John Jay sex abuse report cites wrong culture as culprit

Thank God for your lucidity. It will be covered over, denied, suppressed. The money is behind the new message. The push is on to restore the same all-male, arrogant clerical culture that spawned abusers and abettors. The same men who participated in these evils are now in charge of "the reform."

THE WHEAT FROM THE CHAFF. ....Thank you, Arthur, for weighing in with your experience and wisdom. The simple question is what does the report say about clerical sex abuse. The simple answer is that it tells us a lot of clerical abuse has gone on and a lot of bishops covered up. These are the two really important points. Whether abuse waxed and waned, whether any perpertrator was a pedophile, homosexual, heterosexual, opportunistic predator or just a plain creep is less important. The obvious simple answer is to select better clerical candidates and manage the inevitable deviants more effectively. Clerical selection improvement requires expanding the declining pool of clerical candidates. This means adding married and female candidates. Failure to do so means more deviant candidates will slip through the selection process and be retained by desparate bishops. Managing deviants appears to be the toughest problem. The pope and the curia are hellbent on preserving their power and privileges by secretly maintaining their absolute control of clerics and the laity with repressive sexual policies and brutal elimination of alternative voices. Externally, political leaders need to step up the criminal prosecution of the hierarchy and protect defenseless children. Internally, some brave bishops need to step out of the darkness and join Bishop Morris in an open discussion to renew our Church. The Apostles left us a Church we can be proud of. Bishops, as the Apostles'successors, need to take back the Church from the curia that has hijacked it and renew and return it to the People of God. Until that happens, children will never really be safe.

That's right, Arthur. Refute the facts as soon as they come out. Everyone has been quoting John Jay as the authority on what happened and why, but as soon as they publish their findings, this guy says they can't possibly be right. And his proof? Ask Anglican men in their 80s....Why don't you go home and read the report before you embarrass yourself any more?

Who are you? Read the report. Most were not pedophiles. And those that were, unfortunately were treated by the culture of that time: They can be cured by treatment. Pyschologists have part of the blame. Bishop believed them and shouldn't have.

The only people who will be surprised by this assessment are the ones perpetrating the clerical culture. IF they can hear this news, and that's a big if, change will be painful and accomplished only by the hierarchy being dragged screaming to the discussion table. Come Holy Spirit. . .

Straight talk that disables the hierarchical "spin."
Thanks, Arthur

Well put, Arthur. As one man I know, who grew up in the pre-Vatican II church, put it, "When I was a child, priests did not repesent God. They were God." Inaccountability, arrogance and secrecy are the problem. Not surprisingly, the Vatican wants more of both.

Great...very true article. The best that I've ever read.

Dick Regan
Victim/Survivor

I have been looking forward to this report. I have not read it yet and would like to believe that they were gettinbg something significant for their 2 million dollars. That being said I do have some worries. Were there some pre-suppositions going into this? What were the sources of the information?
If they were 'given' information by the bishops then the report will be worthless. They had to have had unrestricted access to documentation and to people. The people had to be free to speak. Did they consult at all with
people who left the seminary and the priesthood. If they did not then possibly they missed important data. I would not like to be taken as very one sided in this matter. I have consistently stated that besides the clerics
stand our parents and forebears who made the priest worship possible. The
clerical culture must be seen to include all those in the laity who also
contributed their share to make it possible. I do not blame my parents. I merely acknowledge that they like many were caught up in the culture which
denied the possibility of the good father doing anything wrong. I was only
eight years old when I discovered that telling mommy that I was brutalized by
a Christian Brother resulted in a worse beating at home. Many people have similar tales to tell. The Report will have to be analysed by those of us
who have solid training in statistical analysis and in the proper manner of
evaluating sources. Beyond that there will have to be information about how
data was gathered and how reliable the data is. This will not get any
immediate rubber stamp approval. No matter how successful the study is we will
have achieved nothing unless it leads to very real change. Nothing to date
from any bishop or prelate or Pope has indicated any likelihood of real change. Note for example the Vaticans insistance on the Bishop having the control of any situation ab initio. Prayerfully, I hope we are not doomed,
ab initio, in reading the report.
Thanks Arthur, sorry I am only 70.
God Bless, TomC

I am one of the over 80's. I was abused about 1940. I spent half my life wondering what was wrong with me, the other half wondering if I would do away with myself. I asked 3 different Bishops for a public apologize, but no go. One of those Bishops is now serving time. The man that abused died a Bishop. I agree that the article is the best I ever Read.

Of course everyone has his or her spin on this issue. Is it the clerical culture; did it always exist; is celibacy the root cause, etc., etc.?

My spin is simpler. From what I've read something like 25% of girls & 15% of boys are sexually abused in our society before they reach the age of 18. Are these statistics accurate? Who knows but I keep reading statistics like these. The question to ask is was this always true? I think the answer is clearly no because you can bounce these statistics off the illegitimacy rate.

Back in the 40s abortion was illegal & contraception was not widely available (in the supermarket) but the illegitimacy rate was much lower than it is now. Right now, the overall illegitimacy rate is about 40% in the USA with a 25% illegitimacy rate for white people. The illegitimacy rate in America was about 10% overall in 1940 & about 2% for white people in the USA. The bottom line is that there was just a whole lot less sexual sin going on in the 1940s than there is now. This also means that there was a whole lot less sexual abuse of the young back then since that was seen as the worst sexual sin.

The real culprit in terms of the sexual abuse of the young in the Church & in the general society was the sexual revolution. It's just that simple. Wake up & smell the coffee you abuse spinners!

What happened in the 60's and 70's is the Women's Movement. It created the social climate that made it safe for child sexual abuse to come out from the shadows and for victims to finally get the support needed to tell their truth. However, some made the mistake of reporting to the Church, and were revictimized.

The facts are not the facts, Arthur Jones writes. No matter what the findings are, it can't be that way, because Arthur Jones says so. And Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone, either. It was the clergy on the grassy knoll who did it. This is good reporting.

Is this guy kidding? We finally get a report from a reputable third party, and he trashes it! Did he even read it? Where are his data to support his claims about Anglicans in their 80s? How about the culture that lets people trash reports without hard data? That's called muckraking, if I remember correctly.

Arthur Jones gets closer to the truth and he didn't take $1.8 million from the bishops. As a reporter, he knows how the system works. The Jay researchers might have a clue now, but they have no real solutions or insights.

White Europeans are at below replacement level and have basically left the church behind them.

The future of the Catholic Church -- if indeed there is one -- will be in the third world who not as gender confused, polarized or conflicted with the feminist/gay agenda of the West.

I marvel. Who with a brain still thinks this is something new??? Yeah right, Flip Wilson - the devil made me do it!! no joke.

The church has been diseased since its inception and this is the rotting results 2000 years later. The only cult-ure operating here is dark and rich and powerful and very, very ill.

This has been said a thousand times and I'll say it again. As long as scandal leaders receive protection and honor in Rome and key perpetrators and collaborators are PROMOTED to prestigious positions of leadership all words ring hollow, hollow, empty. Words are cheap. No action = no result: except that all this song and dance routine without any substance continues to re-activate old wounds and grind even more salt into them.

I'd like to see a report done which the perpetrators didn't pay for. PERIOD.

Some very good points. They don't invalidate the John Jay study, but rather add to it. What the study has shown, above all, is that any efforts to point to one one factor are futile. There has been a tendency to over-simplify:

• By apologists, who want to put the whole blame on homosexuals in the priesthood, on the "permissive society" or on some other "boogeyman" who, once vanquished, will go away and then all will be fine
• By reformers, who want to tell us that by eliminating the requirement for celibacy or male gender, we'll eliminate the problem.
• By victims' groups, who have historically been manifestly uninterested in the pathology of the perpetrator and who have thus missed the opportunity to add that knowledge to their arsenal of preventative strategies. Perhaps the knowledge that many abusers seem to have learned their behavior patterns by themselves having been abused leads to ideas that are just too hot to handle.

The reality is that the question of why the problem was so severe at this time, in this Church, in this world does not have any single, pat, glib answer. And it certainly cannot be answered by the pre-existing agendas of apologists, reformers, etc.

Arthur, that rings true. My father emigrated from Luxemburg in 1917. God rest his soul. I remember when we were kids (in the thirties and forties) he warned us that saying anything bad about a priest was a mortal sin God would punish in this life. Not to suggest that any of us knew of any sexual wrongdoing by any priest, or I might add, knew anything about sex. I never heard him say anything bad about a priest, but I don't remember him saying anything good either.

Priests were considered absolute resolvers of any problem. Respect for their undiluted authority imposed a burden on priests greater than any human can possibly live up. The reality is that the culture of Tridentine thinking and expectation of the laity are history and will never return. Literal belief in the mythology of the Garden of Eden rendition of the Creation of man and women is totally debunked by knowledge of human nature and the reality of evolution. Theology dependent on it is no longer credible.

The unique opportunity of the moment is that the church can disaffect itself as it has disaffected the laity of its naieve belief and expectation. Many priests may not want the change to happen (undiluted trust in their authority), but I suspect most do want it to happen. Rome is the seat of the medieval culture of arrogance, and Rome has suffered the greatest loss of credibility for trying to return to a culture and a time of history that won't repeat. The future beckons. The past needs to stay in the past.

I agree with much of what the commentator says but would also like to say that there is an element of truth in the critique of 'modernity'- which I would rather call by some other name. In the sixties the so-called 'permissive' era brought in a revolution in attitudes to sexual practices. It did away with the hypocrisy which stigmatised single mothers, and the horrible term 'illegitimate' as applied to their children. It allowed young people to experiment with relationships and not feel guilty about it. But, inevitably, as in all human affairs, the idealistic creed 'anything goes as long as it doesn't hurt anyone' was impossible to maintain.in particular,male violence, coercion and abuse of women and children continued and deviant groups such as unabashed pedophiles set up their networks and some even boldly proclaimed that the age of consent should be lowered so that 'man-boy' love could come out of the closet. In effect, they were cunningly exploiting the relaxation of sexual taboos for their own ends, and society, having lost the old moral codes which would have condemned such actions, had then to find new ways of saying such actions were 'wrong'..they used the legal definition of a crime, they pointed to children's inability to consent and to the power imbalance between perpetrator and victim. Laymen who still constitute the majority of convicted child abusers, and users of child pornography, often used sophisticated defences and artists, writers and the powerful or important men in society in particular - I will not name instances but they are probably known to everyone - seemed to think their talents gave them a dispensation to behave in ways which the rest of the community didn't like. When Roman Polanski's case came up again some years ago, it was amazing the way many 'intellectuals' and media people in France and elsewhere, suddenly became all compassionate and forgiving...if he had been a cleric I doubt they would have reacted in the same way. Watch out now for the latest high profile sexual abuser in the news, and see if a similar reaction occurs!!
None of this excuses clerical crimes but it may explain the angry, defensive tone of some of the reaction from church leaders. They see it as yet another attack on the Catholic faith and this enables them to avoid the real issue - the culture you rightly target as 'clericalism'.

Quite frankly I am sick and tired of clericalism, whether it is in Rome or the local diocese. Unless, this situation is addressed honestly and with humility then the scandal will not go away. The lack of credibility on the part of these men is heartbreaking, it must be amazing to be right all the time.

The words of Brendan Gallaghan, S.J. must always be foremost in our hearts “The great tragedy, of which we must not lose sight, is that so much suffering has been inflicted that could have been avoided: the faces of this tragedy are always the faces of the hurt and betrayed children” Children who were abused well before the era of the Beatles, Woodstock and Godspell.

Rich McGarry

Well done, Mr. Jones. The church's history of abuse is far longer than a 30-year period in the United States. Far, far longer.

Your comments, Mr. Jones, ring so true because they acknowledge the deeply ingrained culture of the Church of Rome. This clerical culture "worked" because it "worked" for the ordained at the expense of the laity.

Several books have been written by Catholic writers on this topic.

I especially recommend, however, organizational psychologist Edgar Schein's THE CORPORATE CULTURE SURVIVAL GUIDE (1999).

Your comments are "spot on" target!

I am not surprised by the John Jay report, it does make some good points. Unfortunately, the report was paid for by Church in large part and it obviously made a report that would please some of the hierarchy and Vatican. This article by Arthur Jones really exposes the main cause of the sexual scandal. Thank god someone had the guts to tell the truth about what has been going on in our Church for years. Now the "spin" will continue by the conservative Vatican and the hierarchy, that wants this scandal to disappear. Let us hope that the Holy spirit will continue to give people the courage to continue to press for reform in the Church structured. Jesus did not create the top down structure we see today, men created the situation that we are living with in our Church now.

Funny, the 800 pound gorilla they uncovered - 81% of the abuse was same sex - is ignored.

Very carefully nuanced findings, designed (?) to placate the CAUSALITY arguments of those on both sides of the question:
CELIBACY -for those on the liberal LEFT- was/is not a cause.
HOMOSEXUALITY -for those on the conservative RIGHT- was/is not a cause.
More time and work are needed to analyze the ABUSE patterns of the priest-abusers as previous victims themselves (pages 59-68). This may also provide a new source of reflection for SNAP et al. to realize that "We have confronted the ENEMY, and HE is US."

While the watershed case of Gilbert Gauthe and one in-depth interview with an abused (by another priest) priest are helpful they are nowhere near a representative sample.

It's unfortunate that many of the more generalized findings/conclusions on clergy (abusing and/or nonabusing) could only be compared and contrasted with Eugene Kennedy's 1970 priesthood study. In terms of psychological research, 41 years is a lifetime, and given the JJ study's fundamental argument that the MEGA social, sexual and cultural upheavals of the 60's were a pivotal etiological factor in clergy sexual abuse patterns and incidence, constant referral to such dated research is methodologically questionable at best, unreliable at worst.

Memo to NCR (the both of you):
Any chance of compiling a list of "the 10 US Seminaries that graduated the largest number of priests with subsequent accusations of abuse?" (page 40), which seems to be "une piste de recherche" not fully exploited by this study.
Or did I miss something in the footnotes?
http://www.bishop-accountability.org/seminaries/
http://www.bishop-accountability.org/news/2005_11_17_Pringle_TrailOf.htm

Memo to B. Balboni:
PUBLISH or PERISH!

The numbers are all skewed by the bishops and the John Jay College of Criminal Justice! As a general rule psychologists use age 13 as the beginning of puberty -- the report says it is 10 years of age. Naturally a LOT of the victims fell in the 10-13 years old category -- so using the 10 year the numbers are all showing a lower percentage of pedophile priests.

Who can trust the bishops to give ACCURATE and HONEST figures? Case in point, Philadelphia! For years we were told there are no priests with accusations against them in active ministry - and then suddenly last February the grand jury discovers thirty-seven!!! Bishops also try to tell us that 4% of priests were abusers -- the actual numbers counted at www.bishopaccountability.org is closer to 10%!!!

As for blaming society and "the 60's!" I was raped in 1970 by a priest who was ordained in the early 1950's -- certainly his moral ethics were well established by the time the 60's rolled around. His history of abuse runs from the 1950's until just 2 months before his death in 2006 at the age of 82! After my rape I reported to my deacon supervisor -- another priest in the same parish. Remember, this was 1970. Nothing happened because he was diagnosed in 1957 s having a psycho-pathological personality and was STILL playing with mentally ill teen aged girls. He, too, was ordained in the early 1950's. By the time the 1960's rolled around these two priests were WELL into their 40's -- and at that time would be considered "old" and not part of the "current age."

As for the bishops' honesty in numbers -- when I brought my case back to Boston I was informed that "I was the only one" -- that there were no other accusations against my perp. I managed to get hold of the investigation and found THREE letters dating back to the 1990's accusing him of sexual abuse. If the bishop (cardinal) can nget away with lying to me as a priest -- how much easier is it to lie to a lay person?

The Hierarchy of the church (all the way to Rome) needs to come clean, be honest, transparent etc. LIST THE NAMES of all perpetrators who have been credibly accused. They cannot be taken to court because of the statutes of limitations. They are still just as dangerous and society in general needs to know about them. Our society is is so migrant! A priest who abuses in Boston can also abuse in Minnesota, or Nevada or anywhere. The names need to be public and acessible.

Fr. Jim Moran

What the John Jay College of Criminal Justice report did not reveal was the possibility that the priest abusers were themselves abused as children. Learned behavior is replicated. The other point the report missed was that the very structure of the hierarchical church was the probable cause of priest abusers. The Church is a domination system based on obedience. Priests with low self concepts were attracted to the externals of ecclesiastical authority and power which dominated them.To feel good about themselves, they acted out the need to dominate others as they were dominated in this case vulnerable children to restore their self concepts. The report faults priests who were ordained to priesthood in the 70's and 80's and attempts to link it to the Woodstock era of sexual experimentation. There is a strong presumption that the sexual abuse of children had gone on for generations that was suppressed by ecclesiastical authorities to avoid scandal and reform to protect the image of the Church.

Maybe it's not just the criteria for the pool of clerical candidates in the seminary that needs to be changed, BUT ALSO THE TOP LEADERSHIP WHO COVERED UP THEIR COLLEAGUES' ARROGANCE AND IMMORAL JUDGMENTS FOR DECADES!!

Otherwise, it's putting the theives in charge of the banks!!

The "Woodstock" defense does not hold up when you take into account that the pedophilia problem and subsequent episcopal enabling is a worldwide phenomenon. And I would bet my last plenary indulgence that because there is no good judicial and police oversight (easily bribed) in the the 3rd world, we've only seen the tip of the iceberg.

The report is a fraud! It absolves the bishops of any responsibility. The civil grand jury in Philadelphia exposed the lie of the dioceses' continued and current coverup. According to the church's own evaluation Philadelphia was compliant. Yet according to civil grand jury, children were not protected and the church hierarchy was engaged in systematic coverup.

For decades, from Boston to LA to SF the bishops have been complicit in the coverup of abuse and complicity in the continued abuse of thousands.

I was raped and abused by a priest when I was 12 until the abuser was caught by another parent. The bishop merely transferred the abuser to a small town with an elementary school. This didn't just happen in my diocese but every diocese in the country (and it seems around the world). The covering up of abuse by the bishops permitted the continued abuse of thousands of children. This in turn caused crippling injury to thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of children to criminal abuse by priests who should have been removed and jailed.

Until the bishops, complicit in abuse and covering up abuse, are jailed no child is safe.

The John Jay study wants to blame everyone else including the culture of Woodstock for systematic abuse. Don't let the church get away with another coverup.

Gee, I went through the 60's culture, and I did not sexually abuse a child.

Thank you Arthur,

The church hierarchy just keeps spending more and more of their loyal parishioners' hard earned contributions to keep themselves out of jail. The covering up of sex crimes committed by clergy is starting to cost a lot in legal defense fees; much more than what the church is spending to help the victims of these clergy. Thousands upon thousands of innocent children ( all ages ) have been harmed so badly that some do not make it.

Church officials can never be trusted to have the kids best interest at heart. They just do not care.

There is only one way to get these men stopped. Outside law enforcement and prosecutors need to take heed and investigate every single catholic diocese in the world. There is no other way to get this life long harmful abuse stopped.

Judy Jones, SNAP Midwest Associate Director, 636-433-2511
snapjudy@gmail.com
"Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests"
http://www.snapnetwork.org/

Yes, the sixties and seventies might have been a factor, but not in the way the JJ study claims and there are a number of other cultures that neither the John Jay Institute nor the Catholic Bishops are willing to name, including some that are older than the 60s and 70s, that can promote, contribute or be implicated in the incidence and perpetuation of sexual abuse and its cover-up in the Roman Catholic Church in the past and in the present:

- Catholic culture itself - which has long elevated, revered and trusted priests, religious above regular church members.
- Priest/Bishop culture that largely controls the institution and its finances and acted as a secret society/fraternity to cover for the abusive priests.
- Homosexual culture - that has been allowed to enter and expand under the radar among the clergy of the church and actually has been fueled by changes in the culture in recent decades.
- The Secular Culture - The secular psychology and psychiatry organizations write the DSM which guides the standard of care for mental health therapists and that is the standard of judgment in courts of justice when trying cases of abuse. The APA have been largely influenced and pressured by various activist groups, the pansexuals (including every sexual proclivity and practice homo, bi, lesbian, transexual, polygamy, polysexual, intergenerational, etc.)agenda groups, and even groups that promote pedophilia under the guise of 'childrens' sexual rights. 2. Amoralists, Secular Humanists or Secularists that demand no moral judgment be given to sexuality). 3. Feminists. 4. Abortion rights activists.
These agenda groups usually believe in the concept of sexual rights, that is that a person has the right to gratify their sexual feelings and choose their 'sexual expression' and 'sexual identity' and 'sexual orientation'. The boundaries by which they draw limits are not universally agreed upon and are continually being debated.
The pansexualists, secularists and feminists are largely pro-abortion/choice. On contraception, abortion and sexual rights, they largely agree.
These agenda groups have targeted the church, funded by very wealthy people like George Soros.
The John Jay study was conducted by a secular group which is necessarily, pro-homosexuality and believes in the concepts invented and promoted by the pansexual agenda.

- The Current Western Culture - we have a nation that has passed laws that allow us to violate all of God's commandments and force us to violate some of them. Obama has given a homosex promoter of unhealthy practices to be Safe Schools Czar. He has authorized money for late term abortion, to promote abortion overseas. He has authorized money for muslim groups that are anti-christian and that practice pedophilia aka sexual abuse. The scourge of pornography is also promoted as 'free speech' and 'sexual rights.'
Now, public library computers are being used by perverted people to view pornography paid for by your tax dollars.
Now, studies show that pastors of every denomination are statistically as likely to use pornography as their parishoners and not a lot less than the secular culture.

As the Homosexual and Secular Cultures and their beliefs are promoted, practiced, gain ground within the Catholic and Priest Cultures and among the membership (generally those who are Catholic in name only), the abuse (and use of child and adult pornography by clergy) may increase because of increased decadence of clergy, unless the watchdog groups intervene and enforce stringent accountability measures.

Or the abuse could increase, because of secular and sexual agenda influenced national laws, like 'hate speech' laws and sexual rights legislation, but it will not be called child abuse, but the 'exercise of the child's 'sexual rights'' and that of his/her 'partners'sexual rights.'