No Church Is of All Saints : Catholic Church appears to be working hard to prevent sexual abuse

Among the innocent victims of Roman Catholic priests who sexually abuse children are priests who have not abused children (and never will) and children who will now be deprived of innocent, nurturing physical contact with the priests who minister to them.

On Monday, Joseph P. Chinnici, leader of the Franciscans in seven Western states, reported with abhorrence that 34 boys had been sexually abused over a 23-year period at St. Anthony’s Seminary in downtown Santa Barbara. Though one of 11 priests involved was convicted in 1989 of having engaged in oral copulation with a minor, the current investigation is one the Franciscan order undertook on its own. That is the good news within the bad news.

Jason Berry, author of the book “Lead Us Not Into Temptation: Catholic Priests and the Sexual Abuse of Children,” reports that for too long church leaders regarded incidents of sexual abuse as exceptional and not likely to be repeated. The instinct, accordingly if unfortunately, was to protect the church and even the offending priest rather than to think first of the victim. That instinct has cost the church dearly not just in respect, as first-time offenders became repeat offenders, but also in out-of-court settlements that kept the scandals not just out of the public eye but off the church agenda.

By all reports, a wiser, tougher attitude is now in place. Chicago’s Cardinal Joseph Bernardin is credited with drafting a model policy for the prevention and correction of clerical child abuse, and the fact that a civil lawsuit allegation of sexual abuse recently was leveled against him does not gainsay the wisdom of the policy of the Chicago Archdiocese. For financial or other motives, it is easy, and more tempting now than ever, to bring a charge of sexual abuse against a prominent Catholic cleric. Bernardin, who denies the charge against him, has followed his own new rules in calling for as public a resolution as possible.

Is clerical sexual abuse a long-held secret just now becoming public? Berry thinks not. He blames it rather on the recent influence of the increasingly hedonistic U.S. culture on the church. American culture underwent a “sexual revolution” in the years since the Second Vatican Council, the very years when a once notoriously anti-hedonistic Catholic subculture (no meat on Fridays, etc.) was absorbing the mainstream’s ways.

As a result, the church has had to learn some new rules. To be sure, some long-suppressed, therapeutically assisted “memories” turn out to be cruel fantasies. But the documented cases of sexual abuse are numerous, and, better late than never, the church does seem to be learning how to prevent them. The greater its success in this effort, the greater the gain for the priests who love children the right way and for the children who need that love.