Catholic Church Sexual Abuse Scandal: Accountability and Reform

The Scope of Clergy Sexual Abuse

"'I am not here to hurt your children; I love your children.' So thundered Fr. Percival D'Silva, trembling, in his sermon at the Blessed Sacrament Church in Chevy Chase, MD," wrote Maureen Dowd in her weekly column in the New York Times (Dowd, 2002). Fr. Percival was one of the few priests to speak out against the Catholic Church's defensive posture — one of obfuscation, dishonesty, and callousness toward victims. He called for Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston, co-indicted in several child abuse cases, to resign.

The Catholic Church has been rocked by allegations of sexual abuse, especially against children. The problem is not isolated but all-pervading. The rate of child sexual abuse cases among priests is roughly proportional to that of the general population. Most cases are not, in the strictest sense, pedophilic — that is, involving sex with pre-pubescent children — but rather ephebophilic, involving the abuse of adolescent children. In a comprehensive study of 2,252 priests over 30 years, only one case of pedophilia was identified; it involved a priest and two six-year-old nieces. Between 5 and 10% of priests were found to be pederasts (ephebophiles) (Jenkins, 1996).

The first nationally prominent case of child sexual abuse by a priest occurred in Lafayette, Louisiana, where Gilbert Gauthe was accused of abusing 37 boys. Gauthe was sentenced to 27 years in prison. The largest case to date involved John Geoghan, who abused more than 130 children between 1962 and 1995. More recently, 54-year-old Russell Dillard was suspended over allegations of molesting two teenage girls 18 years earlier. Older minors were also victimized: in Florida, Bishop of Palm Beach Anthony O'Connell was accused of sexually molesting a seminarian who had come to him to complain about abuse by two older seminarians. Bishop Keith Symons of Missouri admitted to molesting five boys earlier in his career. In New Mexico, 165 cases were brought against priests. Under pressure, Cardinal Law turned over the names of 40 priests against whom allegations had been raised (Cannon & Sheler, 2002).

Cardinal Law and Cardinal Egan — former Bishop of Bridgeport, CT, and now Archbishop of New York — were also named in lawsuits. Though no direct abuse allegations were brought against these two, they were held responsible for failing to hold the offending priests accountable — a sin of omission. The Church's natural response was to transfer the accused priest to another parish, where the abuse often continued. Behind closed doors, the Church would admonish the priest. No priest was held formally accountable until the weight of mounting cases finally forced the institution to act.

The moral and legal case is straightforward: sexual abuse in any form — whether perpetrated against a pre-pubescent child, a teenager, or an adult — is a crime. Non-clergy perpetrators have been sentenced to prison. Even after release, those convicted of pedophilia face ongoing legal consequences under Megan's Law, a form of sex-offender registration and community notification that uniquely follows convicted offenders throughout their lives (Megan's Law Online, 1996).

From the victim's perspective, the immediate and long-term harm does not diminish because the perpetrator wears a collar. In Biddeford, Maine, Michael Doucette abused David Gagnon for three years beginning when David was 15. David, then 37, remained in therapy and continued to struggle with intimacy. His complaint to the diocese was met with a check for $10,000 and a legal release (Cannon & Sheler, 2002). There is also ample evidence that individuals abused at a young age are at greater risk of becoming abusers themselves. In any moral hierarchy, pedophilia and pederasty are regarded as among the gravest of crimes precisely because the victims are defenseless and the consequences are far-reaching. Priests who abuse are criminals and should not be exempt from accountability. The suffering of their victims may, in fact, be compounded by the betrayal: children are raised to trust priests, to see them as beacons of goodness and human manifestations of Christ.

The Church's Institutional Response

The frustration that Catholics and the broader public feel is exacerbated by the Church's attitude — one of near-irrational defensiveness. A few priests described the behavior of their brethren as "reprehensible" in their sermons, but none went so far as to call it criminal. In a comprehensive review published in U.S. News & World Report, Angie Cannon and Jeffery Sheler cited the comments of Pastor Cieri: "This is also a time of carrying the cross and great difficulty. This is like death. But God brings life out of death, just as God raised Jesus from death, so our hope is that he will raise us from the dead, too." Such platitudes do not address the problem.

Even the Pope spoke out against the abusive priests, apologizing for past wrongs and sternly rebuking those who had sexually abused minors. In 2001, the Vatican suggested holding internal tribunals to try cases of sexual abuse by priests — tribunals whose officers would be drawn exclusively from within the Church. The Church has consistently resisted civil and criminal charges against priests, a position tantamount to claiming that priests who commit crimes are above the law. One cannot envision the Church simultaneously creating a system of imprisonment for abusive priests, nor does such an arrangement address the sins of omission committed by the cardinals and bishops who looked the other way.

To understand the Church's attitude fully, one must understand the physical, hierarchical, and emotional structure of the Catholic Church. There are legitimate reasons, from the institution's own perspective, why it moves to protect itself — but understanding those reasons is not the same as accepting them as justification.

Celibacy, Sexuality, and the Priesthood

One structural factor is mandatory celibacy. Celibacy runs contrary to natural human drives, and it is extraordinarily difficult for anyone to suppress such impulses over an entire lifetime. There is a vocal lobby advocating married priesthood, and its proponents routinely cite sexual abuse among priests to make their case. As a result, abuses by Catholic priests tend to receive more prominent media coverage than equivalent cases involving Protestant ministers. The Catholic Church, in turn, regularly points to statistics showing that Protestant ministers and members of similar professions commit abuse at comparable rates.

There is no direct causal relationship between celibacy and pedophilia. Yet the Church places celibacy at a premium in its hierarchy (Biechler, 1999), treating it as a marker of spiritual superiority over the laity — equating celibacy with purity. There are few biblical grounds for celebrating celibacy; the absence of any record of Jesus Christ consorting romantically with a woman, along with questions surrounding the virgin birth and the family life of Mary and Joseph, provides only the thinnest scriptural basis. The institutionalization of celibacy may warp the development of seminarians, fostering an ethos of denial in which family life and procreation are treated as spiritually inferior. It is plausible, in this sense, that celibacy contributes indirectly to conditions that enable sexual abuse.

A related matter is the observation that more than 90% of abuse victims are male. This raises questions about homosexuality within the clergy. Kevin Haggerty, a rector at a seminary in Surrey, UK, published a paper revealing the existence of rival homosexual and heterosexual factions within seminaries (Haggerty, 2001). The Catholic Church's official position has been that homosexuality resides not in orientation but in the performance of homosexual acts; a celibate person, by this logic, is not homosexual. The Church was, in fact, among the first institutions to openly recruit homosexual men to the priesthood in the expectation that they would remain celibate. The flaw in this reasoning mirrors the flaw in the celibacy assumption more broadly. Gay advocates rightly protest any conflation of homosexuality with pedophilia — these are entirely distinct matters — but the internal inconsistency of the Church's approach to sexuality remains a structural vulnerability.

Conclusion: The Case for Criminal Accountability

Religion, theism, and belief in God are matters of faith. While the faith of many Catholics has been shaken by these revelations, the Church as a whole need not be irreparably harmed. By being forthcoming and honest about the sexual abuses committed by its priests, and by embracing criminal accountability rather than resisting it, the decision-makers in the Catholic Church can steer the institution in the right direction. Transparency, not defensiveness, is the path to institutional renewal and the restoration of trust.

Bibliography

Biechler, James E. (1999). "A Question of Rights: Celibacy and Pedophilia." Retrieved from http://astro.ocis.temple.edu/~arcc/rights7.htm

Cannon, Angie, & Sheler, Jeffery L. (2002). "Catholics in Crisis." U.S. News & World Report, April 1.

Dowd, Maureen. (2002). "Rome Fiddles, We Burn." New York Times, March 27.

Haggerty, Kevin. (2001). "Cliques of gay priests are dividing Church, says rector in England." Religion Today. Retrieved from

Jenkins, Philip. (1996). Pedophiles and Priests: Anatomy of a Contemporary Crisis. Oxford University Press.

Megan's Law Online. (1996). Retrieved from

Rentapriest Online. (2002). "Current Statistics and Facts." Retrieved from