Yesterday I wrote a bit about the new report by The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), which tried to unravel the causes of pervasive sexual abuse by Catholic clergy. As Miranda Hale noted in her analysis, the report was a tissue of evasions and circumlocutions, pinning the blame not on evil child rapists in collars, but on the permissive sexual climate of the Sixties and Seventies.
Predictably, Catholics and their sympathizers are rushing to defend this egregious report. One of them, Thomas G. Plante, a professor of psychology and director of the “institute of spirituality and health” at Santa Clara University (a Jesuit college in California), defends the report in a PuffHo piece he has the temerity to call “Clergy sex abuse report: Let’s rely on science, not hysteria.” Why temerity? Because the report, much of which I’ve now read, is hardly a piece of “science.” (What it’s a piece of I’ll leave to your imagination.)
It may not be irrelevant that Plante not only teaches at a Jesuit school, but was one of the consultants in the USCCB study. Basically, he says the report is a scientific analysis and we should simply accept its findings. If you believe that, I can sell you Manhattan for $24. Download the report at this page and see for yourself (warning: it’s 143 pages long).
I just want to highlight two of Plante’s claims. The first is this: “Other organizations did it too!”
Another false claim being made is that other organizations — the Boy Scouts, public schools, Protestant and other faith congregations — don’t have this problem because they deal with it when it happens. Again, data shows that the level and type of abuse in the Catholic Church is consistent with other large organizations with men who had unlimited access to children during this time frame.
That’s just wrong: there are no statistics comparing the levels of child rape by Catholic clergy with those from these other organizations, which also include other faiths. And how could there be, given that much of the abuse by Catholic clergy (and by some of these other organizations as well) was either not reported or covered up? Indeed, the report admits this (p. 17):
As such, it is impossible to accurately compare the rate of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church to rates of abuse in other organizations. Nonetheless, it is useful to review what is known about the various organizations to provide context for the incidence of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.
In the end, the addition of other organizations like the Boy Scouts is simply an attempt to exculpate the clergy by showing that they were not that unusual in their immorality. And do note that on p. 17 of the USCCB report, the authors mention one earlier comparison of religious versus secular abuse—but quickly defuse it:
Sullivan and Beech also found that abuse by religious leaders was more common than that committed by teachers or child care professionals. However, the authors observed considerable crossover in roles; many religious professionals worked in a teaching capacity while teachers worked in residential or religious settings.
WTF?
Now there may have been a point to discussing these other groups if their inclusion helped pinpoint the causes of that abuse or, more important, identify ways to prevent it. But that stuff isn’t in the report. These other groups are included for one reason alone—to make the Church seem less evil. But given the scale of the Catholic Church’s abuse, and its coverup at the highest levels (something not matched by other groups they discuss, like Big Brothers Big Sisters, public schools, or the Episcopal Church), this is simply displacement activity: Other folks did it too!
But this is the part of Plante’s piece I find most offensive:
Let’s also be very clear that the report found that the vast majority of clergy sex offenders are not pedophiles, but rather situational generalists violating whomever they had access to and not seeking out young pre-pubescent children of either gender. They violated whoever was available to them at the time.
As Miranda pointed out in her piece, the USCCB piece reduces the incidence of “pedophilia” among clergy simply by arbitrarily redefining it—lowering the age of victims from 13 (as defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) to 1o. That lowers the incidence of “pedophiles” from 73% to 22%! And do note the replacement of the word “pedophiles” (which, as a commenter pointed out, really should be “child rapists”), with “situational generalists,” a neutral word lacking negative connotations. What is a situational generalist? Somebody who has abused at least one victim 12 or younger and one 15 or older! Well that certainly changes things! Nobody can be a pedophile if he’s raped at least one older child. Plante’s euphemistic redefinition is an offense to any decent person, much less to science.
So much for “science.” Susan Jacoby, at The Washington Post, has a take more accurate than Plante’s:
This “study” boils down to an official conclusion that a lot of those priests molesting children who trusted them were, well, just driven a little crazy by all those pictures of their contemporaries enjoying themselves in the Summer of Love. If only young men and women unconstrained by the church or vows of celibacy didn’t seem to be having so much fun, why those priests would have had the self-control to keep their hands off altar boys!
The current pope just loves the old Latin liturgy. Too bad the hierarchy, which paid for this responsibility-shifting report, doesn’t like saying, Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault. Oh, wait, it’s really the fault of the Pill and miniskirts and pot-smoking hippies and Stonewall. The culture made made me do it.
Is the implication of the reoprt that priestly pedophilia did not occur much before the sixties, and that it radically increased during the sixties. Somehow, I doubt this is the case. Anyone have any idea about this?
“situational generalists” — Oh, puh-lease!!!
If someone can figure out by what mechanism an increase in divorces would infect a celibate priest into becoming a child molester, please let me know.
Besides, there’s good reason to doubt there even was an increase in the 50s and 60s. Considering the numbers were gathered by a census of the paroches, how many cases from before the 1950 do you think they can remember or be bothered to track down?
Unless, of course, the church kept meticulous records. Which begs the question why they had to use a census. Or why the church decided to “forget” about those records long after those “devious sixties” were over.
I think you mean it raises the question of why they had to use a census. Begging the question means something quite different.
You’re right, sorry.
Even the Vatican documents catholic child abuse – and cover up – during the 19the century: The recently ‘canonized’ Australian catholic ‘saint’ Mary MacKillop (1842 –1909) was temporarily ‘excommunicated’ in 1871 for exposing a child raping priest called ‘father’ Keating.
Does ‘managing to expose a child raping priest’ count as one of her miracles?
No, no, no! That she became a ‘saint’ in spite of her treacherous behavior is presumably nothing else than a question of money, and maybe also of papal politics – she being the first Australian saint.
Not only that, it seems like the ones “specializing” in boys aged 11-12 and girls younger than 13 are also “generalists”. It’s 42.1% of all offenders, and it falls into the category “all other generalists”.
A beautiful example of an Orwellian Newspeak language.
Ï spit in that general direction.
Jerry, I think you have the numbers reversed – it should be lowered the age of victims from 13 to 10, not the other way around as you wrote it.
It’s amazing how this issue turns Catholics into contortionists when all it took was a little honest and actually caring about it when it became a problem. Instead they continue to whitewash the problem…you’d think they might learn.
Indeed, that was a mistake; now fixed. Thanks!
On the subject of typos, there’s a subject / verb number mismatch in the title — either “Catholics whitewash the whitewash” or “A Catholic whitewashes the whitewash.” I’m guessing the former….
Cheers,
b&
Speaking of contortions, IIRC they _also_ deviated from the DVM guide*
by making the actual offense, times 2, the definition of the diagnosis.
By the undulations and the cross-purpose shenanigans, we can only conclude that the catholic church lacks, not only “divine” guidance, but a spine.
________
* Guide, since a non-licensed doctor wouldn’t be able to make actual diagnoses.
this sh*t is really the one thing that makes completely angry about religious apologists, etc. i spent part of my day, after posting the link to the analysis, yesterday on another forum discussing this with similar sympathizers. comments such as “it’s not as bad as the media makes it out to be” and “other religious institutions do it too!”, and even a “they have a right to defend themselves” (GAG). last i checked, no one is discounting the fact that child rape exists outside of church institutions. these apologists and blame shifters don’t seem to understand/grasp how the church has simply reinforced this behavior by sweeping it under the rug or pointing fingers every where but at themselves.
Yes indeed, they have a right to defend themselves…in a court of law. For being child rapists.
Anything else is merely protecting child rapists.
Or if they are innocent or misrepresented.
The first they have given up. The later, *they* are the ones misrepresenting.
Which pulls it back to your analysis.
I am rather coming to think of this as the Krupke report….
Dear kindly Sergeant Krupke,
You gotta understand,
It’s just our bringin’ up-ke
That gets us out of hand.
Our mothers all are junkies,
Our fathers all are drunks.
Golly Moses, natcherly we’re punks!
Gee, Officer Krupke, we’re very upset;
We never had the love that ev’ry child oughta get.
We ain’t no delinquents,
We’re misunderstood.
Deep down inside us there is good!
and so on….
Or perhaps, the Ernestine Reply: “We don’t care; we don’t have to. We’re the RCC!”
Even after horribly manipulating data and words, their best defense is that they are no worse than the rest of us! And yet they are morally superior. Unquestionably. How dare we not accord them Respect!
It *is* suspicious that, for an organization with a direct, infallible line from God, they never got a memo saying ‘raping children is bad, mmkay?”
The memo exists, and says the contrary: rape is good for the rapist. Go.
“They violated whoever was available to them at the time.”
Because that’s better than only molesting children?
WTF? Seriously. WTF?
Yes, how is this supposed to be significantly better? “Yes, they raped children, but they really would have raped anyone, so it’s not so bad”?
Truly I am blessed. Because I choose to rape anyone.
[/pukes]
Oops. Need those quotes around that:
“Truly I am blessed. Because I choose to rape anyone.”
[/pukes]
“Other people are child rapists, too” is neither an effective excuse, nor an adequate defense in a court of law.
Other child rapists go to prison. Other child rapists are not protected by their organization. Other child rapists are not transferred to a new location so they can continue their pattern of predation. Other child rapists spend the rest of their lives on the “sexual offenders” list, causing a limitation on their access to children.
What part of “it’s a felony” does Mr. Plante not understand?
BTW: I was going to post that as a comment to HuffPo, but am unwilling to allow the site access to my personal information, as it requests during the log-in process.
If anyone who has an account there would care to recapitulate or copy wholesale my comments, I would not object.
“…the vast majority of clergy sex offenders are… situational generalists violating whomever they had access to…”
HOW IS THAT ANY BETTER?!
And how is it that the Church didn’t restrict their access to “anyone”?
How is it that the Church didn’t drop a dime on these predators? How is it that each and every priest accused of molesting a child didn’t get arrested? Why were they not prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law? Why are they not on the sexual offenders’ list?
Why has apparently nothing been done to help the victims of abuse…which continues even today.
From the Associated Press:
On and on and on it goes. Because the Church is amoral down to its very core.
This is exactly the problem – why was this an internal study? Why are the secular authorities not investigating the church itself, instead of just individual priests? All this report does is implicate the organization itself even further in the support and cover up of child rape. Looking for blame without looking at the perpetrators and the culture in which they were protected shows a level of complicity that can only be described as criminal.
Votes, mostly.
Seriously though, you’re quite right. A division of the FBI needs to be set aside to slowly but surely crunch through the hierarchy and bring them down. These guys aren’t the drug dealers from The Wire, they’ve still got all their documents lying around, and use normal phones.
It is on record that this behavior has been noted since the very genesis of the church. If you slap lots of lipstick on a ‘situational generalist’ pig, it is still a PIG!
I don’t really think it’s fair to call the situation putting lipstick on a pig.
It’s more like putting lipstick on an alligator and telling people it just wants to give you a kiss.
If I remember correctly, they returned that computer to the family? And it has since been destroyed. I will have to wait until I get him to pull that source/link.
Does it seem hypocritical to anyone that Catholics (and most other faiths) preach personal responsibility: We have the free will to be good or evil and go to heaven or hell, respectively. Yet when “situational generalism” (UGH!) arises among priests, “society” is to blame.
Because that makes things just so much better.
It’s not just the raping of children that was peculiar to the catholic church, it was the continual cover up that was peculiar to them, a cover up that they are still desperately trying to defend. Why don’t these arseholes recognise that?
Looked at in context it’s apparent that this report is actually part of the cover up of the cover up.
There’s no avoiding the fact that a number of priests were apparently sex-addicted sociopaths who had to be kept away from the farm animals. Now the important goal now is to distract attention from the fact that there was a cover up at all.
(Sigh.) Time to link this again: Vatican Excuse Bingo
I really do want the world to pin the Catholic church to the f’ing wall on this (apologize for the expletive, I’m just so incensed by this coverup). The Catholic church has institutionalized child rape for CENTURIES up to the present day. Short of murder, is there ANY crime more the repeated physical and psychological torture of individuals too young and innocent to protect themselves. I want stories like Miranda Hale’s on the front page of the paper demolishing the lunatic defences of religious apologists. How dare they! Thomas Plante: how dare you?!
Every country should conduct independent investigations and prosecute these pedophiles. Once found guilty, feed them to the lions.
Not fair to the lions. Besides, if they (the lions) have any self-respect, they’d refuse to eat the child-rapists.
German biologist Ernst Haeckel referred to Jesuits, and the Catholic clergy in general, as “men in black”. Not far off.
So, just to be clear, the arguments offered are:
– This was mainly a problem in the ’60s and ’70s
– It wasn’t (just) pedophilia
– They only raped kids because other victims weren’t available
– Other organizations did it
– The seminarians weren’t taught that child rape was wrong, so they didn’t know
And these arguments are supposed to mitigate things how?
Cerainly those arguments don’t mitigating the damage done to the lives of victims and their families. The Church, it seems to me, is only trying to mitigate the damage done to its image. Just not very succesfully. It comes across as desparate straw-clutching.
It also makes them look even more evil, imo.
*me to Church* “This is how you choose to respond?! Holy crap, you still don’t get it!”
“don’t mitigating”
well, I think you all know how that should actually read
Raping children is okay if you do it in a situationally general way.
One good thing about this is that it documents the depth of their disingenuity* I can’t imagine that it will work. Maybe it’ll have no effect, but it oughtta serve to have the same effect as the Nixon White House’s stonewalling.
*It would be nice if spellcheck could learn that this is how the word is spelled.
Just one question… where was Jesus when this happened?
Or maybe WWJR: Who Would Jesus Rape?
well, I’m sure Jesus would claim that should be situationally dependent.
I’m sure it would depend on the availability of
needy boys who have family issues
In Heaven, in the Great Cathedral, in the choir room, situationally generalizing a bunch of cherubim.
Why do you ask?
Cheers,
b&
Indeed. Aren’t these preists supposed to be called of god? As in god, who knows all, appointed these specific
guysrapists and said: “yep, this is how I want it.”Tulse wrote: “And these arguments are supposed to mitigate things how?”
It seems obvious to me that the Catholic Church desperately wants to be rid of this child-rape scandal, so they’re hoping to get all the facts stated in a published document, then there won’t be more embarrassing questions. They can just point to this USCCB report and move on!
I haven’t read the report myself, but did they address the criminal activity that goes all the way to the top? That would be the institutional cover-up. I’m aware that all organizations can have some bad apples, and maybe the Church had more than its share because of its celibacy policy which would mainly appeal to people with sexual pathologies, but what implicates the Church as an institution is not all the individual cases of child-rape, but the institutional cover-up.
In a way, this is not at all surprising.
In order to believe in a religion, one has to practice self-deception. So we have a group of people who have honed their skills at self-deception, in order to be involved in a religious community. It is to be expected that they are likely to use those same skill in other aspects of their lives.
Anybody and everybody who defends the Church in general and this report in particular is immoral, evil, and an actual threat to society and our children.
All else is commentary.
b&
As I said yesterday, the part of the “Old Liturgy” that Ratzi loves best is Canon Law and if we think this excuse is wordy, “his law” has more weasle words than this poor excuse. To me, saying that other organizations do it does not make it right. I suspect that the “others” do report it more often but Ratzi’s Omerta code says never. Was Fr. Marcial Maciel Degollado affected by the morals of the 60’s here in the U.S? He founded his Legion Of Christ in Mexicao solely for the purpose of getting his hands on children. The Mexican athorities were about to apprehend him, but when Ratzi became Pope, he arranged for him to retire in the U.S. so he could do “penance” without harrament from Mexican police. I’m sure his pension from the Holy See was adequate to allow him to live and pursue his “hobby” until he died in Houston,TX 30 January 2008.
“Situational generalist”
Uh-huh. Well, I’m a situational generalist when it comes to food. I’ll eat whatever I come across first. It may be a dozen doughnuts, but you can’t say I’ve actually eaten something unhealthy, because it might just as easily have been a salad!
No. If you rape a child, you are a child-rapist. End of story.
This is exactly the issue that I’m talking about. Again, I’m not saying that Plante’s answer was satisfactory. I’m just saying that the “other folks did it too” is a valid argument that the Catholic church does not attract pedophiles – valid in the sense that the conclusion follows from the premises. The problem is that the premises need support.
Please explain in more depth how the use of “other folks did it too” in any way negates the possibility that the church attracts more than its share?
Me thinks you jumped to an unsupported conclusion!
Should the title of this post be:
“A Catholic whitewashes the whitewash”
(no “s” on Catholic)?
Correctly and powerfully stated. I especially like the reference to euphemisms to blunt the actual name of child rapist. When “child abuse” becomes “discipline” we fail to understand the gravity of the issue. When “assault and battery” becomes “domestic violence” we don’t take the crime seriously. Let’s name the crime, confront the offender, and protect the victims.
“Others did it too”… This reminds me of the smack-down Hitch and Fry gave to the Catholics. The Catholic Church claims to be morally superior to all other organizations, indeed they claim to be morally infallible. If the best they can hope for is to prove that they aren’t WORSE than everybody else, then in the words of Mr Fry, “WHAT ARE YOU FOR?!”
And, of course, they ARE worse than everybody else. Other organizations don’t protect their child-rapists, shifting them around to a new area, with a new batch of kids. Other organizations don’t act like spoiled brats, blaming everybody else but themselves.
If the Catholic Church teaches one damn worthwhile thing, it’s that the claim of moral infallibility leads to the worst morality human beings could ever practice.
The only good thing is that Plante is getting a richly-deserved smackdown in the article’s comments section.
“situational generalists”
I have long noted the US (some say West Coast only) tendency to qualify a noun with an adjective formed from an abstract noun of exactly the same meaning to create an orotund tautology. (eg “refutational elenchus”)
This is a similar construction, but what is striking is that although the two words mean different things, the expresssion is empty of any reference to what it is talking about.
A situational generalist might be an animal that browsed on fruit in the forest, but also hunted down prey on the plains, or a man who cruised for men if he happened to be in a gay bar and women in cougar bars (I just made those up, but they probably exist).
Now if instead they had coined “ephebo-padophiles” that would have meant what they meant, but been all too clear to suit their purpose.
It would be interesting to see how often the report uses the passive voice, to have actions with no actors.
“ephebo-pedophiles” (I tried to Americanise “paed-” and got it wrong.
The Vatican’s Guidelines to Bishops for dealing with claims of priest sexual abuse was released on May 16:
http://www.sexualabuseclaimsblog.com/2011/05/vaticans_abuse_guidelines_acti.html