And I surely do not buy the blame-it-on-Woodstock excuse. As Ken Briggs says in the National Catholic Reporter:
The Sixties did it.
The John Jay College report on child sexual abuse by priests nails it. Don't put the chief blame on the church -- nothing wrong with its teachings on sexuality or celibacy.
It's the demon Sixties with its ravenous demand for freedom. Blacks, women, college students, war protesters cut loose against the old restraints. Vatican II chimed in, wittingly or not, or borrowed from it, espousing such things as letting fresh breezes blow through the church and encouraging a participatory, more democratic Catholicism.
To many church authorities, the "revolution" that mattered most was about sex. Cramped minds imagined orgies and impulsive free love that assaulted church teachings.
I've finished reading the summary, and I'm on page 20 of the 152 page report, but I can't promise to read it all. The report is here in pdf format and is titled The Causes and Context of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests in the United States, 1950-2011.
There's so much that I would like to address in the report that I don't know where to begin. As a result, I may never begin. The contributors at The Lead have done a terrific job of following the commentary on the report here, here, and here. Pardon me, if missed a link or two.
I remember coming home from the Navy in 1971 and being amazed that our local district attorney was actually prosecuting and winning convictions for rape and child molestation. This was something completely new.Of course, victims coming forward was completely new too.
ReplyDeleteI do remember my mom in the 50's when I was a child telling me that when RC priests did something 'really bad', oh, their bishop just kept moving them from church to church. Times have changed, thank God, but RC bishops, not so much.
The more control the church had the more hair raising the stories of abuse. One of the sadder pieces I have read lately was the Archbishop of Ireland saying that all but the old have left the church and that he had no idea of how to bring them back. I wanted to say lay leadership and maybe house churches, but that would never fly with the RC hierarchy. As always, their way or the highway.
Vashti Winterburg,Lawrence, KS
Vashti, your mom was right. The policy of the church at the time and for years after the 1950s was to move the priest from parish to parish. Sometimes the abusers got sent off on a "leave of absence" or to a long "retreat", but the odds were that the priest would be back in a parish before too long.
ReplyDeletePope John Paul II appointed a large number of conservative cardinals, so I don't see the likelihood of much change with the present pope nor with the next pope. They really don't get it.
Damn hippies!
ReplyDeleteMy Grandfather was a rural MD in central Illinois during the Great Depression. He saw small town and rural life in that time much more candidly and up close than most people would want, and from what my mother tells me, it was definitely NOT "The Waltons."
The combination of rural isolation and economic stress (everyone was worried about debts and losing their farms) produced all kinds of problems; alcoholism, domestic violence, and lots of rape and incest. Almost all of it got swept under one official rug or another. My grandfather labored under a lot of pressure to keep things under wraps, not least by the two most powerful religious institutions in the town, the Roman Catholic church, and the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod (he was Methodist). He would not be surprised at all to see all the stories of pedophile priests and philandering pastors coming out today, and could tell you that it certainly did not begin in the 1960s.
My grandfather had views on birth control and family planning, as well as about the rights of women and children,which would still be progressive by today's standards, and which he kept to himself in that small town.
I like to tell and retell the story of my friend who went on a short trip with a RC priest and other boys. Somehow he ended up sharing a bed with the priest who fondled him during the night. My friend jumped out of the bed and spent the rest of the night on the floor.
ReplyDeleteWhen he got home, he told his parents, and his father slapped him in the face and told him to never say such a thing about a priest again. That's one example of why incidents went unreported. My friend learned on his own not to give the priest another opportunity.
{{{Mimi's friend, and all the rest of the violated-as-children}}}
ReplyDeleteYes, all of them. That's what the reports should be about - those who were abused and how best to help them heal them now.
ReplyDelete