Sense and Nonsense about
Sexual Misconduct in the
Catholic Church

M. Lester O'Shea

M. Lester O'Shea is a businessman, lawyer and writer whose most recent book is A Cure Worse Than the Disease: Fighting Discrimination Through Government Control (Hallberg).

Certainly no one will accuse the press of giving inadequate coverage to the scandal of child molestation by American Catholic priests. Is it, rather, excessive? There is no sign of a significant current problem here; nearly all the cases now in the news occurred 20 or more years ago. Nor was it at all widespread: a few hundred offenders, all told, are a tiny fraction of the 45,000 or so Catholic priests in the United States.

Even so, that priests, respected as dedicated to God's work, used their positions to prey on children is news, and, even more importantly, the covering up of their offenses by church authorities made the story a Watergate-type one of wrongdoing in high places, and in an organization that holds itself out as God's representative on earth, qualified to speak authoritatively as to what is right and wrong in personal conduct, which includes emphatic condemnation of the very acts of which the priests were guilty.

Hence the outrage at a horrible case such as that of the degenerate Boston priest Shanley, who for years had been known to archdiocesan authorities as not only openly defending homosexual acts and publicly promoting pedophilia but as personally practicing what he preached, and yet he was fobbed off on an unsuspecting California diocese as a priest "in good standing" who "has no problem that would be a concern to your diocese," and sent a letter by Boston's Cardinal Law praising his "impressive record." The apparent obliviousness to the welfare of the children in a case such as this-and in similar cases that have come to light-is appalling.

Where was the outrage that one would think indecent acts with children would inspire in anyone with a moral sense, a sense of decency? Were these bishops indifferent to their church's teachings on the subject? Did they have the same view as President Clinton's defenders 20 years later, that it was "just about sex"? (But these cases involved children!) Were there even more disgraceful reasons for their tolerant attitude, suggested by Shanley's reference in a letter to a church official to his having kept his promise not to expose others' homosexual activities?

Such egregious dereliction of duty by persons in positions of high moral authority is legitimate major news, even if aggressive coverage of the matter was encouraged by the fact that the church's hierarchical and authoritarian structure, its refusal to ordain women, and its positions on abortion, contraception, homosexuality, and clerical celibacy are very much at odds with prevailing media opinion and liberal opinion generally. It seems clear that those who would like a more "up-to-date" Catholic Church hope that the arising of the scandal in the existing church, and the discredit some of its leaders brought on themselves in connection with it, can be used to bring about changes that they want. "Reformers Sense Momentum," was a recent New York Times headline.

An unfortunate problem for the "politically correct," however, is that almost all the reported sexual abuse of young people by priests has been homosexual. It is a basic article of their liberal faith that there is nothing morally wrong with homosexual acts: "morally straight," in the Boy Scout creed, does not, as they see it, disqualify active homosexuals from being either Scouts or Scoutmasters; and that homosexuality is not an indication of psychological sickness. How to use the clerical sex scandals to promote change in the Catholic Church without encouraging "homophobia"?

The result has been media coverage that deserves criticism not as excessive in volume but as inadequate in honesty.

One approach has been obfuscation. The terms nearly always used are "pedophilia" and "pedophile priests." An article in The New York Times about the defrocked Boston priest, Geoghan, referred to his abuse of "children" and reported that many "people" had come forward to tell of what they had years ago experienced at his hands. One might have thought that he, and the other "pedophile priests," had been molesting little boys and little girls indifferently. Unfortunately, too many news stories about molestations had identified the victims by sex, and even a casual reader of the news had to have noticed that it was almost always boys, not girls, who were involved. Finally a Boston Globe story made it clear that 90 percent of the clergy sexual abuse victims were boys, principally adolescents.

It would seem immediately obvious that men whose chosen sexual activity is with other males are homosexuals. That is simply a matter of definition. A heterosexual layman who has no wife or is seeking sexual satisfaction elsewhere may find it with a prostitute, or a mistress, or a more casual liaison as with a woman met in a bar or even, if his moral fiber is poor enough, with a young girl. But he is certainly not going to seek it with a boy. A heterosexual priest prepared to break his vow of celibacy has these options too. Obviously, the heart of the problem is that the Catholic Church has, or at any rate had 20 or so years ago, a number of homosexual clergy unable or unwilling to refrain from sexually molesting boys and youths.

This is a reality which some are unwilling to accept, and the verbal gymnastics employed to avoid doing so make entertaining reading. A recent New York Times article entitled "Homosexuality in Priesthood Is Under Increasing Scrutiny" (April 19, 2002) contains the assertion,

Scientists . . . warn that the scandal has caused two distinct issues-homosexuality and child abuse-to become erroneously and wrecklessly [sic] intertwined. They note that homosexuals are no more likely than heterosexuals to be pedophiles.

At first glance it seems obvious that the conduct of homosexuals as a whole is beside the point here. The relevant group is American Catholic priests, and clearly the homosexuals among them are more likely to molest children than their heterosexual colleagues. No one has suggested that homosexuals constitute 90 percent of the Catholic clergy, which they would have to do to account for only their proportional share of abuse. The Boston Globe article states that

Scholars say that somewhere between 1 and 10 percent of the general population is gay, but that in the priesthood it may be as high as 50 percent.

If the maximum figure of 50 percent is taken, so that the homosexual 50 percent are responsible for 90 percent of the molestations while the heterosexual 50 percent account for the remaining 10 percent, then the incidence among the homosexuals is then 9 times that among the heterosexuals. If in fact they are a third of the priesthood, then their rate of child molestation is 18 times that of their heterosexual fellow priests; if 25 percent, 27 times.

But what if the abuse of girls is, for some mysterious reason, underreported relative to that of boys? Leaving no stone unturned, the Times piece quotes a professor at Widener University's Center for Education:

We're just beginning now to get women who are coming forward. My guess is that if the number of women who were abused came out, it would be even more than the males.

That would require, if no more male victims were identified, that more than eight times the number of female victims hitherto reported surface.

Ah, but what about refining the definition of "pedophilia"? The Times piece goes on to say,

Experts also say that few of the abusive priests can be considered genuine pedophiles because many of their victims were not children, but teenagers.

(Thus they are "suffering from ephebophilia.") How reassuring: should 15-year-old Jimmy's parents not be upset at what Father Joe did to him because he is not a "genuine pedophile"? Is it only the word "pedophilia" that bothers people, so that shrinking what it covers will largely solve the problem? (Given this refinement of "pedophilia," perhaps the Times' "scientists" are not really saying that homosexuals are no more likely than heterosexuals to molest young people, only that they are no more likely to molest little children.)

The straightforward reality simply cannot be accepted. The Times' lead article on April 24 contains the statement,

There is no clear consensus on whether homosexuals should be ordained or whether homosexuality is linked to the current scandals, in which many victims are boys.

"Many," note: not "the overwhelming majority" or even "most." And the April 19 article quoted earlier actually states:

The assumption that homosexuality has anything to do with this crisis has arisen largely because a disproportionate number of those abused were male.

People are confusing homosexuality with homosexuality!

Underlying this tortured discussion is an absurdity-that if one can call homosexual acts by another name, they lose their homosexual character. If sex with old men were involved, it would be, I suppose, gerontophilia that was said to be the problem. But homosexuality and pedophilia, ephebophilia, etc. are not mutually exclusive. Homosexual acts, whether with the young, the old, the short, or the tall, are still homosexual acts.

It does not follow from recognizing the reality of disproportionate sexual misconduct with young people by homosexual priests that no men of homosexual orientation should be ordained. Logically, at least, there is no reason why a priest who is sexually attracted to other males cannot agree with church teaching that homosexual acts are intrinsically wrong and faithfully keep his vows of celibacy, with his orientation being a complete non-issue. If someone is going to abstain from all alcoholic beverages, it would seem to matter little whether he prefers Bourbon or Scotch. If, as appears to be the case, the number of homosexual priests is significant, it follows that relatively few of them have been molesting children. In the light of what has happened, however, it would be foolish not to supervise more carefully those who give evidence of being of that orientation. Presumably this will be attacked as "profiling," but one would hope that church authorities, unlike those responsible for airport security, will not consider fairness to require brainlessness.

It would seem a safe assumption that the reason homosexuals comprise a far higher proportion of the Catholic clergy than of American men generally is that the requirement of celibacy discourages a higher proportion of heterosexuals than homosexuals from seeking ordination because it is a heavier burden for the heterosexuals. For a normal man, giving up women, marriage, and family is a major sacrifice. Not so for a man who is not attracted to women in the first place. If he takes both his vow of celibacy and the church's teachings on sex seriously, no sacrifice at all is involved in this regard, since the kind of sex he would be interested in is not permissible anyway.

The president of the United States Conference of Bishops, Wilton D. Gregory, recently indicated that church leaders do not think it desirable that the American priesthood become predominantly homosexual-an understandable position entirely apart from the matter of sexual abuse of minors. Rome has ruled out changing the celibacy requirement, so they need to consider other ways to make being a priest more attractive to normal men.

Might not better pay help? The church cannot and should not try to compete with Wall Street for those to whom wealth is a principal objective, but that does not mean that stipends should be so low (currently $16,000 a year) that a priest without independent means must forgo, in addition to wife and family, a standard of living anyone with just a college education-indeed, even a skilled tradesman-can take for granted. And an intelligent young man prepared to give as many years to study as ordination requires and to give his career the hours and dedication expected of a priest can expect a six-figure income. Is not the laborer worthy of his hire?

The expansion of higher education, scholarships, and student loans, and the ready availability of graduate business and law schools, make the financial sacrifice of priestly life far greater than it was 50 years ago. It is generally believed that good teachers need to have a genuine desire to impart knowledge to young people, but no one doubts that higher pay, other things being equal, will attract better teachers.

A priesthood made up of men led to a noble calling despite the sacrifices it entails will be a more elite group, the greater the sacrifice required. Mandatory hair shirts and flagellation would make it even more so, but then there would be many more parishes without priests. A man does not need to be an Ignatius of Loyola to be a good parish priest.

Paying priests more would be expensive, but American Catholics as a whole do not lack wealth, and fund drives have generated impressive sums. It would be more appealing to contribute to improve priests' standard of living than to fund sexual-abuse lawsuit settlements.

Another obvious way to attract normal men to the priesthood is to stop making them feel unwelcome. According to the new book Goodbye! Good Men: How Catholic Seminaries Turned Away Two Generations of Vocations from the Priesthood, in the post-Vatican II years, many of those responsible for seminaries and vocations were thoroughly alienated from what they saw as the "Old Church," and they discouraged men who were in tune with it from seeking ordination, viewing them as "rigid and uncharitable homophobes," while at the same time encouraging those at odds with Rome, including active homosexuals, to become priests.

As a result, according to the book, the dominant culture at many American seminaries became one of both homosexuality and dissent from Catholic doctrine, and traditional Catholics and heterosexuals were made to feel unwelcome, discriminated against in various ways, and often expelled, if they did not leave of their own accord in disgust. Says Notre Dame Professor of Philosophy Ralph McInerny,

A shortage [of priests] has been artificially created by keeping good candidates out and admitting unorthodox and effete ones.

As a result of an apostolic visitation of the seminaries, this situation seems to have been partly brought under control; but, as suggested by the comments of the president of the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley, reported in the San Francisco Chronicle in May, making clear his aversion not to the "people of homosexual orientation" in his institution but rather to "our rigid reactionary candidates," there is still work to be done. Another visitation was announced after the recent cardinals' meeting with the Pope. Obviously, operating seminaries such as described in Goodbye! Good Men is no way to attract heterosexuals to the priesthood.

While there would seem an obvious connection between such seminaries and the current scandals, the facts are actually otherwise. The scandals typically involve acts committed in the 1980s. The priests being exposed as serial sexual abusers are now men at least in their sixties; the notorious Shanley, just brought back to Massachusetts for trial, is 71. They are not products of the seminaries described in the book, but rather of the pre-Vatican II seminaries.

It is obvious that a painstaking analysis should be undertaken, by competent researchers, of the cases of the priests who have been exposed, looking for common patterns or threads, whatever they may be. Did a disproportionate number originate in certain dioceses, or areas of the country? Are they disproportionately alumni of certain seminaries? Were there facts about them prior to their ordination that should have raised doubts at the time or, even if not, such as now to represent warning flags, given what we know as to how these men turned out?

There is no magic formula such as a "one strike" policy that will solve the problem of sexual misconduct with minors by priests. What is a "strike"? One recent New York Times article about a California priest stated,

He has been accused of touching several children in an inappropriate way, including massaging their shoulders.

Massaging their shoulders? Again, what about one offense 20 years ago with no recurrence? And-recalling the child-care center hysteria of some years ago, and being aware of the litigation shakedown racket-is every charge to be taken as true? Relentless and inflexible severity today is not the right answer to the foolish and irresponsible leniency of 20 years ago. There is no substitute for intelligence, judgment, and integrity.

Alas, these qualities do not automatically come with a bishop's mitre. Nor does immunity to current fads and follies. A recent Times editorial rightly criticized Cardinal Law for expressing "little sense of the sinfulness of the behavior taking place under his watch," quoting him as volunteering that molesting children was "an illness" with a "moral component." Hitler could be said to have had that problem too. The characterization of criminal and immoral acts as an illness, so rampant in the "therapeutic society," discourages appropriate response. Aren't sick people supposed to deserve sympathy and treatment rather than punishment?

The head of a bank who put an embezzling cashier back handling money after "therapy" would be out of a job in short order. The Navy's policy of holding commanding officers responsible for what happens on their watch may sometimes have apparently overly severe consequences, but allowing the man in charge to excuse himself on the basis that he relied on his subordinates is a recipe for unending mismanagement. Tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner is no way to run an organization.

One hopes that the current scandal will serve as the impetus for constructive steps that will make the American church a more effective force for traditional Christian values. One definite silver lining, at any event, is a respite from the crusade for homosexual Scoutmasters.