Blood and Boys
Published February 27, 2004
One of the reports, written by researchers at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, revealed that 10,667 children were allegedly abused by 4,392 priests from 1950 to 2002. But the report said the figures depend on self-reporting by American bishops and were probably an undercount.
....Most victims were male, and of those, the largest single age group was boys 11 to 14 years old. Alleged abuses ranged from touching, with or without clothing, to oral sex and sexual intercourse.
Some $572 million has been paid in damages to abuse victims, the report said, but noted this did not include $85 million paid by the Archdiocese of Boston, where the sex abuse scandal first grabbed headlines two years ago, and that 14 percent of dioceses who were not able to provide figures.
....The second report, a 145-page examination of the causes and context of the priestly sexual abuse crisis, was crafted by a panel of prominent Catholics who found systemic problems in the way candidates for the priesthood are chosen and guided. This report did not dispute the hard numbers of abusive priests and their victims reached by the John Jay researchers.
"It's always bad when a child is abused, but when the abuser wears a collar, it's worse," said attorney Robert Bennett, a member of a panel. "Much of the blame, unfortunately ... must be placed on the higher-ups."
The panel found two main factors contributing to priestly child sexual abuse, Bennett said at a news conference: dioceses failed to keep "dysfunctional and psycho-sexually immature men" out of the priesthood, and candidates for the priesthood were ill-prepared for lives of celibacy in a highly sexualized age.
"At heart, what we are talking about is not only a ... personnel crisis; it's the age-old question of right and wrong, good and evil," Bennett said.
....This panel used interviews with 85 bishops and cardinals, Vatican officials, experts and a handful of victims to look at the culture in Catholic seminaries, where priests are trained, and chanceries, or church offices, that it said tolerated moral laxity and a gay subculture.
"The picture that emerges, sadly, is one of those who broke faith with their people, their priesthood and their religious values to use their sacred position to prey on the young and the vulnerable, instead of safeguarding them with the tender love of Christ himself," Gregory said at a news conference.
- Blood and Boys
- Published: February 27, 2004
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- Section: Culture
- Filed Under: Video: News
- Writer: Eric Olsen
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Read "Goodbye Good Men" by Michael Rose - it'll curl your hair.
Rose says that the priesthood had no trouble attracting candidates before the 60s, celibacy or not. Not so coincidentally, that is when many of the seminaries started to fall into the hands of radical homosexual activist types. They have the power to kick out anybody who doesn't toe the company line, and the company line is whatever those who run the seminary say it is. So for the last 40 years, many thousands of perfectly worthy priesthood candidates have been kicked out because they refused to buy into the gay thing, and now we have shortages.
The seminaries are the root of the problem, but we don't hear anything about that in the media, do we?
Read the book. Knowledge = power.
I wrote a little screed about this myself, last night.
I was raised Catholic and I have a hard time understanding why people stay with the church, including my own family members. It's just been plain WRONG and hypocritical so many times.
Eric, outstanding essay. You nailed it, so to speak. Being Catholic I won't deny it hurts, but neither will I deny I'm Catholic. I urge you and Dawn and everyone else to have at it -- open season -- and I'm not being sarcastic. I'm sincere. We're just other Christians who need your help.
Anger, outrage, ridicule will be part of the process of healing far beyond our lives. What we are addressing here is centuries old and cloaked in many layers of secrets. Expecting the church to heal itself in the absence of God is like asking a tooth to bite a tooth, or a Congress to review its own pay scale. The healing will begin in the form of scourging from the whips of you and Dawn, but it won't hang dead on the cross until the last pedophile is off this earth.
I was baptized in a Congregational church, raised Methodist, later Presbyterian, became Lutheran as an adult, came to my senses, came to again and became Catholic -- and when story about pedophile priests broke I was enraged. I still am. They betrayed our trust, irreversibly damaged the lives of thousands of God's children, which to me is the rape of God Himself. And yes, it was the church that did it by creating and harboring these murderers of spirit.
Forgive them I do and am, as I'll try again tomorrow. I want them in jail and I want them studied. I want them to devote the remainder of their lives to fixing the problem they made. They can't. But I want them to try anyway. And I don't want them to try to pray their way out of it. In fact, I'd take away their crucifix and rosaries and even their Bible. Because they tried that once and it didn't work.
Thanks for writing this. I still wish you'd stop trying to pin this on Mel, or even worse Jesus. Believe me, the Catholic church hasn't forgotten the resurrection. You are in error about that. Christ died for all of us and it hurt. The movie is about his death. There will be others about his life and afterlife. Not this one. Say whatever you feel necessary about the Catholic church, its bishops and priests, and its members, lapsed like me, or like the millions who return to their faith many times a day without a thought to the sins of the fathers, but the sins of their own doing.
But I ask not to spit on our bloody Christ. Mock what you don't understand, but don't kill him again. Outrage is, in the end, rage. And rage.... well, maybe you should see that movie again....
CW, thanks for all that on several levels. I am not mocking anyone, least of all Jesus, nor do I minimize His sacrifice, nor do I question for one second the faith of tens of millions of good Catholics, but the structure they cling to is perhaps in need of another Reformation.
By the way, I've been meaning to ask. The BC banner was gray on Ash Wednesday as I recall. Coincidence?
Eric:
I don't you'll have to worry about sending those child molesting f*****s to hell. I'm quite sure God will take care of that himself.
CW, Actually, we were grey on Tuesday for the Grey Album protest.
Benjamin C, in His infinite wisdom he appears to be much more forgiving than I.
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While we will all be reminded that the crimes of the few cannot be held against the many, it would seem that a religion that holds itself as the superior standard of Christianty could use a little humility,rather than fall on the cross of its own hubris.