The relationship between the Holy See and the United States thus stands at a crossroads. The two sides can decide to think outside the box, giving each other the benefit of the doubt and each striving to glimpse the other’s point of view. They can become, in a wonderful phrase of former Dominican Master General Fr. Timothy Radcliffe, “mendicants for the truth," begging with outstretched hand for every scrap of genuine insight anyone is willing to offer, regardless of where it originates. Or the two parties can opt instead, as so many appear prepared to do, to go on vilifying and dismissing one another. The choices made in this regard will be consequential not just for the Catholic Church, but for the entire human family.
THE TOLL OF THE CRISIS
The sex abuse crisis has been the most painful episode in American Catholicism since its foundation. One can say this with confidence, despite the many ways the story of the Catholic Church in the United States was distorted during the annus horribilis of 2002. That distortion can be glimpsed from the following:
The American press invested incalculable resources broadcasting the failures of the Catholic Church, but made no similar effort to publicize anything the Church did right. To provide just a bit of context, in the same year that the sex abuse scandals finished on the front page of the New York Times for forty-one days in a row, 2.7 million children were educated in Catholic schools in the United States, nearly 10 million persons were given assistance by Catholic Charities USA, and Catholic hospitals spent $2.8 billion in providing uncompensated health care to millions of poor and low-income Americans.
The percentage of priests guilty of sexual abuse, whatever the final number, is almost certainly comparable to that of other clergy or other professions. Research in the field of mental health care, for example, shows that between 1 to 7 percent of female professionals and 2 to 17 percent of male professionals sexually exploit their patients. A 1998 study by Education Week found there are as many as nine cases of sexual abuse in the public education system in the United States each week. The mental health care and education professions, however, were not subjected to twelve months of witheringly negative media attention.
While some Catholic bishops failed to protect the most vulnerable members of their flock, others dealt with the scourge of sexual abuse aggressively and effectively. Yet while American reporters wrote extensively about Bernard Law, Rembert Weakland, John McCormack, Thomas Daily, William Murphy, Anthony O’Connell, and other bishops tarred by the scandals, most never heard of Sean O’Malley until he was appointed to Boston, or Michael Sheehan until he took over in Phoenix—two bishops with a track record of outreach to victims and firm responses to allegations of abuse.
It’s little wonder that some Catholics, inside the United States and out, concluded that the treatment of the Church during the course of the scandals was unfair.
Yet there is no evading the truth that this crisis produced an unparalleled hurt in the heart of the Church. After all the explanation and all the gloss, the bare facts remain: thousands of children were abused by priests, bishops who should have known better let it happen, and the Church too often attempted to protect itself rather than to accept its failings and make efforts to repair them. Compassion from Church officials was too little and too late. Images of the bishops engaging in hardball legal tactics and Nixonian damage control speak for themselves. As Archbishop Sean O’Malley of Boston said in his July 30, 2003, installation Mass, “The whole Catholic community is ashamed and anguished because of the pain and damage inflicted on so many young people, and because of our inability and unwillingness to deal with the crime of sexual abuse of minors."
The crisis has left many rank-and-file lay Catholics confused, weary, and dispirited. At its most profound, it has permanently alienated a group of sexual abuse victims, their families and friends and supporters, from the Catholic faith. Many of these people are psychologically and spiritually incapable of ever setting foot again in a Catholic place of worship. A much wider circle of Catholics, not personally caught up in the sex abuse issue, will continue to take part at least sporadically in Church life, but has nevertheless experienced its own crisis of confidence. They find themselves newly suspicious of priests and newly skeptical of bishops. The crisis has also deepened the ideological split in American Catholicism between a left that diagnoses the situation in terms of antiquated sexual teachings and a dysfunctional hierarchy, and a right that insists instead on doctrinal dissent and pervasive homosexuality as the principal causes. The recrimination, in a perverse cycle, makes the atmosphere of resignation and weariness that much worse.
Priests also have been hard hit, although too often in recent months the public climate in the United States has made any expression of sympathy for the clergy sound like complicity. Not only do priests second guess themselves about any gesture of intimacy with a young person, but they feel depressed about the priesthood itself, wondering how an institution to which they have devoted their lives could have gone so badly off the tracks. They also worry about a cultural climate in which any accusation of sexual abuse, however unfounded or ill-motivated, could be enough to ruin their lives. A 2002 report by the Cleveland Plain Dealer revealed that sixteen priests accused of sexual abuse had committed suicide since 1986, and in the almost two years since that time, a handful of others have followed suit. They are simply the most dramatic examples of widespread demoralization. This despite the fact that, as noted author and sociologist Fr. Andrew Greeley points out, American priests who like being priests are generally among the most satisfied professional classes in the country.
Catholic bishops in the United States have also been badly wounded. Those who should have been aware of the sexual misconduct of priests and yet allowed them to do harm have been disgraced. To date, a small number has resigned, but more face civil and potentially even criminal procedures that will forever mar their legacies, regardless of whether they survive in office. Bishops not personally culpable in the crisis nevertheless face criticism for their failure of leadership and of imagination in responding when it broke out. Many priests are angry for what they perceive as the bishops’ collective decision to adopt punitive policies for priests, but to do little to address their own culpability. Priests thus feel hung out to dry by the men who should be their last line of defense, who according to the traditional Catholic theology are supposed to be their father and brother. Many laity, meanwhile, feel unable to trust the leadership of the Church. They want to respect and honor their bishops, but in too many cases recent experience has made that difficult. The bishops, who are overwhelmingly caring and pastoral men, realize this. One American bishop who sits on the Ad-Hoc Committee on Sexual Abuse of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops said in 2002 that the last nine months of his life had been like “a nightmare from which I can’t wake up." A further cost has been exacted in terms of the bishops’ moral authority. They are less capable of bringing a critique to social questions because their moral standing has been compromised.
In times of crisis, Catholics instinctively turn to Rome for solace. Too often, however, a climate of mutual incomprehension and distrust between Rome and America has made the situation worse rather than better. During the early period of the crisis, from January 6 to March 21, 2002, the Vatican kept silent, feeding public perceptions in the United States that the Holy See and Pope John Paul II were out of touch. When the Pope did eventually speak, in his annual Holy Thursday letter to priests, the language was indirect, circumspect, and unsatisfying. At a Vatican press conference to present the Pope’s letter, Colombian Cardinal Dario Castrillón Hoyos, head of the Congregation for Clergy, the Vatican office that supervises priests, seemed defensive and combative. From that point forward, an adversarial dynamic set in, with the American press and a large sector of public opinion accusing the Vatican and the Pope of being in denial, of regarding the crisis as an “American problem," of not caring enough to take the problem in hand. Such impressions were exacerbated by the Pope’s physical condition, w
hich led many Catholics to believe he was incapable of addressing an out-of-control situation, and by the rhetoric used by some foreign cardinals in complaining about media persecution of the Church, likening it to the worst of Hitler and Nero’s oppression. Some pundits began to speak about a mar on the Pope’s legacy. For average American Catholics, the impression of having been abandoned or misunderstood by Rome added to their dismay.
From Rome’s point of view, meanwhile, the crisis deepened reservations that many in the Holy See already felt about American culture. Some saw the ferocious reaction in the press as an extension of the same puritanical hysteria about sexual misconduct that produced the Clinton/Lewinsky fiasco. Others saw it as an extension of the historical anti-Catholicism that has always percolated among American elites. Still others regarded it as a form of payback to the Church for her countercultural stands on abortion, birth control, women’s ordination, and a host of other issues. The deepest thinkers in the Vatican have always harbored their doubts about the United States, seeing it as a culture forged by Calvinism and hostile to a genuinely Catholic ethos. The sexual abuse crisis compounded that impression. One archbishop put it this way: “Americans have a bad combination of youth, wealth, power, isolation and very little serious Catholic intellectual tradition. It’s a recipe for a lot of mischief."
Observers in Rome watched as lay groups such as Voice of the Faithful arose to demand reform and interpreted such activism as another instance of Americans seeing the Church in terms of power and class struggle rather than as a communion. Many Vatican officials reacted with shock to the June 2002 meeting of the U.S. bishops in Dallas, and especially the norms for sexual abuse adopted there, which seemed a capitulation to a lynch-mob mentality. Aware of the drumbeat of criticism in the American press that the Vatican was wrong to put up roadblocks, these officials resented the apparent assumption that two thousand years of tradition should give way so the institution could be reshaped according to American exigencies. Despite being a mere 6 percent of the global Catholic population, American Catholics seemed convinced that their problems should trump everyone else’s. From a Roman point of view, that could look like American narcissism. It did not help that the crisis was unfolding at a moment in which European stereotypes about American isolationism and arrogance were being revived by the foreign policy choices of the Bush administration, a point to be developed in the next chapter about the war in Iraq.
While it is flippant to say, “Americans are from Mars, the Vatican from Venus," there is nevertheless a cultural gap between the two worlds that was enormously consequential as the crisis unfolded. Quite often, American Catholics and the Holy See found themselves speaking two different languages, usually without realizing it. They thought they were talking to each other, but in many instances they were talking past each other, making deceptively similar statements that were in fact rooted in different psychological and sociological assumptions and that meant very different things to each of the two parties. There was a work of translation necessary to bring the two sides into genuine dialogue that too often was missing, so that statements intended to be helpful ended up making things worse, and policy choices designed to promote healing sometimes actually deepened the pain.
This chapter will review the various ways in which American Catholicism and the Holy See misunderstood one another during the sexual abuse crisis. Ultimately, the hope is to promote better communication between Rome and the English-speaking Catholic world. This is not to justify individual positions on either side, and no amount of improved communication will paper over the real differences in perspective and priorities that sometimes divide mainstream American Catholic sentiment from the Vatican’s way of thinking. But perhaps some of the acrimony generated by mistaken assumptions can be reduced, so that at least conversations can unfold on the basis of clarity, and disagreements can be rooted in differing approaches to shared values.
THE STATUS QUO
Though the focus in this chapter is on the crisis triggered on January 6, 2002, with the first Boston Globe report about former Boston priest John Geoghan, it should be noted that the phenomenon of sexual abuse by clergy is not new. In the United States, the 1985 case of former priest Gilbert Gauthe in Louisiana, who is alleged to have had more than seventy victims, first brought attention to the issue, to a great extent through the pioneering reporting of the National Catholic Reporter. But the roots go much deeper. To take one example, St. Peter Damian (1007–1072) stated: “Vice against nature creeps in like a cancer and even touches the order of consecrated men . . . unless the strength of the (church leadership) intervenes as soon as possible, there is no doubt but that this unbridled wickedness, even though it should wish to be restrained, will be unable to stop on its headlong course." Even earlier, St. Basil (330–379) had stated, “A cleric or monk who seduces youths or young boys . . . is to be publicly flogged. . . . For six months he will languish in prison-like confinement, . . . and he shall never again associate with youths in private conversation nor in counseling them."
The American bishops had commissioned a study from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York as to the overall national dimensions of the crisis. The National Review Board instituted by the U.S. bishops noted in an interim report in July 2003: “A puzzling dimension of the scandal is that no accurate statistical snapshot had ever been taken over decades of the number of offending priests, the number of youthful victims and the financial cost to the Church. This led to mounting accusations of secrecy and stonewalling."
Issued on February 27, 2004, the John Jay report found a total of 4,392 priests faced allegations of sexual abuse that were not either withdrawn or known to be false, lodged by some 10,667 alleged victims during the period 1950 to 2002. This means that some 4.3 percent of diocesan priests and 2.5 percent of religious order priests faced at least one accusation of sexual abuse. The number of accusations peaked in 1970, and there were more accusations from the 1970s than any other decade. In some cases the alleged abuse extended over several years. Two-thirds of the accusations were reported after 1993, with one-third reported in 2002–2003 alone, suggesting that the total scope of the crisis has only recently become clear. The total amount of money paid by the Church as a result of these accusations is $572,000,000. The majority of priests, 56 percent, were alleged to have abused one victim. The 149 priests (3.4 percent) who had more than ten allegations of abuse were allegedly responsible for abusing 2,960 victims, thus accounting for 26 percent of allegations. Therefore, a very small percentage of accused priests are responsible for a substantial percentage of allegations. The largest group of alleged victims, 50.9 percent, was between the ages of 11 and 14 at the time of the incident, while 27.3 percent were 15–17, 16 percent were 8–10, and nearly 6 percent were under age 7. Overall, 81 percent were male. Males tended to be older than females, with over 40 percent of alleged victims being males between the ages of 11 and 14.
Thomas Plante, a lay psychiatrist at the University of Santa Clara and a consultant to several Church review boards, concludes that “research suggests that less than 6 percent of Roman Catholic priests or other male Catholic clergy such as brothers have had a sexual experience with a minor." Plante also said, “When all of the current evidence is examined from police records, treatment facilities, and researchers who investigate these matters, no evidence suggests that Catholic priests are more likely to sexually abuse minors than other male clergy or men in general." The same point applies to other professions that enjoy positions of trust with vulnerable people. For example, Plante said, in mental health professions, a percentage of therapists analogous to rates among priests sexually abuse people entrusted to their care. In that regard, Plante offers one encouraging parallel. In the 1960s and 1970s, he said, studies indicated that up to 23 percent of male psychotherapists had sexual contact with their patients. Within a generation, Plante said, that number was cut to between 1 percent and 1.5 percent, through a combination of aggressive one-strike policies, better tr
aining, and changing sensitivities.
The norms adopted by the American bishops in Washington, D.C., in November 2002 envision that when a priest is credibly accused of sexual abuse of a minor, two procedures will be launched. First, the accusation will be referred to the police, which could lead to a criminal investigation and indictment. Second, the Church will initiate a canonical investigation that could lead to the imposition of penalties such as permanent removal from ministry, or laicization. The Church understands these procedures as parallel and complementary. At least in theory, the canon law process is intended to be in addition to, not instead of, full cooperation with civil authorities. In 2002, the New York Times story reported, 432 priests had resigned, retired, or been removed from ministry. Not all did so, however, because of the sexual abuse crisis. Conventional estimates are that some 325 of the current crop of roughly 46,000 American priests have been removed under the weight of allegations of sexual abuse. The initial determination of credibility is critical, and most bishops are relying upon lay review boards to make it.
Under the terms of a May 18 papal decree called Sacramentorum Sanctitatis Tutela, a bishop is obliged to report every credible allegation to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome, which has exclusive canonical jurisdiction over cases of sexual abuse of a minor. As of the summer of 2003, some 199 American cases had been reported to the congregation, with most still awaiting action. When a case is submitted to the congregation, it may decide that insufficient evidence exists to proceed to trial, and direct that the priest be returned to ministry. If it decides that the allegation is credible, it can authorize one of three procedures:
All the Pope's Men Page 26
