In
2002, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops commissioned a
1.8 million dollar study, popularly known as the “John Jay study,” to
uncover the patterns and causes of the sex abuse crisis since 1950. The
National Review Board—the entity designated to implement the study—gave
the first John Jay report in 2004. In this report, which describes the
“Nature and Scope” of clergy sexual abuse, the board pointed out that
more than 80 percent of the victims were teenage boys and young men.
This conclusion, in itself, should have been a solid roadmap for truly correcting the sex abuse problem.
Indeed, the bishops quickly responded. They issued guidelines for
tough diocesan policies, such as the immediate reporting of abuse to
civil authorities, and better oversight of children’s safety.
However, despite those good reforms, clergy with sexual abuse
histories were still active in public Church ministry. In early 2011,
the Archdiocese of Philadelphia revealed it was involved in yet another
major “roundup” of sex abuse cases, a majority of them (82%) involving
the original category of identified victims—male teens and young men.
Also in 2011, the Vatican called on bishops and local dioceses to
develop comprehensive plans to stop sex abuse. It urged “an even greater
importance in assuring a proper discernment of vocations.” Clearly, the
Vatican still sees a need to encourage more thoroughness when screening
priesthood candidates.
These developments—still surfacing seven years after the original
John Jay findings—suggest that reforms have not been wholly adequate.
Why? I would suggest that, from the start, reforms concentrated on defensive
measures—protecting young people from predators who may be lurking in
the clergy. That is well and good. However, a more important question
remains unanswered: why should the Church allow predators to be lurking among the clergy in the first place?
The fault is not with the original John Jay data. It pointed to the
predator issue by identifying the overwhelming victim demographic as
young men and male teens. Here are the statistics, in Part 4.2 of the
study: “four out of five (80%) alleged victims were male,” and “the
majority of alleged victims were post-pubescent (87.4%), with only a
small percentage of priests receiving allegations of abusing young
children.”
This statistic paints a vivid picture: the sex abuse crisis was the
overwhelming work of a very small number of clergy targeting young males
as their victims. This fact suggests one reform that has yet to be
addressed: the Church must screen out clergy candidates with same-sex attractions.
At first, this reform appeared to be on the radar. In 2004, the
National Review Board stated that while the sex abuse crisis had no
single cause, “an understanding of the crisis is not possible” without
reference to “the presence of homosexually oriented priests.” The board
cited the data: “eighty percent of the abuse at issue was of a
homosexual nature.”
Dr. Paul McHugh, a former psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins
Hospital and a member of the National Review Board, put it more
strongly. Quoted in an August 25, 2006 National Catholic Register editorial, he observed that the John Jay study had revealed a crisis of “homosexual predation on American Catholic youth.”
But that warning soon disappeared from the public perception. The
John Jay conclusions began to be explained as an “environment” problem.
This new interpretation was made official in a 2011 John Jay report,
“Causes and Context.”
Two years earlier, Dr. Karen Terry, the lead spokesperson and
coauthor of the John Jay study, offered this interpretation at the
bishops’ November 2009 meeting in Baltimore. According to the account in
the National Catholic Reporter, Dr. Terry inferred that the
sexual orientation of the predators didn’t matter. In Dr. Terry’s words,
“It’s important to separate the sexual identity and the behavior …
Someone can commit sexual acts that might be of a homosexual nature, but
not have a homosexual identity.”
Quoted in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the National Catholic Reporter,
Dr. Terry said the problem was that clergy “had access to boys” rather
than because they had “a homosexual identity” or a “homosexual
orientation.”
But “access to boys” avoids one glaring issue: the data reveals that a
very small contingent of clergy did most of the sexual exploiting, and
they overwhelmingly chose same-sex victims.
Dr. Terry’s own interpretation notwithstanding, it is absolutely
crucial to examine who these exploiters are. At the very least, it’s a
cop-out to blame the crisis on the “field” of victims, and the
implication is potentially dangerous: It suggests that future crises
could be avoided if the Church bans “access to boys.” This inevitably
would include banning: priests from all-male high schools; priestly
vocation retreats; and any gathering designed to specifically encourage
young men in the pursuit of a Christian way of life. These kinds of
gatherings have raised generations of good Catholic men for
centuries—and, rest assured, morally strong and healthy priests have
never had any interest in sexually stalking young men at these
gatherings.
Instead, we owe it to generations of Catholics to get to the heart of
the issue, and examine what kind of man would sexually pursue
post-pubescent males.
Before going further, let’s be clear: sexual predators come in both
homosexual and heterosexual orientations. In either variety, sexual
predation is evil, and homosexual behavior isn’t the only sexual sin, or
the only problem. All sexual sins can gain strength unless the clergy
formation process includes an emphasis on spirituality, prayer, and
asceticism. But the data from the John Jay study strongly suggests that a
homosexual influence in the clergy is a key factor in the sex abuse
crisis.
And yet, this factor has been consistently ignored in the reform
process. In fact, in the John Jay report issued in 2011, homosexuality
was definitively discounted as an issue. The study cited
“organizational” (and institutional) causes among the explanations for
the sex abuse crisis. It concluded that perhaps the real causes are the
result of “certain vulnerabilities” accompanied by “opportunities to
abuse,” as in “access to boys.”
The second report did not suggest screening anyone from the seminary.
Rather, the “Conclusions and Recommendations” suggested that the
solution lay in “education,” “situational prevention models,” and
“oversight and accountability.” The report stated: “By regularly
surveying priests, administrative staff, and parishioners about their
responses to, and satisfaction with, the priests with whom they have
contact, dioceses are more likely to be alerted to questionable behavior
that might have been undetected in the past.”
In effect, now all priests will be considered
guilty until proven innocent! More insidiously, the report calls for
closer surveillance or “oversight” of the activities of all priests.
According to a July 22, 2011 article in the National Catholic Reporter,
this means “ensuring at least one adult is present whenever clergy and
children (young men) are together.” Big Brother, welcome to the Church.
Significantly, this second John Jay report was challenged by a top
psychiatrist who treats sexually abusive priests. Dr. Richard
Fitzgibbons told the Catholic News Agency on May 20, 2011, that “he is
‘very critical’ of the latest findings because they avoid discussing
important causal factors in clerical sex abuse cases, namely
homosexuality.”
Of course, anything critical of homosexuality offends modern
standards, even the standards of some within the Church. But those are
not the standards of the Catholic Church, and her teaching. Pope
Benedict XVI, for example, says in his recent book, Light of the World,
that one of the “disturbing problems” in the Church today is that
“homosexuality exists in monasteries and among the clergy.” He goes on
to say that “homosexuality is incompatible with the priestly vocation.”
The Pope’s statements are backed by the “Catechism of the
Catholic Church” (#2358), and other documents which declare that
homosexual behavior is “objectively disordered.”
The question is: will objective data, like the John Jay study, be interpreted by Church standards, or by other standards?
So far, the answer is unsettled. Unfortunately, what should be the
Church’s primary concern seems to be currently off the table. Instead,
the study’s new direction and warning about “access to boys,” carries a
subtle, but troubling, challenge to the Christian formation of young
men—including the male-only priesthood.
When it comes to “access to boys,” the Church should have only one
goal: to protect every young man who has discerned a call to religious
life, and any male who sees, in priests and deacons, worthy role models
of Christian values. For now, this vast demographic of human souls is
still vulnerable to sexual targeting within the very walls of the
Church.
We must face facts. The data overwhelmingly identifies the main
victims of the sex abuse crisis as young men. Furthermore, what critics
call “access to boys” is a natural consequence of Church life, and the
male priesthood. Therefore, true reform should not be to question
“access to boys,” but to reconsider, with compassion and wisdom, whether
clergy roles are appropriate for any man who finds “access to boys” a
sexual temptation.
Until this human problem is addressed, we cannot expect a complete solution to sexual predation within the Church.
