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	The "60s Made Them Do It By Jon Carroll San Francisco Chronicle May 19, 2011 http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/05/19/DD3S1JHQ9L.DTL We might want to be skeptical about all polls, studies and reports. They invariably - one might say inevitably - reflect the biases of whoever is asking the questions. Less obviously, the studies might reflect the opinions of whoever is paying for the poll or study. Third, until we know what questions were asked, and of whom, and when, we can't get a real handle on the reliability of such samplings of reality. Not that studies aren't valuable. It's just that there's a lot of junk science along with the good stuff, and caveat emptor, as Cicero used to say. Now comes a new report that purports to uncover the reasons behind the Catholic Church's sex abuse scandals. Here's what Laurie Goodstein of the New York Times has to say: "Instead, the report says, the abuse occurred because priests who were poorly prepared and monitored, and were under stress, landed amid the social and sexual turmoil of the 1960s and '70s. Known occurrences of sexual abuse of minors by priests rose sharply during those decades, the report found, and the problem grew worse when the church's hierarchy responded by showing more care for the perpetrators than the victims." A few weeks ago, we had a prominent Catholic layman writing that, in essence, the gays made them do it. Now we have a slightly tonier argument prepared by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and paid for largely by official organizations of the Roman Catholic Church. The argument is that somehow the zeitgeist got the better of priests and their vows. It was a time of turmoil. I remember the turmoil; I remember the debates. At no time do I remember anyone ever saying, "I'm sorry, but all this marijuana and dirty talking makes me want to molest boys." I don't mean to be flip here - I was there, and it wasn't like that. Maybe somehow priests felt they had more permission, but the urge to criminal sexual behavior is a minority taste, and not even 100 listenings to "White Rabbit" could have turned a suppressed priest with legal tastes into an exploiter of children. As a friend of mine said, perhaps we should blame the Inquisition on the permissive culture in 15th century Spain. Of course, there could be another reason. The researchers at John Jay were basically studying the bishops' own records. It is possible that reporting went up, fueled in part by the sexual candor of the late '60s, whereas the incidence of child abuse stayed relatively stable. There's no way to prove that either way, but it's certainly a valid counter-theory to "The '60s made me do it." There's also some controversy about the report's use of the word "prepubescent." In the report, the cutoff is 10 and under; the American Psychiatric Association favors the definition 13 and under. Only 22 percent of the abused children were 10 or under. If the latter definition is used, then over 50 percent of the children fall into that category. It does lay the report open to charges of minimizing the nature of the scandal, which is what the bishops have been trying to do all along. On the other hand, the researchers may have had valid methodological reasons. Put that in the "not proven" category. The report also has another interesting finding. Again according to Goodstein's story, the report says that as soon as gay men began entering the priesthood in large numbers (in the late '70s), the number of reports of sexual abuse of minors began to level off and then drop. I have no idea what that means, but it does indicate that the old canard about gay men "recruiting" little boys seems to fail the squint test. Or maybe all that sexual freedom stuff had died out by the late '70s. Wait: No, it hadn't. I'm all for the church trying to clean up its act. I am certain that lots of people within the church knew little of these scandals - that's how good the cover-up was. Commissioning studies and reports to delineate the exact nature of the problem is a good step. I see the same divide in the church that I see in secular organizations. A very small number of people, almost all of them men, hold the secrets, smooth over the rough spots, protect the good name of the church while trying to hush up the people who have come forward with horror stories. The parishioners don't approve of the cover-up, but they are powerless to do anything about it. Oligarchy rules, whatever arena we are in. Where was the church when it was needed? Down at the Fillmore listening to "Piece of my Heart." Who gives anything to poor Tom? Whom the foul fiend hath led through fire and through flame, and through ford and whirlpool, o'er bog and quagmire; that hath laid knives under his pillow and halters in his pew; set ratsbane by his porridge, made him proud of jcarroll@sfchronicle.com.
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