Mystical Body in Black Sackcloth, Canberra Times, May 20, 2011

Mystical Body in Black Sackcloth

Canberra Times
May 20, 2011

http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/opinion/editorial/general/mystical-body-in-black-sackcloth/2170432.aspx

The Catholic Church, or at least its United States branch, dragged itself out this week for further ritual public shaming about the sexual abuse of children by priests. It was as ever an unedifying sight, if one apparently more seemly for the thoroughness for which the Church had examined its conscience, loudly and noisily, and determined to sin no more.

It appeared to have some assurance that the epidemic of sexual abuse is now over, having reached its peak in the '60s and '70s and dropping dramatically afterwards a fact somewhat concealed by the fact that most cases, even ones 40 years old, came to notice only over the past 10 years.

This is not to say that priestly abuse of trust no longer happens but it seems now back to ''normal'' levels, about a 10th of the old rate. Between 3 and 6per cent of priests were the subject of allegations; only a few had large numbers of victims, although these swelled enormously the number of cases.

Moreover, everyone now agrees that the handling of the problem was shameful, with far too much focus on the cover-up, and far too many attempts to protect the institution (and its money) rather than on reaching out to the victims. Much has now changed. Just as importantly, the Church is now far more self-conscious about prevention by education and safe environment programs and reducing opportunities for potential abusers to be alone with potential victims, by increasing the risks that abusers will be caught, by focusing on some matters known to accentuate abuse (such as stress and alcoholism among priests) and by removing ''excuses'' for inappropriate behaviour.

The American report (uscb.org) is of a sort which would be familiar to students of institutions and bureaucracies around the world. In parts it might be describing incompetence, mismanagement and a failure to ''get it'' about sexual harassment at an Australian Defence Force Academy, institutionalised bullying and brutality in a prison, or the trials of a Department of Immigration simply unable to manage the concepts and principles of natural justice and administrative fairness.

If the Church emerges dirty and grubby, the surprise is not so much that its inward-looking, largely unaccountable and hierarchical structures floundered: better trained bureaucrats, administrators and managements have made a complete mess of new things and new expectations, and have had to learn from experience. If obvious people-management deficiencies in bishops are made up by the Holy Spirit, it has not been obvious to the laity.

The really astonishing thing is that the Church seems to know and understand so little about sin. It is, after all, its business, its speciality, its thing. And not simply as a church but as a body which says it is the Church. A purist might say that the business of a Christian Church is to lead good people to God by encouraging and reinforcing the teachings of Jesus. No Catholic would disagree. But Jesus focused on the sinners. Like a doctor focuses on the ill. The business of bringing man to the divine involves a lot of focus on the problems of our being human.

What is interesting about the report apart from the closesimilarities with the Australian experience is that it was subcontracted out to independent researchers, at John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York. The multi-million dollar research program had access to all US diocesan files of all cases of sexual abuse, actual or alleged, and, of course, a lot of secular criminological and psychological literature about sexual abuse, paedophilia, and other matters. Theology, or the Church's supposedly specialised knowledge of sin, did not come into it.

Its conclusions are challenging; some are convincing. With some that are not, the weakness is more one of method not least the seeming incapacity of social scientists, even ANU economists, to understand basic principles of statistics than of a want of inquiring spirit or refusal to go down difficult paths. Yet even where my instinct is to say that I am not convinced, I have to check to see whether I am consulting my prejudices or my critical scepticism.

The research team thinks the most important cause of the abuse epidemic was its social and historical context, which included the dramatic changes in attitude to matters sexual that occurred from the '60s, as well as a fast developing (if still imperfectly known) understanding of sexual victimisation.

It looked as how priests were trained; at psychological profiles of priests (abusers and non-abusers); at the responses by the Church to allegations; what we know about the sexual victimisation of children; and at situational crime prevention the science of what a wry Catholic might call ''avoiding occasions of sin''.

The report, essentially, blames the times, rather than the Devil. The 1960s involved a revolution in popular ideas, especially about sexuality, for which some priests were ill-prepared.

One could not predict who would become an abuser. Psychological studies of priests who abused and non-abusers do not show much. Priest abusers were similar to other sex offenders in the general population, and the majority were not, strictly, paedophiles those who focus on pre-pubescent children. For some, targets were pubescent and post-pubescent children. Though boys were the victims in about 80 per cent of cases, this seemed as much a reflection of opportunity rather than the orientation of the abuser. Priests who had a homosexual identity were not significantly more likely to abuse children.

The report says most offenders were priests who had been ordained before 1960. This is a maddening finding, hardly explored, yet full of a significance that is not discussed. These were men who had been ordained before the Second Vatican Council, at a time of both Church triumphalism and self-certainty. They are of the same generation as those now in authority positions in the Church. Many conservative Catholics, including some of the priests of that generation, feel that the ''opening of the windows'' caused by the council created much confusion and decline in the Church, including the much dreaded moral relativism. Yet the implication of some such as George Cardinal Pell is that the abusers and backsliders are generally of my generation the one that followed this one.

The implications of Vatican II are little explored. Nor is a softening fact that it was this generation of priests typically now in their 70s that was most numerous, indeed still is. There was an upsurge of vocations after World War II; numbers of new entrants began to decline dramatically from the mid-1960s. We are not given good information about rates of abuse in each generation; it is, in fact, not clear that it is higher in this cohort.

The report says that ''factors that were invariant during the time period addressed, such as celibacy, were not responsible for the increase or decline in abuse cases over this period.'' This will not satisfy some critics who believe that the answer to all current problems in the Church is the abandonment of an unmarried priesthood. But those who want that should, on reflection, be thankful that they are not finding themselves arguing that the abuse of children and young people is displacement activity by randy men not allowed to have wives. The case for married priests (or priestesses) lies elsewhere. It has not been authoritatively resolved, despite what bishops are forced to say they think.

But methinks that the moral confusion of priests (and, for that matter, the moral blindness of many bishops in coping with allegations of abuse) owes as much to change in the Church, as in society. More speculatively, as much to the collapse of Church support systems and structures for priests as to a reduction of priestly calibre. The modern priest may be better prepared for the priesthood, including by teachers now well versed in psychology and matters of sexuality, but they have no more definite answers to problems of loneliness, of safe relationships, or temptation than anyone else.

Particularly appalling and troubling is the material on the type of excuse making or denial. In most respects it does not greatly differ from that of others who abuse trust or authority, but it is rich coming from pastors. The Church has undergone a particular purgatory, without any evidence that its clerical abuse of children is more common than abuse by Protestant clergy, teachers, youth workers, or social workers. That neither excuses nor explains the Catholic problem, but the fact that the Church is facing it, if still inadequately, may mean it comes out better and quicker, if somewhat more humiliated by instant publicity, than some others.

The report does not deal with abuse by teachers and religious brothers and sisters, though I am not sure that including them would make a vast difference to the findings. Maddening again, however, and possibility more fit for explanation in an educational or institutional context, would be information about the connection between physical and sexual abuse, and for that matter, emotional abuse and neglect and sexual and physical abuse. That and the discussion of the heresy of Jansenism to which it leads must still be faced by many in the hierarchy.