community from these acts. So they hid the whole crisis behind a veil of pedophilia. That way they could say “It not about homosexuality. It’s about a totally different set of sexual desires that some adults have towards children.” But it is about homosexuality. It has always been about homosexuality. You can’t address the problem until you properly identify it.

Traditionally we protect teenagers from adult sexual predators by gender segregation. This strategy assumes that adults have no sexual interest in teenagers given into their charge. Since there is considerable expectation of such desire across genders, common gender leadership is put in place. But the whole system breaks down if you place homosexual men into positions of leadership and authority. Suddenly the people who are supposed to protect those boys from predators have a sexual interest in the prey themselves. That’s the problem. It’s also the exact problem that homosexual activists don’t want anyone to examine.

It’s much easier to guard against this kind of occurrence across gender lines because the expectation of sexual desire is already present. But we typically assume a lack of sexual desire within genders. In fact, the whole system of gender segregation - from locker rooms to bathrooms to separating kids by gender for room assignments on school trips - depends on it. But homosexual activists can’t have that principle consistently applied, or else they have to remove themselves from positions of authority. They want all adults to be granted the “presumption of innocence” so that homosexuals can be allowed supervisory positions. It’s the “We are all adults. Some adults control their desires, and some don’t.” line of defense. Only a fool of a parent would grant the truth of that idea. Most parents want an extra measure of security. Something more substantial than an assurance like “I would never ever EVER do such a thing.”

One one of my favorite blogs, Homileo, (by a blogger in Northern Ireland) there is a most wonderful prayer:

For those to whom great trust is given, there must be harsh punishment when that trust is abused. The animal part of me cries out for those priests who have abused these children to be castrated and publicly flogged within an inch of their life for this, and then branded on their foreheads with a hot iron. I pray instead for the Lord’s justice to come swiftly upon them.

While those who supervise these priests are at fault for their excessive zeal for the church which blinded them to their duty; I could more easily forgive their crime, if not for the scars left in the victims.

The prevalence of this problem in the RCC does present a harsh indictment of the prohibition for clergy to marry. Of course, the problem exists elsewhere and that is not the only cause, but these results show it to be an obvious flaw in the system. When combined with the respect and privilege reasonably accorded to priests, it presents an egregious problem that deserves the attention of the pontiff. If we can choose not to imitate Jesus and become Jews, perhaps we could also choose to allow priests to marry and demonstrate conjugal fidelity. The tradition of celibacy was instituted long after the time of the apostles and arguably for petty reasons of church economics. It was never commanded by our Savior.

RE: “The prevalence of this problem in the RCC does present a harsh indictment of the prohibition for clergy to marry.”

Au contraire—it presents a harsh indictment of placing gay males in positions of authority over children.

If they’ve been covering this abuse up, I wonder what else they’ve been covering up?

Cennydd #31: I would guess that they are covering up anything and everything that might be embarrasing to the Roman church.

Cennydd #32: Didn’t the Pope issue an apology a year or so back? These facts have been known for some time, and it has been known that the facts were due to be published.

It is interesting that, at least to my knowledge, no Roman prelate either here in the United States or in Ireland has ever been charged as an accessory after the fact for his role in covering up the crime. Here in the United States, we drove a president out of office on allegations that he was covering up a crime. I guess bishops get a pass.

Carl pins blame for the sins of the Irish RC church on “gay activists.” Others blame “clerical celibacy.” IMO these are both ways of deflecting blame from the clergy who committed the crimes. We immediately turn the horrible disclosures of the commission into fodder for our particular agendas.

OTOH Carl is right about the predominance of homosexual abuse in these cases. But it is less because parents in Ireland trusted men to take care of their boys than because they trusted priests. And when their trust was broken, they were afraid or unable to complain about priests. This is a problem with the RCC. And particularly with the Irish church.

Brer Rabbit [35] - Of course the bishops get a pass. They are getting passes on this thread.

Sarah,
Probably because it never occurred to Rome to ask “have you been covering up child abuse?”

Not one that succeeded in appointing four such leaders over its 64 year period . . . they are all out of business.

RE: “Probably because it never occurred to Rome to ask “have you been covering up child abuse?”

But I think that organizations that promote four sick bastards like that in a row over the same entity have slightly deeper issues than merely not asking the right question of the candidates.

Just as I think the same thing for The Episcopal Church and it’s last three PBs over a far shorter period.

I think carl was saying that gay activists exemplify the kind of thinking that prevents the root cause (allowing homosexuals into positions where they have access to male teens and boys) from being treated. Not that the priests responsible were mostly gay activists or gay rights supporters.

#42 “Probably because it never occurred to Rome to ask “have you been covering up child abuse?””

Rome is as culpable in all of this as the Dublin Archdiocese. Even now, the Vatican has consistently refused to co-operate with the investigations detailed in the Murphy Report, despite repeated requests:

All sex crimes are particularly evil, particularly those involving people in a position of trust. The Priest represents Christ the shepherd of the flock, Christ the head of the mystical body, Christ the bridegroom of the Church. This is the teaching of the church. The historic role of the Priest gave him unmatched access and authority over men and women of all ages, particularly children and teens.

This special position required a much higher standard of diligence and discipline to be applied for any lapse. Yet, the Roman Catholic authorities in Ireland and several US Dioceses, schools and seminaries, seemed to do just the opposite for years.

The Vatican has pronounced standards to try to address this problem since 1961, and sexual orientation was one of its measures. However, its pronouncements were largely ignored. For example, in 2002, the Rector of St. John’s seminary speculated that up to have of the seminarians were gay. What developed was a dichotomy between the teachings and practices of the church as it relates to Priests. Based on the initial reactions,several seminarian leaders disagree with the Vatican’s renewed efforts to restrict admission as both impractical and unjust. Will they be enforced? Thats the question.

I would be very interested in hearing from current seminarians and new Priests as to any actual changes in admission standards and teaching.

I read the link and I think the problem is that the request was made to the governance of the Vatican and yes normally it would have to go through excepted diplomatic channels. But I believe an exception should be made in this case. As this goes beyond one government asking another government asking for documents.

Much of this has little to do with ‘sexual attraction’ (of whatever ‘orientation’) but, like rape in general, with power and violence. In its most extreme form, as I heard testified by an Irish survivor, this took the form of anal and vaginal rape of a young girl with a crucifix.

Lifting the Rock’s comment [49] is exactly the approach Carl refers to and rightly rejects [26].

This does not have mostly “to do with power and violence.” It has to do with lust.

This is an argument I really wanted to make. But all I have to support it is the intuition that the requirement of celibacy fundamentally alters the population of men willing to become priests. It makes good common sense. But it doesn’t answer the question “Why did celibacy suddenly produce this outcome after so many years of not producing this outcome?” One might offer a weak response such as “Well maybe it did happen and we just didn’t know it.” But it seems more logical to assign blame to the collapsing standards of priesthood in the 60’s that brought in so many openly non-celibate gay men.

If the problem is homosexuality, then it’s not celibacy. Once we argue that homosexuals in the priesthood caused the crisis, we necessarily imply that the crisis would never have happened if only they had been excluded in the first place. And that would tend to exonerate priestly celibacy as the cause. Besides, the homosexual priests at the root of this crisis never took their vow of celibacy seriously in the first place.

As I said, I wanted to blame celibacy at least in part. But I just couldn’t pull the trigger.

#49, if that’s so, can you please show the stats that show that a sexually abusive priest is equally likely to abuse a minor of either sex?

Rocco, I am confused about why you want to insist that “this does not have to do with power and violence, it has to do with lust. ” I would say that the “lusts of the flesh” include the lust for power. I would also say that there is no form of purely sexual gratification received by raping someone with an object. And in the case of the most horrible example cited on this thread, the raping of a girl with a crucifix, we are certainly not talking about mere sexual desire, nor even only of the desire for power over another. I would say that this is demonic, in that it is deliberate pure evil, the destruction of innocence and an act of deliberate blasphemy and sacrilege. The outrage here was intended against both the innocence of the child and against the holiness of God.

I have absolutely no explanation for how such evil came to be, other than that the evil one works hard to tempt and corrupt those who corruption will lead others to lost their faith and to despair.

As for these archbishops and their coverup, I am afraid that administrators and bureaucrats are always more likely to act this way than not. The qualities needed to rise in an organization seem to be the opposite of those needed to respond with directness and openness to embarrassments to the organization. Just a few years ago an Episcopal priest here in my town had reason to believe that one of his predecessors had abused several teens, and tried to get his bishop to investigate. The bishop tried to quash the whole thing, and when the priest made this public, the bishop absolutely destroyed him, inhibited him, initiated a forensic audit to try to find financial malfeasance, caused him to lose his church. (He lost his health insurance while his daughter had cancer, then he had a heart attack; the local paper recently revealed that because of these health problems and inadequate insurance, he went bankrupt.) He was finally exonerated of any financial wrongdoing, and the past abuse was not kept quiet; 17 teens turned out to have been involved, the perpetrator confessed and then reneged on his confession. The point though is, the first reaction of this Episcopal bishop, despite the public spectacle of several Catholic dioceses on the verge of bankruptcy over this issue, was coverup.
No wonder Dante shows so many bishops in hell!
Susan Peterson

I analysed the marginal statistics, given 2.3 boys abused for every girl abused. I looked at three possible explanations; a) selective hiring (RC Priests more likely to be gay) b) GI-pedophilia link (gays more likely to be abusers) and c) GI-victim-count link (gay abusers have more victims). (where “GI” is “Gender Identity”)

Assuming Gays are 6% of the male population (Wikipedia quotes 6% of Britons self-identifying as gay or bisexual from a 2008 poll.)

1) If we assume no selective hiring (i.e. 6% of priests are gay) and no GI-pedophilia link, we must infer gay abusers have on average 36 times as many victims as non-gay abusers.

2) If we assume no selective hiring and no GI-victim-count link, we must infer gay abusers are 36 times as likely to be abusers

3) If we assume no gender-pedophilia link and no GI-victim-count link, we must infer that the RC church is 11 times as likely to hire a gay man as a straight man.

2) If we assume no selective hiring and no GI-victim-count link, we must infer gays are 36 times as likely to be abusers

3) If we assume no gender-pedophilia link and no GI-victim-count link, we must infer that a gay man was 11 times as likely to apply for and be received as an RC priest. (which would imply that 70% of RC priests were gay).

Michael D [54, 55, 56] - thanks for interesting analysis. FWIW my own non-scientific observations lead me to suspect that inference 3) is the most probable.

I consider the case of the person sodomizing the girl with a crucifix an urban legend. I have heard it too many times. At best it is a hypothetical. OCICBW. Hypothetically, I would agree it would be an exercise of physical power and would be a violent act.

The claim that rape in general and the Dublin abuses in particular have little to do with sexual feelings or orientation is an argument used to divert blame from gays in cases of abuse of boys. Carl discussed this at length in comment [26]. The power and violence twist comes from some forms of feminist ethics and the theories of the French post-modernist Michel Foucault, who interpret all male sexual feelings as a desire for power and dominance, and all male sexual activity as violence. I know I’m oversimplifying but this is just a blog comment. The upshot is they interpret sex as political. I personally regard this as malarkey.

I don’t think the Dublin priests were making a political statement or “lusting for power”, or even in most cases using violence. They used positions of authority and trust to get what they wanted, which was sex. Their motivations belong in the gutter. I don’t want to dignify them with philosophy.

#58 “I consider the case of the person sodomizing the girl with a crucifix an urban legend. I have heard it too many times. At best it is a hypothetical. OCICBW.”

I’m afraid you are wrong - it most certainly happened, and is recounted on page 525 of the Murphy Report where Fr Noel Reynolds admitted to it to the police.

Rocco, I don’t buy into the “all male sex is power and dominance” thing either. I would like to say that a certain element of power in the sense of strength and in the sense of command, is part of what women respond to in a man, and that this is not a bad thing. Power and dominance for their own sake is probably a perversion of what it means to be male, and in a sexual context it is a sexual perversion, but it is a perversion of a good thing. There is such a thing as a “lust for power” and it can be tied up with sexual lust. Of course they weren’t making a political statement. But if they just wanted sexual gratification they probably could have found adult women who were vulnerable, or adult men for that matter, who were interested in that kind of sex.

Michael D, I don’t think your three hypotheses are mutually and severally exclusive. I would say that gay men are more likely to abuse than are heterosexual men (even though I know that given the much larger numbers of heterosexual men, the absolute number of them is larger). After all, if we are serious in believing that for a man to desire sex with a male is intrinsically disordered, then it makes sense that his ability to bring those desires into control would be less, since there is already some sort of psychological problem involved. I am not saying though, that men with same sex attraction cannot be chaste as I believe many gay priests are chaste and celibate. It is just that there is a problem with the basic structure of the person’s sexuality in the first place, so any kind of further disorder is more likely. As for victim count, I don’t really know much about that, except that one does hear now and then of a pedophile or ebephile with an exceptionally large number of victims, and all of these that I have heard of have been abusers of males. It seems that abusers of females are more likely to abuse one victim repeatedly for years. I would guess…and apparently we are all guessing, that both of these factors contributed to the larger number of male victims. That said, I don’t think anyone really thinks that the percentage of homosexuals in the Catholic priesthood is no higher than the percentage in the general population. I think relatively few men decided on the priesthood in order to get themselves in a position to abuse children and young men, or even to live in an all male enclave in which it is easy to hide one’s sexuality. Rather, I think that for a man who has no desire to marry a woman, but who does not want to challenge the mores of his social group and go join the gay subculture in a large city, the priesthood offers a socially respectable way of dealing with the problem of his sexuality. It is my opinion that most joined intending to be celibate and that many men would have done so if they had found themselves in a culture which supported that. Some did find such a culture in some parts of the church, and some truly have remained celibate. However in other places there were obviously some very sick circumstances. With respect to pre Vatican II days, there were minor seminaries where boys went when they were twelve. One abuser in such a seminary over a course of twenty years could create a large number of priests almost programmed to abuse young men. One priest I know who was tortured by his desire for younger teens, always considering this an evil thing to do, was abused himself in such a seminary, something I learned from another priest at his funeral. He told me he had never abused anyone in his charge as a priest but he had a very few times gone into the parts of cities where such services can be found. I remember coming back at him strongly that one of these young men might have been a baby he baptized, as he baptized my babies, and that in any case, they were also souls for whom Christ died. He knew this. He wound up being defrocked (laicized) and expelled from his order. I always thought his life was one of the saddest I know, as he was clearly someone who had a vocation to preach and was a wise and gentle confessor. He lost his ability to do what God planned for him, for a very few minutes of pleasure a very few times. And he knew it. He managed to amend his life, giving up drinking which facilitated the behavior, and also driving, which put him into areas of temptation, and lived a very circumscribed life in which he walked to his parish church and to the grocery store. He eked out a living designing web sites for churches and had a beautiful web page full of prayers, religious pictures, and texts, called “A Catholic Page for Lovers”...meaning lovers of Our Lord, which can now only be found in Google’s cache. I believe he is among the saved. I suppose I tell this story to humanize this issue, as this was a person I cared about deeply.
I don’t really think the problem is solved yet. I don’t think Rome’s dictates are being obeyed everywhere. Personally, although I think a truly holy celibate priest is a wonderful witness, and I have known quite a few of them and value their sacrifice, I think we Catholics would be better off using the Orthodox pattern of married parish priests combined with a strong monastic presence. However my fellow conservative Catholics do not agree with me, as they value this part of our western Catholic tradition. They will point out all the times married non Catholic ministers and public school teachers have abused young men, which of course is true. Celibacy isn’t the cause of abuse. But I think it is difficult to change social patterns once they are established, and this is a stubborn one.
Susan Peterson

Please do not be afraid to tell me I am wrong. I am grateful for it. It makes my understanding more accurate and helps me avoid making the same error in future. I found the section of the Murphy Report you cited, and read the whole saga of Fr. Reynolds. It would take a Graham Greene to do justice to that tale of corruption. In my comment above [58], I said that, regarding the incident as hypothetical, “I would agree it would be an exercise of physical power and would be a violent act.” Now that I know it actually occurred, I say the same. Thanks for responding.

Eulogos, I think we are mostly in agreement. But having read some of the Murphy report at the instigation of Lifting the Rock, I have to conclude that at least some of the perpetrators were solely attracted to children and/or adolescents. Or if they were also attracted to adults, could control those attractions but not the attraction to kids. There may be some psychological excuses for some of these guys - the Fr. Reynolds whose story Lifting referred me to seems a particular nut case. But I don’t like to exonerate them en masse, and refuse to exonerate their managers.

I do not like to comment so much, but this is a particularly hard issue for me so I am having trouble shutting up.

Eulogos [53] - I would like to note that none of the bishops Dante saw in Hell were Episcopalians.

Its really hard to know the answer to this, but I tend to agree with the sentiment that a many sexually disfunctional individuals may have seen the celibate priesthood as a socially acceptable option for those that can’t marry. I also agree with Susan when she says that the Roman Catholics would do well to adopt the Eastern Orthodox/Catholic diciplines, though of course it is well established that married persons are not immune from abusing minors.

You should also consider what carl said about access. Male priests are more likely to have unsupervised access to male children.

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