dotCommonweal » Blog Archive » John Jay’s ‘Causes & Context’ study released

Joseph S. O Leary 05/18/2011 - 3:18 pm

If the report’s statistics are reliable, they suggest that the proportion of true pedophiles among clerical abusers is very small (and is not affected by social change).

“Specialist” offenders

Pedophiles—only victims 10 and younger (male and female) 96 3.8

Ephebophiles—only male victims between the ages of 13 and 17 474 18.9

Priests with female victims between the ages of 13 and 17 127 5.0

“Generalist” offenders

Priests with at least one victim 12 or younger and at least
one victim 15 or older 761 30.2

All other “generalists” with victims of various ages and genders 1054 42.1

Total 2512 100 %

David Gibson 05/18/2011 - 3:42 pm subscriber contributor

BTW, this is NOT the same David Gibson:

REPORT-OVERVIEW May-18-2011 (1,160 words) xxxn
Causes and context report released on clergy sexual abuse of minors
By David Gibson
Catholic News Service
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/1101940.htm

Poor man.

Nicholas Clifford 05/18/2011 - 3:51 pm subscriber

The link to the NBC report on John Jay doesn’t work (though all the other links on the same NBC page do). No doubt the fault of (in no particular order):

a) the Vatican
b) the Archbishop of Canterbury
c) the Jesuits
d) the Jews
e) the Communists
f) Newt Gingrich
g) George W. Bush
h) Nancy Pelosi
i) Attila the Hun
i) PBS
j) Fox News

. . . .und so weiter.

Grant Gallicho 05/18/2011 - 3:56 pm contributor

Now that the press conference has ended, the feed is dead. I’ll remove it.

Joe McFaul 05/18/2011 - 4:21 pm

I think we got the “same-o, same-o” from Dolan.

“Keep in mind that the study released today is a report to the bishops of the United States, not from them.”

The laity appear to be quite aware of that fact. It’s the bishops that have a problem with the idea that the report is TO the bishops. It is a call for corrective measures to a broken system. Can the bishops learn from the report?

“Our Independent Lay Board, comprised of judges, lawyers, psychiatrists, social workers, parents, teachers, and those experienced in working with sex abuse victims, reviews these allegations after the civil process has completed. Using all the information that the Archdiocese has been able to gather, they determine if an act of abuse occurred, and advise the Archbishop of New York if the priest can be returned to ministry.”

Archbishop Dolan is making a factual representation here that, unlike in Philadelphia, the Lay Board is actually “independent” and, further, that the the board is provided all the information that the archdiocese has been able to gather.

Does anybody know if this is a true representation?

Does Dolan agree that the Philadelphia board was inadequate becasue it was neigher idependent nor was it provided “all” of the relevant information? Has he shared his suggestions for improvement with his colleague in Philadelphia?

Barbara 05/18/2011 - 4:52 pm

Joseph, apparently the report used a somewhat more stringent definition of pedophilia: children 10 or under — rather than children 13 or under. If you used the latter, the incidence of “pedophilia” would rise dramatically as a proportion of reported abuse.

But you know what? I don’t care anymore. It doesn’t matter why abuse occurred — what matters is that it occurred and those who were in authority reacted by doing almost anything they could to protect perpetrators even if it resulted in many more incidents of abuse. You can’t blame that kind of moral failure on the 60s.

Joe Pettit 05/18/2011 - 4:56 pm

Barbara: Yes you can, only in the case of the bishops we are talking the 160′s, 260′s and 360′s. After that the pattern was pretty well established.

P Flanagan 05/18/2011 - 5:21 pm

” what matters is that it occurred and those who were in authority reacted by doing almost anything they could to protect perpetrators even if it resulted in many more incidents of abuse”

No, what matters is that the Church has taken actions that make a Catholic Church sacristy pretty much the safest public place in the world for our children. If only the public school system could say the same.

Bill Mazzella 05/18/2011 - 5:53 pm subscriber

Very few people, children or parents placed the same trust in a public school teacher as they do for a priest. bishop or a nun. That is the rub

Archbishop Dolan still has a way of saying nothing with many words. Perhaps that is why they call him the “Jolly Bartender.” This appellation has been given to him by the diocesan clergy of NY, many of whom it is reported do not like him.

Paul Moses 05/18/2011 - 5:57 pm subscriber contributor

There is a lot to digest in this report. My first reaction is that it seems off-base to blame the loose social mores of the 1960s and 1970s for the reported increase in clergy abuse of minors.

The report notes that the number of abuse cases dropped sharply after 1985. Might that be because that was the year some – well, a few – in the news media focused national attention on the issue? The reporters and editors who tried to bring this issue to public attention (while church authorities kept trying to block them) deserve a lot of credit.

Richard Smith 05/18/2011 - 6:14 pm subscriber

Bill, as a member of the diocesean clergy I can tell you that is simply not true.

Richard Smith 05/18/2011 - 6:16 pm subscriber

Oops, diocesan

Mark Proska 05/18/2011 - 6:32 pm subscriber

So, let me make sure I have this right. A man who does not self-identify as an adulterer, though he engage in adultery, is not an adulterer. And how much did we pay for this study? Where do I go to get my money back?

“…many of whom it is reported do not like him.”

That is lame. That is really lame.

Bill Mazzella 05/18/2011 - 6:59 pm subscriber

Richard,

I got this from your fellow priests. Your argument is with them. The same goes for Mark.

David Gibson 05/18/2011 - 7:16 pm subscriber contributor

Mark, you have a logic fail — adultery is not comparable to homosexuality.

Joseph S. O Leary 05/18/2011 - 7:47 pm

Nor to pedophilia as defined.

To the angry readers of the NYT all this is angels dancing on pins.

Joseph S. O Leary 05/18/2011 - 7:49 pm

Some will see red to find Kinsey quoted with such respect. Others might say the report is too Americo-centric in its references.

Bob Nunz 05/18/2011 - 8:16 pm

One first thought: the Episcopal Church (and several other Protestant Churches) have rules to deal for sexual abuse (of all types, not just children,) however one neatly defines that.
WHY?????????

Joseph S. O Leary 05/18/2011 - 8:24 pm

The report says that restrictions should not be placed on the nurturing activities of priests toward adolesents — the same could be extended to the nurturing activities of all adults toward adolescents. If adolescents need nurturing, they are unlikely to get much of it in an atmosphere of moral terror and legal fears.

Claire 05/18/2011 - 10:02 pm

Let’s say we bypass Abp Dolan and the USCCB. What use can we, lay Catholics, make of this study?

For example my parish is getting a new pastor in June. Can we ask him for his vita, run a background check, ask parishioners from the place he comes from about him, ask him to tell us what training he has in terms of sexual abuse prevention and what his plans are in that regard?

Claire 05/18/2011 - 10:29 pm

Bob Nunz: excellent question. Forget Abp. Dolan and the USCCB. How do other churches do it? Maybe there we can find some useful guidelines.

Alan C. Mitchell 05/18/2011 - 10:36 pm subscriber

Claire,

Excellent questions. Other Christian denominations “hire” their ministers. Given what has transpired not only with the sex abuse scandal, but also with embezzlements and financial mismanagement, it is only wise for parishioners to ask the bishop for a slate of three candidates, whom they can evaluate across the board, and from which they can recommend the one they feel most comfortable with for the position. If a bishop ends up with priests he cannot place, maybe he will select better candidates for the priesthood. Who, except for priests, has the luxury of not having to interview for a job and the possibility of not getting it? Likewise there should be annual performance reviews.

That having been said, do I think this will happen? No.

Jimmy Mac 05/18/2011 - 10:42 pm subscriber

A regular poster here, Todd Flowerday, had this to say on his blogsite:

http://catholicsensibility.wordpress.com/2011/05/18/blame-the-60s-doesnt-resonate/#comments

David Gibson 05/18/2011 - 11:26 pm subscriber contributor

I’m sure there is much to learn from other denominations, but as the case of Episcopal bishop Charles Bennison showed, some things there are almost Catholic in the results:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Bennison#Handling_of_a_sexual_misconduct_case_from_the_1970.27s

Also, there are no good stats on abuse in other denominations, and the congregational polity of many denominations — in particular Baptists — can allow predators to hop from church to church. There is no way for the most involved laity to vet someone if they don’t know his past, and even his (or her) previous congregations may not know of abuse allegations if the perp moves on before they go public.

It’s complicated. But yes, better scruitny and hiring of priests by parishes would be a good move.

David Gibson 05/18/2011 - 11:27 pm subscriber contributor

Oh, and look up the number of parishes that rallied to their pastors when they were accused — credibly — of abuse. Parochial dynamics are interesting things. Sometimes overseeing authorities aren’t such bad things.

Claire 05/19/2011 - 12:02 am

Parochial dynamics are interesting things.

Not that complicated, I think: people rally to the side of the one they know. A parishioner, to the side of their well-known pastor rather than some less known or unknown victim. A bishop, to the side of their well-known brother priests rather than some unknown victim. A French national, to the side of their favorite future presidential candidate rather than some unknown victim, etc.

Anthony Andreass 05/19/2011 - 4:07 am subscriber

Bill,

It is somewhat silly to play he said, he said with the attitudes of NY priests, but take it from someone who knows a lot of them, they on the whole like Dolan very, very much. They find him personable, caring, gentle and someone who really cares for their well-being. Is he perfect? No, quite from it, but who is. I think you need to widen your circle of clergy confidants to get a clearer impression of what they are saying and thinking

Joseph S. O Leary 05/19/2011 - 5:47 am

To call your bishop “the jolly bartender” hardly sounds like an expression of rooted hostility.

Joseph S. O Leary 05/19/2011 - 5:54 am

I suspect that priests who are fully engaged in pastoral ministry within the framework of their diocese are quite loath to get involved in the critique of church officialdom that flourishes on commonwealmagazine.org and praytellblog.com — not because of cowardice or conformism but because their local responsibilities are far more pressing and because they do not want to introduce useless complications into their collaboration with their bishops. A situation of hostility between a bishop and his priests is good for no one, and priests wisely avoid fomenting anything of the sort (I hope). That is why bishops are shocked at the intensity of lay criticism — it is not the sort of thing that is voiced by their priests.

Jim Pauwels 05/19/2011 - 9:12 am subscriber

“My first reaction is that it seems off-base to blame the loose social mores of the 1960s and 1970s for the reported increase in clergy abuse of minors.”

Hi, Paul, I saw a number of similar comments to that effect in the NY Times reader comments (before I gave up on them).

I just want to comment that this isn’t the first time that I’ve seen the explanation that it was a loony time with regard to sexual mores. It doesn’t seem impossible that priests and others got swept up into the overall lunacy. It wasn’t just priests; it was a generally goofy time (I’ve read). I was a kid, so I didn’t experience it as an adult.

Alan C. Mitchell 05/19/2011 - 9:47 am subscriber

If you go to BishopAccountability.org and open the abuse tracker at the letter A, the second, and third cases are about abuse that took place in the ’50′s, the fourth case took place in the mid-60′s before the revolution of ’68 happened. I suspect that, if one were to check the entire database one would find that there are other cases of abuse taking place in the ’50′s and perhaps even the ’40′s. It only stands to reason that if there was a spike in reporting in the ’60′s and ’70′s the abuse being reported must have happened earlier than that. It seems to me that there is probably a longer history of clergy abuse that pre-dates the ’60′s and ’70′s, but we just do not have the data for it.

Mary 05/19/2011 - 9:55 am

Like Jim, the nyt comments/caricatures got old for me really fast.

I’m struck by how–despite the report emphasizing that there is no individual personal trait that can be predictive of abuse and that we need to look to the interaction of a number of complex situational factors to explain it–so many stubbornly insist on reading (the headlines of) the report through lenses explicitly rejected by the study as unable to be empirically verified (eg it’s all about gays, or it’s all about the sex-crazed 60s).

Regarding the 60s, it cracks me up that some of the loudest voices yelping about the decade’s moral depravity are often young people who weren’t there (and whose parents or grandparents probably had quite a conventional time of it). It’s like thinking the 20s were nothing but bathtub-gin and flappers because you read “The Great Gatsby.” The tumult of the 60s, as many of the commenters here know from personal experience, can’t be reduced to loose sex and free love. The same questioning of received knowledge, pious fictions, and institutional authority that produced radical questioning of traditional sexual morality was also that which taught us “the personal is political,” that there actually is such a thing as marital rape, that child abuse isn’t a parental right, that rape isn’t rough sex, that civil rights might reasonably extend to people of color and women, that patriotism might demand refusing to support a war, etc. The “tumult” wasn’t merely about sex. It was about agency and power.

Understood in that sense, I can more easily see how the authors would find that poor formation in previous decades combined with social upheaval of the 60s in a way to produce one situational factor that helps illumine the context of abuse.

Felapton 05/19/2011 - 10:10 am

If the loose sexual mores of this legendarily “goofy” time made priests molest children, why is there no comparable pedophile-accountant scandal? Did accountants suddenly begin molesting children in large numbers about 1968 and then abruptly stop around 1985 too? Maybe all the accountants were locked up in monasteries during the loony 1960′s and 1970′s?

FWIW, I was a kid during the “loony” time too, but I don’t remember it being all that loony. People wore some funny-looking clothes. Some ridiculous noises were dignified with the word “music.” A few very fit people went streaking. But I don’t remember anybody ever saying child molestation was an OK thing to do.

Barbara 05/19/2011 - 10:24 am

David Gibson: for whatever it’s worth, the Baptist church my husband belongs to runs criminal background and credit checks on every candidate for minister, and asks for permission to discuss his record with any member of the board or management of a previous church or employer.

There are inherent difficulties in trying to deal with someone who has been accused but not prosecuted or convicted. It’s hard for previous employers to be forthright because accusations can just be accusations, and the prospect of legal liability is real. This isn’t just true about sexual abuse allegations and it isn’t just true about the ministry. It also means that the particular organizational structure of the RCC makes it particularly susceptible to allegations of breach of duty precisely BECAUSE it controls so much about where individuals are deployed, and how their behavioral or other problems are dealt with, or not, within the organization. ONLY the Catholic Church can agree to appoint someone as a priest in a parish — in congregational denominations the local church is free to conduct its own vetting process and reject candidates for whom it cannot get enthusiastic references. This difference is key in terms of legal responsibility that seems to be overlooked often when people point to other settings in which abuse occurs –e.g., schools or other denominations.

IF you assume the responsibility for placing personnel in a parish you must accept the responsibility for failing to exercise that duty reasonably in a manner that takes the interests of future parishioners into account, especially potential child victims. I assume that sexual predators have been and will be with us forever. What motivates them doesn’t even need to be relevant if you have a process in place that vastly diminishes their opportunity to victimize others.

Patrick Molloy 05/19/2011 - 11:13 am subscriber

We now learn that statisticians in the 21st century reach similar conclusions as the moral reformers of the 19th century.

We discover that culture matters and that the power of moral uplift (or its absence) can be confirmed by t-tests, regression equations and, as a special bonus, an exceptionally potent expectation maximization algorithm.

From Victorians to the High Priests of social science – - Progress?

Bob Nunz 05/19/2011 - 11:23 am

Here in New Mexico, the big crime news today is the lockup of a teacher who texted pictures of his genitalia to an 11 year old girl and asked her to send him naked pictures of herself.
Acording to the Report, he’s no ta “pedophile”.
What would most folks think?
I think that delimitation undermines the credibility of the report.
As a retired Criminal justice person who worked on sex abuse isues, i must say I found the report both controversial and disappointing.
I guess I would have emphasized more strongly the criminality of sexual abuse in all its forms, the issue of the misuse of power by those in positions of trust( the police analogy is to some degree helpful, especially in terms of the Abp. Martin mentioned phenomenon of peers or superiors not coming forward), and the particular danger to children ( and not just those under ten, but through teens in my opinion, in relationships that trust matters.
I also think that I would have like to have seen more notion on the question of data accuracy in terms not only of what is reported but historically what’s been reported.
Lastly,I would note that the problem is hardly unique to the US (and in noting Papal action, and reaction, numerous problems of abuse and mistrust exist in differing cultures.)
I guess I’d note many professions that provide care to individuals have their own codes and certainly look more harshly on those who abuse the care of children, but The Church has its own rules that supercede civil rules in such matters and that this may be a major problem.
I do not wish to denigrate some of the fine things and work in the report, but I think it could have ben framed quite differently and effectively. I also think its pedophilia definition will cast doubt on the intentions and work of the authors in many quarters (e.. g Anderson Cooper on CNN last night.)
Ms. Tery says the sex abuse crisi is”over.”
I don’t know, but I do know many wil continue to doubt that.
So I’m far from certain we’re moving forward on this, despite all the money and resarch.

Jim Pauwels 05/19/2011 - 1:10 pm subscriber

“If the loose sexual mores of this legendarily “goofy” time made priests molest children, why is there no comparable pedophile-accountant scandal?”

Felapton – personally, I don’t think the ’60s and ’70s *made* these priests do anything.

Here is what the report says: “Social and cultural changes in the 1960s and 1970s manifested in increased levels of deviant behavior in the general society and also among priests of the Catholic Church in the United States … the rise in abuse cases in the 1960s and 1970s was influenced by social factors in American society generally. This increase in abusive behavior is consistent with the rise in other types of ‘deviant’ behavior, such as drug use and crime, as well as changes in social behavior, such as an increase in premarital sexual behavior and divorce.”

What I take away from this is that the twenty-year-or-so spike in abuse incidents *correlates* with increases in other deviant behavior in larger society at that time.

Dennis Di Mauro 05/19/2011 - 1:26 pm

Joseph and Bob have correctly questioned the arbitrary nature of the distinctions of pedophilia at 10 or 13. I agree.

This seems like an overt effort to exempt gay priests who are abusing teenage boys from being labeled. Why are they making these arbitrary age distinctions? To remove the argument that the abuse is done mostly by homosexuals, which of course it is. As usual, defending the homosexual lifestyle will always outweigh the safety of children in these types of reports.

This is truly sad because the legal pedophilia age, last time I checked, was 18. That is why we have laws against statutory rape. It is immoral and illegal, despite the psychological normalcy that the John Jay committee has placed on many of these behaviors.

Let’s get real, we don’t need to study the gradations of age abuse..it’s useless. What we really need to study is why anyone abuses any minor (under 18) and put into place procedures and education that will stop this type of person from entering the ministry, and after he is ordained, from reverting to this type of behavior while in the ministry. Some of the suggestions in the report seem to make sense in that regard.

As to why people defend their priests who have been accused of abuse is a subject I know firsthand. My wife’s church had just such a situation. A priest in her church was accused, after one accusation of abuse by a person in his former parish. He was immediately kicked out of the rectory and removed from his church duties and his adjunct teaching position at a Catholic University. He had to live for 6 months in a parishioner’s basement because he had nowhere else to go. In short, he was completely banished from the church, with no salary, health care, or any means of supporting himself. As for finding new employment, it will be very tough for him to explain all this. So he will likely end up destitute. This is how the Church treats its priests, many, or even most of them innocent, no doubt, and it is a disgrace. I believe this priest was falsely accused, and shamefully treated, as does everyone I spoke to in the parish. This is where we are today..the church used to arrogantly turn a blind eye on the abuse of children. Now that it has been publically exposed and embarrassed, it chooses to arrogantly disparage its own priests.

Bob Nunz 05/19/2011 - 1:43 pm

?Many or most of them innocent.,”
How do you know this, Dennis?
An additional note from me:
on a you tube reaction, I saw Linda Fairstein, former head of sex crimes unit in Manhattan Da’s office, for whom I have loads of respect, questioning the 60′s &70′s thesis.
I think once more the report will not accheive the credibility it thinks it deserves despite all the hopefully well intentioned work that went into it.

Patrick Molloy 05/19/2011 - 1:49 pm subscriber

James Q. Wilson’s brief remarks
on the John Jay report – - IMHO he would be one of the best to give an informed review of the report:
___________________
an esteemed criminologist says the bishops are right to point to a direct connection between the countercultural revolution of and criminal behavior.

“Now, how do people summarize that change? Well, we can borrow a lesson from the recent Vatican report, which said priestly abuse was the result of the 1960s.

“What did the Vatican mean? . . . It meant that in this decade, owing to broad changes in our culture and the culture around the world, people began to value self expression over self control. I happen to think that that — at least with crime; I don’t know about priestly abuse — is a very powerful explanation.”

http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/Wilson-Vatican-sexual-revolution/2011/05/19/id/396968

Jim Pauwels 05/19/2011 - 1:58 pm subscriber

I would direct folks’ attention the shapes of the charts in Figure 1.1 on p.8 and Figure 1.2 on p. 9.

The first shows the distribution of incidents of abuse. As has been described above, it’s somewhat shaped like a bell. Abuse seems to have begun increasing in the 1950s, continuing to climb throughout the ’60s, and then peaking from about 1968 until about 1984. At those peak levels, it was a multiple – some 8-9X – its trough in 1951.

After 1984, it begins a precipitate decline. By 1995 or so, it had leveled off, at a level actually below that of the 1950s.

For more details on the historical pattern, cf pp 27 ff in the report. The authors seem to have considered most of the hypotheses floated in these comments, and address them there.

Compare Figure 1.1 to 1.2. The latter shows the incidence of *reporting* abuse. There was a dramatic spike in 2002 – when Boston was in the news every day. The incidence of reporting seems to follow the media coverage of abuse – a spike in the early ’90s, and then a much bigger spike in the early 2000s.

To my mind, this all suggests that what is paramount now is the church’s pastoral response. It seems clear that abuse is not nearly the problem now that it was 30 years ago. And it seems likely that the great majority of abuse instances have now been reported. What has yet to be done, by and large, is reach out to victims.

David Gibson 05/19/2011 - 2:15 pm subscriber contributor

For those critiquing the report, a question: what is your basis for comparison in making your arguments? In other words, what are the other analogous studies and statistics on which you are basing your assertions that the John Jay study conclusions are wrong?

I don’t know of any, so I’m not sure how one argues that these conclusions are wrong or that there is something inherently worse about the Catholic Church and priesthood in this regard than other denominations or organizations.

But perhaps you all have information I don’t know about. Please share.

Bill deHaas 05/19/2011 - 2:20 pm

Jim – the problem with the bell curve is that JJ study did not use data or cases prior to the 1950′s. So, to compare numbers prior to 1950 to what they analyzed is misleading, at best.

Two other points:
- this does indicate a pattern and trend using the data that was given to them by bishops – this is not the whole story…it is what can be documented to date;
- to extrapolate and make a statement such as abuse as significantly decreased since 2000 is risky, at best. It ignores the fact that it takes years for abusers to come forward – we do not know the extent of abuse yet much beyond the early 1990′s

Am disappointed in the argument about pedophilia and the use of 10 years old as a cut-off – this again ignores current psychological definitions; facts used by most professional organizations, etc. Why create your own “arbitrary” definition no matter how well you explain it. Would have laid a context for all criminal sexual behavior without “wasting” time on who or what exactly is a Pedophile – who cares? The point is criminal sexual behavior.

Given that this study only focused on criminal abuse, wish there had been some link to past, current sexual activity with adults and some conclusions drawn in terms of that. It might have enhanced or expanded the “celibacy” conclusion.

David Gibson 05/19/2011 - 2:37 pm subscriber contributor

BTW, Richard Sipe hardly seems like someone who would characterized as in the tank for the bishops, and he has a constructive take here:

http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/richard-sipe-john-jay-report

Ann Olivier 05/19/2011 - 2:48 pm subscriber

Mary –

Many years ago because of my interest in Wittgenstein (a most fascinating individual) I read a lot about him and his friends who were members of the Bloomsbury group. For those who don’t remember them (ha!), they were a truly extraordinary group off extremely influential intellectuals/friends/lovers who hung out around Russell Square in London in the early 20th century when the Victorian age was ending. They more than any group, I think, articulated the new “modern” set of values which we are still struggling with today. (Yes, struggling.)

The world-view of most of them included religious skepticism, sympathy with the poor, sexual license, an eagerness to challenge everything that went before, a hopeful optimism that when the old order was replaced by their modern one, things would be much better. They replaced the old religious world-view with the notion that beautiful aesthetic objects and, above all, friendship were the ultimate human values. (They could have written, “I’ll get by with a little help from my friends”.) They were also highly hedonistic. Or should I call them “tastefully hedonistic”.

They included in their innermost core Virginia Woolf (an important early feminist), and her sister Vanessa, her husband, a publisher of highly influential early 20th century books, Clive Bell (Vanessa’s husband) who, with Roger Fry, articulated the radically new aesthetic theories of the Impressionists and later “radical” artists, John Maynard Keynes, philanthropist and the economist whose theories still shake the corridors of power when there is a recession or depression, and, at the edges, Wittgenstein, who as I see it founded the Age of Communication we’ve yet to exhaust, and Bertrand Russell, pacifist, leader for change in sexual mores and educational theorist (his permissiveness still resonates strongly today). None suffered economically, none were socialist, they ranged from super-rich (Wittgenstein) or at least well-to-do by today’s standards. None of them ever went hungry, though they were very concerned with people who did. (Sound like today’s Yalie sophomores?)

I have always thougt that great novelists and biographers have more to teach us about history and human nature than the historians and social scientist do. If you want to understand the 60s and today, read some of the excellent biographies of these fascinating and extraordinarily influential people. Their lives all overlap, and the group is known collectively as Bloomsbury. Ray Monk’s biography of Wittgenstein is particularly well done, and the Skidelsky biography of Keynes is particularly good — and particularly long (3 vols.) Russell’s own Autobiography gives the flavor of the group, and there are excellent biographies about all the others, often more than one for each of them.

The Courts of the Gentiles were made for them, I think. 100 years too late.

But even Bloomsbury wasn’t totally self-creating. It’s roots were in the Victorians, such as Virginia Woolf’s father, one of the early Victorians who could no longer accept Christianity.

Ann Olivier 05/19/2011 - 3:29 pm subscriber

Dennis –

Though there has been a range of meanings of “pedophile”, these days pedophile as used in the DSM does not a man who is attracted to little boys. A pedophile is a person (males or female) who is attracted to little children (male or female). A homosexual is someone with predominantly same-sex sexual attraction, whether their sex-objects are children or not. The two meanings are like apples and oranges. Not the same.

Dennis Di Mauro 05/19/2011 - 3:47 pm

Bob, to answer your question, this is just an educated guess, nothing more. But it appears that the days of due process are over for accused priests. And it is a shame. Many people may disagree with me, but I believe that the priesthood is a life of almost unbelievable sacrifice, and the way some innocent priests have been treated by the church is absolutely disgraceful. It seems that their guilt or innocence is of little concern to the hierarchy. They have now become a liability and simply must be eliminated.

Dennis Di Mauro 05/19/2011 - 3:49 pm

Ann-

Thanks for the summary. Now that I have been educated, how does your explanation in any way assist the church in solving the problem? You have made an interesting academic distinction. So what?

Ann Olivier 05/19/2011 - 3:54 pm subscriber

David G, –

Internal inconsistencies are problems and do not require comparison with other reports. Example: I noted in a post on another thread that in one place (p. 55) “pedophile victim” means someone 10 years old or younger, while in the Glossary the DSM’s cut-off of 13 or younger is given.

I don’t know that there are other inconsistencies in the report. But this kind of issue is fair to raise.

I have one other little complaint about the report. It shows U.S. regions in colors and names them “1″, “2″, “3″… etc. The colors are so dark for some of them you can’t tell what number is there. The text also has charts which refer to “Region A”, “Region B”, “Region C”, etc. Are these the same as regions 1, 2, 3, etc? It just looks like sloppy work, or maybe I didn’t read far enough into that chapter.

By and large, however, there is a lot of information of interest in the report which should help people recognize warning signs when they encounter them. For instance, the fact that most priests were old when they first abused would not be something most of us would expect. But the main points, I think, are that causes of abuse cannot be simply reduced to either celibacy or homosexuality. Those are very important conclusions, even though I think it’s apparent that celibacy has something to do with the loneliness that is an apparent cause of abuse by some priests. As to homosexuals not being more likely to be abusers, that is terribly important because it would seem that that mistaken assumption is a major reason many people object to homosexuals being priests in the first place.

Margaret O’Brien Steinfels 05/19/2011 - 3:55 pm subscriber contributor

Some things that happened during the sixties:
1. the birth control pill became available;
2. a university building at Wisconsin was blown up to protest the war in Vietnam;
3. R.D. Laing and other somewhat goofy psychologists, analysts, etc. started proposing some new child rearing/development theories; ditto educators; and child-rearing “experts.”
4. The American people had an epiphany: their government lied to them; Vietnam and all that!
5. If I recall correctly the Man-Boy Love Association got going in that decade;
6. Various hallucinatory drugs became available;
7. The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan was published;
8. Catholics stopped going to confession in the latter years of that decade;
9. Many Americans came to realize what a racist society we were
10….and so much more.

Jim Jenkins 05/19/2011 - 3:57 pm subscriber

It all started with the Beatles!

Dennis Di Mauro 05/19/2011 - 3:59 pm

Summary of John Jay Study

Action: All the teen boys have been taken out of the study. Conclusion: The gay priest problem can be dismissed.

Discovery: Abuse slows in 1985. Conclusion: This is not as big a problem as everyone has been saying, i.e people are picking on Catholics. Blame it on those 60′s hippies.

Ann Olivier 05/19/2011 - 4:03 pm subscriber

Dennis –

Though I think the report helps us to see the problem of abuse more clearly, I do not think it gives any help with forcing all of the recalcitrant bishops to mend their ways. Further, even well-meaning bishops can be prejudiced in favor of certain priests. (Just look at JP II and that monster Maciel.)

Until the problem bishops are over-seen by others with the clout to make them act — and those others could be either other bishops or laity or possibly both — the “guidelines” from Dallas have no teeth. Philadelphia shows that major cover-ups are still possible — and in Philadelphia’s case real.

I admit there are theological problems with laity-only review panels. But panels which find their bishops to be resistant to over-sight should be able to call on other bishops for help. Such judgment by peers should be theologically acceptable.

David Gibson 05/19/2011 - 4:06 pm subscriber contributor

Ann, I do think the definition of pedophilia is problematic, but that hardly undermines the overall findings of the report.

By the way, the DSM definition is not that clear cut:

Diagnostic criteria for 302.2 Pedophilia

A. Over a period of at least 6 months, recurrent, intense sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors involving sexual activity with a prepubescent child or children (generally age 13 years or younger).

B. The person has acted on these urges, or the sexual urges or fantasies cause marked distress or interpersonal difficulty.

C. The person is at least age 16 years and at least 5 years older than the child or children in Criterion A.

The age of 13 is also arbitrary in its own way. I think we have to be aware of ambiguities and complexities as much as we would like to paint this all in simplistic, black and white terms. It’s tempting to do that with something like child abuse, but I think it’s important to place a priority on acknowlegding what went wrong in the past, who was responsible, and so take steps to avert the tragedy in the future.

It’s hard to avoid “moral panic” in these situations, but I think it’s important to at least try.

Bob Nunz 05/19/2011 - 4:20 pm

I thought the Sipe input was concise and helpful in both recognizing the values in the report but also methodological problems which (I guess I disagreewith David about) can do real harm to the reception of the overall findings.
I think we’ll get more sophisticated views in the days ahead -I especially would like to hear from Gene Kennedy, whose studies were used in the report, and Professor Frawley.
BTW, Dennis, I think the number of “innocent” priest has been thought to be minimal and that the focus primartily should be on innocent children/victims -or maybe you don’t think so.

Mollie Wilson O'Reilly 05/19/2011 - 4:24 pm contributor

Action: All the teen boys have been taken out of the study.

Dennis: Not true. You need to get your information from someplace other than wherever you came up with this.

Dennis Di Mauro 05/19/2011 - 4:28 pm

Mollie,

Ok, they just removed them from what would be considered pedophiles..same thing.

Mollie Wilson O'Reilly 05/19/2011 - 4:32 pm contributor

It’s not, actually, Dennis. You’re wrong about the study’s premises and its conclusions, and you’re especially wrong in suggesting that it’s attempting to minimize sexual abuse of any kind. You’ll have to read the actual findings if you want to draw conclusions from them.

Dennis Di Mauro 05/19/2011 - 4:33 pm

already did

David Gibson 05/19/2011 - 4:49 pm subscriber contributor

Dennis, don’t you have a truther or birther meeting to go to?

Dennis Di Mauro 05/19/2011 - 4:52 pm

Bob,
While I would agree with you that our first concern should be about the safety of our children, I am becoming concerned that this is really about two other things.
1) Protecting the Church from scandal. This is the #1 goal. Everything is secondary. This was proven early in the scandal when pedophile priests were just moved around, allowing them to abuse many more children. It was done to protect the church from embarrassment, and of course, the tactic backfired causing more abuse and more embarrassment. Now we have zero tolerance. But it is clear that this is being done mostly to satisfy point #1, because there is little consideration of the priests that are being accused. It is clear that they are as inconsequential as the children were 20 years ago. They are simply cannon fodder for the curial PR machine.
2) Defending gays from the accusation of pedophilia. Why make a dichotomy between people who are abused at under 10, or under 13, (the so-called pedophiles) and those under 18? Answer: this arbitrary distinction allows one to remove gay priests who are abusing teens from the label pedophile. Then one can create this headline: “John Jay Report shows no link between homosexuality and pedophilia”
Problem solved…
What about the kids and the accused priests? er.. ah.. we’ll pray for them.

Mary 05/19/2011 - 4:57 pm

Ah, for Pete’s sake. The report sure has ended up being a Rorschach. I think the report should have done a much better job clarifying the theoretical basis for how they operationalized terms. However, even if you combine what they would call pedophiles with the ephebophile category you still don’t end up with statistical significance. They aren’t trying to mau-mau the math in order to hide the fact that the problem is pedophilia. Like celibacy and homosexuality, people are going to have to get over the wish that there is a single individual psychological predictor of abuse.

The article by Kathleen McChesney (at America) has some interesting reaction to the study. Here’s what she says on one point: “Less than 5 percent of priests with abuse allegations exhibited behaviors consistent with pedophilia, meaning that this small segment of abusers had an abnormal, primary sexual attraction to pre-pubescent children. That does not mean that the other 84 percent of priest-abusers had a normal attraction to adolescents, but merely that the “offender as pedophile” stereotype is not consistent with the type of cases that occurred between 1950 and 2010. Regardless of the researcher’s distinction between pedophiles and ephebophiles (those attracted to pubescent and post-pubescent children), the sexual acts imposed upon the minor children were criminal and not normative by any social or cultural standard.”

Dennis Di Mauro 05/19/2011 - 5:06 pm

Mary,

Look at the “Specialist” offenders numbers..this means that if there were equal number of gay and straight priests, the gay “Specialist” offenders would be over three times more likely to abuse a teen than a straight “Specialist” offender…of course we know the likelihood is much higher assuming there are more straight priests.

oops- that we be an non-PC headline!

Ephebophiles—only male victims between the ages of 13 and 17 474 18.9

Priests with female victims between the ages of 13 and 17 127 5.0

Claire 05/19/2011 - 5:09 pm

Some things that happened during the sixties: [...]
11. I was born!

Mary 05/19/2011 - 5:13 pm

Fail. That’s not correct Dennis. But, go ahead and think it’s so–as long as it confirms what you already believe, you’re golden.

Dennis Di Mauro 05/19/2011 - 5:16 pm

just using those John Jay numbers! OK gang gotta run..

Jim Pauwels 05/19/2011 - 6:10 pm subscriber

“for whatever it’s worth, the Baptist church my husband belongs to runs criminal background and credit checks on every candidate for minister, and asks for permission to discuss his record with any member of the board or management of a previous church or employer.”

Yes, they’d be foolish not to. My assumption is that the Catholic Church leads the league in running criminal background checks: not just of its clergy and staff, but even its lay volunteers (it has to run to hundreds of thousands of individuals in the US alone).

Dennis Di Mauro 05/19/2011 - 6:40 pm

I would think that the church runs backround checks during the ordination process, maybe not as they move from parish to parish, though.

Lisa Fullam 05/19/2011 - 8:25 pm

Assuming Dennis’ reporting of JJ data is correct, then he is pointing to a significant data question, one that, IMHO, wasn’t well handled in the wake of the 1st report. A few comments:

1. Sexual abuse of teens DOES tend to track with sexual orientation more than pedophilia does. Also ephebophiles tend to have fewer victims, and psychosexual immaturity is more obviously a factor in ephebophilia. Pedophilia is very resistant to treatment, while ephebophilia is not. These are some reasons people distinguish them: they’re different kinds of pathology, and shouldn’t be lumped together.

2. Two big HOWEVERS about the high rate of same-sex abuse of teens: first, sexual activity does not always reflect orientation. Consider the incidence of homosexual activity in, e.g., prisons and single-sex boarding schools. (As prison inmates say, “gay for the stay, straight at the gate.”) And male teens are simply more available to predatory priests than girls are. That doesn’t explain away the high proportion of ephebophilic abuse, but it does explain a fair amount of it.

3. HOWEVER number 2: Linking ephebophilia to homosexuality is a logic error, which is why the JJ report discounts it. An analogy–almost all rapists are men. It is not fair to say that almost all men are rapists. A small proportion of men are sexual criminals. Most men are not. Back to priests: a small proportion of gay priests abuse teens. That doesn’t make all gay men predators any more than all men are rapists. These two HOWEVERS, I think, explain the data about ephebophilia without discounting it. So both Dennis and JJ can be correct: it’s mostly ephebophilia (at least in more recent decades,) and it’s not about homosexuality.

4. Recall too that RC teaching about homosexuality is that it is an objective disorder, a tendency to intrinsic evil. Also recall that in 2005 the Vatican reiterated its attack on gay men who would be priests, implying that they are dangerous. (And not just gay priests are bad; the USCCB labels gay unions a threat to the fabric of society.) Also recall that while most gay priests may be well-adjusted, mature, safe, and holy, they have also been silent in the face of these theological insults. For one reason or another, neither straight priests nor gay priests, by and large, were willing to stand up for gay priests in any numbers following that 2005 document. Jim Martin over at America points to a dearth of open gay priests, and lists several reasons for this. Yup. Until people know what a high proportion of the priests they know and admire are gay, why shouldn’t people believe the slurs?

5. To a different point: are the data on abuse reported in terms of percentage of priests, or as raw numbers? If the numbers of reported abuse cases declined, does that reflect a decrease in the proportion of priests who abuse, or only a smaller number because there are fewer priests? Remember that another factor in the 60s was an exodus from priesthood and religious life.

Jack Barry 05/19/2011 - 8:54 pm

Re: Some things that happened during the sixties – Margaret O’B. S., 3:55P

If looking for a “cause” to explain Catholic clerical change associated with the ’60s, the study might have done better to invoke Humanae Vitae, which the Pope addressed to “THE WHOLE CATHOLIC WORLD, AND TO ALL MEN OF GOOD WILL” in 1968. It declared authoritatively an official Church view on human sexuality. It had a widely observed, well-documented effect on Catholic clergy and laity in the ’60s and ever since, although not the intended effect. The reaction it triggered, reinforced by the passage of time, has involved a far more direct, persistent shaping of Catholic views on sexuality than long-gone concerts, campus uproar, orgies, and riots in the streets.

Bill Mazzella 05/19/2011 - 9:24 pm subscriber

David G,

Maybe you can clarify. The Times seems to use the report to blame the sixties for the clerical abuse. Do you agree with that? The sixties was a time of getting rid of many taboos and did get excessive. But I don’t think by any stretch of the imagination that can be used as a cause of pedophilia. A casual attitude toward sex is one thing. To abuse children is a horse of an entirely different color. Can you clarify?

Ann Olivier 05/19/2011 - 10:05 pm subscriber

Lisa –

Is the basic defining characteristic of ephebophiles simply the *age* of their sex objects? Are there both male and female ephebophiles? Can the individuals be either homosexual (preferring same=sex sex objects) and heterosexual or can they be bisexual? While all prefer youngsters of a certain age group, do individual ephebophiles typically prefer either males or females, not both?

It seems to me that the great concern with the 14-18 year old adolescents is that many people seem to be assuming that ephebophiles must all be male homosexuals, and, therefore, to add homosexual priests to the ranks of Catholic priests is necessarily to increase the likelihood of homosexuals predation. This, of course, also assumes that homosexuals are all predators, a prejudice that the JJ report should help to correct.

Thanks for your clarifications. They help.

Patrick Molloy 05/19/2011 - 10:09 pm subscriber

If it’s true that some portion of same-sex abuse is due to heterosexuals with a greater opportunity of seducing boys then is it also true that some portion of opposite-sex abuse is due to homosexuals with an unusual opportunity of seducing girls?

IMHO there is a plenitude of opportunities of all kinds for those who are in the market;

David Gibson 05/19/2011 - 10:15 pm subscriber contributor

Lisa, very good analysis. I’d also note that a (fairly small, but significant, I believe) correlation the researchers did find between sexual identity and abuse of minors was associated with men who had a “confused” sexual identity. I think this refers largely to gay men, and I think that is a red flag for the church authorities in using the prejudicial language against homosexuals. One thing that seems likely to create psychosexual problems is trying to sublimate one’s desires and self-hatred, especially the higher one goes in the hierarchical ranks.

Bill M, I didn’t think the NYT story blamed the Sixties, exactly, but noted that many church leaders like the “Blame Woodstock” approach. (Though I never understood why Snoopy’s little bird friend should get all the blame. Ba da bing!)

I do think it make sense that as you say there was a casual attitude toward sex and that, I don’t know, maybe like teens going off to college, that some priests who were wound pretty tight about sex from the earlier approach to that “taboo” couldn’t figure out how to deal.

I also wonder, however, if the “golden age” of vocations of that “Going My Way” era was really about taking in so many seminarians willy nilly that they weren’t screened or educated properly. Again, nostalgia is a dangerous thing, and that great wave of vocations produced great priests and also a great number of problematic clergy.

I think there are many ways to parse the spike, but it is real, and it’s good to engage that reality. I agree that K. McChesney’s America piece frames it well:

http://www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=12884

David Gibson 05/19/2011 - 10:26 pm subscriber contributor

BTW, ephebophilia is a classification that I’ve never been terribly convinced about. Neither, in fact, have the editors of the DSM, who did not include it in the last edition, even as so much else got in.

My suspicion is that we’re all ephebophiles to some extent (except for me, who still thinks Ann Bancroft in “The Graduate” was the sexiest thing on film) and that’s why all those Calvin Klein ads feature mostly naked 14-year-olds. Dirty old men (French and non-French alike) and cougars are attracted to fertile young things. Most of us know enough not to act on those fantasies, or realize how much worse we’d look accompanied by even a “legal” 18-year-old.

Ephebophilia seems way too squishy a category. I prefer calling it the sexual abuse of a minor, and a crime.

Also, this is a stat to keep in mind: 149 priests (out of about 6,000 abusers) were serial abusers (with more than 10 allegations against them) and were responsible for 27 percent of the allegations.

That’s remarkable in that we tend to focus on the stories of those 149, yet they were truly pathological in a way the others were not, however you want to charatcerize those others.

Ann Olivier 05/19/2011 - 10:36 pm subscriber

David G. –

In all my years in the 60s at C.U. in a predominantly clerical philosophy school, I don’t remember the issue of homosexuality arising either in class nor in conversations with other philosophy students. The naivete’ of the nuns especially was incredible, so I don’t see how it would have arisen, except privately among the lesbian nuns in the closet, and I’m sure there must have been some of those too. Of course, I didn’t take any ethics courses as such, so I don’t really know what might have been considered in them. Maybe there were discussions in theology courses because priests hear confessions, and the seminarians would have neeeded tolearn something about it.

On the other hand, in the 60s there was a general opening of the young people to experimentation of all sorts, so maybe that basic attitude did affect a lot of seminarians-soon-to-be-priests. I just never saw nor heard of any overt evidence of it.

On the third hand (ha), the JJ report says that the typical abuser does not start to abuse as a young man, but, rather is somewhat older (one priest was 90 when he first abused!) which would move the increased incidence of abuse into the 70′s and 80s. To some extent this did happen.

Also in the 60s drugs use burgeoned, and, indeed, drugs and alcohol use by predators as enticements became common.

Mary 05/19/2011 - 10:36 pm

Also appreciating Lisa’s analysis. It’s important to note that ephebephilia isn’t considered a disorder the same way that pedophilia is (it’s not listed among the paraphilias in the DSM-IV). It is, as Lisa points out, not exclusive to homosexuals. When combined with the opportunity factor, this means it can not be assumed that any instance of priest on adolescent abuse is evidence of a homosexual orientation on the part of the priest if the victim was male, or of ephebephilia, if the victim was adolescent. Acts are not always evidence of orientation.

The ephebephilia issue is particularly interesting because one defining characteristic of heterosexual masculinity is ephebephilic–the “barely legal” phenomenon. The culture sexualizes adolescent girls, markets thongs to grade schoolers, says it’s ok for little girls to wear bikinis, encourages adult women to groom their genitals to look like those of a prepubescent child, eroticizes the baby-doll look. The line between healthy and disordered, normative and deviant, seems a bit blurry these days.

Ann Olivier 05/19/2011 - 10:45 pm subscriber

\Mary –

Maybe the emphasis on looking young is another link with the 60s. At that time the great motto of the young was, “Don’t trust anyone over thirty”. Looking young has, in my opinion, become ludicrous, with 60 year old women with their straw-like hair hanging down their backs, wearing thong sandals on arthritic feet, with eye shadow making them look like raccoons, etc., etc., etc. The boomers just don’t want to be old, and it’s affected how children are being brought up. I wonder if there has been an increase in the number of ephebophiles culture-wide.

Mary 05/19/2011 - 10:51 pm

David’s point re squishy categories emphasizes to me why canon law matters. Think about countries with different ages of consent or different civil standards for what constitutes consensual behavior–you could have situations where abuse isn’t legally abuse. On the other hand, if in other countries homosexual acts are criminalized (think about Uganda’s recent efforts to make it a capital crime), mandatory reporting becomes a scary consideration.

Paul Moses 05/19/2011 - 10:52 pm subscriber contributor

“Things that happened in the 60s”

This notion that Sixties mores were to blame for the increase in priests’ abusing minors seems very speculative in a study that is otherwise well documented – and the authors haven’t controlled for a lot of other possible explanations. For example, one can just as easily speculate that the cause lay in the culture of the church in the 1940s and 1950s, when the abuser-priests of the 1960s and 1970s were recruited and trained.

I agree, Bill, that a more casual attitude to sex did not mean sexual abuse of children was viewed casually in the Sixties. The Sixties were about challenging traditional patriarchal power – and a clergyman’s sexual abuse of a child is a severe abuse of such power.

Mary 05/19/2011 - 11:34 pm

@Ann re increased prevalence of ephebephiles. If we mean it in the narrow clinical psych category sense, I don’t know enough to say, though the part of me that suspects we’re all accelerating wildly down Interstate Crazy would not be too surprised. As for the more broad sense of eroticization of adolescent girls (and boys, think ancient Greece), I’d say it’s a pretty consistent long-standing cultural phenomenon and that it just appears “bigger” thanks to our highly media saturated modern world. OK, I’m off to do some reading. Maybe…Lolita.

Cheers!

George D 05/20/2011 - 12:03 am subscriber

I haven’t read the report but as Bob N mentions above, it seems to take the social science as opposed to criminal slant.

I guess I would have emphasized more strongly the criminality of sexual abuse in all its forms, the issue of the misuse of power by those in positions of trust( the police analogy is to some degree helpful, especially in terms of the Abp. Martin mentioned phenomenon of peers or superiors not coming forward), and the particular danger to children ( and not just those under ten, but through teens in my opinion, in relationships that trust matters.

That said, there is likely a lot of good data that is useful for researchers and those working in the area even outside of the ecclesial Catholic world.

I also wonder to what extent the mentality and culture of entitlement that was such a part of clerical Catholic culture in the 50′s and 60′s had on some of the offending priest’s attitudes. Think of mini- DSK’s and the culture that supports and minimizes his private conduct.

Many of the priests I know now cook their own meals, shop, work around the rectory, etc. and don’t expect that there is going to be hired people and when they do have staff they treat them very respectfully and are grateful for their service. I have heard that this was different in years past when the priesthood was lived out as a kind of semi-aristocracy.

Ann Olivier 05/20/2011 - 12:46 am subscriber

It seems to me we should distinguish the effects of the “liberation” of the 60s on ordinary folks and possibly different effects on people with inclinations to abuse children sexually. Normal people would not feel free to abuse kids, but the others might feel that all sorts of actions were now permitted. And this is what I think the JJ report is implying.

Mary 05/20/2011 - 1:13 am

Yes, that’s an important point, Ann. Scary to think through the implications. Since the report indicates there’s no way to know which priests will abuse–since we can’t say “these here are the psychological characteristics or personality traits of the abuser priest which distinguish him from the priests who don’t abuse”–then knowing who’s got the “inclination” and who is “normal” and “ordinary” isn’t something we’re gonna be able to figure. Which makes all of the situational factors in “our” control the real focus. Long past time to drill down on the institutional issues, which as you noted in a much earlier post, didn’t get the attention in the report they merit.

Ann Olivier 05/20/2011 - 3:21 am subscriber

Paul Moses –

Indeed, I would think that some of the factors contributing to the abuse (and I must emphasize that there have probably always been *many* such factors) also obtained in the 40s and 50s == for instance, most obviously, celibacy which contributed to loneliness of some abusive-inclined priests.

The report emphasizes that there were *many* probable causes, causes which varied from individual to individual, and that makes great good sense to me, and some of the causes, I think, are endemic in the Church.

I should also add that the report’s consideration of abuse in other institutions is a welcome contribution to solving the general cultural problem. It is NOT just the Catholic priests who are problems. They are a small percentage of the overall problem (5 per cent?). And if we really care about the children we won’t stop complaining until all of the other institutions are reformed. The Catholic bishops are right on that score.

Ann Olivier 05/20/2011 - 3:27 am subscriber

“. . . the part of me that suspects we’re all accelerating wildly down Interstate Crazy would not be too surprised. . . ”

Mary –

You sure know how to turn a phrase :-) Yes, I feel like that sometimes too. To quote the movie The Bridge on the River Kwai, “Madness. Madness.”

Bill Mazzella 05/20/2011 - 7:53 am subscriber

The NY Times editorial concurs with the conclusion many of us have come to

“The directive came two days before a new study of the abuse problem that cites the sexual and social turmoil of the 1960s as a possible factor in priests’ crimes. This is a rather bizarre stab at sociological rationalization and, in any case, beside the point that church officials went into denial and protected abusers.” http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/19/opinion/19thu4.html?src=recg

We should be clear that, at least before the scandal became public, priests were absolutely trusted by children and adults. These trusting people were easy prey for any priest who decided to take advantage. This has to rate on the lowest scale of degradation. To blame the climate of the 60′s is more than bizarre. What might be true is the “open” climate might have encouraged those who did these things to be more aggresive. IOW, this happened just as much before the 60′s. The 60′s just made them more brazen.

Mollie Wilson O’Reilly 05/20/2011 - 7:53 am contributor

I think one has to be cautious in discussing “ephebophilia” in connection with the JJ report. The report itself (in an attempt to make the category less “squishy,” as David G. notes it is) sets “ephebophilia” apart with parameters as strict as those it applies to “pedophilia,” and finds that most of the sexual abusers were neither ephebophiles or pedophiles. So to say the abuse was “mostly ephebophilia” is at odds with either the premises or the findings of the report.

Paul Moses said: For example, one can just as easily speculate that the cause lay in the culture of the church in the 1940s and 1950s, when the abuser-priests of the 1960s and 1970s were recruited and trained.

There’s certainly a lot in the report about seminary training and how it affected those “cohorts” of priests — but at the same time, the stats show that priests who were trained in the 1940s and ’50s started to abuse around the same time as priests who were trained in the ’60s. In other words, they all spiked in the ’60s and ’70s, but the later-ordained group started abusing sooner after ordination. That’s how I read it, anyway; correct me if I’m missing something here, because I’m still working my way through!

Jean Raber 05/20/2011 - 8:33 am subscriber

Three cheers for Claire’s approach: “Let’s say we bypass Abp Dolan and the USCCB. What use can we, lay Catholics, make of this study?”

For many years the “guardian angel” of the local parish was a state cop, father of four boys, assigned to investigate suspected pedophiles, and he knew a lot of priests (ministers, teachers, scout leaders and others) on the “watch” list. He worked very hard to bring awareness of the problem to the diocese and parish. He was sometimes an intermediary between adults who had been abused and the diocese, encouraging them to speak out because without that, no one would know, and nothing would be done.

I credit his efforts with the proactive policies we have now.

Please pray for this good friend of our parish. He had seen so much ugliness in his line of work that he developed PTSD, had to retire early, and eventually shot himself to death.

In my view, a person like this is a martyr, left too long to carry the burden of bringing sin into the light of day alone. Those who play semantics games with the definitions of “pedophile” (“the kid was over 10!”) or look for blame outside the hierarchy (“the ’60s made him do it!”) helped load that gun.

Fortunately, he made lay people aware of dangers, and the local parish remains prudent and vigilant on its own.

Jim Pauwels 05/20/2011 - 9:28 am subscriber

I haven’t seen anything in the report that says that the ’60s “caused” the crisis. Correlation is not causation.

Possibly it would be more fruitful to inquire what “caused” the ’60′s and ’70′s, and ask whether those causes, whatever they might be, could have been a factor in the hard fact that nobody, not even the NY Times, can get around: incidents spiked throughout the ’60s and ’70s, and then receded dramatically.

My own, probably antiquarian, view is that abuse is a sin, and the proximate cause of abuse was, and still is, a personal decision by individual priests to override the internal and external restraints on sinful behavior. Was there something in the air, or the coffee, or the pot, that led to this lack of restraint? I’m not qualified to say. But the spike in deviant behaviors – not just sexual abuse by priests, but other behaviors such as drug use and crime – seems pretty well documented and can’t be dismissed for the sake of convenience or to preserve some alternative narrative.

Barbara 05/20/2011 - 9:48 am

Jim, I will probably regret saying this, but here goes: Yes, I agree that “the proximate cause of abuse was, and still is, a personal decision by individual priests to override the internal and external restraints on sinful behavior.”

And yes, I agree that there was a spike in all kinds of behavior heretofore classified as deviant. In some cases (like sex with minors) that behavior is still widely and broadly considered deviant. In other cases (consensual homosexual or premarital sexual activity), not so much — the pendulum has really swung.

But the Church itself spends a lot of institutional effort to reinforce the definition of what it characterizes as deviant behavior (homosexuality, use of contraception, etc.), to condemn those who engage in it not only as sinners, but the kind of sin that is inimical to the social order (e.g., traditional family and marriage).

To put such a stern face forward when dealing with people, in many cases non-Catholic, and to display such a generous and, frankly, amoral face when dealing with “its own kind” can never be reconciled with a claim for moral authority. That is what is so depressing when listening to bishops or anyone else talking about what caused abuse. What caused their own remarkably obtuse deviant behavior, all the more remarkable for the fact that it still goes unacknowledged?

Jack Barry 05/20/2011 - 9:58 am

Jim P. –
Keep repeating “Correlation is not causation”. It has everything to do with evaluating major study arguments and conclusions.

Another key guideline is that “invariance” of a factor in the environment (e.g., celibacy) says nothing whatsoever about whether or not that factor, by its presence, exerted causative influences through interactions with other factors.

Re: peaks and spikes –
The title of the key graph of the study is inaccurate and misleading – “Incidents of Sexual Abuse by Year of Occurrence, 1950-2002″ (p. 8 and USCCB press release). What this and derived graphs show is “REPORTED Incidents of Sexual Abuse …” Two known factors affecting the reports data are the deaths effect reducing reports from early years (left slope) and the well-known victim reporting delay (10-20-30 years) reducing reports from recent years (right slope). Both are recognized in the study text, but none of the resulting uncertainty is even hinted at in this graph, which summarizes the study’s basis for the central assertion that _incidents_ peaked in the ’60s and ’70s and therefore are to be understood from the sociopolitical context of that era.

Bob Nunz 05/20/2011 - 11:09 am

I keep thinking that given how the state of credibility of Church leadership has fallen, the reaction to the report in many quarters will be credulous.
And Jean is dead right about the reality!
More discssion will go on about the report’s value, but the reception thereof, I still think, has been tinged in both its delimitation of pedophilia and its 1960s emphasis.

Dennis Di Mauro 05/20/2011 - 11:29 am

Lisa,

I certainly did not say that all homosexuals are abusers. What I did say is that according to the JJ report a gay priest is at least three times more likely to abuse a teen, if the proportion of gay to straight priests is 50%/50%. If we assume that gay priests are 25% of the priest population this means that a gay priest is 6X as likely to abuse a teen. If the are 12.5% of the priest population that are 12x as lilkely to abuse a teen.

Here is my question to you…how can we responsibly use that data to protect our teens without simply stating some type of inanity like “homosexuality has nothing to do with abuse” when it clearly does.

I think your example is a good one..more men are rapists than are women. Does that mean all men are rapists, no, hence the word “more.” But when looking for potential rapists does it make sense to screen women as closely as we screen men? No, that would be overkill and a waste of time and resources. One can apply the same logic to gay priests and teen abuse.

David Nickol 05/20/2011 - 11:56 am subscriber

What I did say is that according to the JJ report a gay priest is at least three times more likely to abuse a teen, if the proportion of gay to straight priests is 50%/50%. If we assume that gay priests are 25% of the priest population this means that a gay priest is 6X as likely to abuse a teen. If the are 12.5% of the priest population that are 12x as lilkely to abuse a teen.

Dennis,

Where in the report does it say this? It is my understanding that the report specifically denies this. Can you cite the part of the report where you get this?

Dennis Di Mauro 05/20/2011 - 11:58 am

David, I was asking Lisa a question. I have already answered yours above in the string.

Ann Olivier 05/20/2011 - 12:11 pm subscriber

Jack –

True, correlation is not causation, but when a theory *explains* a set of phenomena better than any other theory it is rational to accept it as true. Philosophers of science now realize that no sciences can ever establish empirical causes beyond a doubt. But they know that there are sometimes coherent explanations of sets of phenomena that only a fool would reject,

Historical judgments are somewhat different. They are not all generalizations. But that doesn’t mean that rational judgements about historical facts can’t rationally be made. Some historical judgments can even have even a very high degree of probability, e.g.,the Allies won WW II, and the Nazis were not pleased by that victory.

So we reject strong correlations out of hand at our peril.

Ann Olivier 05/20/2011 - 12:28 pm subscriber

“What I did say is that according to the JJ report a gay priest is at least three times more likely to abuse a teen,”

Dennis –

Where does the report say this?

David Nickol 05/20/2011 - 12:51 pm subscriber

Dennis,

On page 119 of the report:

The clinical data do not support the hypothesis that priests with a homosexual identity or those who committed same-sex sexual behavior with adults are significantly more likely to sexually abuse children than those with a heterosexual orientation or behavior.

Your statements about “gay priests” directly contradict the findings in the report.

Dennis Di Mauro 05/20/2011 - 2:18 pm

Here is my previous post..the numbers directly contradict the prose on p. 119. See the bottom, more than 3x teen boys abused than girls by studied. 18.9% vs. 5.0%

Mary,

Look at the “Specialist” offenders numbers..this means that if there were equal number of gay and straight priests, the gay “Specialist” offenders would be over three times more likely to abuse a teen than a straight “Specialist” offender…of course we know the likelihood is much higher assuming there are more straight priests.

oops- that we be an non-PC headline!

Ephebophiles—only male victims between the ages of 13 and 17 474 18.9

Priests with female victims between the ages of 13 and 17 127 5.0

Ann Olivier 05/20/2011 - 2:38 pm subscriber

Dennis –

What the report says on p. 119 is this:

“The clinical data do not support the hypothesis that priests with a homosexual identity or those who committed same-sex sexual behavior with adults are significantly more likely to sexually abuse children than those with a heterosexual orientation of behavior.”

Given the evidence from the report and your apparent ability to read into a text what isn’t there, don’t you think you ought to revise your assumption about the likelihood of homosexuals being abusers?

Dennis Di Mauro 05/20/2011 - 2:44 pm

no

Ann Olivier 05/20/2011 - 2:45 pm subscriber

why?

Dennis Di Mauro 05/20/2011 - 2:54 pm

It doesn’t match their own statistics, which state that there is at least three times the number of incidents of gay abuse on teens, and then they say “The clinical data do not support the hypothesis that priests with a homosexual identity or those who committed same-sex sexual behavior with adults are significantly more likely to sexually abuse children than those with a heterosexual orientation of behavior.”

They need to explain this disconnect. My guess is it is because they don’t consider teens to be “children,” which is the arbitrary distinction I discussed at length above, and was made, of course, to skew the data, to arrive at the desired results.

David Nickol 05/20/2011 - 2:55 pm subscriber

Dennis,

You are using the statistics in the report to assert something that the report takes pains to deny. You are assuming that because someone commits a homosexual act, that person has a homosexual orientation. It is not true. The classic example is prison, where heterosexual men—men who prior to prison and after prison would not even think of having sex with other men—nevertheless engage in homosexual acts in prison. This does not make them gay. As I mentioned above, the article in Newsweek on prison rape said that gay men are more likely to be victims of prison rape than perpetrators. If you want to disagree with the John Jay report and claim that if a man commits a homosexual act, then he must have a homosexual orientation, you should state that as your position rather than implying the John Jay researchers are contradicting themselves when they make the assertion quoted above from page 119. The John Jay researchers have been asserting for quite some time now, well before the publication of this report, that there was no evidence to support the hypothesis that gay men molested young people at a significantly greater rate than straight men.

Disagree with the report if you like, but don’t pretend the report says what you are saying.

Dennis Di Mauro 05/20/2011 - 3:04 pm

“You are using the statistics in the report to assert something that the report takes pains to deny.” Yes, I am.

Thanks for acknowledging at least what the statistics seem to show. So kudos to you.

But I think the prison example is another unconvincing attempt to shape the statistics in a way that defends the politically correct conclusions at all costs. These priests were not in prison, that is a very unusual situation. I simply can’t believe that a statistically relevant number of normally straight men have gay sex under normal conditions. This sounds like nonsensical grasping at straws to defend a dubious conclusion.

David Nickol 05/20/2011 - 4:26 pm subscriber

Dennis,

Disagree with the report if you like, but you have no right to say, “What I did say is that according to the JJ report a gay priest is at least three times more likely to abuse a teen,” That is not what the report says.

Ann Olivier 05/20/2011 - 5:47 pm subscriber

Dennis –

Please don’t say that they *said* something when you only believe that they *implied* something.

Where does the report say that there are three times as many incidents of sexual abuse of children PER GAY PRIEST as there are incidents of such abuse per straight ones? If the report doesn’t say that explicitly, but does *imply* that, then please cite the statements in the report that function as the premises for that implication. If you are correct, then that would indeed be an important conclusion. But most of us haven’t seen the evidence that you think is there, so it’s up to you to present it explicitly.

Ann Olivier 05/20/2011 - 6:01 pm subscriber

Dennis –

You have also misinterpreted and misrepresented what David N. said.

Your “beliefs” about homosexual activity of heterosexuals are not the same thing as the facts.

As to prisons being abnormal places, they are. But priestly celibacy is also not the normal state of affairs for straight men. Why would straight priests choose boys? Because, in the immortal words of the mountain climber, they’re there. There were many, many times more available boys available than girls, especially since girls were never altar boys, and boys were allowed to go on jaunts with priests, sometimes overnight, when girls weren’t. Further, I don’t doubt that many of the priests were aware that there could be severe consequences for molesting girls that don’t happen when boys are molested — adolescent girls get pregnant, boys don’t, which is another reason for choosing boys.

Face it, Dennis. Basically straight people sometimes have homosexual inclinations.

Felapton 05/20/2011 - 8:37 pm

” … priests with a homosexual identity or those who committed same-sex acts with adults … ”

These are weasel words. “With a homosexual identity” means “those who identified themselves as such.” The compliment of the set described above consists of two kinds of priests: (1) heterosexual priests and (2) homosexual priests who didn’t identify themselves as such.

So it is not fair to say that it was definitely heterosexuals who molested all those eleven-to-seventeen-year-olds. It’s kind of slanderous, actually. Heterosexual priests have never, in any time or any place, encountered much difficulty in finding women to be intimate with. Even New Orleans had brothels. Even in the 1960′s.

Dennis, It is a waste of time to discuss it. The bishops paid for a report that would blame the whole thing on the long-ago-departed heterosexuals. And they got what they paid for.

Mark Proska 05/20/2011 - 10:19 pm subscriber

“They need to explain this disconnect.”

Dennis–

I had identified this disconnect 2 days and 100 comments ago. Although technically it is not 100% accurate to state that “…according to the JJ report…” you can make a stronger statement which is 100% accurate, namely, “…the statistics in the JJ report show that men with same sex attractions…”

Ann Olivier 05/20/2011 - 10:38 pm subscriber

“Heterosexual priests have never, in any time or any place, encountered much difficulty in finding women to be intimate with.”

Felapton –

You are assuming that priests can as easily have sexual relations with women as with boys. What is your evidence for this? Visiting a house of prostitution risks the identification of the priests while having sex with an altar boy in the sacristy doesn’t. Not to mention that prostitutes cost money..

As I see it there is a logical problem concerning the one-time abusers of boys. They might or might not be homosexuals, so it is unwarranted to assume *either* that they were probably homosexuals or probably straight. Unless, of course, you beg the question and *assume* what you’re trying to prove, viz., that homosexuals are much more likely to abuse than straights, which is the point at issue.

Lisa Fullam 05/22/2011 - 2:07 pm

“Heterosexual priests have never encountered much difficulty in finding women to be intimate with.”

OK, and this is borne out by the widespread practice of priests “involved” with women, here and esp. in Latin America, parts of Africa, and the rest of the world where celibacy makes even less sense culturally than it does here, and where bishops are under even more pressure to keep any man in ministry that they can. Of course, the recent speaking out of an Italian woman on behalf of all the women she knows who are in sexual relationships with priests bears witness to the phenomenon in Europe. And yes gay priests do this too. (Remember Sipe’s estimate of 50% of priests actually living celibately at any one time?)

But this isn’t the “ordinary” sexual acting out of priests. This is priests sexually involved with TEENS, people they KNOW are teens. The situation here involves psychosexual immaturity on the part of the men involved, the blanket taboo of talk of sex in many seminaries, likely failure in self-care (so they’re looking to kids in their parishes to meet their relational and then sexual needs, rather than meeting partners outside the parish like more healthy priests who are in sexual relationships do.) Add all these up, add in the un-self-aware closetedness of some priests, the fact of male “flexibility” w.r.t. sex partners in conditions of scarcity, and you’ve got priests who realize that a camping trip with boys or a close “mentor” relationship with a boy won’t cause anyone to bat an eye, while doing the same with girls would draw attention. There’s more to availability than the mere existence of adult women (or men) that the same men could hit on if they were healthy. I increasingly think that the biggest closet in the priesthood isn’t the gay men but the fact that lots and lots are unable to live celibacy, but no one dares to admit it.

And if you’re one of those priests in a sexual relationship (or, more likely, sexually fooling around without ever assuming the responsibility of a real relationship,) are you going to have the courage to call out a fellow priest who’s hanging around with kids too much? Because he’ll out you right back.

Jack Barry 05/22/2011 - 3:35 pm

Lisa F. is closing in on the overarching problem. Part of the complexity Lisa and others describe appears to be a consequence of _all_ sexual activity being lumped together into one category which is forbidden by the Church’s theory of clerical celibacy. Within that category, possibilities range from what many might consider trivial and near-inevitable to what most would consider profoundly grave evil (e.g., sexual abuse of youngsters). All are similarly forbidden.

What distinction is made with respect to “celibacy” between the priest who slips away for one weekend with a parishioner, perhaps using artificial contraception out of prudence, and the one who sexually abuses his young nephew for 13 years?

The topic of celibacy might be more fruitfully addressed, including by the Vatican, if some differences were explicitly observed between minor, major, and gravest activities and violations. Some priests obviously do this on their own as described by Richard Sipe in “The Celibate Myth” and, specifically with respect to child sexual abuse, by ret. Bishop Eugene Robinson.

http://www.richardsipe.com/Click_and_Learn/2005-10-05-Celibate_Myth.html
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/child-sex-no-breach-of-virtue-some-priests-believe/story-e6frg6nf-1225859084751

Ann Olivier 05/22/2011 - 3:52 pm subscriber

“Because he’ll out you right back.”

Ouch, Lisa. This is a point I haven’t seen made before. Unfortunately, blackmail is a subject that doesn’t lend itself to sociological study, to put it mildly. Sad to say, human nature being what it is, no doubt there is some blackmail operating within the circle of hierarchs as well.

Another possibly relevant psychological matter that is rarely mentioned is the possibility/ probabllity that there are gays among the bishops who unconsciously deny their own homosexualiity and then transfer their unconscious self-loathing against other gays. So unfair, and so terribly sad. On the surface, at least, the bishops’ sexual orientations are nobody’s business but their own. But If their denial and transference affect their decisions about the priesthood, then it seems to me the matter is no longer strictly private.

This discussion of other people’s sexual orientations and sins is a very unappetizing one — it’s even like tabloid talk at times. But unfortunately sometimes the Church at large needs to know what is going on, and sometimes the tabloids tell the truth. Sigh.

Oh, what a tangled web we weave
When first we practice to deceive.
— Bobby Burns

Jack Barry 05/22/2011 - 4:13 pm

“Because he’ll out you right back.”

Some priests who may be related to the ones Lisa mentions are identified as “non-offenders” in the 1st of the 3 Phila. Grand Jury reports (p. 8):

“Finding 10. Many non-offender priests have remained silent in the face of clear evidence that a brother priest is sexually molesting a minor, and in some cases have actually covered up the abuse. The Archbishop and his appointed administrative managers foster this silence in order to avoid scandal in the Church and do not encourage priests to report suspected abusers.”
http://www.bishop-accountability.org/reports/2003_09_25_First_Philadelphia_Grand_Jury_Report.pdf

Molly Roach 05/23/2011 - 8:40 am subscriber

I think Lisa is on the trail of our dilemma because I believe that blackmail is at the heart of the current institutional paralysis in the Roman Catholic church. Having inherited and built up the vision of a heroic clerical culture, our bishops and priests are shocked into silence at the growing evidence that this vision has turned in on itself as a nightmare of entitlement and self-serving deals. I agree with Jack that distinctions must be made between different violations of celibacy; that may allow us to find a way to talk about this situation constructively. We have also inherited a view of human sexuality that is an obstacle to constructive reflection and dialogue. Sexuality has been a way to control people and this, among other things, is what is biting us so badly right now.

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