I’m appalled at the intransigence of my readers, trying to drive me to a nervous breakdown by demanding an unending stream of posts. All I can say is—YOU try it!
Here’s some meat to quell the beasts. The Washington Post‘s “Religion” section has analyzed the Vatican’s new report on Catholic sex-abuse cases reported to the Holy See and how they were handled. It’s appalling, at least to me. But first note this caveat:
The vast majority of reported cases concern abuse that occurred years or even decades earlier. The sanctions only cover cases directly handled by the Holy See, not those handled by local diocesan tribunals, meaning the total numbers of priests defrocked or otherwise disciplined is likely far higher.
Since the total number of priests either defrocked or sanctioned adds up to the total cases, these must have been cases in which guilt was determined beforehand. The data go back to 2004.
I’ve calculated the yearly ratio of those defrocked/total punishments, which ranges from 48% to, most recently, 10%.
2004: 0.12
2005: 0.46
2006: 0.48
2007: 0.39
2008: 0.36
2009: 0.35
2010: 0.18
2011: 0.35
2012: 0.17
2013: 0.10
It seems to me that any priest guilty of sexual abuse should be not only defrocked, but reported to the local authorities. And we know how often the latter happens. As we also know, the Vatican actively campaigned to keep accused priests from being reported to the law. Unfortunately, the Post doesn’t give data on how many of these cases actually did go to secular authorities.
h/t: Matt
That’s a lot of priests being “disciplined”.
I’m sure we can all supply our own punch lines here…..
PERSONALLY, I DOAN FINKZ PRIESTS SHUD BE DEFROCKD, CUZ THEY JUS MITE ENJOY IT LIL 2 MUTCH.
This message has been sent by my Blackberry!
…ah boy…
The “discipline” often consists of being reassigned, too often to a boy’s school.
“boys'”
boys’
I’m quick!
Since the Roman Catholic Church actively subverted justice for the abused children, it would be nice to imagine them having their assets in this country seized under RICO as such a level of complicity in the abuse and the musical chairs game with the pedophiles certainly looks like a criminal enterprise.
Second, the fact that abuse cases are in the past may have something to do with the time it takes victims to begin to come forward and the fact that the church got caught in its duplicity.
Perhaps if we redefined fetus to include kids up to 16 we might get them on board.
One might surmise the US Justice Department classifies the Vatican in somewhat the same category as “too big to fail” banking interests (aka major campaign donors/principal ex-public service employers) and high $$ illegal substance enterprise.
Which is not far wrong, btw.
http://www.infowars.com/big-banks-launder-hundreds-of-billions-of-illegal-drug-cartel-money-but-refuse-to-provide-services-for-legal-marijuana/
What effect does “RICO” (assuming that you mean the American anti-corruption law) have on a distinct country?
Nothing but the church’s operations in this country should fall under it.
Not sure these stats are meaningful with out knowing the specifics of each case. I am never in favor of mandatory punishments applied in a sweeping way to classes of infractions/crime. That simply fails to often to serve justice. The fact that each year the number of cases report/investigated goes up is a good thing.
It’s pretty disgusting.
Defrocking a priest simply means they may not say mass anymore. No more host consecrating. It only means something to other Catholics, but it is no more a punishment than to tell a bus driver he may not drive any more buses. At least if they are defrocked then they can’t be moved on to another parish. Well, one hopes they can’t anyway.
The other disciplinary measures referred to are such things as “prayer and penitence”. Saying 50 Hail Marys a week may be as boring as watching paint dry, but it is not appropriate punishment for people who have been involved in serious criminal acts.
I would bet that the ‘defrocked’ cases correspond (more or less precisely) to priests who were in a relationship with an adult woman. That’s the one thing priests are not allowed to get away with (unless their bishop is OK with it).
More Holy-Shit moments supporting that Ratzinger should be made Saint of Pedophilia.
Luckily that nightjar isn’t easily spotted in the threads.
You would think that it is enough that the host joins the party…
My childhood priest was sentenced to 3 years in jail after pleading guilty to indecent assault of 47 girls ages 7 to 15 between 1954 and 1986. he died 3 months into his sentence at the age of 84 in 2006.
IIRC there was some investigation into what the Bishop knew and whether there was a cover up of the scandal but I don’t recall the outcome of that.
Yes, I think the pertinent statistic is the one not reported on.
Number of priests reported to the secular authorities.
I would suspect the number is as close to zero as possible, given the use of whole numbers. Which means for all practical purposes, the percentage of priests actually and really “punished” for crimes is 0%.
I would also be interested in seeing how often priests and the church pay civil penalties.
As rarely as possible.
which is the case for all organisations of a significant size. Nobody pays penalties if they can avoid it, though only some avoid penalties by not doing doing wrong things.
Thanks for all your continuing and copious hard work bringing interesting posts to this site! 🙂
I’d like to see a map of the rapes and the punishments. How many reports in Africa, for example?
Our local paper says that defrocking declined because it cost priests their livelihood, so they switched to lesser punishment, even though the crimes may be as serious as before.
Can we compare a company’s reaction to the same events? How about a company operating charter schools?
I doubt that anything like the totality of the extent of the abuse has been reported yet sadly. These inquiries have only focused on the places where non-church sources have blown the lid off long-term abuses that were suppressed by Church authorities.
I understand at least some orders take up a secular career (which of course might be teaching or the like, so no further ahead) too, so there is at least some fall back. But that shouldn’t matter anyway, one would think.
Atheists should run a campaign to support victims of crimes perpetrated by the frocked in reporting the crimes to secular authorities. I would love to see lawyers do pro bono work in this area to see the prosecution through to its conclusion & represent the victims of these crimes. Churches shouldn’t be able to protect their members from acts the secular state deems as crimes.
Take a week off of posting. As much as I enjoy the posts, I’ll live.
Speak for yourself.
If a truck driver did this, he’d be away for years, labeled a sex offender, raped in prison, and be forced to live under a bridge because of statutory limitations on where he can reside. These priests not only deserve to be treated like a random John Doe — they deserve even worse, because of the fact that they were (and some still are) in positions of power, with the threat of hell looming in the background.
Well, all except the hell part…
Well, the child being threathened with going to hell most probably believes in hell…
Pierre, that’s what I was trying to say. / Alnitak: That was my error for not being clear on this point. / Clarification: I don’t believe in Hell, but the threat of Hell (which I failed to articulate) can often times lead to victims having even less power. Every situation is different, but it is simply one factor of many. Again, my fault for not clarifying earlier.
Here in Puerto Rico, the justice department has been aggressively pressuring the local Catholic Church to handover the names of five priests accused of child molestation and their victims. The Church has been staling and alleges that it wants to protect the victims identities over all, and that the five priests involved have been disciplined and defrocked. The justice department wants to bring the perpetrators to justice. The Church is invoking serration of church and state as its defense-conveniently so! So far a stalemate has developed for both sides, but the state is not backing down.
Pretty shocking. Perhaps the police should simply prosecute their superiors for conspiracy. In fact, I don’t know why this isn’t done more often.
It shouldn’t be up to the Church who does and does not get prosecuted for committing a criminal offence.
‘Separation of church and state’ is not supposed to mean that the religious are not subject to secular law, but precisely the opposite.
Just the fact that there are hundreds of cases per year is appalling.
As long as the sex lives of men forced into celibacy are kept shut behind heavy doors, cases like this will persist. Yes, the Catholic Church needs to be much stronger in their condemnation of priests involved in child abuse – in a hurry