Child Abuse: Some Stats

I'm sorry Pope Benedict wrote his letter of apology to the Irish. It tends to imply acceptance of the false charge that this problem of child sexual abuse in the Irish schools and orphanages is somehow the Church's fault. The bottom line is that abuse is less common among the Catholic clergy than in the wider society, less common than among clergy of other denominations, and apparently much less common than among schoolteachers--so it necessarily has nothing to do with the Church, its organization, or the bishops; or rather, the raw data suggests they are doing something remarkably right. But I suppose if it makes any of the victims feel better, it is perhaps worth the self-sacrifice on the Church's part.

Why did he send it when he did? St. Patrick's Day.

Almost all the headlines since have been along the lines of “Pope's apoligy fails to satisfy some victims.” Of course. That will always, inevitably, be true, and you knew that, no matter what he said, this would be the lede of the stories that ran in the next edition of most major newspapers. Which is one reason I fear he should not have done it. Pearls before swine. But then, as I say, maybe it helped the victims.

The "Irish Survivors of Child Abuse," the largest such organization, has publicly welcomed the Pope's letter. Oddly, this does not get reported outside Ireland.

The Catholic Church, as an organization, hase been widely accused of “cover-up.” But this is ironic. The Catholic Church insists on openness. No secret doctrines; everything must be accessible to everyone. This is why Catholics are not allowed to join secret societies; why Freemasonry is held to be incompatible with Catholic morals. This has been the basis of the struggle between Catholicism and Gnosticism for the last two thousand years. Nobody knows better, or cares more, historically, about the dangers of lack of transparency.

The Irish government's Ryan Report, specifically, notes that the Irish boshops' actions at times had to do in some part with a desire to protect the reputation of the Church as institution.

But why shouldn't the bishops be concerned with protecting the reputation of the institution? This is obviously of value, so long as you believe in the first place that the institution is of value. It only seems wrong if you do not.

And, of course, almost nobody, back in those days, would have thought to turn in a pedophile to the police. I speak from personal experience.

In part, nobody thought then much real harm had been done to the child. And that is still, frankly, arguable, though it is now dangerous to say so. In any case, the Church holds the Christian obligation to forgive the penitent, and to assume we all have free will. It follows, therefore, that it must, ethically, assume a pedophile is able, if willing, to reform and to cease and desist. And, in fact, this is perfectly true, according to studies--recidivism among pedophiles, contrary to popular belief, is low.

Some, of course, are trying to implicate the Pope himself. He “stands accused,” as one pseudo-news story puts it, “of approving the transfer of an accused priest for treatment rather than informing German police during his 1977-82 term as Munich archbishop,...”

Indeed. He stands accused, to be precise, of giving an accused priest a place to stay and medical treatment.

Doesn't anyone outside the Catholic Church read the Bible?

34"Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed
by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the
creation of the world. 35For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat,
I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you
invited me in, 36I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you
looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.'

37"Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry
and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38When did we see
you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39When
did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?'

40"The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of
the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'

Note that, as in Germany or in Canada, the Irish government study in fact found problems in schools and orphanages throughout Ireland, not just those run by the Church. Oddly, but predictably, this is not commonly reported. The Irish Prime Minister publicly apologised for the State's conduct of the schools back in 1999, and the Minister of Education has also apologized. The Church is a major part of this, in Ireland as elsewhere, because, to its eternal credit, it is so active in charity work.

To put this in some perspective, the Vatican is aware of 3,000 plausible accusations of sexual abuse of minors of some sort over the last ten years, albeit these cover incidents over the last 50. Since bishops are obliged to forward all plausible accusations to the Vatican, this should be the whole lot, worldwide. For comparison, there are currently 400,000 priests in the world. This suggests an offense rate of less than 1%, if and only if all are in fact guilty; though the Church generously estimates it might really be as high as 5%. Dr. Thomas Plante of Stanford writes that "available research suggests that approximately 2 to 5% of priests have had a sexual experience with a minor."

How common is pedophilia in society as a whole?

Dr. Plante estimates the equivalent figure for the general adult male population “to be closer to 8%."

http://www.psychwww.com/psyrelig/plante.html

Two different Canadian studies found that 32% of all women and 15.6% of all men had been molested as minors, in a random sampling of the general population. A US study found the same for 31% of females, and 16% of males. That's starting to look consistent. On this basis, one has to conclude that Catholic priests are just not a significant factor. There are over one billion Catholics in the world. Thirty-one percent of 500,000,000 females would mean 155,000,000 Catholic women, plus 80,000,000 men. 235,000,000 Catholics worldwide today have presumably been assaulted as minors. Yet only 3,000 incidents involving priests.

http://www.mayoclinicproceedings.com/content/82/4/457.full

According to the author of a recent study commissioned by the US Department of Education, child sexual abuse among teachers at the public schools is much higher--"likely more than 100 times the abuse by priests."

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/08/24/opinion/main1933687.shtml
http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/4/5/01552.shtml

Studies suggest the rate of child molestation among clergy of other denominations is about 14%.

But the most likely perpetrators by far are still members of a child's immediate family.

Obviously, anyone who sees child molestation as a serious problem is not going to go after the Catholic Church; and anyone who is going after the Catholic Church is not doing so because they are concerned about child abuse.

Of course, the Catholic Church can no more guarantee that none of its employees is a pedophile than can any other human institution. Miracles we do, but people are given free will. That's basic. That said, the best way yet known to reduce the incidence of pedophilia in society generally is clearly to convert everyone to Catholicism. This is not accomplished by slandering the Church.

The very low rate of child molestation in the Catholic clergy is all the more impressive when you factor in that there are apparently far more homosexuals in the Catholic clergy than in the general population, and homosexuals account for the great majority of abuse cases.

Attempting again to implicate the Pope, a nes item says “While a cardinal at the Vatican, Joseph Ratzinger, now the pope, wrote a 2001 letter instructing bishops worldwide to report all cases of abuse to his office and keep church investigations secret under threat of excommunication.” Other publications make similar accusations. This is pure malicious fabrication. The text of the actual letter is available online, and in English translation. It says nothing about keeping the charges secret. You are invited to read it for yourself:

http://www.bishop-accountability.org/resources/resource-files/churchdocs/EpistulaEnglish.htm

Should the bishops have turned in all suspected pedophiles? From the Church's perspective, there is no obligation ever to report another's crime. Were there, Judas Iscariot would have been the only righteous apostle. This automatically verges on the sin of calumny. One should report if one is reasonably certain that by doing so one can prevent a greater moral evil from occurring. This is always hard to do, because the evil of the thing comes with the intent, not the action. And even this is not true of anything learned in the confessional. If, say, someone confesses he wants to murder someone else, the priest must say nothing, to anyone.

Interestingly, Benedict actually pinpoints what he considers the main cause of the problem of child abuse in the Church, such as it is, and this part of his letter just never seems to get reported. Funny, that. He writes that, in the wake of Vatican II, "there was a well-intentioned but misguided tendency to avoid penal approaches to canonically irregular situations."

I was there, and have to agree. It was part of the overall mood of the Sixties; of course; you were there too. So was Roman Polanski.

I think you could actually make a decent case for blaming the Sixties entirely on us Catholics. Not the Catholic Church, itself, mind, but on the Catholic subculture in America. But that's a tangent here.

The church, mind, never wavered; canon law did not change. But how it was implemented by individuals did.

Note that the Christian Brothers and the Irish Church were obliged to turn over truckloads of documents to the Irish commission, and the full resources of the Irish government were set upon them. And what have we heard about what they countained? Essentially, nothing. You can be sure, if they contained a smidgeon of anything incriminating in the least, we would all have heard it by now, given the demonstrable press bias. That we have heard nothing more than a morsel or two of smoked herring in the fine print is as striking as Conan Doyle's dog that did not bark.

What is most needed right now, in Ireland as in Canada, is a "Good Samaritan" law protecting charitable instutitions like the Catholic Church from lawsuits by victims of their employees. Without it, we have a classic case of Pharisees-trial lawyers-living high by picking the pockets of widows and orphans.

Of course, since priests themselves have very little money, this would leave victims without any significant financial compensation. Perhaps a government fund might accomplish this, taken from the general tax revenues. Or perhaps it would be yet more fair to tax the media and the law societies to create the fund, as they represent the interests who chiefly profit from such scandals.