Last month, I visited my grandchildren in Chicago and ran geology lectures for the pre-K and 3rd grade classes in their respective schools. As I looked out over this sea of eager, innocent faces, it dawned on me that hundreds of thousands of children like these were fondled, caressed, abused, raped, and sodomized by Catholic clergy. Their lives were destroyed and the guilty priests got away with their crimes. I wanted an opportunity to round out some earlier excellent Kos diaries on the subject. This will not be the last on this issue, by me or anyone else. Full disclosure: I attended a Catholic grammar school in upper Manhattan in the 1940’s and 50’s. Our parish protected a pedophile priest who abused altar boys in the 50’s and 60’s. He was finally brought to justice (of sorts) in 2004 and in his deposition admitted that even had be been discovered earlier, he knew he would not be punished.
This is not a new issue with the Church (nor is it limited to Catholic clergy). I make two important points:
- The problem is far more widespread than anyone has imagined. In a poll taken in Ireland, 25% of adults reported they were victims of clerical abuse as children. If the poll is true and you do the math, it would amount to over 700,000 people in one country alone. Doubters in the US should consult http://www.bishop-accountability.org for a list of individual abusive clerics by state or diocese.
In addition to reports coming out of Ireland, Germany, and Italy, It is also becoming clear that Catholics in Poland had been subject to abuse that was denied by Cardinal Karol Wojtyła (who later became Pope John Paul II), believing that all such reports were a Communist plot to destroy the Church. He maintained that position for over 20 years and consistently defended pedophiles (see Michael Parenti’s article in http://axisoflogic.com/...
- Sexual abuse by clergy has been going on for centuries with only sporadic attempts by Church authorities to quell it. (See Doyle, T.P. et al., [2005] Sex, priests and secret codes… Volt Press, Santa Monica, CA). As early as 309 CE, church leaders voted to dismiss any clerics who had abused a child. Sadly, the last pope to do anything about predator priests was Pius V in 1568. He demanded that over 4,000 priests be sent to monasteries and never to have contact with young children. Some priests were condemned as galley slaves on ships, and a few were killed. Unlike today’s bishops, Pius V did not transfer offending priests to other parishes but banished them forever. More details can be found at http://patrickjwall.wordpress.com/...
Most Catholics don’t know that the confessional box was started in the 16th century as a result of the Spanish Inquisition’s investigations of priests who were having sex with their penitents. The Inquisition did not just deal with heretics and witches. Clerical sexual misbehavior was so widespread that the Church confined priests to wooden boxes to keep them away from their parishioners.
As Gail Collins pointed out in a recent New York Times piece, the real gulf is between the Vatican and the rest of the Church. The Vatican is above all a political organization, and they are more interested in sweeping scandals under the rug. The real Church, and the ones being harmed by the Vatican’s foot dragging, are the thousands of decent nuns, brothers, and priests who are toiling in the vineyards and doing good works. They are being unfairly tarred by the Vatican’s century old cover-ups.