John Paul II rejected the Prophet
John Paul II was like Herod who beheaded the prophet John the Baptist - he refused to listen to the warnings of Fr. Thomas Doyle, the formost prophet of the priest sexual scandal, and had him fired from his post.
http://justgoodcompany.org/2.1/doyle.htm
Here is a report from the famed Tom Doyle, the Dominican canon lawyer who warned the U.S. bishops in 1982 about the looming priest-sex-abuse crisis. He was not only ignored, most tellingly by the head of one bishops' subcommittee, Cardinal Bernard Law, but pressure was put on the pope's diplomatic office in Washington, D.C., where Doyle was working, to have him fired. He left and joined the U.S. Army Chaplain's Corps, then went on to become a star witness in many victim's lawsuit.
Here, Doyle makes a searing critique of the report of the U.S. Bishops' National Review Board and of the long-awaited John Jay Study, released on Feb. 27, 2004. So many questions remain unanswered, and unless we misjudge the state of the question, we do not believe the U.S. bishops will be able to say they have even come close to accountability here.
The John Jay Report andThe National Review Board Report
By Thomas P. Doyle
Release of the reports by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the U.S. Bishops’ National Review Board marks an important landmark in the long and painful era of clergy sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. It is far from the end of the era. The reports along with the Gavin Self-Study, released in January, do not constitute exoneration of the U.S. Bishops.
These reports would not have come about were it not for the fact that intense and unrelenting pressure has been put on the U.S. bishops as a result of widespread revelations that they have covered up and enabled sexual abuse of children, adolescents and adults by clergy and religious.
This era began in the early 80’s and not in January, 2002. The gradual uncovering of the Bishops’ collective and individual responsibility for this nightmare has been the direct result of the persistence of victims and survivors; honest and detailed reporting by the media and the demands for justice in the civil law arena. Had none of this happened, the cover-up would have continued until some other point of critical mass was reached, possibly well into the future.
Thousands of sexually abused adults, victims from past decades, would have remained unaided and suffering and unknown numbers of clerics and religious would have been continually shifted around unchecked. Finally, the Catholic laity reached the point where they would no longer tolerate seeing their children raped and ruined. The courts and the press, fed up with an uncaring monolithic power structure, responded when the institutional church could not.
It is imperative that we understand that these three reports have told only part of the story.
The unasked questions and still hidden information is possibly more important than the data
and conclusions which are published:
1. Preliminary glimpses of the John Jay Survey indicate that the bishops claim that 50% of the accused clerics had one victim. This statement defies the data provided by mental health professionals concerning the average number of victims of sexual abusers, both pedophiles and ephebophiles.
2. The reports do not indicate how often bishops and religious superiors reported alleged sex abuse cases to the law enforcement authorities or child protective agencies.
3. The John Jay Survey does not give a clear differentiation of the ratio between diocesan and religious order clerics.
4. Do the reports clearly indicate the number of accused bishops and what happened to them?
5. Do the reports provide statistics on the number of accused clerics and religious who were moved at least once from one assignment to another after having been accused of sexual abuse?
6. Do the reports reveal credible financial details such as the amount of money expended from church (diocesan and religious community) funds for the following?
a. Treatment of accused clerics/religious
b. Legal fees for accused clerics/religious
c. Retirement maintenance for suspended clerics/religious
d. Treatment fees for victims
7. Do the reports reveal the treatment costs paid by insurance carriers?
8. Do the reports reveal the numbers of victims personally visited by bishops and religious superiors?
9. Do the reports reveal the number of civil and criminal court actions?
a. The number of criminal actions and convictions
b. The number of civil suits filed, settled, dropped
c. The number of confidentiality agreements entered into between dioceses/religious orders and victims, and the number of these that were at the insistence or request of the victims
d. The number of countersuits filed by perpetrators or dioceses/religious orders
10. Do the reports reveal the exact number of diocesan bishops who knowingly moved accused clerics from one place to another?
11. Do the reports reveal the number of bishops who accepted known abusers from other dioceses or religious orders and allowed them to work in ministry?
12. If the bishops are sincere about their commitment to provide a safe atmosphere for children and their promises of transparency and accountability, then why are the Catholic bishops in several States the most strident opponents of revisions to the Statutes of Limitations and the expansion of the reporting laws to include clergy? In these instances, why are the bishops lobbying so vehemently using false information about canon law and first amendment concerns.
13. In how many cases in the reporting period did the bishops and religious superiors comply faithfully to all of the requirements in canon law especially the requirement for a documented inquiry into the validity of an allegation?
14. How many victims have committed suicide and how many accused clerics/religious have committed suicide
15. How many dioceses and religious orders have provided complete records to law enforcement officials, judicial officials or the media and how many dioceses are resisting such disclosure at the present time?
16. How many priests have been laicized and suspended
a. Willingly and by their own request
b. Against their will at the request of the bishop
c. With and without any due process
As we review the statistics and other information we must keep in mind that all data was provided by the bishops to investigators or other persons either selected and appointed by the bishops themselves or employed by organizations selected by them. Furthermore the same bishops claimed for years that they had no way of providing statistical data on clergy sex abuse cases because of the independence of dioceses one from another and the inability of the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops to compel or even suggest uniform case following and reporting.
Some will point to the so-called study done by the Catholic Anti-Defamation League which claims that the number of Catholic clergy abusers is no higher than in other professions including clergy of other denominations. Even a cursory look at this report will reveal multiple questions that seriously impugn its relevance and credibility. Nevertheless since some bishops (e.g., Archbishop Edwin O’Brien of the Archdiocese for the Military Services) have used this highly questionable data to deflect the seriousness of the real situation the erroneous data and conclusions should be addressed.
To compare the Catholic clergy to the general population and thereby attempt to minimize the seriousness of the problem of sexual dysfunction among the clergy is outrageous. The Catholic Church is not a secular corporation but a religious body that insists that loyal members comply with a highly restrictive code of sexual ethics. The Vatican is a signatory of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. The bishops have collectively and individually condemned violence and abuse against children. Yet the institutional church has intentionally conspired to allow known sexual offenders to escape criminal prosecution. By failing to remove known or suspected abusers it has enabled these offenders to prey upon multiple victims. It has not only intentionally ignored the plight of victims but has revictimized them in countless cases in order to obtain their silence or defeat their attempts at receiving justice through the civil court system. The trust expected of the leadership and clergy of the Catholic church and the compliance and respect demanded by these same leaders and clerics means quite simply, that the Catholic church cannot be compared to other social entities or other religious denominations.
The clerical elite are held to a much higher standard.
This era of revelation has focused in great part on the sexual abuse of children and young people. It has incorrectly been referred to as “the pedophilia problem” in part because the earliest publicly known offender was a serial pedophile. Some have tried to minimize the issue with the hardly newsworthy revelation that a small minority are true pedophiles while most victims are above the age of reason. Again, a resounding “So what!” In fact, the majority of offenders have preyed upon young adolescents, most of whom were male. The age matters not.
Sexual abuse is sexual abuse whether the victim is 6 or 13 or 33 years of age. The damage is deep and long lasting.
Some will claim that most of the victims who have recently come forward are reporting events that happened years ago. This is irrelevant because the damage done is life long and does not abate as years pass. In nearly every case of this kind the victims remained silent out of fear or because they deeply buried the painful memories. Only recently has there been sufficient support for many of these older victims to come forward without the fear that they would be disbelieved and summarily dismissed by the church and by society.
Yet another claim is that there has been a dramatic reduction in the number of contemporary complaints. This too is misleading and almost irrelevant because it often takes years for a young victim to come forward. It has also been much more difficult for bishops and religious superiors to cover up and simply move accused offenders from place to place. The intense public scrutiny has made such actions close to impossible. Nevertheless it is highly probable that in the near future we will see a dramatic upsurge in complaints from certain ethnic communities where reporting of child sexual abuse was socially discouraged and where the position of the priest was more protected.
The revelations of widespread sexual abuse of children and young people has surfaced concern for another aspect of clergy sexual abuse that is deep seated, equally insidious yet somewhat protected by a less than sensitive society. Some experts claim that although clergy sexual abuse of the young is the most dramatic aspect to surface it is not the most numerous. There is far more sexual abuse of age appropriate victims, most of whom are women. In spite of the awareness of this problem by the bishops, they have steadfastly refused give it serious consideration. Historically the institutional church has promulgated more disciplinary legislation to curb sexual abuse of adult victims, again mostly women, than any other category of victims.
The obvious reason is because this has been the largest class of victims. The present age is no exception yet the bishops and clergy in general as well as a significant segment of the general population remain in culpable denial, refusing to honestly confront the issue or failing to see validity in the immense power differential that allows unscrupulous professionals to prey on vulnerable clients.
There is yet another dimension of sexual, physical and spiritual abuse that must be confronted and this is the abuse meted out in schools and orphanages by religious women. Long protected for a variety of reasons, the sisters and nuns have not yet been forced to answer on as widespread a scale as clerics and male religious yet their victims are every bit as numerous and the scars and trauma inflicted every bit as deep and deadly. The dramatic example seen in the recent exposure of the Magdalene Sisters serves as a prophetic reminder that this bastion of abuse must also be named, confronted and its victims healed.
The hardest questions provoked by these studies are the very questions that the church’s governmental structure and clerical elite refuse to face. These are the questions that will not go away no matter how much effort the papacy and the bishops fight to keep them hidden. These questions cut to the heart of the matter and they are about two fundamental issues: the governmental structure of the Catholic Church and the obsession of its incumbents with their power and, the relevance and authenticity of mandatory celibacy. Until these questions are honestly faced, these studies and any others that may follow remain far from complete.
February 26, 2004
http://justgoodcompany.org/2.1/doyle.htm
http://justgoodcompany.org/2.1/doyle.htm
Here is a report from the famed Tom Doyle, the Dominican canon lawyer who warned the U.S. bishops in 1982 about the looming priest-sex-abuse crisis. He was not only ignored, most tellingly by the head of one bishops' subcommittee, Cardinal Bernard Law, but pressure was put on the pope's diplomatic office in Washington, D.C., where Doyle was working, to have him fired. He left and joined the U.S. Army Chaplain's Corps, then went on to become a star witness in many victim's lawsuit.
Here, Doyle makes a searing critique of the report of the U.S. Bishops' National Review Board and of the long-awaited John Jay Study, released on Feb. 27, 2004. So many questions remain unanswered, and unless we misjudge the state of the question, we do not believe the U.S. bishops will be able to say they have even come close to accountability here.
The John Jay Report andThe National Review Board Report
By Thomas P. Doyle
Release of the reports by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the U.S. Bishops’ National Review Board marks an important landmark in the long and painful era of clergy sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. It is far from the end of the era. The reports along with the Gavin Self-Study, released in January, do not constitute exoneration of the U.S. Bishops.
These reports would not have come about were it not for the fact that intense and unrelenting pressure has been put on the U.S. bishops as a result of widespread revelations that they have covered up and enabled sexual abuse of children, adolescents and adults by clergy and religious.
This era began in the early 80’s and not in January, 2002. The gradual uncovering of the Bishops’ collective and individual responsibility for this nightmare has been the direct result of the persistence of victims and survivors; honest and detailed reporting by the media and the demands for justice in the civil law arena. Had none of this happened, the cover-up would have continued until some other point of critical mass was reached, possibly well into the future.
Thousands of sexually abused adults, victims from past decades, would have remained unaided and suffering and unknown numbers of clerics and religious would have been continually shifted around unchecked. Finally, the Catholic laity reached the point where they would no longer tolerate seeing their children raped and ruined. The courts and the press, fed up with an uncaring monolithic power structure, responded when the institutional church could not.
It is imperative that we understand that these three reports have told only part of the story.
The unasked questions and still hidden information is possibly more important than the data
and conclusions which are published:
1. Preliminary glimpses of the John Jay Survey indicate that the bishops claim that 50% of the accused clerics had one victim. This statement defies the data provided by mental health professionals concerning the average number of victims of sexual abusers, both pedophiles and ephebophiles.
2. The reports do not indicate how often bishops and religious superiors reported alleged sex abuse cases to the law enforcement authorities or child protective agencies.
3. The John Jay Survey does not give a clear differentiation of the ratio between diocesan and religious order clerics.
4. Do the reports clearly indicate the number of accused bishops and what happened to them?
5. Do the reports provide statistics on the number of accused clerics and religious who were moved at least once from one assignment to another after having been accused of sexual abuse?
6. Do the reports reveal credible financial details such as the amount of money expended from church (diocesan and religious community) funds for the following?
a. Treatment of accused clerics/religious
b. Legal fees for accused clerics/religious
c. Retirement maintenance for suspended clerics/religious
d. Treatment fees for victims
7. Do the reports reveal the treatment costs paid by insurance carriers?
8. Do the reports reveal the numbers of victims personally visited by bishops and religious superiors?
9. Do the reports reveal the number of civil and criminal court actions?
a. The number of criminal actions and convictions
b. The number of civil suits filed, settled, dropped
c. The number of confidentiality agreements entered into between dioceses/religious orders and victims, and the number of these that were at the insistence or request of the victims
d. The number of countersuits filed by perpetrators or dioceses/religious orders
10. Do the reports reveal the exact number of diocesan bishops who knowingly moved accused clerics from one place to another?
11. Do the reports reveal the number of bishops who accepted known abusers from other dioceses or religious orders and allowed them to work in ministry?
12. If the bishops are sincere about their commitment to provide a safe atmosphere for children and their promises of transparency and accountability, then why are the Catholic bishops in several States the most strident opponents of revisions to the Statutes of Limitations and the expansion of the reporting laws to include clergy? In these instances, why are the bishops lobbying so vehemently using false information about canon law and first amendment concerns.
13. In how many cases in the reporting period did the bishops and religious superiors comply faithfully to all of the requirements in canon law especially the requirement for a documented inquiry into the validity of an allegation?
14. How many victims have committed suicide and how many accused clerics/religious have committed suicide
15. How many dioceses and religious orders have provided complete records to law enforcement officials, judicial officials or the media and how many dioceses are resisting such disclosure at the present time?
16. How many priests have been laicized and suspended
a. Willingly and by their own request
b. Against their will at the request of the bishop
c. With and without any due process
As we review the statistics and other information we must keep in mind that all data was provided by the bishops to investigators or other persons either selected and appointed by the bishops themselves or employed by organizations selected by them. Furthermore the same bishops claimed for years that they had no way of providing statistical data on clergy sex abuse cases because of the independence of dioceses one from another and the inability of the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops to compel or even suggest uniform case following and reporting.
Some will point to the so-called study done by the Catholic Anti-Defamation League which claims that the number of Catholic clergy abusers is no higher than in other professions including clergy of other denominations. Even a cursory look at this report will reveal multiple questions that seriously impugn its relevance and credibility. Nevertheless since some bishops (e.g., Archbishop Edwin O’Brien of the Archdiocese for the Military Services) have used this highly questionable data to deflect the seriousness of the real situation the erroneous data and conclusions should be addressed.
To compare the Catholic clergy to the general population and thereby attempt to minimize the seriousness of the problem of sexual dysfunction among the clergy is outrageous. The Catholic Church is not a secular corporation but a religious body that insists that loyal members comply with a highly restrictive code of sexual ethics. The Vatican is a signatory of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. The bishops have collectively and individually condemned violence and abuse against children. Yet the institutional church has intentionally conspired to allow known sexual offenders to escape criminal prosecution. By failing to remove known or suspected abusers it has enabled these offenders to prey upon multiple victims. It has not only intentionally ignored the plight of victims but has revictimized them in countless cases in order to obtain their silence or defeat their attempts at receiving justice through the civil court system. The trust expected of the leadership and clergy of the Catholic church and the compliance and respect demanded by these same leaders and clerics means quite simply, that the Catholic church cannot be compared to other social entities or other religious denominations.
The clerical elite are held to a much higher standard.
This era of revelation has focused in great part on the sexual abuse of children and young people. It has incorrectly been referred to as “the pedophilia problem” in part because the earliest publicly known offender was a serial pedophile. Some have tried to minimize the issue with the hardly newsworthy revelation that a small minority are true pedophiles while most victims are above the age of reason. Again, a resounding “So what!” In fact, the majority of offenders have preyed upon young adolescents, most of whom were male. The age matters not.
Sexual abuse is sexual abuse whether the victim is 6 or 13 or 33 years of age. The damage is deep and long lasting.
Some will claim that most of the victims who have recently come forward are reporting events that happened years ago. This is irrelevant because the damage done is life long and does not abate as years pass. In nearly every case of this kind the victims remained silent out of fear or because they deeply buried the painful memories. Only recently has there been sufficient support for many of these older victims to come forward without the fear that they would be disbelieved and summarily dismissed by the church and by society.
Yet another claim is that there has been a dramatic reduction in the number of contemporary complaints. This too is misleading and almost irrelevant because it often takes years for a young victim to come forward. It has also been much more difficult for bishops and religious superiors to cover up and simply move accused offenders from place to place. The intense public scrutiny has made such actions close to impossible. Nevertheless it is highly probable that in the near future we will see a dramatic upsurge in complaints from certain ethnic communities where reporting of child sexual abuse was socially discouraged and where the position of the priest was more protected.
The revelations of widespread sexual abuse of children and young people has surfaced concern for another aspect of clergy sexual abuse that is deep seated, equally insidious yet somewhat protected by a less than sensitive society. Some experts claim that although clergy sexual abuse of the young is the most dramatic aspect to surface it is not the most numerous. There is far more sexual abuse of age appropriate victims, most of whom are women. In spite of the awareness of this problem by the bishops, they have steadfastly refused give it serious consideration. Historically the institutional church has promulgated more disciplinary legislation to curb sexual abuse of adult victims, again mostly women, than any other category of victims.
The obvious reason is because this has been the largest class of victims. The present age is no exception yet the bishops and clergy in general as well as a significant segment of the general population remain in culpable denial, refusing to honestly confront the issue or failing to see validity in the immense power differential that allows unscrupulous professionals to prey on vulnerable clients.
There is yet another dimension of sexual, physical and spiritual abuse that must be confronted and this is the abuse meted out in schools and orphanages by religious women. Long protected for a variety of reasons, the sisters and nuns have not yet been forced to answer on as widespread a scale as clerics and male religious yet their victims are every bit as numerous and the scars and trauma inflicted every bit as deep and deadly. The dramatic example seen in the recent exposure of the Magdalene Sisters serves as a prophetic reminder that this bastion of abuse must also be named, confronted and its victims healed.
The hardest questions provoked by these studies are the very questions that the church’s governmental structure and clerical elite refuse to face. These are the questions that will not go away no matter how much effort the papacy and the bishops fight to keep them hidden. These questions cut to the heart of the matter and they are about two fundamental issues: the governmental structure of the Catholic Church and the obsession of its incumbents with their power and, the relevance and authenticity of mandatory celibacy. Until these questions are honestly faced, these studies and any others that may follow remain far from complete.
February 26, 2004
http://justgoodcompany.org/2.1/doyle.htm
posted by Paris Arrow | Friday, August 04, 2006
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