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Child sex abuse and the Catholic clergy

By Brendan O'Reilly - posted Tuesday, 17 December 2013


Key behavioural patterns have come to light from the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, and from related investigations both here and overseas.

Firstly, child sex abuse seems to have occurred in a wide variety of settings, and has generally been covered-up in the past. Secondly, it has occurred in both public and private institutions, including those run by government, charities, churches and religious, and absent parents seem to increase a child's vulnerability to abuse. Thirdly, rates of child sex abuse by clerics and religious seem to have peaked decades ago and were highest in boarding environments. Finally, while none of the Churches has been immune from such scandals, the incidence of child sex abuse seems to have been much greater in the Catholic Church and has done its public image immense damage.

The damage to the Churches in general, and to the Catholic Church in particular, relates both to the gravity of the offence, and to obvious and blatant hypocrisy.

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A key characteristic of churches and their pastors is a trade-mark habit of taking the moral high-ground on many issues, preaching good works, and admonishing many types of behaviour as "unchristian" or immoral. This is not a problem in itself and can be laudable. The difficulty is that the churches lose all credibility, if they are caught not living up to their own standards, which is effectively what has happened. Worse still, the churches now find themselves in a reversed situation, where they and (some of) their ministers are now the offenders being examined by the same secular state they themselves are so used to chastising.

A common response to being exposed has been to offer empty apologies in the hope that the problem will go away, and, more particularly, go away without them being asked to pay large amounts of compensation.

As crimes go, child sex abuse is almost as low as it gets, and can have a serious and lasting impact on its victims. As far as the Catholic Church goes, the public perception of its hypocrisy is that it is even greater than for the other churches.

Every Christian denomination seems to have a "hobby-horse" it particularly condemns or campaigns against. For many Protestant denominations this has historically been alcohol or gambling. For the Catholic Church (particularly the Irish variety and its Australian relative) for over a century its "hobby-horse" has been extra-marital sex of any type. On top of (what now seem minor) scandals involving the (more than?) odd priest or bishop being caught after having an affair, the extent of child sex abuse that has come to light has both rocked the Catholic Church and exposed the grossest hypocrisy on its part.

Further compounding matters is how known abuse has been dealt with, and that the reputation of the Catholic Church (in contravention of broad Christian teaching) seems to have been put before the interests of the victim and the community. It is clear that, both in Australia and right around the world, the reaction of Catholic authorities to almost any child sex abuse, that came to light, was to cover it up. This generally involved trying to silence the victim, with the perpetrator often left largely untouched or merely moved to another location (only to re-offend).

The widespread nature of such cover-up practices suggests that child sex abuse was more common than people had been led to believe in the past, and has been known about by the Catholic hierarchy for very many decades, if not centuries, across the globe. Systematic cover-ups had become standard and were, until recent decades, largely successful. Similar happenings seem to have occurred, only to a lesser extent, in other churches. Things have only changed because of greater openness about sex, and greater willingness of victims to come forward. Had child sex abuse been severely dealt with in the past (as is proper), it is likely that abuse rates would have been a lot lower.

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A major underlying issue contributing to greater problems of child sex abuse within the Catholic Church is that a significant minority of priests and religious brothers seem to have difficulty keeping their vows of celibacy. Child sex abuse may, in part, be an extreme response to repressed sexuality on the part of individuals who cannot handle their commitment, though other factors clearly also prevail. On a broader level, Catholic teaching on sexuality has had difficulty in receiving acceptance among adherents. The Catholic Church's prohibition of artificial means of contraception has met with widespread opposition amongst Catholics and has become a cause of dissent. Additionally, the apparent unpopularity of priestly celibacy almost certainly is a significant factor in declining vocations to the priesthood, and in priestly resignations.

A hidden but substantial historic influence on Catholic attitudes to sex in countries like Australia has been Jansenism. Jansenist attitudes were exported to counties like Australia and the US by emigrant Irish priests and religious. Jansenism, sometimes referred to as a Catholic Calvinism, was a Christian theological movement centuries ago, primarily in France, that emphasised original sin, human depravity, the necessity of divine grace, and predestination. It spread to Ireland in centuries when the Irish Catholic Church was repressed and Irish priests were commonly educated in European seminaries. Emphasis on strict sexual morality, while latent, only became a major feature of the Irish Church after the Great Famine (which had underlined the risks of high population growth). While the influence of this type of Catholicism has greatly diminished since about the 1960s, Jansenism's extreme sexual Puritanism has affected Catholic culture wherever the Irish church had an influence, and has been blamed for making it difficult for many Catholics to be comfortable about their own sexuality.

While not in any way excusing abuse, it is likely that many Catholic priests and religious, who went on to abuse, were to some extent victims themselves. Until relatively recently, most recruitment to the Catholic priesthood and religious life occurred when young people left school. In some cases it was even earlier. This meant that such persons were on a path to celibacy from an age when (at best) they were barely mature, in a context where there was often a stigma attached to leaving religious training ("spoiled priest"). Many observers have speculated that sex abuse by Catholic priests would be substantially lower, if they were allowed to marry.

A subject rarely discussed is the extent of homosexuality among Catholic priests.

The Catholic Church expressly forbids homosexual acts, disdains the gay lifestyle, and is viewed with a degree of hostility by the gay lobby. This might provide reason for gay men to eschew the priesthood, especially in more recent times. On the other hand, the Catholic Church has tended to be tolerant of gay priests who are not active in engaging in homosexual acts, and its ban on married priests does provide a very convenient closet for gay men to unsuspiciously hide in. It is probably drawing too long a bow to link homosexuality amongst Catholic clergy with levels of child sexual abuse within the Church. There seems, however, be a link between homosexuality within the priesthood, along with the tendency for most Catholic institutions to be same-sex, and the majority of the child victims of Catholic priests and religious being boys.

There are limited data on the extent of homosexuality amongst the Catholic priesthood. Wikipedia notes that studies find it difficult to quantify specific percentages of Roman Catholic priests who identify as gay priests. The John Jay Report ("The Nature and Scope of the Problem of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests and Deacons in the United States") did report that "homosexual men entered the seminaries in noticeable numbers from the late 1970s through the 1980s", and that "available figures for homosexual priests in the United States range from 15 to 58 per cent". It also cites Elizabeth Stuart, a former convener of the Catholic Caucus of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement, as claiming that "it has been estimated that at least 33 percent of all priests in the RC Church in the United States are homosexual".

Persistent rumours also suggest a gay lobby in the Vatican and investigative journalists have allegedly caught high ranking people in the Vatican engaging in gay behaviour. The Catholic Church in Scotland was engulfed in crisis following the resignation of Cardinal Keith O'Brien amid allegations of "inappropriate behavior" with fellow priests stretching back 30 years. (This scandal was made worse by his public record of stridently defending Catholic prohibition of homosexual behavior.)

The John Jay report found that 81 per cent of the victims of Catholic clergy in the US were male. It also found that "individuals who molest children may be heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual with regard to victim selection. Child sexual abusers who prefer female victims were found to be more likely to be diagnosed as paedophiles than those who prefer male children, while child sexual abusers who prefer male victims tend to target boys who are slightly older".

While accurate figures are hard to come by for other countries, including Australia, the John Jay report put rates of alleged child sex abuse across regions of the Catholic Church in the US at between 3 and 6 per cent of priests. There seems to be a broad notion that such figures may also be typical for other developed countries.

The highest figures I have heard about relate to the Irish Christian Brothers. In Ireland in the early 1960s the Christian Brothers had enjoyed a peak membership of some 1,300 Brothers. An audit subsequently found allegations of abuse against a staggering 325 (or 25 per cent) of Brothers relating to 870 incidences of abuse over several decades. The very high incidence of alleged abusing by this Order may reflect that up until the 1960s it routinely sought to recruit noviciates as young as 14 years of age. Recruits were subsequently separately educated at a special boarding school so that they were set on a path of celibacy virtually from the age of puberty. The Christian Brothers' membership in Ireland now stands at some 267 Brothers, with an average age of 74 years. It is a dying order and management of its schools and institutions is now substantially in the hands of Catholic laity.

There are two sad aspects to the story of child sex abuse within the Catholic Church (and other churches to a lesser degree). The first obviously relates to the direct impact on innocent child victims, whose lives may have been scarred by abuse. The second relates to collateral damage affecting those priests and religious who have always acted properly and never abused children (the vast majority). Their reputations have been smeared by association. The churches continue to do good work in the areas of education, health, social work etc. It is a pity that the child abuse issue was allowed to run largely unchecked for so long, overshadowing good work being done in other areas.

While I have empathy for innocent rank and file priests and religious, I believe that Church hierarchies have a lot to answer for, and are themselves totally undeserving of any sympathy.

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About the Author

Brendan O’Reilly is a retired commonwealth public servant with a background in economics and accounting. He is currently pursuing private business interests.

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