Betrayal of innocence

The scandal of child sexual abuse by priests rocked the American Church. Reports just published reveal its extent. What was to blame ? vice or a culture of secrecy?

?PIU difettoso, il migliore,? as they say in Rome: ?The worse, the better.? The very awfulness of the report made it, at first, welcome reading within the Curia. If so many parish priests were really violating their vow of celibacy with boys, then a stern reinforcement of clerical discipline from above was all the more necessary. Soon, however, as public outrage became strident, the Holy See backed off, in its usual stately fashion. The Pope suggested that after all only those guilty ?as a long-standing practice or with many males? needed be unfrocked; other priests, who had subsequently ?curbed their desires? and ?atoned for their infamous deeds with proper repentance?, might continue in parish ministry. The author of the report responded furiously, for he maintained that the rot ran deep. Not only lecherous clergy but the ?do-nothing superiors of clerics and priests? were ?partners in the guilt of others? by permitting ?the destructive plague? to continue: the Church must be reformed! Rome turned frosty?

The year was 1050, the report was racily entitled Liber Gomorrhianus, its author was Peter Damian, the Pope was Leo IX.

Which of them was right? Peter and Leo are both saints now, yet Peter and Leo were at loggerheads about what to do with pederastic priests, because they were at loggerheads about what the scandal meant: whether it was merely slackness in discipline, or whether it was the sign of a crisis deep in the soul of the Church.

The scandal that has tormented the American Church for the past two years has revealed the same bleak rift in understanding. There are Leos, who treat the scandal empirically, and blame the guilty individuals: wanton priests, ?naive?, cowardly or over-merciful bishops, optimistic psychiatrists, callous church bureaucrats, rapacious lawyers. And we have Peters, who understand the scandal as a symptom of some profound sickness in the Church ? whether it be homosexuality, or celibacy, or patriarchal hierarchy, or ?dissent?.

If Leo is essentially correct, then the scandal could be exploited as a ramp for reaction or reckless reform. But if, as Peter says, such an appalling epidemic of crimes is merely a symptom, what must the disease be?

Last week, on the first Friday in Lent, two authoritative reports were released on the American Church?s sex abuse scandal. One is a huge statistical investigation, commissioned by the bishops? conference, carried out by the College of Criminal Justice at John Jay University in New York City, and drily entitled ?The Nature and Scope of the Problem of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests and Deacons in the United States? (hereafter N&S). The other, which appeared bound in penitential purple, ?A Report on the Crisis in the Catholic Church? (CCC), is the work of the National Review Board for the Protection of Children and Young People, an independent body set up by the bishops at their Dallas meeting. CCC attempts to explain the darkness tabulated by the John Jay report, and account for the ?spiritual dimension? of the crisis.

Between them, the two documents read as grimly as Peter Damian?s Book of Gomorrah. Unlike Damian?s book, they deal with misdeeds that have probably almost ceased: from the mid-1980s, and especially since the Dallas conference, priestly molestation has clearly become an extremely difficult crime to get away with, as the statistics seem to show. The Archbishop of Boston, while declaring his grief at the reports, was consoled that ?the number of incidents of abuse occurring within the last 12 years has dropped precipitously?. And Wilton Gregory, president of the American bishops? conference, was quick to insist that ?the terrible history recorded here today is history?.

But the two reports account for the scandal so diversely that they cannot be said to explain it. And until we grasp what the history was ? whether it was a crisis of many weak men, or of one diseased Church ? the crisis cannot be said to be over.

When the scandal erupted in early 2002, Cardinal Ratzinger famously insisted that less than 1 per cent of priests were guilty ? a negligible proportion, in other words. But the most compelling of the report?s statistics is that 4 per cent of priests who served in the American Church between 1950 and 2002 were credibly accused of sexual misconduct with minors. Four per cent is not negligible; it means that within living memory 4,400 American priests are plausibly accused of having molested 11,000 of their under-age parishioners.

Who were these victims? More than 80 per cent were boys, most were 13 or older. Two-thirds were abused more than once, but on the other hand most accused priests are only alleged to have molested one minor. Only 3 per cent of the accused had ten alleged victims or more, although these serial molesters accounted for a quarter of the total complaints. Thus the paedophiles whose atrocities ignited the crisis ? Frs Geoghan, Shanley and Birmingham of Boston, with scores of victims apiece, some as young as five ? were not typical.

Despite what was suggested by some conservative commentators, very few priests stand accused of ambiguous behaviour. Only 9 per cent of the allegations were of touching through clothes, while the offences are overwhelmingly more overt ? with penetration in a quarter of cases.

The classic perpetrator was a priest in his thirties who spent some time, typically less than a year, sexually involved with a boy in his early teens. He had an even chance of being reported to his diocese; if so, he might have had some sort of treatment, but probably not; in any case, the chances of civil penalties were small. Only 14 per cent of the priests denounced to their bishops were reported to the police ? which is particularly significant, because half those reported to the police were charged, and most who were charged were convicted. There were black spots, such as the archdiocese of Boston, where the rate of alleged abuse was almost twice the national average.

The secret pay-outs were gargantuan: $572m. (?308m.), and since N&S was compiled there has been much more.

How trustworthy is this picture sketched by N&S, given that the survey was based on dioceses? self-reporting, albeit policed by the visit of the National Review Board?s agents, who are often former FBI officers. Victims? groups have already rejected the reports? authority: ?The only safe assumption is we?re still not seeing the whole picture,? insists David Clohessy, national director of Snap (the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests).

Yet this is one of the most detailed pictures we have ever had of child sex abuse. No other profession has ever been subjected to such a survey. Do we yet know why this happened? CCC, which is based on the N&S statistics and on interviews with bishops, priests and victims, concludes that the crisis ?represents a failure to comport with divine law and the teachings of the Church?. So far, this is the classic verdict of a Leo: ?The problem facing the Church was not caused by church doctrine, and the solution does not lie in questioning doctrine.? The Church?s structures are sound, and it was the guilty priests, whatsoever their sexual tastes, who created scandal by their individual rebellions. ?Neither the presence of homosexually oriented priest nor the discipline of celibacy caused the crisis.?

Yet CCC sometimes hints at some more widespread wickedness. As with almost all Catholic controversies in America, the debate circles round understanding the Second Vatican Council and its aftermath. ?Discussions about the ?causes? of the current crisis often are seen as an opportunity to rehash old arguments about Vatican II,? reports CCC. Those of a ?conservative bent? blame the crisis on ?the culture of dissent?, whereas the ?progressives? blame it on the reforms of Vatican II.

The liberals convinced the National Review investigators that there is indeed something awry with the mind of the American priesthood. There has been a certain psychological immaturity tolerated in seminarians, and at the same time an excessive solidarity between bishops and their priestly ?sons?. Bishops ?placed the interests of the accused priests above those of the victims and too often declined to hear from victims directly, relying instead on assurances from those accused?. The promise of the Council, therefore, has to that extent not been fulfilled. At its most extreme, this insight is being thundered forth by Voice of the Faithful: ?The clericalism that characterises the modern Catholic Church? is ?a cancerous culture measured in the lives of children?, declares the VotF president, Jim Post, who wonders aloud if the Church can still be reformed.

On the other hand, the conservatives did persuade CCC that bewildering changes in the era of the Council created a certain ethical blankness in the priesthood. ?In the 1970s and 1980s some seminaries yielded to a culture of sexual permissiveness and moral relativism,? a trend reversed, they hope, under the present pontificate. According to N&S, lechery with minors peaked among priests ordained in the aftermath of the council. These were years of turmoil in the priesthood, which nearly 20,000 men were abandoning. A horrific 10 per cent of 1970s ordinands were to be plausibly accused of sexual crimes with minors.

But how, exactly, are we to describe these crimes? Is the American Church?s crisis essentially to do with homosexuality, as many conservatives argue? This remains the hardest question, and a great deal hangs on it. Just as the Anglican Communion is facing schism over homosexuality and doctrine, American society is facing a crisis, and a national election, over same-sex marriage. The American bishops are committed to opposing same-sex marriage, but their moral prestige has clearly been damaged by the crisis, and they face barrages from the Right (which is appalled at the ?gaying? of the American priesthood) and the Left (which wants the Church?s hostility to all homosexual acts re-thought).

Although N&S was strictly statistical, the John Jay team has gone out of its way to remove the question of ?orientation? from its conclusions. Karen Terry, the principal investigator, insisted in an interview that we cannot know if the overwhelming majority of victims were boys because of ?homosexual orientation or because that?s who they had access to?.

What history tells us is that there has always been a taste among certain men for early teenage boys, and the N&S statistics reveal this to be a problem in the American Church. Long before the rise of modern ?homosexuality?, with its sometimes permanent bonds between peers of the same sex, pederasty was a typically clerkish vice.

Last week, Mgr Richard Sniezyk, who is administering the diocese of Springfield, Massachusetts (the bishop was forced to resign in February over allegations that he abused boys), startled the press with his candour ? from which he hastily backed away. As a seminarian and young priest in the years before the council, he heard of priests who had sex with youths, but ?no one thought much about it?. These priests ?did good ministry, they were good to their people, they were kind, compassionate, but they had no idea what they were doing to these young men that they were abusing?. To molest a boy was not a violation of vows the way an affair with an adult woman would be; it was, as the N&S documents, a fairly safe vice. It was almost a perk of the job; ?the destructive plague?, as Peter Damian called it, had been hideously folded into the metabolism of the Church.

The Roman line essentially remains that of Leo IX: the problem is local, the cause is individual weakness. Thus, only last week, a report by non-Catholic therapists working for the Vatican?s Pontifical Academy for Life condemned the Dallas standard of ?zero tolerance?, which it casts as a peculiarly American over-reaction. The policy ?sacrifices priests for the sake of the bishops?, which is unjust ?from a human point of view. From a Christian point of view it is inconceivable.? As St Leo said, priests who had erred with minors, but have curbed their desires and atoned for their infamous deeds with proper repentance, can return to ?a meaningful role in the Church?.

And perhaps, speaking therapeutically, the Pontifical Academy is correct. But what if therapeutic language is not the way to understand the American crisis? What if the priesthood was besmirched not just because of the viciousness of many ordained men, but because of some awful corporate flaw in the Church? What then?

Richard Major is our American correspondent