Abuse Tracker has chronicled the revelations of sexual abuse by clerics in Germany. It is a story of abuse and cover-ups all too familiar to those who have followed similar revelations in the United States and Ireland. While in quality the abuse in Germany is as bad as in English-speaking countries, in quantity it seems to be significantly less. If this is in fact the case, and not simply a matter of lesser reporting, peculiarities of European continental history may account for the lesser amount of abuse.
In the nineteenth century, Europe began to develop an image of Modern Man, and I mean man, not woman. The New Man was nationalistic, militaristic, rational, scientific. He rejected he world of Catholicism, which was international, pacifist, and superstitious – and feminine. In France, Italy, and Germany the Catholic clergy was attacked as the enemy of true masculinity.
Some who attacked the church more or less explicitly accused the clergy of perversion, either homosexuality or pedophilia.
The New Man took other incarnations in the twentieth century: The Futurist Man, the Fascist Man, and the Nazi Man. In the mid-1930s the Nazi government arrested hundreds of Catholic priests and brothers and charged them with sexual molestation of children and adolescent boys. (see the Wikepedia article) Historians have assumed that these charges were fabricated.
But what we have discovered about the Catholics clergy makes it appear probable that many of the charges were in fact true. The Nazis wanted to attack the Church, and the perverse and criminal behavior by a segment of the clergy gave them the tool. The cases, as far as I can tell, were tried in the regular German courts, not the Nazi courts, and in the regular German courts courts legality largely ruled.
The Nazis may have inadvertently done the Catholic Church in Germany a favor by purging hundreds of abusers from the ranks of the clergy. As a result of that purge, we may now be seeing fewer cases in Germany than in Ireland and the United States.
The memory of the trials of the Nazi era may explain, but not excuse, the touchiness of some German bishops. Germans have a long memory, and anything that reminds them of the Nazi era (Boy Scout uniforms, smoking bans) sets off irrational reactions.
Leon,
Did you have a hand in writing the script for “Back to the Future?” Unless you forgot, WWII ended 65 years ago. Nice try, though, at trying your hand at science fiction!
While I respect Lee tremendously and find his theory interesting, I think it’s too early to surmise that there are fewer clergy sex crimes in one country than another. In our experience, jurisdictions that seem to have more church scandal are usually the ones with the more victim-friendly laws. Other factors probably matter too, but places where it seems “quiet” are usually those with archaic, arbitrary, predator-friendly laws.
David Clohessy, National Director, SNAP-Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, 7234 Arsenal Street, St. Louis MO 63143 (314 566 9790), SNAPnetwork.org, SNAPclohessy@aol.com
Yes, I am aware of the events of 1945, but it seems to me that abusers in the United Sates and probably Ireland formed a loose network which recruited abusers to the priesthood and in which boys were passed from priest to priest and in which abusers in administrative positions protected and enabled other abusers.
My hypothesis (that is all it is) is that the Nazis may have disrupted this network in the 1930s and therefore fewer abusers entered the priesthood in Germany for the next generation or two.
Or the lower number, as David suggests, may be an illusion: if the German government dug as deeply as the Irish government has, the proportion of abusers in the two countries might be the same.
In the comparison one should take into account the fact that Ireland is/was ‘overwhelmingly’
Roman Catholic while Germany was fundamentally split by the ‘Protestant Reformation.’ Since Italy was also ‘facist’ at the same time period, what kind of comparison can
be drawn between Italy and Germany? Perhaps
the best comparison for Ireland is Poland though
Ireland was spared the horrors of WW II.
I disagree with Clohessy – its not too early to
to suggest these hypotheses. We know that the
child rape horror is international – the observers’ task is to assume (for purposes of
study) that it is ‘equally’ bad EVERYWHERE and then attempt to hypothesize about the reasons for the difference – and the quality of the
reporting on the true situation will always be a viable alternative hypothesis explaining the
differences. KEEP ON HYPOTHESIZING LEE!
Sick, just sick!
Now there are news from Holland.
The Holy See must have as a PRIORITY how to stop the sexual abuse by priest.
Civil authorities must be contacted FIRST when abuse is reported to the bishops or priest.
NO more covered up, no more stonewalling the victims. Abusers name must be know by all Catholics. Open all the church files concerning abuses by priest.
It seems like the German government would like to dig deeper with a “round table” but Bishop Zollitsch, the head of Germany’s Episcopal Conference doesn’t want to co-operate. Perhaps he has his own ideas on how to proceed, but I’m not sure that’s likely. He’s the fellow who denied in a TV interview that Christ’s death was an expiation for sin. Rather, it was “an act of solidarity”. I wrote to the Congregation of Bishops voicing concern that something so heterodox was said by the head of the episcopal conference of a major country. I got a little postcard saying “thank you for writing to the congregation.” Maybe I’m overly sensitive, but I took it as a sort of “@$#! you peasant!” Oh well, perhaps being a bishop means never having to say you’re sorry! If the German hierarchy resist exposure of sins against the young, we can only hope (unfortunately) that the media go after them with force.
Leon, don’t forget that the Nazis also tried to arrest Catholic priests (and nuns) on trumped-up charges of smuggling currency out of the country. Do not forget, either, that the Nazis absorbed all Catholic lay groups (especially youth groups) in direct violation of the Reich Concordat of 1933. The fact that Church authorities inadvertently gave the Nazis a tool with which to defeat and suppress it doesn’t mitigate the fact that the Nazis intended to suppress (if not destroy) all perceived ideological threats, political and religious.
Oops! It was the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith that sent me the postcard.
Is anyone else amazed that the media are leaving the Church alone with all that’s happening in Germany, Holland, Ireland and now Mexico (with regards to Marcial)? Is this the calm before the storm?
Father Michael, I’m sure the CDF receives who-knows-how much correspondence concerning all manner of issues. But for you to get a mere postcard in response to a bishop making an obviously heretical claim is inexcusable. It just shows me that Rome cares about nothing but “peace and quiet,” which is how most entrenched bureaucracies like to work, unfortunately.
As far as the media is concerned, most of the media is more interested in what’s immediately fashionable and buzzworthy, not in what’s right or wrong. I say this from more than 30 years in the newspaper profession.
Convenience is the bane of morality.
German Numbers
[…] earlier speculated that the seemingly lesser number of victims in Germany may have been the result of prosecutions in […]