ROOTS OF SEXUAL ABUSE IN THE CHURCH

US Bishops' actions seen to be far from adequate in addressing sexual abuse "catastrophe"

LIFESITE SPECIAL REPORT 1 - JUNE 18,2002

DALLAS, June 18, 2002 (LSN.ca) - Last week's United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) meeting that approved a "Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People" was the Bishops' opening foray into what is bound to be a spiritual 9-11.

The document, which passed 239 to 13 says "an alleged offender will be promptly relieved of ministerial duties and referred for medical and psychological evaluation." Moreover, "when an allegation is admitted or determined, past, present or future, the diocesan policy will be that the offender will be removed permanently from ministry. If he is not dismissed from the clerical state (e.g., for reasons of advanced age or infirmity), he will not be permitted to celebrate Mass publicly, to wear clerical garb, or to present himself publicly as a priest. "

While the provisions in the document are dramatic and mostly praiseworthy, many Catholics and non-Catholics are disturbed about what was not decided or even discussed at the conference. One writer after another has noted in the past few days that "The bishops still don't get it."

They did not propose accountability measures for bishops who have been criminally negligent in protecting known repeat abusers. They did not publicly admonish long time defenders of the homosexual agenda within the church such as Bishops Thomas Gumbleton, Rembert Weakland, Mathew Clark, Joseph Imesch, Walter Sullivan, and others identified by Fr. Enrique Rueda in his his 1982 book "The Homosexual Network."

Cal Thomas, a non-Catholic, states in his June 18 column, that the final conference document "is a good step, but the fact is many bishops who occupied a unique place of authority and trust did nothing and, thus, allowed evil to spread like untreated cancer throughout the church body. They also caused the name of the One they profess to follow to be dragged through the mud and held up to ridicule by nonbelievers." Thomas also indicts Protestant communities for not dealing with widespread sexual scandals within their denominations. http://www.townhall.com/columnists/calthomas/ct20020618.shtml

Most seriously, during the conference the bishops refused to address the core issues behind the scandal, namely homosexuality and dissent in the Church, particularly on sexual matters. The pope has emphasized that ending dissent must be the bishops' top priority in dealing with this crisis.

Significantly, many critics say that this "catastrophe" within the North American church has been a logical result of corrupting dissent from the Church's teaching on sexual morality. That dissent began, with the approval and even complicity of many bishops, with open defiance to Pope Paul VI's encyclical Humane Vitae which reaffirmed the Church's opposition to artificial birth control. Paul VI correctly predicted that the social, legal and theological acceptance of artificial birth control would lead to a general and deadly collapse of sexual morality.

Many prominent Catholics, quoted in previous LifeSite reports, have emphasized that homosexuality within the church is an obvious, grave problem directly related to the abuse crisis. To the surprise of even well-informed conservatives, the percentage of homosexual Catholic clergy is now thought to be far higher than previously suspected - realistically perhaps even as high as 30%. Conference president Bishop Wilton Gregory told reporters in April that "It is an ongoing struggle. It is most importantly a struggle to make sure that the Catholic priesthood is not dominated by homosexual men".

2% or even 10% of all priests could not be considered a potentially dominating faction. Gatekeepers, that is those who controlled admissions to seminaries, are known to have for many years given preference to gays and to exclude straight or at least faithful seminary candidates. These gatekeepers were often feminist nuns. It is therefore no wonder that the percentage of homosexual priests became so high. Catholic World Report noted in its May 2002 issue that the Kansas City Star's "examination of death certificates and interviews with experts indicates several hundred priests have died of AIDS-related illnesses since the mid-1980s. The death rate of priests from AIDS is at least four times that of the general population", the newspaper said. (The Jan. 3, 2000 report by Judy L. Thomas is available for $2.95 U.S. from the Star at http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/archives/)

During the Dallas proceedings, one of the US's most outspokenly pro-life Bishops, Fabian Bruskewitz of Lincoln Nebraska, proposed that the bishops commission a study of the role, if any, theological dissent and clerical homosexuality has played in bringing about this scandal. The proposal, likely the best of the gathering, was quickly voted down. As National Review's Rod Dreher wrote on June 17 "they'd rather not know, because that implies the moral obligation to act."

Dreher continued "They did not promise to come clean about how much of their money has been spent on scandal-related payments or to establish a mechanism for financial transparency and accountability. They didn't commit themselves to whistleblower protection for priests and Church employees who wish to come forward with evidence of sex abuse, but who fear for their jobs. They didn't put teeth into the lay-oversight committees they planned to establish, to prevent them from being stacked with the bishops' cronies (as in Chicago), or left without authority (as in Baltimore). And they didn't promise to knock off the pit-bull legal tactics with victims and their families" - all this from a faithful lay Catholic who has no wish to change Church structures or theology but just have the bishops and priests do their jobs.

In a related matter, the Bishops seemed to have ignored a significant contribution towards dealing with some of the damage as proposed by the Catholic Medical Association (CMA). A May 29 letter to the bishops was written on behalf of the CMA by a Catholic psychologist and a Catholic psychiatrist. These two professionals have treated a significant number of priests from various dioceses and religious communities over the past 25 years for same-sex attraction (SSA or homosexuality) and for pedophilia and ephebophilia (homosexual behavior with adolescents).

The letter advises the bishops to offer treatment for priests with same sex attraction to overcome the disorder. Further, the experts recommend screening out candidates for the priesthood who have same sex attraction and those who dissent from church teachings on matters of sexuality. "Our experience over 25 years has convinced us of the direct link between rebellion and anger against the Church's teaching, and sexually promiscuous behaviors. This appears to be a two way street: those who are sexually active dissent from the Church's teaching on sexuality to justify their own actions, while those who adopt rebellious ideas on sexual morality are more vulnerable to become sexually active, because they have little to no defense against sexual temptations," says the CMA letter. It also advises screening should be applied to seminary professors and psychologists who evaluate candidates for the priesthood. (see the full CMA letter: http://www.cathmed.org/news_detail.asp?id=41&tableID=news )

Rod Dreher also covered a post-meeting conference of conservative Catholics featuring among others, Bishop Bruskewitz, and Catholic World Report editor Phil Lawler.

Lawler told the audience the American Church faced a "dual scandal": the sexual abuse of minors by a very small proportion of Catholic priests, and the cover-up of these crimes by a significant majority - two-thirds, according to some reports - of current bishops. Lawler also noted that the implementation of the policy lies with the bishops who are well known for their failure in this regard.

Another National Review writer, Michael Novak, poignantly presents the case that the bishops' refusal to stand up for the Church's teachings on sexual morality beginning in 1978 with Humanae Vitae is the root of the problem. (See links to the Dreher and Novak pieces:
http://www.nationalreview.com/dreher/dreher061702.asp
http://www.nationalreview.com/novak/novak061802.asp

The above noted comments seem to indicate that illicit sexual activity is undoubtedly also a severe problem in the mostly liberal Canadian and European Church institutions because of entrenched, widespread dissent from Catholic moral teachings within most of those institutions. Canada has experienced major, public, clergy and religious sex scandals over the years. Because of lawsuits and media exposes, the Canadian bishops had to implement a national policy on clergy abuse of minors (which is not always enforced). Tragically, they have still not dealt with the dissent and homosexuality, although conditions have improved.

And perhaps viewing the problem at its deepest level, Mary Jo Anderson, writes in WorldNetDaily that the whole controversy is an endgame for modernism. "The American bishops are a means to an end: The titanic battle is for the Keys of St. Peter - to control the structure and doctrine of the Church," she writes. She explains that the Catholic Church is the "lone international voice for morality . Hate the Catholic Church or love it, it must be admitted that it publicly teaches and preaches against the totalitarian, utilitarian worldview. The moral voice of the Catholic Church stands between modernists and their New World Order vision." Concluding, Anderson suggests: "The goal among modernists, clerical and secular, is to use this crisis to create chaos so large that a new pope will have to deal with the crisis as his first order of business. If a momentum is built that insists that the old order is the problem, perhaps the cardinals can be stampeded into electing an unusual pope: a candidate approved by the New York Times and the United Nations." http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2002/jun/020618a.html