My dear friend Bill Donohue has found the money to take out a full page ad in the New York Times in an attempt to minimize the charges of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.
Donohue summarizes Philip Jenkin’s analysis:
Penn State professor Philip Jenkins has studied this problem for years. After looking at the John Jay data, which studied priestly sexual abuse from 1950-2002, he found that “of the 4,392 accused priests, almost 56 percent faced only one misconduct allegation, and at least some of these would certainly vanish under detailed scrutiny.” Moreover, Jenkins wrote that “Out of 100,000 priests active in the U.S. in this half-century, a cadre of just 149 individuals—one priest out of every 750—accounted for over a quarter of all allegations of clergy abuse.” In other words, almost all priests have never had anything to do with sexual molestation.
But that is not what Jenkins is saying. The bishops admit that almost one out of 20 diocesan priests have been credibly accused (John Jay Report), and in the dioceses that have been most thoroughly investigated, one of ten have been credibly accused.
Donohue criticizes BishopAccountability, of which I am a board member because we post all public accusations.
BishopAccountabilty.org is accessed by reporters and lawyers for information on priestly sexual abuse, though the standards it uses cannot pass the smell test. It admits that the database “is based solely on allegations reported publicly” and that it “does not confirm the veracity of any actual allegation.” Swell. Furthermore, it says that “If an individual is ‘cleared’ or ‘exonerated’ by an internal church investigation and/or a diocesan review board decision, the individual remains in the database.” Ditto for cases where a priest faces an allegation for an act which occurred after he left the Catholic Church; even lawsuits against the dead are listed. There is no other group in the U.S. which is subjected to such gross unfairness. No wonder wildly exaggerated claims have been made based off of such collected “evidence.”
We emphasize that these are only accusations, some of which (such as the one against Cardinal Mahoney) were made by a person who said she was subject to delusions; others have resulted in criminal conviction. However we have neither the authority nor the resources to sort out the validity of each accusation, so we simply summarize them and link to the newspaper reports or public documents.
Donohue also critics us for continuing to list priests who have been exonerated. But we say that they have been exonerated and link to the source that exonerates them. If a priest has been publicly accused, rumors will continue to circulate about him for years. It is helpful to him that a non-Church source indicates publicly that he has been exonerated. Anyone can go online, check his name, and see that the accusations were found to be baseless –and not have to take the priest’s word for it.
Donohue is correct that some of the criticism is motivated by anticlericalism or even antiCatholicism, but the failures of the Church have given its enemies much ammunition. Nor is sexual abused confined to the Catholic Church; but it is impossible to compare church with church, because statistics are lacking. And no other major Church, much less the public school system, claims that leaving it will lead to damnation. If the Church is going to preach that apostasy is damnable, it had better not give create conditions that lead people to apostatize. That is why Augustine insisted that discipline be maintained among the clergy and that offenders be removed immediately.
Donahue might be correct about the Church being “unfairly singled out” but that attitude is completely antithetical to the attitude that God demands: repentence and change.
Besides, apparently, Donahue has never heard of St. Peter Damian and Liber Gomorrahticus.
Donahue is not the only prominent Catholic displaying a non-repentent attitude. So is the Archbishop of New York, the president of the USCCB:
http://blog.archny.org/?p=1127
Catholic leaders talk a good game about repentence but it’s all talk. They would much rather lecture the laity about “social justice” and enforce convoluted fasting regulations than actually apply their own stated principles to themselves.
This attitude of mitigating moral responsibility and blaming the messenger is nothing but the end result of institutional arrogance. That same arrogance is the product of the belief that loyalty to the ecclesiastical institution equals salvation. That is beyond arrogant; it is blasphemous and idolatrous because it equates the institutionalized Church with God, if it doesn’t raise it over God.
That attitude has been SOP for centuries, as you well know, Leon. This is why God will punish and scourge the Church (if He isn’t doing so, already). The Prophet Isaiah says that God will not share His glory with idols…and, for all too many Catholics, the Church is one such idol.
A friend who works as a DRE told me the rectory phones are ringing off the hook with calls from desperate catholic families whose breadwinners have lost their jobs. Another friend with eight children whose finances took a sharp turn south after a car accident was told to call the Diocese as they have homes for just this purpose (to help out with housing for large families who have been hit by a financial crisis). The nun on the other end of the line informed her that they now rent these homes at the current market value of approximately two thousand a month and have long since stopped their charitable programs.That said……….
Why Donohue’s $400,000 salary is a public scandal
http://www.ourdailythread.org/content/why-donohue%E2%80%99s-400000-salary-matters
“For anyone familiar with the non-profit sector, these numbers are astonishing. The Catholic League’s “non-profit” work involves little more than sending out inflammatory press releases and conducting PR stunts in the name of defending Catholicism. And this is ironic because Bill Donohue’s work “defending Catholicism” and his frequent appearances in the media make little mention of core principles of Catholic social teaching, such as solidarity and the preferential option for the poor.”
video of Donahue defending child abuse in Ireland.
Even the Vatican was shocked by the numbers and the public outrage ,but not Donahue.He called the outrage “hysteria”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKLlxAgMO-w
Mary, the only thing the novus ordo church knows how to do with the poor parishioners in the pews is to turn them over to some red-tape bureaucracy. They would bend over backwards to help someone in a foreign country all the while ignoring the plight of the person sitting next to them Sunday after Sunday.
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As for The Catholic League and Mr. Donahue, while I understand he feels the need to defend the Church from Her enemies, Her prelates brought this upon themselves. Also, since She is the one, true Church, we expect more from those that represent Her than any other church organization. There is no defense against what the cardinals and bishops failed to do. None.
Leon:
Where did the figure 1 in 20 priests as credibly accused come from?
Thanks
“The failures of the Church have given its enemies much ammunition.” Well said Leon. I wish Mr. Donahue would quietly retire as he seems more bent on defending the incompetence and corruption of (some) members of the hierarchy than defending Catholicism as such.
Sorry Leon: I didn’t notice that you mentioned John Jay. I looked at the report briefly. Do you agree with the reports assessment that abusers of 10+ cases and priest transferred but with fewer reported incidences (average 4 I think) represent separate types of perpetrators.
It doesn’t seem to take into account that maybe things were not reported or reports were missing for the second group.
Fr, I see the Vatican and many Diocese as having taken on the same values as the big corporations.
The individula is no longer of import, it is all about the collective as an entity in and of iself.
I think I pointed that out before when I noted how corporations transformed the “Personnel Office” into the “Human Resource Office”.
Psychologists were brought in for group meetings to facilitate the transitional thoughts of the employees. It happened in every field in every corporate structure back in the eighties and nineties .The same view was foisted on the institutional Church via the opus dei corporate thought and the Legion organization. Both convincing their adherents they were building the Kingdom! Whose Kingdom?
Christ pointed it out clearly that his Kingdom is not of this earth and that the Kingdom of God in within us. He said,” Love you brother as yourself”,not love the group or team or corporate entity.
The Heirarchy has lost sight of the individual for the business of religion.
while the simple unknown faithful parish priest, who is becoming an endangered species, is the one who loves the individuals in his care and feeds the sheep.
Sad to say that most now have become part of the Borg.
Veronica, please refrain from referring to the Catholic Church as a ‘her’ – given that there is not one single female at all in the higher echelons of the Vatican, and there never will be, please use the male equivalent.
Thanks
Mr. Podles, I don’t get this “numbers game.” How can honest people be so far apart on this?
“The Defenders” try to make it seem like abuse in the Catholic Church is a minor problem and it’s way worse everywhere else. But other people — including you — don’t buy their figures.
What’s going on?
Paula, the Catholic Church is the Bride of Christ! Sorry if this ruffles your feminist feathers, but it is so.
The Heirarchy has lost sight of the individual for the business of religion, while the simple unknown faithful parish priest, who is becoming an endangered species, is the one who loves the individuals in his care and feeds the sheep.
Well put, Mary, but this isn’t a new problem. Look at how the Gospels portray the religious leaders of Jesus’ day. For that matter, look at how some of the OT prophets excoriated their own religious leaders.
I’ve told Catholics this numerous times but the Church’s ecclesiastical organizations encourages blind groupthink above all else, and that was true way before 20th-century business practices. Human nature has hardly changed since Eden….
Paula:
The mystical body, the church militant, suffering and triumphant is considered the bride of Christ.
Paula,
The Catholic Church has always been known as Holy Mother Church since the first century when the Eastern Church dedicated the Church Militant to the care of the Mother of God and the Early Christians prayed for her intercession , and that is why we are referred to as Her seed.
Genisis 3: 15.and why the Church is referred to as “Her”.
Veronica is expressing the traditional reference when referring to the Church.
“Additionally, among Catholics, Eastern Orthodox Christians, Anglicans and many other Christian denominations, Mother Church, or Holy Mother Church, is believed to refer to the Universal Church or Church Universal, which is considered to be the Bride of Christ and the Mother of all the Christian faithful regardless of manmade divisions or denominations.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Church
http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/abuse_allegations_true_false_and_truthy/
There has to be a better way to deal with this horror for the sakes of all concerned. It is a very ugly situation of only recent occurrence in the long history of Christ’s Church. Nothing good is being taught by the popular discussion.
I have seen two vicious attacks on the Church recently, one by Ishmael Reed on C-SPAN’s Book-TV and one by Harvey Firesteen on The Joy Behar Show, both of them marshalling armies of misinterpretations culled from the sensational “conclusions” of the media.
Firesteen was particularly good in arguing, not implausibly, that the Catholic Church had no right to tell him what was moral or immoral when the Catholic Church allowed “The Jesuits” to rape Indian boys in Alaska. These same rapists oppose homosexual marriage! And homosexual marriage: “What’s so bad about that?” Why is Firesteen an expert on this matter? Does he know anything else about the Jesuits?
Who is defending Christ and His Church as well as the victims? Only Mr. Donahue is doing so. He has not uttered a sentence on this matter that could be useful to those evil spirits, prowling the world, seeking the ruin of souls.
Ultimately, why should the numbers even matter? Whether the incidence of abuse is worse elsewhere is irrelevant. I have no doubt that there is abuse in the public schools, in swim teams, and within families, etc. But most of us have no practical way to voice our displeasure within those systems. As Catholics who care about the spiritual health of the Church, we have an obligation to speak out when we see that conditions that enable abusers to escape detection continue to persist. Besides, I don’t think the argument that essentially says, “The Catholic Church: Just as bad or a bit worse than the rest of society at attracting pedophiles” makes for good apologetics.
Joe , I beg to differ. Mr Donahue wrongly made statements accusing the victims in Ireland of being miscreants and delinquents who were placed in the work houses for punishment. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Many ,if not most were placed their by mothers who could not afford to feed them. If these lies can be confabulated as defending the Church ,then I would have to say the demons are doing a good job of prowling and ruining souls along with destroying credinlity in the authority of the Faith.
http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/sipe-donohue-bozo
MC, there is a sense in which the numbers game doesn’t matter. We don’t want any of this filth.
But to paraphrase Jesus, in the real world you will have filth.
If there’s always some abuse, and it’s generally lower in the Catholic Church, that’s sad, but not horrible. But if it’s higher in the Catholic Church, that raises lots of questions.
And then, of course, there is the question of how abuse is treated once it’s discovered, which is even more of an issue.
Crowhill, your point is well taken. I am a survivor of childhood sexual abuse (the man who abused me was neither Catholic nor a clergyman) so I think that the discussion of numbers is a peripheral one to me. My cynicism also makes me ask if one could demonstrate that the numbers are higher, whether that would change the tone of Mr. Donahue.
It seems that Mr. Donahue, backed by archbishop Dolan, will do anything to seek the limelight. What they both fail to acknowledge is that without the Grand Jury investigations, pedophile clergy would still be having a heyday. Why aren’t both of these men clamoring for Grand Jury investigations in all U.S. dioceses?
Do they honestly have no visceral reaction to catholic priests and hierarchy raping children? Do they honestly believe that teen agers aren’t our children? Do they not understand that the ordained clergy who molest children are doing the work of demons? The introduction of evil into the Sacred proliferates demon energy. And you don’t have to be a bishop to figure it out.
There is nothing on this earth as holy as the soul of a child. Not all the sacraments of the ordained put together. Men like Donahue and Dolan do more to hurt the face of Roman Catholicism than gays and feminists, than Jews and heretics and all the outcasts whom Jesus loved. He wasn’t fond of Pharisees then, either.
AW
I do wish to say that Mr. Donahue’s point that false accusations do get made is not entirely a bad one. I think he overstates the magnitude of false accusations– the shame and stigma of sexual molestation is such that I cannot imagine anyone who makes a false accusation can withstand the scrutiny for long. Yet, just as narcissists abuse, I don’t doubt that there are narcissists who would use the heightened awareness of clergy abuse to further their own agendas. I think these are a minority of cases, but they do irreparable damage to the reputations of innocent men and make it harder for real victims to be taken seriously.
The truth will set you free. The goal should be to discern truth. It seems to me that there is little interest in truth on either side of this debate. Neither the Church and its faithful nor victims of abuse are served by the constant bickering of “advocates” on either side of the debate. If the truth is that a bishop covered up abuse, he should be held accountable. If he did not know about abuse, he should not be painted with a broad brush. For those who say the numbers don’t matter, because it’s the Church, again, truth should be the goal and the guiding force. The numbers do matter if they do not bear out the impression being projected in the media and elsewhere that this is a mostly Catholic clergy problem, and that somehow it is so much worse when an errant cleric gets through and abuses a child. As is so often the case, both sides are guilty of the same thing. Both sides treat the Church as a monolithic lock-step institution. Nothing could be further from the truth. Let the truth prevail; let the chips fall where they may. One truth that is never reported is that it is simply factually inaccurate to say that most bishops knew and covered up abuse–certainly not in recent times. In recent history, when that happens, it should be dealt with harshly. But the fact is, there are few bishops who engage in that kind of misconduct today. Bill Donahue and Leon Podles, and many other commentators, do a great disservice to the dialectic when they generalize all bishops together, when they refer to the “Church” as a monolithic entity that is guilty or innocent of the same crimes and/or incompetencies. We would not tolerate that from commentators in a discussion of racial groups or other religious groups. We should not tolerate it from these two commentators and others like them. Stop trying to advocate for an agenda or a position on the matter, and start demanding the truth–whether that bodes well or ill for various bishops or self-proclaimed victims advocates. Individuals in both groups have been helpful; individuals in both groups have been harmful. Generalizations and stereotypes–even from disgruntled Catholics who profess to know the “truth” as insiders–do not help. None of us are served well by commentators who profess to know the “truth” and to speak in general terms about these issues based on some information. Both Donahue and Podles are callous in their arguments and conclusions that suggest to posit “truth” in general terms. Also, failure to acknowledge true facts that don’t support your position is just as dishonest. Give credit where credit is due. Hold those accountable for their own actions, not those of their innocent colleagues,. Hold yourselves and your constituencies accountable for the truth as it pertains to them. Do not profess to know the “truth” based on incomplete facts.
I agree with Mere Catholic. One of the biggest problems in the priesthood is that it attracts many narcissists. This is true for ministers and rabbis and imams as well. This is also true of any profession that is high profile, in front of the public, given authority, etc. (movie stars, politicians). It is also true of many of the highly revered–even adored–“advocates” of abuse victims. Abuse victims were betrayed by narcissists in the Church who exploited their trust, and now they are equally betrayed by so-called advocates who exploit their trust again. Wherever there is money to be made or attention to be garnered (something far more valuable than money usually), these so-called advocates will manipulate their constituency and the faithful and the public to paint a picture that is often not true, but is devastating to victims who are led to believe the picture is true. The anger and pain engendered in victims by these trusted advocates feeds the needs of the advocates. I have worked on countless clergy abuse claims in the Church, in many different capacities. Very often, the victims are further devastated by untruths told them by their attorneys, by SNAP and others. These “advocates” exploit victims’ vulnerability for their own gain-sometimes monetary, sometimes gain that comes from an insatiable narcissistic need for attention and adulation. It is tragic and unnecessary. Victims say that the cover-up of a bishop adds exponentially to their pain. I get that. How sad, then, when “advocates” knowingly lie to such victims, telling them falsehoods about coverups that did not happen, just so those “advocates” can exploit the victims’ resultant anger and hurt for their own gain. It is devastating for all involved.
We had a teacher in our area who lost his job, marriage and reputation because of an accusation made by a female (high school) student. After becomming an adult she publically admitted that she had made up the whole thing. But I agree, such situations are rare.
I think mr donahue and the hierarchy of the church need to explain, How they have helped millions of people profit, From experiments on babies in the care of nuns orders in a number of countries, One being the USA
re: mr mcmanus & experiments on babies by nuns:
mr donahue & the hierarchy of the church continue to stonewll all questions about the experiments.
Repeated telephone calls to the Vengentine Srs Motherhouse were not returned though the bodies of several private investigators, horribly mutilated, were.
The people have a right to know!
The John Jay report itself is used as a numbers game. The study was commissioned by the bishops and only included sexual criminal activities of diocesan clergy. Religious order members were excluded from the report. This is never mentioned when talking about the number of criminal clergy.
In my local (Chicago) SNAP support group, we took a poll at a meeting, and only 2 out of 13 perpetrators were included in the John Jay report. It would be revealing to see a realistic study done and find out a more realistic number of sexual abusing clergy.
I think that part of our problem here, from Lee Podles down through Mr McManus to me, is that there are no rules in this particular numbers game. Again and ardently, I am recomending the perusal of the article by drs
Richard Fitzgibbons and Peter Kleponis ,at,
http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/abuse_allegations_true_false_and_truthy/
It is very short & very objective & it restricts itself to the philadelphis 21, the latest scandal.
What we are up against is illustrated by the comment of a lawyer friend on this particular scandal: “okay, I’ll read the article but I am not going to let it change my mind about child abusers” {sigh}
Michael McManus and joe lowery, I have heard of the Duplessis orphans who suffered medical experimentation. Can you give some other examples and references?
Is there anything being done to prove the accusations of the killing of Native American children in Residential Schools? Are any bodies being exhumed from graves?
Does Canada have a website like Bishop Accountability?