Clerical Sexual Abuse Reports

                                         

The recent findings of a Pittsburgh grand jury investigation into sexual abuse of minors by Catholic clergy in a number of Pennsylvania churches have shocked the nation as well as the Catholic faithful. The grand jury investigated claims of sexual abuse of minors over the past 70 years. Headlines indicated that around 300 priests had abused around 1000 children. Even more shocking were the lurid details in the more than 800-page report.

Here are some facts about the report. During the past seventy years a total of 5000 priests served in the six dioceses under investigation. The 300 accused clergy were not all priests. Some were religious brothers, deacons, or seminarians.  But let’s say that they all were  clergy in one form or another. The 300 accused made up about 6% of the 5000 who served during those years. *

I use the word “accused” because so far none of the accusations of sexual abuse that took place over 30 years ago have been verified by either the grand jury or the dioceses involved. The district attorney is seeking to change the statute of limitations law so that prosecutions can be launched.

Nevertheless, based on other studies it is likely that half of the 300 accused were indeed guilty. That leaves about 150 guilty parties. That figure conforms with earlier studies that have indicated that the abusers made up about two to three percent of the clergy. That is, for every 100 clergymen, three were probably guilty as accused. 

The Pennsylvania report also confirmed earlier studies that demonstrated that the great majority of the victims were teen-age boys. To put it another way, of the small percentage of clergy who violated their vow of chastity and became sexual predators, the great majority were homosexual men. They were not pedophiles because by definition, pedophiles prey on pre-pubescent boys and girls. 

Experience as a practicing Catholic for over 70 years makes me suspect that homosexuals made up a larger percentage of the clergy than 2%. I also believe that majority of them were true to their vows. Most homosexual men do not prey upon teen age boys. But the facts remain. Most of the men who were creditably charged were homosexual men who abused multiple young men.

Although the Pennsylvania grand jury study got a great deal of attention, it was basically old news. Most of the cases occurred in the last century at the time of the outset of the sexual revolution in the sixties and seventies. Most of the clergy named in the report are either dead or long deprived of their clerical positions. What was new and surprising was the accusations of homosexual activity in Catholic seminaries.

This news tied in with the news that charges of sexual abuse of young men by Cardinal Theodore Mc Carrack, the former head of the prestigious diocese of Washington D.C., had been found creditable. McCarrack has been accused of not only molesting teen-age boys but also seminarians over a long period of time. The charges were so creditable that Pope Francis asked Mc Carrack, already retired as Bishop of Washington, to resign as a member of the College of Cardinals.

Mc Carrack’s case seems to have been just the tip of the iceberg. Many reports are surfacing that seminaries in the latter part of the last century had been infiltrated by homosexual priests who preyed upon young candidates for the priesthood. Some even suggest that to get along, you had to go along, and that seminarians who resisted either wound up in poor assignments, or just left the seminary. 

The good, the bad, and the ordinary can be found in any organization. Some of the priests and religious I have encountered in my lifetime as a Catholic have approached sainthood, but the great majority have been ordinary with the same faults and failings of anyone else. 

But the bad, although few, can be like the proverbial worm in the apple and make everyone look bad. Experience and common sense make me believe that a small percentage of heterosexual clergy were not true to their vows. Indeed, I think that many of the men who leave the priesthood have a lady in waiting. 

Nevertheless, the great majority of sexual molesters were homosexual men whose influence in the past seems to have far exceeded their numbers. Mc Carrack’s case is a sign that homosexual influence went from the seminaries to the highest ranks of the Church. Commentators have suggested that the problem in the seminaries has largely been eliminated but that problems still exist in the highest ranks of the Church.

A recent letter sent to Pope Francis by Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, an Italian prelate who had served as Papal nuncio or ambassador to the United States for years, claimed that he had told Pope Francis about Mc Carrack’s record five years ago but that the Pope had declined to take action.  Moreover, Vigano claimed that some other high ranking prelates in Rome were part of a powerful homosexual lobby. Vigano has even called upon Pope Francis to resign. So far, the Pope has remained silent but has convened a bishop’s conference early next year to address the issue. The media in America has also been largely silent on the Vigano accusations perhaps because they deal with homosexual predators.

My own bishop has tried to address the new revelations by calling for the faithful to pray and attend masses of reparation. I fail to see why the faithful have to offer reparation. More and more it seems to me that the laity make up the real strength of the Church and that the hierarchy has much to account for.

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*Details of the report have come from an article by William A. Donovan, the President of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, that appeared in the Sept. 2018 issue of Catalyst, the League’s periodical. Donovan is a partisan but he is a trained sociologist who has read the whole report, and written about the clerical abuse scandal for years.