In case it slipped by you. According to Donohue:
Penn State professor Philip Jenkins has studied this problem for years. After looking at the John Jay data, which studied priestly sexual abuse from 1950-2002, he found that “of the 4,392 accused priests, almost 56 percent faced only one misconduct allegation, and at least some of these would certainly vanish under detailed scrutiny.” Moreover, Jenkins wrote that “Out of 100,000 priests active in the U.S. in this half-century, a cadre of just 149 individuals—one priest out of every 750—accounted for over a quarter of all allegations of clergy abuse.” In other words, almost all priests have never had anything to do with sexual molestation.
What Jenkins is saying is that a very small number of priests – 149 – were accused of abusing almost all the victims. That is, these 149 priests had a large number of victims, and that 56% of accused priests had only one accusation.
However, the bishops reported that over 4.5% of priests had been accused, so it is NOT true, as Donohue claims, that “almost all priests” – implying 749 out of 750 – have nothing to do with sexual molestation. One of twenty were accused, nineteen out of twenty were not accused.
From my conversations with victims, many of them are satisfied once their abuser has been publicly accused. If there is no possibility of civil or criminal action, they see no point in coming forward and suffering the embarrassment of admitting that they had been abused.
There seem to be some cases in which a priest had a large number of victims but no one has gone public yet. Criminologists and psychologists have studied abusers to try to determine the average number of victims per abuser, and it is far greater than one; perhaps 15-20 for abusers of older children, perhaps scores or even hundreds for abusers of small children.
Another weasly statistic which Vatican officials occasionally quote is a fraction of1% figure of priests as pedophiles. This is misleading. Pedophilia strictly defined is sexual abuse of pre-pubescent children. The proportion of this type in abuse by priests has been small and has even declined in absolute numbers over the decades. But most of the abuse has been of pubescent and adolescent boys, technically not pedophilia, but pederasty or ephebophilia.
That of course raises the question of homosexuality, and I think Donohue is correct that there has been blindness about that.
For a long time, both those who disapproved and those who approved of homosexuality conflated it with pederasty. Church documents refer to homosexuality when they mean sex with boys. Homosexual activists for many years accepted pederasts into their ranks. NAMBLA – the North American Man-Boy Love Association – marched in gay pride parades. Gradually homosexuals decided to dissociate themselves from these pederastic groups. I leave it to the psychologists to decide whether there is a real or only a political distinction between pederasty and homosexuality.
In yet another article by Jenkins back in 2002.
“The fact that Cardinal Law´s regime in Boston seems to have blundered time and again does not mean that this is standard practice for all Catholic dioceses, still less that the church is engaged in some kind of conspiracy of silence to hide dangerous perverts.”
http://www.zenit.org/article-3922?l=english
I wonder if Dr Jenkins still considers this to be true?
Homosexuals in general are NOT more prone to abuse than heterosexuals but in the cases of sexual abuse by priest, the great majority of them were or are HOMOSEXUALS!
How do we know this?
Because they said so, courts papers, police reports, seminary papers, they have boyfriends.
So if we got rid of all the homosexuals in the priesthood (good luck with that, by the way!), why should we believe that the heterosexuals in the priesthood would abuse any less than the heterosexuals in the rest of the world? According to Donohue&Co, abuse is so much worse everywhere else “look over there!”, but schools, families, etc, don’t seem to have nearly the percentages of homosexuals as the priesthood does.
So it seems to me that homosexuality is no more the cause than heterosexuality is the cause of sexual abuse of children.
I would not put any more trust in the safety of priests if I knew every single one of them was heterosexual than I do now, knowing that a good number of them are homosexual. Heterosexuals in the rest of society are raving child molesters, too, yet we never see anybody up in arms blaming heterosexuality on child molestation.
From what I have read about child molestation by priests in some other countries, the numbers of priest-on-girl are much higher than is reported here in this country. Whether it is a matter of lack of reporting here or is actually a cultural difference is the question. Have any studies been done on this?
The bottom line is that I don’t trust any numbers coming out of the Catholic Church in regards to sexual predation by priests. And it’s always hard to know if studies done by other organizations are equally biased in other directions due to political agendas and such.
This is not just a Roman Catholic issue. The Reformed Church I grew up in was taken over by a “More Light” than Thou group circa 1990. A poem from NAMBLA actually was published in the church newsletter. Most people did not know what NAMBLA was then, and I doubt that such a publication would take place today. All sermons were anti patriarchy and pro gay rights. Finally, one of the women ministers asked God to bless five different types of sexual orientation in her pastoral prayer. She was later disciplined for inappropriate activity of a sexual sort with an adult at another church. Young children in Sunday School are taught to make banners saying they heart their gay Sunday School teachers. However, I have not heard of any incidents of actual child abuse.
The services long ago turned into something akin to a town hall meeting with hymns.
Hopefully, NAMBLA is not now tolerated.
I now drive an hour each way to attend a Traditional Mass.
More germane than the discussion of homosexual vs. heterosexual men is how conformed are they to a Christian lifestyle and how well do seminary rectors know if they are. Or God forbid, how are trustworthy are the rectors? Do seminary candidates and students watch pornography? (A priest friend once confided that this was rampant at his well-known seminary). Do seminary candidates and students have sexual proclivities or sexual histories that are not in line with Christian living (as in the photo of the cross-dressing seminarian who “graced” this blog a few weeks ago)? All of these it would seem to me would be more pertinent than merely discussing a same-sex vs. other-sex attraction. I have no doubt that men who have same sex attractions can live heroic lives of chastity just as I have no doubt that heterosexual men can violate their vows of chastity. But the question to me is the extent to which both men have been influenced by the sordid culture that surrounds them. We shouldn’t shy away from asking these questions.
Janice, I presume that liturgical considerations inspire your laudable devotion to the TLM, but I wish I could say that even traditionalist communities are immune from all this. I recall the now defunct Society of St John, their traditionalist credentials not withstanding, violated the trust of many traditionalist Catholics and their children. Perhaps the lesson is that there is a peculiar pathology to the man who preys on children (or teens, whose abuse is sometimes even more damaging because it occurs during a time they are maturing towards adulthood) and that man can manipulate anything to gain and then abuse our trust.
Mere Catholic, you mention the Society of St John. Guess where it’s ‘proud to be’ leader Fr Urrutigoity went!
Randy Engel Exposes Pederast Urrutigoity’s Protection by Opus Dei Bishop .Saturday, April 3, 2010
http://whereisfrhaley.blogspot.com/2010/04/randy-engel-exposes-pederast.html
The movie I referred to in another post was ,’Deliver Us From Evil”the full version was eye opening
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qr6q3XYKSJc
“From what I have read about child molestation by priests in some other countries, the numbers of priest-on-girl are much higher than is reported here in this country.”
NOT TRUE in the case of CATHOLIC priest. In Ireland, UK, Germany, Austria, Belgium the great majority were adolescent boys.
I know women do not report these cases much when a priest is the perp.They feel they are to blame somehow, I have been told this by several.( they should not have gotten so close to the priest)
Many of the boys, now men ,who have testified also felt that they MUST be homosexual or Father so and so would not have been attracted to them. The testimonials were heart wrenching .Those who realized they were heterosexual and married and had children came forward NOT for money necessarily , but to add their voice to others who were still within the Statute of Limitations. Quite a few said they felt they HAD to speak out when they thought of this being done to their own sons. imho The Paternal Instinct at it’s finest.
All of this is a distraction….
What we know is that the majority of reported abuse was homosexual in nature. Part of it may be due simply to access, can one imagine a girl in a rectory sleep over? (Some authors such as Richard Sipe suggest that abuse by women is under reported. )
How has our Church leadership served the faithful in the history of this mess?
B-XVI doesn’t read the Philly Papers !!!
OTHER PONTIFICAL ACTS
VATICAN CITY, 18 APR 2011 (VIS) – Today, the Holy Father named:
– Cardinal Justin Francis Rigali, archbishop of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (USA) as his special envoy to the bicentennial celebration of the birth of St. John Nepomuceno Neumann that will take place in Prachatitz, Czech Republic on 18 June 2011
SmF: Can one imagine a girl in a rectory sleepover?
Check out the case of Fr. William Hughes of the Archdiocese of Dallas at Bishop Accountability. He was 26, the girl 13. He missed morning masses because of oversleeping with her in the room. Only when the housekeeper found a nude picture of the girl was it deemed inappropriate.
The account is given in the work of A. W. Richard Sipe. Yes, it is hard to believe.
SmF,
The answer to your question is .They have NOT!
Whether a conspiracy by the Communist/.masonic sect or an overt demonic attack, the Heirarchy has failed sincere Catholics for many decades now. They allowed the promotion of Mass confusion with the New Order of the Mass, ignored the Faithful who wrote complaining of the religious entertainment being substituted for Sunday Obligation, allowed catechetical texts which undermined any shred of Faith that parents attempted to pass on to their children, destroyed the seminaries both with bad theology and sexual perversion, made secret hush payments to the victims of abuse, closed Catholic schools after polluting the convents ,sold parishes off to be used as bars and restaraunts, created cult like organizations run by perverts and ignorant lay leaders all the while blaming the loss of Faith, priests and the abuse on the secular society.That would be US.
Then there are all those apparitions. Why?
SmF, Rigali took over from Beviloqua, who took over from Krol . Krol was sent to Philly to patch up the financial scandal at the Czestohowa shrine in Doylestown..”In the late 1970s he served with Cardinal John Krol as co-chairman of the National Czestochowa Trust Appeal, called into being to rescue the scandal-ridden shrine built in the Pennsylvanian town of Doylestown on the initiative of a Polish-born priest. Krol and Abramowicz viewed the shrine as a symbol of Polish pride and objected to investigations into the disappearance or embezzlement of up to $20m.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/obituary-bishop-alfred-abramowicz-1122642.html
Two Journalists recieved investigative writing awards for exposing the financial improprieties of the Polish Pauline Order priests.Krol was assigned to the task by his good friend Cardinal Woytola.
“The following is from the 500 page expose of the TRUE character of John Paul the second by David Yallop. There are several pages in the book about Maciel, but the following really nails the dishonesty behind the mask of holiness that John Paul wore most of the time in public:
“The new Pope continued to ignore `careful advice’. During the first week of November he made yet another decision that astonished his Secretary of State and many other insiders. This time he countermanded .the orders not of John Paul I, but Paul VI. In doing so he chose to ignore an extraordinary volume of evidence compiled over four years at the direct instructions of Pope Paul. The issue was the shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa in Jasna Gora in Poland, controlled by the Pauline Fathers. Among their other activities they administered a replica shrine in Doylestown, Philadelphia. This secondary activity had brought a Vatican investigating team on the direct orders of Pope Paul VI to the Order’s American Headquarters. They established that the Superior of the Order, Father Michael M. Zembruski, and his favourites within the Order had dispensed with their vows of poverty and were living the high life with the use of credit cards, checking accounts, secret investments and huge loans. Father Michael was running a mistress as well as several Cadillacs. He had used donations to make illegal investments in two hospitals, a cemetery, a trade school, an aircraft equipment plant, a foundry and a number of other businesses. The investments were structured to obtain the greatest advantage from the Order’s tax-exempt status. The Vatican investigators also established that the Order had raised $250,000 from the Catholic faithful for hearings of the Mass, a curious revival of medieval practice, except that in Philadelphia the fathers spent the money and never even bothered to say the Masses. The investigators discovered another scam involving extracting a further $400,000 of contributions towards the cost of installing bronze memorial plaques within the shrine. Again, the funds were spent. No plaques were erected. The scams were countless, the embezzlements huge. The Pauline Fathers got through a substantial part of $20 million raised in charitable donations. Father Michael obtained multi-million dollar bank loans. His security was a letter of guarantee from Father George Tomzinski, his superior in Poland, supreme head of the worldwide Pauline order.
The letter, in effect authority to spend the total assets of the Pauline Order valued by Father Tomzinski at $500 million, did not bear close investigation, but that did not stop the Polish Primate Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski and Karol Wojtyla rushing to intervene on behalf of a man who was a disgrace to the Pauline Fathers Order. In 1976 the Vatican investigators, with the approval of Pope Paul VI, dismissed Father Michael Zembruski from the Order. Wyszynski and Wojtyla flew to Rome and proceeded to rewrite the verdict. They successfully pressured Pope Paul and his Vatican advisors into reversing the decisions. Subsequently Cardinal Wyszynski fired every single senior member of the Order who had co-operated with the investigation. His action, however, was illegal under Church law and shortly before he died (Pope) Paul had appointed a committee to re-examine the entire affair. Less than three weeks into papal office, Wojtyla dismissed the committee and issued a confidential directive upholding Wyszynski’s illegal dismissal of men who were guilty of telling the truth.
The Roman Curia were dumbfounded. Senior officials within the Vatican Government saw it as a blatant misuse of papal authority in the name of Polish nationalism. Others, including a number of cardinals, saw the new Pope’s actions in conjunction with his refusal to clean up the Vatican Bank as evidence of something far more disturbing. They began to consider the possibility that they had placed on Peter’s Throne wilful, corrupt and potentially very dangerous man.”
(The Power and the Glory, by David Yallop, pp 36-37)
Read more: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:UUXecaDFJv8J:blog.beliefnet.com/crunchycon/2009/08/marcial-maciels-love-children_comments.html+embezzlement+in+doylestown+czestochowa+shrine&cd=17&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&source=www.google.com#ixzz1JylPet32
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/belgium/8457669/Child-abuse-bishop-disappears-from-French-monastery.html
Mary, I have the book by Yallop but have not yet read it. I wasn’t sure if Yallop was reliable. Do you think he backs up his claims with good and convincing documentation? I’ll wait until after Holy Week to look at it. All this news is very disturbing. But then, the Sacred Scritures tell us to not out our hope in men “but in the Lord.”
It all reminds me of when Our Lord said to the people “Listen to the scribes and pharisees for they sit upon the chair of Moses. But do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they preach.” Maybe that goes for those who sit upon the chairs of Peter and the Apostles!
Tony,
You misunderstand—all I am saying is that I have read that the percentage of females (at least reported) abused by priests in other countries is higher than what is (at least reported) here. Germany was surprised to learn upon opening up their sexual abuse hotline that, instead of it being 75% girl and 25% boy, it was actually 50-50% boy/girl when it came to sex abuse in the church: ” In church environments, including the confessional, abuse victims were equally male and female.” (http://www.podles.org/dialogue/sexual-abuse-analysis-from-germany-389.htm)
Unless I am misreading that, it seems that Germans had thought far less boys were abused than girls and were surprised at how many boys actually were being abused in church settings (50-50, which is still a much lower percentage than is reported here in the US, which is more like 75% boy/25%girl).
I’ve also read that sexual abuse of girls/women by priests is much higher in Africa than is reported here in the US. Of course, homosexuality is generally looked down upon very much in Africa, so it could be that reporting of abuse against boys is minimal due to the social stigma.
I guess my overall point is that it is really hard to know just how many are being abused of each sex because of reporting issues.
Father, I have corresponded with David Yallop off and on for over a decade.His credentials as an Investigator are impressive.years ago I read and heard him discredited because he was not a Catholic. His mother was a staunch Irish Catholic.while his own views on birth control are certainly not mine, I respect him as an honest man.I also believe him concerning the death of Pope John Paul I. his book , ‘The Power and the Glory”,states the facts while you may not always agree with his views . The facts speak for themselves and have been supported through the test of time.
‘I guess my overall point is that it is really hard to know just how many are being abused of each sex because of reporting issues’
True, but is clear that in the priest cases in the USA, Ireland, UK, Canada most were boys.
There is this article that i recommend:
http://www.afany.org/HPR.pdf
Fr, FYI Yallop
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yukB4J8deRw
Monday, 4th Apr 2011
“The ever growing legacy of Pope John Paul II
The Vatican has now made public many of the details connected with the beatification
of Pope John Paul II. The vigil on the evening of Saturday April 30th.The beatification ceremony the following day in St Peter’s Square. The veneration of the remains of new blessed. The Mass of thanksgiving. The internment in the Vatican Basilica within the chapel of Saint Sebastian. Every aspect
is covered except one. The evergrowing legacy of the late Pope.
This legacy includes the continuing investigation by a papal commission into the gross activities of the
sexual degenerate Father Marcial Maciel one of a number of sexual abusers who enjoyed the late Pope’s
protection.
The commission are currently confronting the harrowing task of listening in Rome to testimony from a number of Maciel’s victims.
This particular Papal legacy is not confined to any one country the late Pope’s continuing refusal to confront the global cancer that is clerical sexual abuse continues to be demonstrated.For example in Philadelphia a recent grand jury report has asserted that within the diocese as many as thirty seven priests who have perpetrated sexual abuse remain in active ministry.
And finally there is the Vatican Bank,there is always the Vatican Bank, officially known as the Institute for Religious Works,this money laundering organisation staggers from one scandal to the next with
impressive regularity. By far the biggest of these scandals occurred under the Papacy of the late Pope. It has been announced that “tough new standards governing all financial transactions by Vatican
agencies came into effect on April 1st . Sometimes life is wonderfully written. The date that this brave new financial child first saw the l;ight of day, happens of course to be April Fools day. ”
Best wishes
David A. Yallop