Every Sperm is Sacred

Catholic Church Report Cites "Social Tumult" in Priest Scandals

 (It's all the hippies' fault--jef)

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN - NY Times

A five-year study commissioned by the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops to provide a definitive answer to what caused the church’s sexual abuse crisis has concluded that neither the all-male celibate priesthood nor homosexuality were to blame.

Instead, the report says, the abuse occurred because priests who were poorly prepared and monitored, and were under stress, landed amid the social and sexual turmoil of the 1960s and ’70s. 

Known occurrences of sexual abuse of minors by priests rose sharply during those decades, the report found, and the problem grew worse when the church’s hierarchy responded by showing more care for the perpetrators than the victims.

The “blame Woodstock” explanation has been floated by bishops since the church was engulfed by scandal in the United States in 2002 and by Pope Benedict XVI after it erupted in Europe in 2010.

But this study is likely to be regarded as the most authoritative analysis of the scandal in the Catholic Church in America. The study, initiated in 2006, was conducted by a team of researchers at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City at a cost of $1.8 million. About half was provided by the bishops, with additional money contributed by Catholic organizations and foundations. The National Institute of Justice, the research agency of the United States Department of Justice, supplied about $280,000.

The report was released Wednesday by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington, but the Religion News Service published an account of the report on its Web site on Tuesday. A copy of the report was also obtained by The New York Times. The bishops have said they hope the report will advance the understanding and prevention of child sexual abuse in society at large.

The researchers concluded that it was not possible for the church, or for anyone, to identify abusive priests in advance. Priests who abused minors have no particular “psychological characteristics,” “developmental histories” or mood disorders that distinguished them from priests who had not abused, the researchers found.

Since the scandal broke, conservatives in the church have blamed gay priests for perpetrating the abuse, while liberals have argued that the all-male, celibate culture of the priesthood was the cause. This report will satisfy neither flank.

The report notes that homosexual men began entering the seminaries “in noticeable numbers” from the late 1970s through the 1980s. By the time this cohort entered the priesthood, in the mid-1980s, the reports of sexual abuse of minors by priests began to drop and then to level off. If anything, the report says, the abuse decreased as more gay priests began serving the church.

Many more boys than girls were victimized, the report says, not because the perpetrators were gay, but simply because the priests had more access to boys than to girls, in parishes, schools and extracurricular activities.

In one of the most counterintuitive findings, the report says that fewer than 5 percent of the abusive priests exhibited behavior consistent with pedophilia, which it defines as a “psychiatric disorder that is characterized by recurrent fantasies, urges and behaviors about prepubescent children.

“Thus, it is inaccurate to refer to abusers as ‘pedophile priests,’ ” the report says.

That finding is likely to prove controversial, in part because the report employs a definition of “prepubescent” children as those age 10 and under. Using this cutoff, the report found that only 22 percent of the priests’ victims were prepubescent. 

The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders classifies a prepubescent child as generally age 13 or younger. If the John Jay researchers had used that cutoff, a vast majority of the abusers’ victims would have been considered prepubescent.

The report, The Causes and Context of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests in the United States, 1950-2002, is the second produced by researchers at John Jay College. The first, on the “nature and scope” of the problem, was released in 2004.

Even before seeing it, victims advocates attacked the report as suspect because it relies on data provided by the church’s dioceses and religious orders.

Anne Barrett Doyle, the co-director of BishopAccountability.org, a Web site that compiles reports on abuse cases, said, “There aren’t many dioceses where prosecutors have gotten involved, but in every single instance there’s a vast gap — a multiplier of two, three or four times — between the numbers of perpetrators that the prosecutors find and what the bishops released.”

David Clohessy, national director of the Chicago-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said that while the report contained no surprises, it had nonetheless been a disappointment because it did not include recommendations for far-reaching reforms, including limiting the power of bishops. Mr. Clohessy said this was critical because bishops had covered up many instances of sexual abuse by priests in the past. 

“Predictably and conveniently, the bishops have funded a report that says what they’ve said all along, and what they wanted to hear back,” he said. “Fundamentally, they’ve found that they needn’t even consider any substantive changes.”

Robert M. Hoatson, a priest and a founder of Road to Recovery, which offers counseling and referrals to victims, said the idea that the sexual and social upheavals of past decades were to blame for the abuse of children was an attempt to shift responsibility from church leaders. Mr. Hoatson said he had been among those who had been abused.“It deflects responsibility from the bishops and puts it on to a sociological problem,” he said. “This is a people problem. It wasn’t because of the ’70s, and it wasn’t the ’60s, and it wasn’t because of the 1450s. This was something individuals did.” 

Kristine Ward, the chairwoman of the National Survivor Advocates Coalition, said the cultural explanation did not appear to explain why abuse cases within the Catholic church have shaken places from Australia and Ireland to South America. “Does the culture of the U.S. in the 1960s explain that? It’s hard to believe,” she said.

William Donohue, president of the Catholic League, a conservative Catholic group, however said he believes permissiveness in the church in the 1960s and 1970s - particularly at seminaries - had been a significant reason for the rise in sexual abuse. Mr. Donohue said that while he generally supported the report’s findings, he believed that the study seemed to have purposefully avoided linking abuse cases with the increase in the number of gay men who became priests during the 1960s and 1970s. “The authors go through all sorts of contortions to deny the obvious - that obviously, homosexuality was at work,” Mr. Donohue said.

In Philadelphia, where a grand jury in February found that as many as 37 priests suspected of behavior ranging from sexual abuse to inappropriate actions were still serving in ministry. The archdiocese initially rejected the grand jury’s findings, but soon suspended 26 priests from ministry.

An essay in the Catholic magazine Commonweal last week by Ana Maria Catanzaro, who heads the Archdiocese of Philadelphia’s sexual-abuse review board, which is supposed to advise the archdiocese on how to handle abuse cases, said that the board was shocked to learn about the dozens of cases uncovered by the grand jury. Her essay raised questions about whether bishops provide accurate data even to their own, in-house review boards.

Still, the John Jay report says that when it comes to analyzing the incidence and causes of sexual abuse, “No organization has undertaken a study of itself in the manner of the Catholic Church.”

Because there are no comparable studies conducted by other institutions, religious or secular, the report says, “It is impossible to accurately compare the rate of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church to rates of abuse in other organizations.”

 +++++++++

How should the Catholic Church respond to sex abuse report?

By Sarah Pulliam Bailey for USA TODAY

A new study was released yesterday, finding that neither the celibate priesthood nor homosexuality were main factors contributing to the sex abuse crisis.

"Individual characteristics do not predict that a priest will commit sexual abuse of a minor," the researchers write. "Rather, vulnerabilities, in combination with situational stresses and opportunities, raise the risk of abuse."

The $1.8 million, five-year study was prepared by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and commissioned by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

The study suggests that the number of incidents per year increased steadily between the 1960-1970s and declined in the 1980s. Accused priests began abusing during increased job stress and social isolation, the study says, and professional counseling was not readily available.

"The rise in abuse cases in the 1960s and 1970s was influenced by social factors in society generally," the report says. "Factors that were invariant during the time period addressed, such as celibacy, were not responsible for the increase or decline in abuse cases over this time."

The New York Times reports that the finding that fewer than 5% of the abusive priests exhibited behavior consistent with pedophilia is controversial.

...The report employs a definition of "prepubescent" children as those age 10 and under. Using this cutoff, the report found that only 22 percent of the priests' victims were prepubescent.

The American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders classifies a prepubescent child as generally age 13 or younger. If the John Jay researchers had used that cutoff, a vast majority of the abusers' victims would have been considered prepubescent.

The majority of the victims (80%) were male, compared to national statistics that suggest girls are three times more likely to be abused than boys, the study says. The report suggests that the majority of those accused of abuse entered the priesthood before 1970.
The study was first obtained by David Gibson for Religion News Service.

The John Jay researchers take pains to credit the hierarchy for making important strides in combating child abuse--an assertion victim advocates will strenuously dispute--and they point out that society as a whole was only slowly coming to understand the nature of child abuse as U.S. dioceses were swamped with cases.

At the same time, however, researchers note the bishops' abysmal track record in so many tragic instances, and say church leadership was reflexively defensive and self-protective--behavior that fits a well-defined pattern of crisis management in large institutions.

On Monday, the Vatican issued guidelines bishops to comply with laws of reporting abuse accusations.

Boehner's Ominous Beginning

(and it's ALL about that big ol' gavel...--jef)

***

Ashes to Ashes
By RAYMOND J. LAWRENCE

John Boehner’s brief opening remarks as the new Speaker of the House were ominous in their religious insensitivity. In the first minute of his speech, after some thank-you’s and applause, he referred to his Catholic Church’s practice of the imposition of ashes on the first day of Lent, which signifies human mortality. (It is also a ritual observed by Anglicans, Episcopalians and others, which Boehner did not mention. Lent, incidentally, begins on March 9 this year.)

On the face of it the reference is quite impressive. Here a powerful political figure declares openly an awareness of his mortality. Who cannot applaud such humility? On the other hand, the reference exhibits a tin ear. Boehner’s Catholic religion is after all a powerful religious minority in the context of simmering religious wars both at home and abroad.

Leaders of Boehner’s own church, including popes, have publicly castigated Islam. Our own troops in the Middle East have been supplied rifles whose scopes are inscribed with Bible verses, which is suggestive of killing Muslims for Jesus. Both the country and the world are a tinderbox ready for religious war, and the new Speaker of the House signals in his first minutes of office that he is a devout Catholic, one of the parties in that strife.

This is not to criticize Boehner for his personal religious devotion, but it is to criticize him for calling specific attention to it in his first few minutes of his term of office.

Now suppose the new Speaker were a Muslim, and suppose his first remarks referenced the edifying character of the Hajj to Mecca. Would this not be considered offensive to non-Muslims, if not alarming?

Or suppose the next Speaker of the House were an Evangelical Christian, and he or she made reference to the edifying nature of having been saved at an Evangelical revival meeting. Would this not sound a note of alarm among all those who are not Evangelicals?

If the Speaker of the House were a Jew, would it not be divisive - at least - to make reference to the daily study of the Torah?

There are some important points of agreement that all the major religions of the world share. They can and do speak generally with one voice on such matters as the requirements of justice and equity in human society. If leaders of the nation opt to cite religion publicly, they would do well to emphasize these points of common ground. This might help defuse some of the current urge to religious competition and strife.

The American revolutionaries who founded this country were virtually all escapees or children of escapees from religious persecution and religious wars in Europe. With one voice they sought to keep organized religion out of the political and governmental arena. While our founding fathers espoused important religious values such as justice and equity, and even publicly acknowledged their belief that God commanded that such values be sustained, they assiduously kept religious organizations and movements out of the political and governmental arena. They were wise to do so. They knew what we seem to have forgotten, that religious organizations almost invariably dream of universal domination and control.

Speaker Boehner sounded a sour note in his first few minutes of office in signaling that he is a faithful member of a minority religious group, and one that is currently picking a fight with Islam. The innuendo is ominous.

Bishop: 100 cases in 10 yrs for Italy priest abuse

By NICOLE WINFIELD (AP)

ROME — Italy's bishops' conference provided the first ever statistics of clerical sex abuse in the country Tuesday, saying there had been about 100 cases over the past 10 years that warranted church trials or other canonical procedures.

Monsignor Mariano Crociata, the No. 2 official in the Italian bishops' conference, gave the estimate during a press conference on the sidelines of the bishops' general assembly, the ANSA and Apcom news agencies reported.

He declined to say how many of the cases resulted in condemnation or defrocking of the priest, or how many were reported to police. While saying the church officials cooperated with police, he insisted that Italian law doesn't require bishops to report suspected abuse.

Some lawyers for victims say bishops are required to report abuse since they are public officials. Vatican norms say bishops should follow civil laws in reporting abuse.

Crociata's comments came a day after the head of the bishops' conference, Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, opened the bishops' annual meeting by asking families to trust the Catholic Church despite the scandal, insisting that it had never intended to underestimate the problem.

The meeting came as more cases are coming to light in the Vatican's backyard: On Tuesday, the ANSA news agency reported that a 73-year-old priest well known in Milan's gay community had been arrested on charges he had sex with a 13-year-old boy, who is now 16. A day earlier, a priest in Savona went on trial for alleged sexual violence against a 12-year-old girl, ANSA said.

And last week, a Rome bishop testified in the case of another accused priest, the Rev. Ruggero Conti, that he knew about rumors of abuse two years before Conti was arrested yet didn't alert police or the Vatican or proceed with any canonical trial against him.

Mario Staderini, a member of Italy's Radical party who is a civil party in the Conti case, said it was unconscionable that a canonical trial hadn't proceeded against Conti, given the evidence provided to his bishop, Monsignor Gino Reali.

Reali testified that he had spoken to 20-25 people, including two boys who said they had been abused by Conti, yet didn't find their accusations credible. He said he convened a tribunal after receiving a written complaint from one of the boys, but it never got under way because the victim didn't show up.

Conti is charged with sexual violence and other charges. In police interrogations, the boys — some as young as 13 at the time of the alleged abuse — said Conti would masturbate them and force them to perform oral sex on him in his home, where he frequently invited them to eat dinner and watch movies.

"How is it possible that only in Italy no bishop has felt the need to resign or make a mea culpa for failing to be vigilant?" Staderini asked in a statement.

He said if the Italian bishops' conference wanted to be transparent and care for victims it should put some of the money that Italians earmark to the Catholic Church on their income taxes toward a fund for victims.

The main U.S. victims group, SNAP, Survivors' Network for Those Abused by Priests, denounced Crociata for his defense of not reporting abuse to police, saying "it's tragic and telling that most Catholic officials still insist on keeping clergy sex crimes secret."
The group's Midwest director Peter Isely said he doubted that there had only been 100 cases. "For decades, Catholic officials have underestimated and underreported the shocking extent of clergy sex crimes. We believe most of them still do."

Good news! The Devil is in the Vatican

Chief exorcist (of the Vatican) says the Devil is IN the Vatican
Published on 03-11-2010

Father Gabriele Amorth said people who are possessed by Satan vomit shards of glass and pieces of iron.

He added that the assault on Pope Benedict XVI on Christmas Eve by a mentally unstable woman and the sex abuse scandals which have engulfed the Church in the US, Ireland, Germany and other countries, were proof that the Anti-Christ was waging a war against the Holy See.

"The Devil resides in the Vatican and you can see the consequences," said Father Amorth, 85, who has been the Holy See's chief exorcist for 25 years.

"He can remain hidden, or speak in different languages, or even appear to be sympathetic. At times he makes fun of me. But I'm a man who is happy in his work."

While there was "resistance and mistrust" towards the concept of exorcism among some Catholics, Pope Benedict XVI has no such doubts, Father Amorth said. "His Holiness believes wholeheartedly in the practice of exorcism. He has encouraged and praised our work," he added.

The evil influence of Satan was evident in the highest ranks of the Catholic hierarchy, with "cardinals who do not believe in Jesus and bishops who are linked to the demon," Father Amorth said.

In a rare insight into the world of exorcism, the Italian priest told La Repubblica newspaper that the 1973 film The Exorcist gave a "substantially exact" impression of what it was like to be possessed by the Devil.

People possessed by evil sometimes had to be physically restrained by half a dozen people while they were exorcised. They would scream, utter blasphemies and spit out sharp objects, he said.

"From their mouths, anything can come out – pieces of iron as long as a finger, but also rose petals," said Father Amorth, who claims to have performed 70,000 exorcisms. "When the possessed dribble and slobber, and need cleaning up, I do that too. Seeing people vomit doesn't bother me. The exorcist has one principal duty - to free human beings from the fear of the Devil."

The attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II by a Turkish gunman in 1981 and recent revelations of "violence and paedophilia" committed by Catholic priests against children in their care was also the work of the Devil, said Father Amorth, who has written a book about his vocation, Memoirs of an Exorcist, which was published recently.

Father Amorth, who is the president of the Association of Exorcists and fought as a partisan during the war, has previously claimed that both Hitler and Stalin were possessed by the Devil.

In an interview with Vatican Radio in 2006, he said: "Of course the Devil exists and he can not only possess a single person but also groups and entire populations.

"I am convinced that the Nazis were all possessed. All you have to do is think about what Hitler and Stalin did."

He also condemned the Harry Potter books, saying they were dangerous because they dabbled in the occult and failed to draw a clear distinction between "the Satanic art" of black magic and benevolent white magic.