Let me start with a confession. My first encounter with what would be the priest abuse scandal was when I was 12ish. We were making our yearly trip to confession as part of CCD. A girl makes a comment to me asking if I’m afraid to go in there. I wonder why on earth anyone would be afraid. My second experience was several years ago. SNAP protesters showed up outside a service, not one I attended. They showed a picture of a woman from Iowa with whom Father allegedly had inappropriate relations over two decades prior. Father was suspended. After an investigation by the diocese, Father was exonerated but chose to resign. SNAP has never had a high regard for the lives they have ruined.
The second thing I need to confess right off the bat is that due to a personal defect on my own part, I have a very difficult time sympathizing with those who have been victimized. I am proud to say that I at least able to recognize this personal defect. Ten years ago I would not have been able to this. To put it briefly there was no white picket fence in my childhood. I have talked to people who have had worse childhoods, and I’m no where close to the bottom 10%; I’m not however in the top 50% either. This is always difficult for folks to understand. It is similar to how the harshest critics of women will always be other women.
My faith in the human condition is pretty low. It surprises me when people are shocked at the behavior of others. In the end, people tend to be romantics. They want their villians to be purely evil and their heroes to be perfectly righteous. As such we tend to impugn and glorify based on ideology. The name is unimportant, but there is a ‘conservative’ priest with an apostolate that many are shocked to learn lived a colorful life. [Notice: Comments mentioning this individual by name or speculating upon who this individual is will be redacted.] Similarly many are shocked to learn that Cardinal Mahony is one of the most tireless defenders of the unborn. (I was honestly surprised to learn it.)
The thing I find interesting about the priest abuse ‘debate’ is to what degree sin is a source of scandal. In the same breath people can speak of the joy they have knowing John Paul II, and today Pope Benedict, go to confession regularly (weekly if I remember correctly), but in the next breath they can speak of their shock and horror at actual sins that would be confessed. Men and women religious do sin. I know this is easy to accept at a mental level in the abstract. Yet when we get down to specifics people want heads. The fact one goes to reconciliation on a regularly basis isn’t a source of scandal, but all the sudden a sin becomes public, and it is a source of scandal.
No priest would actually attempt this, but let’s try this thought experiment. We know how pious the laity is. They go to church every Sunday. Well, actually they don’t, but they try. If a priest had to write a bill of indictment on your parish, what would he write? What if we were to focus of the Sacrament most closely resembling Holy Orders, Matrimony? What percentage of parishioners would we find who
– Abandoned their spouse through divorce?
– Committed physical adultery?
– Had inappropriate but non-sexual relationships with people of the opposing sex?
– Viewed pornography?
If a priest were to assume the attitude of a parishioner, he would be tempted to throw the whole lot out.
But are we really looking at the priesthood? Of 200 priests you would meet, roughly how many of them would you think have had a relationship outside the bond of marriage since entering the priesthood? Of the 200 parishioners a priest meets, how many of them do you think had a physical relationship outside their marriage? This is not to excuse any priests specific behavior. What has been entirely lacking in the priest abuse debate is how safe children are with priests. It isn’t even a close call.
John Stossel recently did a segment on sensational journalism. He surveyed some kids asking them if kidnappings were more common than they used to be. Each kid responded, “Oh yes, much worse.” Statistically, kidnappings have been on the decline for more than a decade. Even if you buy the accuracy of the self reporting in the John Jay Report, you would have to concede that the risk one’s child will be a victim of abuse by a priest is significantly less than it was 30 years ago. This is good news one would think.
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