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The 'crisis' that wasn't -- pedophiles and the priesthood

New research on the priest-pedophilia scandals of the 1980s and '90s challenges accusations of widespread abuse

By Colleen Smith

The lurid priest-pedophilia lawsuits that scandalized the Church did not constitute the widespread problem portrayed by the media in the late 1980s and early '90s, according to Philip Jenkins, a Pennsylvania State University professor and author of the new book "Pedophiles and Priests: The Anatomy of a Contemporary Crisis" (Oxford University Press, $27.50).

Despite the widespread criticism of media coverage of the scandal, Jenkins finds that the most anti-Catholic and anti-clerical messages were being sent from forces within the Church.

"The whole thing emerged from disputes within the Church itself," Jenkins told Our Sunday Visitor in an interview. "It used to be that prosecutors wouldn't touch it; the press wouldn't touch it."

He notes that the National Catholic Reporter opened the floodgates to positive and negative outcomes when the newspaper broke the story of the charges against Father Gilbert Gauthe, a Louisiana priest, in June 1985. Prior to that, Jenkins claims, the secular media steered clear of negative coverage of accusations against priests.

"The media were always very scared of Catholic stories," Jenkins said. "If it was a major criminal conviction or major lawsuit, yes, the media were going to cover that. But even the most spectacular sexual abuse cases in the '80s, many secular papers wouldn't touch."

Jenkins' conclusions gather credibility from his exhaustive research and nonpartisan voice. Now a member of the Episcopal Church, Jenkins is a former Catholic. Further, he claims to have studied the crisis from neither a conservative nor liberal vantage point, albeit his arguments more frequently condemn the Church's left.

"I probably go after the people coming from the liberal side more than the conservatives, because they were more successful in getting their position in the media," Jenkins said. "They were the people on the Rolodexes of the media. So these are the positions that need to be discussed."

But Jenkins also points a finger at the right-wing, anti-homosexual camp, which he found exploited the scandal to "prove" its claims that the "modernist" bishops were subverting the Church with an influx of homosexual clergy.

'The sober truth'

His historical take on the crisis may bring the objectivity required for his work to be taken seriously.

"A priest couldn't have written this book," Jenkins said. "It would look like insensitive apologies for pedophile, even if the sober truth were told and supported with statistics."

Jenkins has written several other books, including two others on "moral panics" -- a sociological phrase for what he describes as "when society goes crazy about an issue." His prior works on moral panics examined serial murders and satanic rituals.

His research of priest pedophilia differed from his previous subjects, he said.

"In a sociological sense, this was different from some because there was an objective reality," he said. "There were real cases. Some cases are true; they've been proved in court."

But technically, Jenkins claims, priest-pedophilia cases are extremely rare. He ardently differentiates the pedophile -- one who engages in sex with children younger than puberty age -- from the ephebophile -- one who engages in sexual abuse of a teenager.

"Most cases involved a homosexual priest and 16- or 17-year-old boys," Jenkins said. "It's still immoral and probably illegal, but it looks quite a bit different from sex with a prepubescent child."

Moreover, Jenkins charges that the wrongly defined problem not only got disproportionate media attention, but became disproportionately linked with Catholic priests. The liberal argument -- that the Church's celibacy requirements were driving sexually repressed priests to abuse children -- became the conventional wisdom in much of the media, as well as among elites in the Church.

But, Jenkins said, such conclusions have no factual basis. "Non-celibate clergy are just as likely to abuse," he said, noting the research.

Nor did Jenkins find evidence for the claim, repeatedly made in the press, that 6 percent of all priests were pedophiles. The most innocent explanation, he said, is that the figure derived from a rough, unscientific estimate of the number of priests who might have "inclinations" toward pedophilia. But even then, the only study of the question, conducted by the Chicago archdiocese, found that less than 2 percent of all the priests who served there in the 40-year period between 1951 and 1991 could plausibly be charged with sexual misconduct. And even then, only one of the alleged cases involved sex with a pre-puberty age child.

And even though figures of child sexual abuse and pedophilia are similar for clergy in other denominations, Jenkins said that underlying anti-Catholic stereotypes and prejudices has led the issue to be "portrayed as a vast social crisis and a vastly Catholic crisis."

Age-old stereotypes of the lascivious, sex-hungry priest -- caricatures that date back to the Middle Ages -- became the staple of editorial cartoons and more serious media treatments of the issue, he found.

Another stereotype was cast as the media repeatedly reported that the Church covered up sexual abuse allegations, reassigning the accused priest without informing the new parish. But in addressing, or more precisely not addressing, sexual abuse allegations, Jenkins believes that the Church acted in accordance with the best advice of the time.

"What the Church did was precisely correct according to the time's standards: medical, psychological and criminological," said Jenkins. "In the 1960s, the best of experts at Harvard and Princeton recommended to ignore it. The thinking was that an act of sexual abuse was only serious if made so. That sounds shocking to us today, but it's important to judge people by the standards of the time."

He stressed that Catholics need to defend their faith against unfounded accusations and flagrant stereotyping.

"Lots of people accuse the Church of playing legal hardball in court, but very often the Church was resisting lawsuits that were false," he said. "The Church shouldn't be criticized for defending its rights; and Catholics should be unashamed of the Church defending against false lawsuits."

Catholics can only hope that Jenkins is accurate in his observation that the moral panic of clerical sexual abuse has receded in the wake of the highly publicized but false abuse charges filed against Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago in 1992.

But even then, the damage has been done, as the spate of negative publicity demoralized Catholics, particularly priests. "The morale," Jenkins fears, "may be poisoned beyond repair." q

Smith writes from Denver, Colo.

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The real consequences of a false crisis

In the past decade a sinister and unsavory vision of the Catholic Church has come close to being a routine part of perceived reality in this culture, with the required institutional quality provided by recurrent reinforcement through newspaper headlines and television news stories, rumors and jokes. Collectively, these symbolic actions draw upon and define social reality. Whether a news program introduces a story with visuals of a church or a Mass, or a cartoon depicts a bishop, or a comedian begins a story about a priest, there is the same expectation that the likely and predictable outcome will involve scandal, improper sexuality and exploitation, or at least misogyny. When the same message is repeatedly offered by all forms of media and confirmed by conversation with friends or associates, then it has been legitimized as social fact, for Catholics as well as non-Catholics. . . .

Priestly prestige has been severely damaged, and even in traditionally loyal Catholic communities there is evidence of intense family opposition to boys' entering seminary or even becoming altar boys. The apparent need to restrict personal contacts between clergy and children sends a symbolic message that this is a dangerous or tainted profession, even where no specific allegation has been made. In the Los Angeles archdiocese, for example, stringent policies now forbid priests from engaging in such apparently innocent activities as "hugging, tickling and wrestling that involve physical contact with minors.". . . Anyone considering the priesthood must be aware of the greatly intensified risk that a career will be damaged, perhaps irreparably, by a scandal resulting from either false charges or misconstrued horseplay. -- From "Pedophiles and Priests," by Philip Jenkins

HEADLINES FOR FEB. 25

The making of a 'crisis' (editorial on priest-pedophile scares)

In England, a new push for divorce, U.S.-style

Postcards from another world (on Latin American life)

When 'dead men' walk

The other great Chicago fire

A stubborn love (profile of Kathy Troccoli)