What Faye Gastal saw

Add a local and nationally-known Unity Church teacher to the list: Carrollton author gets 5 years in child pornography case, although it appears he limited his deviance to his computer and was perhaps only a wannabe or fantasy pedophile. His Webpage.

Well said, Erin.

My experience has been much like Anonymous', above. My wife was abused. Her sister was abused. My stepfather was abused, along with all his brothers and sisters. I was almost abused once as a teenager and only avoided it because I was rescued by a passerby. I think the numbers are probably closer to 50% of all people. At least, that has been my experience.

Erin: but I think we're beyond the point where we can sit around pretending that this is just a Catholic problem and that no one else needs to be concerned.

Erin, you did notice, I hope, that in my post I made this point expressly clear.

Anyway, feel free to say whatever you like. I know that this topic is one I feel passionately about, but I know as well that my view is harsh, so I welcome your perspective. I totally agree with you that most people really have very little idea about this issue.

Actually, Rod (and HH) I did notice this point, and was merely supporting it when I said that we (meaning society in general) had to move beyond viewing child sexual abuse as a Catholic problem. These things don't always come out as well in written communication (she said ruefully).

Where Rod and I have disagreements it's in viewing the Church's efforts today--and for the record, I still don't think everything that needs to be done has been done, or that having every lay volunteer in the Church take a "Keeping Children Safe" class is necessarily the most productive idea (though clearly some of the people in the class I took needed to receive the information). However, I have known some priests and a bishop or two who take the problem extremely seriously and who have made their intentions clear that in the future no tolerance of any sort will be granted to anyone accused of abuse while under their watch. I realize that it's hard to trust the Church's leaders in the immediate aftermath of so horrific a betrayal of that trust, and I'm fully aware that until some bishops of the present day have resigned or retired it will be premature to place unalloyed trust in those specific leaders; yet I'm unwilling to consider all bishops by definition unworthy of my trust, as that would be extremely problematic in terms of my own beliefs as well as unjust and uncharitable.

I'd like to thank both anonymous posters above for sharing the impact this issue has had on their families. We have to do a better job of protecting children and young adults from this kind of exploitation, regardless of who the perpetrator is. And part of that is insisting that child molesters are not treated indulgently by the criminal justice system, another part of this whole issue that I see as sickening and wrong.

Rod: Something interesting you say: "I told him that my faith didn't depend on the competence or basic human decency of any given priest or bishop." How, while you were a Catholic, did you feel about the doctrine of infallibility? Admittedly, how one administers and how one teaches are different matters, but if one is convinced of the fallibility of bishops and archbishops, can one really completely accept infallibility of the Pope/Curia? I started to lose my faith on infallibility when infallibility was invoked in response to the issue of women in the priesthood. It seemed to not only close the door on discussion, but locking the door with deadbolts in perpetuity, in a "because-I-said-so-now-shut-up" sort of way.

A very interesting question, Rod; I'll do my best to answer it.

When I read in the Catechism numbers 874-896, I see outlined the office of the bishop: the nature and scope of his authority, the duties proper to him, the important characteristic of service which is properly a part of the office, and so on. None of these things means that it's impossible to have for one's bishop a person who is incompetent, who neglects his duties, or who is actively evil--but these things should be seen as a failure on the part of the person, not a deficiency inherent in the office, which indeed was instituted by Christ for the benefit of His flock, not (however much we may be tempted to think so) for our punishment.

Now, to clarify what I said above, if I took it as true that every bishop in America, or in the world, were *by definition* (i.e., somehow in his character as a bishop) unworthy of my trust on this or any other issue, this would clearly present a problem. There have been times in the Church's past when a whole region of bishops were untrustworthy, as in the days of the Arian heresy or in the "Oath of Supremacy" days in England; but the Church was aware of the systemic betrayal of these bishops and made it clear to the faithful that these men were not to be trusted, by means of excommunication and other public acts.

If I were to believe that a significant number of bishops were acting publicly in such a way as to prove themselves outside the Church, yet the Church herself was indifferent to the matter and intended to take no action for the remedy of the faithful, now or ever, I truly would put myself outside the Church with this belief, which would see the institution itself as irreparably flawed. In writing that, I'm not at all certain that I haven't described in some way what happened to you.

I, too, have known orthodox Catholics who are willing to believe every evil of their bishop and unwilling to suspect any good of him; God help me, I've been one of them. But as I grow in my faith I realize that there's no asterisk in the Catechism in the section on rash judgment that says (*except for bishops; go ahead and judge them rashly); and so I've tried to avoid the knee-jerk reaction of anger and suspicion to anything a bishop might do, and to pray for them a lot more than I used to.

But Rod, the question of how the faithful might have seen things, and what the Church was *actually* saying and doing, are two very distinctly different questions. In my example I spoke of hypothetically believing that the Church was untrustworthy, thereby separating myself from her. Isn't that, in effect, what you did, at least at the outset? I'm not speaking of your later decisions--I'm speaking of your initial frustration, anger and disappointment over the scandal, and your decision, based on your perception that the Church, in the person of her bishops and leaders, could no longer be trusted, to investigate other possible faith traditions, particularly the sole other tradition which had valid sacraments and could point to apostolic succession.

English Catholics who followed their bishops into apostasy ceased to be Catholic. Catholics under Arian bishops who followed them into heresy became heretics. Demoralized Renaissance Catholics who left the Church likewise ceased to be Catholic. We may want to excuse them, especially the poor or simple people who quite possibly didn't realize they were actually leaving the Church, but they left her nonetheless.

And whatever excuses we may have given for Catholics caught up in the confusing or demoralizing times of the past, we can't claim the same excuses today: we *know* what the Church teaches, and it isn't "Clergy sex abuse is o.k." or "Bishops who move pedophiles around are above suspicion" no matter how heartsick we might get about individual abusers or bishops, or how frustrated we might at times become with the glacial pace with which Rome sometimes seems to move.

Maybe I can offer a hypothetical parallel that would help. Suppose you were to find out that Orthodox bishops had acted more or less shamefully on a certain and very serious matter--something as terrible as the scandal. Would this remove their ability to remain in authority over you as true shepherds and descendants of the Apostles--would this justify a decision on your part to pick and choose which of their words you would accept, and which you would reject with anger and contempt as being definitively untrustworthy? Wouldn't this strike at the very core of what it means to be Orthodox?

We might be talking past each other, but I see this, "I had given up most Catholic bishops as useless, if not actively harmful to the faithful, long before I even thought about leaving the Catholic Church..." as possibly a somewhat detrimental attitude for any Catholic to have. Even in my most hypercritical small-o orthodox phase I doubt I'd have said that, despite being aware of the faults and flaws of local bishops--I did believe there were good ones, and was privileged to live in a solid diocese or two, which may have given me a sense of balance about it.

And there's a difference, too, I think, between deciding that one's local bishop is deeply flawed (which I have done) and deciding that the Church herself could *never* be trusted to solve a particular problem, even if that solution took place on a timetable far slower than what I would like to see.

Which, to get back to the scandal, is what I see unfolding. There will be people in the Church, both bishops/clergy and lay people, who will get in the way of solving the problem of clerical sexual abuse, and there will be times when it seems like the Church is moving far too slowly to weed out the bad and strengthen the good; but I am ultimately confident that the gates of hell won't prevail in this or any other matter. Like you, perhaps, I don't see that confidence as placed on the personal holiness or goodness of any individual leader, not even the Pope; but I do see it as placed in my trust in Jesus' promise to St. Peter, without which the Church might have crumbled into ruin at any time in the past 2,000 years.

Susan,

I wince a bit when you say the "priesthood" en toto because I can't think of the priests of my parish and associate them with what you describe.

I am woefully unqualified to make any thoughtful comment along the lines of what many others have written, but one thing that is occurring to me as I read what others have written: "The Spirit Is On the Move" (something that our pastoral associate, a wonderful woman, has said to me a couple times over the last few years as we've lamented and marveled at what's going on in the Church and the world in general).

That thought, that somehow in all this craziness, we're going to be transformed, is a hopeful thought. I've probably thought about religion, the Church, my faith, more in the last 7 years than the 15 prior to that.

The sort of simplistic, authority-bound "Father Knows Best" approach that I heard in my youth from many of my elders seems to be getting discarded, and I think it's healthy, if not easy; we're collectively growing up a bit maybe. Maybe I'm deluding myself, and no doubt give myself way too much credit.

I'm wondering how it must have looked when most of the bishops were Arian. Or how English Catholics might have seen matters when most of their episcopate apostatized? Or, for that matter, how the Russian Orthodox faithful would have seen their own position during the dark night of communism, when many (most? all?) of their bishops were KGB? There was, for the latter, no hope of the episcopate changing in their lifetime, and very many went to their deaths knowing only collaborator bishops.

I think it is certainly possible to believe that one's bishops are, for whatever reason, hopelessly flawed, and yet to understand that this is the fault of this or that time-bound reason, and that it says nothing about the validity of the office of bishop.

Great lines. I agree with this 100%. This is my feeling exactly about the AmChurch bishops and culture.

I never had an "orthodox" fetish (small "o") as so many conservative Catholics have - I've never really seen any good bishops in my lifetime and doubt I will. To my mind, he's supposed to be a spiritual leader, one that lives among the poor, and who preaches and teaches by example. The Amin part should be bottom-up, not top down.

But of course this is for the simple reason that I don't see many good Christians either, including myself. I've never found the Church to be a positive spiritual home. More like a dead reflection of our culture when not taken over by the weeds. Bluntly, the community has always been a negative place in my spiritual life.

But the doctrine is great, the truths eternal, the Eucharist valid. The problem is the people. One can't live the American dream without becoming a spiritual weakling and impacting families. Bishops are zero exception here. And, speaking from an objective position, I don't expect it to get any better in my lifetime. One can hope, but still remain practical. The whole cultural of liberalism that entrenches our institutions, families, and yes religion will have to be shunned by Christian families in order to break free, and we are nowhere close in the Church. The whole model is wrong. Being a Christian will have to mean living different, creating "sub-cultures" that live near each other, work together, and worship together. To mix with liberal Western culture, one that undermines sexuality (feminism, homosexuality, free love) and the dignity of the human person (abortion, ESCR, IVF, cloning) is to eventually become co-oped as a Christian and pay the cultural price.

A final point: when in human history did one have to do background checks on their neighbors to protect their children from sexual abuse? I think this says more about our lack of close community, our sexual decline, and our desire to chuck relationships for institutions than the bishops. I can safely say I trust no institution (school, church, etc) with my kids and feel that anyone who does should not be suprised when their kid is abused. The breakdown of family and community is the root of the abuse thing and most other problems, not our leadership.

The breakdown of family and community is the root of the abuse thing and most other problems, not our leadership.

Is that really the cause, or is it just reported more given the liberal breakdown of talking about taboo subjects and abuse of authority? Was there no abuse in the past?

Rod,

This article dismays me. You start out mentioning several problems in other churches to return to your favorite poster child, the Catholic Church. You admit that your new church has not even begun to try to address this problem. Children are being hurt as you read this. Yet, you gloss over this. It is ok. You have decided to live with the human fraility that you find in the OCA church. So you once again make a scapegoat of the Catholic Church. You spend 70 percent of this article complaining about the Catholic Church which has done more than the OCA church and most other churches and most institutions in society over the past 5 years to address this problem. Has the church reached perfection in erradicating this? No. Will it ever? No. You hold the Catholic Church to a standard that you do not hold any other institution. That should maybe tell you something. Maybe that it is the Catholic Church which is the True church founded by Christ and that is why you are so obssessed with her failings? That is why you write so many articles about the Church's problems with this because you want to continue to justify your decision to leave the Church. You want to keep convincing yourself that she is somehow the nexus of this problem when the evidence is the contrary. The greatest number of abused children and abusers are to be found in the society at large. Why are you spending 90 percent of your journalistic talents exposing problems in something that represents a small fraction of the entire problem? It's like a war reporter confining himself to one battlefield for the duration of a war. Even by conservative estimates 2 percent of the population at large are abusers. There are not 2 percent of the population at large in jail for abuse. The victims of their abuse have not received a fraction of the inadequate pre and in most case ample post scandal help that the Church has provided. Most of the victims in the society at large have received nada. Children are being abused as you read this. Yet you and all your confreres in the media spend 90 percent of your coverage on the Church all the while claming that you want to protect children. Well if you want to protect children you should want to protect all children and protect them by spending resources on sectors of society proportionate to their share of the total abuse problem. Two percent of 55,000 priests (about 1100) is a small fraction of the 2 million or more million abusers in this country. For every article you write about the Church you should write 50 or more about other sectors of the society.

I can imagine many reasons for your predilection for obsessing over the Church: you want to find the Church wanting. You want to have an excuse for not believing. You want to justify your prejudices. You want to revenge the hurt you felt in finding out about this failing. You want the easy story. You want the story that brings down something perceived as good. Because then you don't have to do the hard work of reforming that which is not perceived as good to start with. Maybe you are doing this because if the standard is brought down, there is no longer a reason to fight. You are absolved for all the stories you didn't write. Like the one about your new church which remains only a hint. Are you not "protecting" abusers by keeping your private conversations private the same as the Church protected its abusers?

Will the media's constant harping on the Church result in the rest of society rolling over and turning a deaf ear when Hollywood rolls out TV shows with deparate moms abusing teenagers or movies that glamorize adults abusing teens or schools that pass the trash (see NYT articles about abuse in the schools? Over saturation with one part of a story means the rest never gets told.

M_David's case all the bishops one has personally encountered, as deeply flawed both as men and in their role as bishops

Erin, I don't mean to flame the bishops here. They aren't special, either in their holiness or not. Just you typical admin. Better than school admin, that's for sure, especially for abuse issues. I saw many cases of sexual abuse in my school, but none in my church. The stats bear me out here too. I find the focus on the "church" sex-abuse thing pretty dishonest. You find this form of abuse and cover up in every institution in the West. Heck, you show me a culture that thinks nothing of dressing their teen girls in cheerleader outfits and I'll show you a culture with sexual disfunction.

M_David, I know of a bishop who tried to do some of what you say, above (and he's still trying in other ways) in terms of service. One of the things he attempted was to live at the Cathedral rectory to be more accessible to people. Guess what? It didn't work--people would line up at all hours to bombard him with petty things that their own pastors should properly have been informed of first

Great story. This is exactly what I would expect. Exactly. This should tell him how sick it really is in the trenches. Rod's experiences in the Catholic Church - bland, get-along spirituality - are generally mine as well.

The bishop is going to have to do something radical to get anywhere. Maybe break the parishes into smaller mass-going groups. Make his flock fast with him all night before they get to see him. Shatter the institution from the top until the flock become part of the solution, and not the problem. Ride mean, serious herd on the priests and lay leaders (especially educators), abolish the kumbya curriculum, give fire-and-brimstone sermons, excommunicate pro-aborts and dissenters. Change things. The current institutional model from the '50s get-along with-the-broader-culture-Catholicsm doesn't work. The broader culture is sick.

Susan's penultimate paragraph above has illustrated better than I did what I was trying to say. It's one thing to see this or that bishop, or these or those bishops, or even in M_David's case all the bishops one has personally encountered, as deeply flawed both as men and in their role as bishops, but when one has crossed that line to believe that the institution itself is the seedbed of those flaws, that the flaws are a feature, not a bug, of the institution, that one has effectively placed oneself outside the Catholic Church.

Erin, now YOU've topped ME articulate explanation. That's exactly what I was trying to say, but couldn't quite get there.

I believe that the institution is the problem, not the victim. It's not a bug, it's a feature. I've known so many fundamentally good men - priests - who behave like monsters, not because the ARE or WERE monsters (before the institution got to them), but because that's the institutional imperative. Little by little you go along....soon your economic security depends on overlooking the sins of your brothers....after all, who is without fault...besides, what if you lose your retirement benefits?

M_David, of course "the broader culture is sick." That was assuredly true in Paul's day as well. But the Church wasn't sick.

Oh this too. I really don't want to hear any more about the sins, real and fancied, of the public school system. By and large the public schools are controlled, not by administrators, but by parents. The only cases I have personally encountered concerning child abuse in the schools have resulted in the teacher being all but burned alive instantly. The schools don't have the institutional bias to protect abusers reflexively. They may not be saints, but they know who's in control, and parents don't go along with that kind of thing the way priests do. Do mistakes get made? You bet. But the institution isn't and can't be invested in perpetrating those mistakes.

And....so what? So the public schools sin too. This makes it OK for the One True Church to go them one better??? How would that have sounded, back in the day? "Oh, the Roman Empire is corrupt, so it's OK if the Church is even more corrupt." Huh?

Oh this too. I really don't want to hear any more about the sins, real and fancied, of the public school system. By and large the public schools are controlled, not by administrators, but by parents. The only cases I have personally encountered concerning child abuse in the schools have resulted in the teacher being all but burned alive instantly. The schools don't have the institutional bias to protect abusers reflexively. They may not be saints, but they know who's in control, and parents don't go along with that kind of thing the way priests do. Do mistakes get made? You bet. But the institution isn't and can't be invested in perpetrating those mistakes.

Heh. I could easily replace "church" with "school", and you sound exactly like a cleric defending their turf. Funny how everyone defends their particular zone and thinks everyone else is corrupt. Now it's the parents fault? Whew. And if you don't think priests are being flayed alive as much as teachers for even the slightest bit of molestation, you aren't reading the paper. Every lawyer in the country wants a piece of it.

And....so what? So the public schools sin too. This makes it OK for the One True Church to go them one better???

I never, never said the church is excused for shuffling priests around, or anything like it. You just made that up.

Erin: It's one thing to see this or that bishop, or these or those bishops, or even in M_David's case all the bishops one has personally encountered, as deeply flawed both as men and in their role as bishops, but when one has crossed that line to believe that the institution itself is the seedbed of those flaws, that the flaws are a feature, not a bug, of the institution, that one has effectively placed oneself outside the Catholic Church.

I just don't see your logic, Erin. I have accepted that in the Catholic Church, in the Orthodox Church, and in any human institution, flaws are built into the system, because they are devised and run by human beings. Susan's seen a lot more than I have, but I tend to agree with her: the Catholic clerical system was not intentionally designed to protect clerical abusers, but it sure does function smoothly that way. I do not accept the behavior! But I have had to accept that I expect too much from religious institutions in expecting them to be systematically free of that sort of thing.

I think a big part of it is in the nature of religion. It's normal for people to look up to religious figures as especially moral, even saintly. We seem to have a need for that sort of thing, and I'm really chapped on the occasion when a cleric is nailed for child molestation and people shrug and say, "What do you expect? He's only human?" Nevertheless, I've not seen what Susan has seen, but I've seen enough to know that its human nature to look the other way when confronted with evidence that religious figures are sinning.

As for Sebastian and the other person, please, do get a clue.

I think we're getting somewhere.

Rod, you said, "I just don't see your logic, Erin. I have accepted that in the Catholic Church, in the Orthodox Church, and in any human institution, flaws are built into the system, because they are devised and run by human beings."

...and in any HUMAN institution...

...DEVISED...by human beings...

I'm highlighting those two phrases because in them I see the crux of our communication difficulty.

The Catholic Church teaches that Christ instituted the Church, that the Church is both human and divine. Human beings neither devised the Church nor built its hierarchical "system;" these things are prefigured in the Old Testament and brought to fruition in the New, when Christ selected the twelve Apostles to be the first visible leaders of the invisible spiritual reality which is the Mystical Body of Christ, the Church.

I don't know how the Orthodox view things, of course, but considering that they also point to their Apostolic roots and retain a hierarchy I tend to think they'd agree, for the most part, that the Church is not merely a human institution.

Now, none of this is to say that flaws won't occur anyway, because sinful human beings are all we have to work with, and we carry our sins with us into every work that we do. But if an *institution* is inherently flawed or sinful, it ought to be torn down, rebelled against, or destroyed. Our colonial ancestors certainly thought so, and they were successful in throwing off British rule and establishing our democratic system of government.

So, what's the difference? If sinful human beings corrupt an institution, should we blame the institution, or not?

Let's look at the presidency, for instance. There were quite a few Americans who thought Clinton was a disgrace to the office. There are quite a few Americans who currently believe that Bush is. But no one I know of thinks that because of these less than stellar examples of presidential authority and power, we ought to consider getting rid of the office of the presidency, or reforming the constitution so that the president has about as much power as the British monarch, leaving the real business of governing the country to Congress. But if the *institution* of the presidency were inherently corrupt, it would become necessary to consider whether we wouldn't do better without this office at the head of our executive branch of government, wouldn't it?

Here's where it gets difficult. The office of the presidency could, theoretically, become so corrupt that these would be valid options for dealing with the problem. The whole American system of representative democracy could become unsustainable in some far distant future under conditions we can't even imagine. And it would be fine for our descendants, under those circumstances, to send out invitations to a new sort of Boston Tea Party.

Any human institution could fail in this way. The New York Times or the Dallas Morning News could shut their doors forever, maybe sooner than we can imagine. Public education in America could be completely replaced by something new. Social Security could run out of money. It could happen.

But the Church has weathered the storms of corruption before, and paid for the sins of her leaders before. She's had her obituary written before, too, by countries that no longer exist, by long-dead politicians and intellectuals, by angry men and women who slam the doors on their way out, or at least nail lengthy documents to them. If she were merely, solely, exclusively a human institution she'd be long gone by now--which is where that "gates of hell" promise comes in again.

This doesn't mean that we should shrug at the sins of bishops, or yawn at tales of clerical corruption. It is a great betrayal of the faithful for spiritual leaders to sink so low, to become themselves a stumbling-block to those who seek to follow Jesus. But just as it would be naive to suppose that those who hold holy offices are themselves necessarily holy, so too is it naive to suppose that because a particular bishop or group of clergy have wallowed in malice and corruption it therefore follows that all who hold these offices are necessarily stained and tainted by their brothers' evil; and even more is it premature to read the prayers for the dead over the Mystical Body of Christ, the Church, as she has formed a two thousand year-old habit of resurrecting herself from these untimely burials.

I believe in the Church, Erin, in the Mystical Body of Christ. I just don't think it's coterminous with the Roman Catholic institution. The RCC may not survive, or may survive in a form unrecognizable to us. But the True Church will survive, perhaps in a form we would not recognize or accept.

But if you're asking me to believe that the RC hierarchy as we see it (lay people have no role whatever in running this thing) is to be identified with the True Church, well, that's where I get off the boat.

Oooo, M_David, so after all in the end it's the Bad Bad Media Hounds, those jackals, who are responsible for the whole thing. The "liberal media." Who really don't care about raped children, they're just promoting abortion. In a cross-eyed way, it's not the fault of the priests who raped children, it's not the fault of the bishops who protected, them, it's - wait for it - ROD DREHER'S fault, because "he needs to get his material from somewhere."

Rod, you bad man. See what you've done?

Shoot the messenger. It has a long history.

And my own reasons for being disaffected? I'm not a newspaper person, I'm not a trial lawyer. And I didn't get my stories from the "liberal media", I got them from detailed personal experience.

Well, I'm just a bad person, doubtless. As are all the people who are disaffected by the bad behavior we've seen first hand, all the parents of the raped children, all their friends and relatives. Well, you just see what bad people we all are, so there.

Oooo, M_David, so after all in the end it's the Bad Bad Media Hounds, those jackals, who are responsible for the whole thing. The "liberal media." Who really don't care about raped children, they're just promoting abortion. In a cross-eyed way, it's not the fault of the priests who raped children, it's not the fault of the bishops who protected, them, it's - wait for it - ROD DREHER'S fault, because "he needs to get his material from somewhere."

Let's do it by the numbers:

1) I never said it was "the media's fault". I said they are going to report more on the RCC for the reasons I've gave. This has nothing to do with who's fault the actual abuse that happened is. Get a grip and quit slandering me.

2) I was agreeing with Rod. Have you lost your mind?

Do you even read the post, or just make up material?

Yah yah, M_David, let's by all means divert the discussion. To the alleged "school sexual abuse scandal." (Anything, anything, rather than discuss the real issue!!)

All I know about any of this is personal, since you've ruled newspapers out per se. (Rod Dreher and his like, that bad bad man, is biased.) There was one man in our town, a fifth grade teacher, who didn't abuse any student here, but who was found with photos of children from his neighborhood. Not his students. Just photos, no evidence of first-hand abuse. A priest with that kind of evidence would have been given a medal.

The instant this came to light, this teacher was, needless to say, fired. HE NEVER SET FOOT ON SCHOOL PROPERTY AGAIN. They boxed up his stuff and sent it to him. In jail. Would that suspected priests - this was BEFORE any trial - had been treated in the same way.

I've had children in this school system for 32 years. Wanna hear my first-hand stories about RC priest child abuse during that period? No, you don't.

And even if, per impossible, you could show that the alleged "public teacher sexual abuse scandal" was as widespread as the RC priest sexual abuse scandal, so what? The last time I looked, the Piedmont Public School District didn't claim to be the very Voice of God.

You are contending, maybe, that the Bride of Christ need not be held to any higher standard than the Piedmont Unified School District? Sad news, they can't rise anywhere near that standard.

Actually, Susan, my definition of the Church can be found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Chapter Three, Article 9, paragraphs 1-6 inclusive. A summation would be that the Church, instituted by Christ as the ordinary means of salvation for His people, includes all who are members of her either by either ordinary or extraordinary baptism (which includes the baptisms of desire or blood), and consists of three distinct groups of people: those in Heaven who enjoy the Beatific Vision after their earthly struggles (the Church Triumphant), those in purgatory who earnestly long to be in God's presence (the Church Suffering) and those of us on earth, both clergy and lay people, who take part in the sacramental life of grace, who earnestly seek to follow Jesus by living the fullness of the Christian life, and who strive to purify ourselves through the liturgical life of the Church, through the sacrament of Penance, through a generous application of the corporal and spiritual works of mercy, and through our habits of prayer and devotion (the Church Militant).

I don't think my present opinion (though I would call it 'faith') will ever change, though I trust God to preserve me through trials, knowing my own weaknesses. I pray for your peace of soul, and for all who have found this wretchedness on the part of the clergy too much to bear.

All I know about any of this is personal, since you've ruled newspapers out per se. (Rod Dreher and his like, that bad bad man, is biased.)

This is the second time you are either saying or implying I think Dreher is biased.

I haven't said this. In fact, just the opposite a few posts ago: that Rod needs to work with what the media gives him, so he's has no choice but to give us more RCC abuse stories than other churches. Sheese, it must be 10:1 on stories reported. Rod has no choice.

So, one more time: I said just the opposite, and I'm tired to having to always reply to your posts to correct the implication. This is the second time on this issue alone.

Where do you get the idea you can just libel someone you disagree with? It violates the blog rules, and it's wrong as well. Please stop.

M_David, according to one of the best studies of religious belief and affiliation in America done in 2004, Evangelical Christians made up around 28% of Americans. In addition a significant number of people who describe themselves as having no religious affiliation hold beliefs which actually put them in line with traditional Evangelical Christian beliefs. Altogether, the percentage of the population which can properly be considered "Evangelical" is probably over 30%. I'm not sure where your 2% number is coming from.
BTW, I think we're not hearing screaming about public schools because the code of silence there is as strong, if not stronger than in the RCC. Also a priest remains "employed" by the church through his career, meaning that the paper trail is in one place and connections and culpability can be traced pretty easily. On the contrary, an abusive teacher often moves from place to place leaving behind a paper trail which is protected by confidentiality laws and union rules as well as being completely disconnected and extremely difficult to follow. If one of the reasons the RCC story broke so large in the press was because of the availability of documentation, then it almost makes sense that the press hasn't jumped on the public school story as it would require having reporters tracing different people's paths all over the country with very little access while constantly facing dead ends and dropped trails. It's just a much harder story to report on.

This whole priest abuse story does not make the mid section of the papers in much of the world. There are far too many other issues and practical problems to be all obsessed about this. This obsession is a luxury that is not affordable in other areas.

Sexual abuse of minors is world wide and huge; but the frequency, both statistically and collectively by priests is so damn small as to be little more that a footnote.

People have more pressing issues to worry about in places where I live; like whether so nut is going to try to blow up the Church during Mass, or whether the Mullahs will get the Emir to close the church and deport the priests. What some priests did 25 years ago and how some bishops, retired-dead-about to retire handled it is off the mental radar screen.

>>>Your attitudes are part of the (continuing) problem, not part of the solution.

OK Rod,

I suppose when you see my posts on this subject or any subject of your blog you too will have images of child rape. So I will do you a favor and never post on your blog again for any subject.

A problem is your obsession. It is serious. Really!

Goodbye.

In addition to all of the above, the disturbing presence of pedophile lurkers on the internet is another aspect that needs to be addressed. It seems almost every day one hears in the news now of a pedophile being outed in some "chat room" by the authorities.

The presence of so much abuse in all sectors and professions of society today reveals that we have a very serious problem at large.

Posted by: rebeccat,

M_David, according to one of the best studies of religious belief and affiliation in America done in 2004, Evangelical Christians made up around 28% of Americans.

Please give me the study. Remember, as a Catholic, I consider myself "Evangelical", so I question the poll.

Altogether, the percentage of the population which can properly be considered "Evangelical" is probably over 30%. I'm not sure where your 2% number is coming from.

From real polls. How people, when asked about their denomination, what they say.

You can look at numerous polls, from Gallop, Harris, etc. The best is the ARIS and NSRI identified broad denominational loyalty. Some results below:

The best data I know is the
Catholic 50,873,000 24.5% 48% 11.74%
Baptist 33,830,000 16.3% 50% 8.13%
Methodist 14,150,000 6.8% 49% 3.33%
Lutheran 9,580,000 4.6% 43% 1.98%
Pentecostal/Charismatic/Foursquare 4,407,000 2.1% 66% 1.40%
Presbyterian 5,596,000 2.7% 49% 1.32%
Mormon/
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints 2,697,000 1.3% 71% 0.92%
Non-denominational Christians 2,489,000 1.2% 61% 0.73%
Church of Christ 2,593,000 1.2% 58% 0.72%
Episcopal/Anglican 3,451,000 1.7% 30% 0.50%
Assemblies of God 1,106,000 0.5% 69% 0.37%
Congregational/
United Church of Christ 1,378,000 0.7% * 30% 0.20%
Seventh-Day Adventist 724,000 0.3% 47% 0.16%

Note "Evangelical" doesn't even show up here; 1-2% is generous. Now if you want to call some of these denominations "evangelical", sure. But then it doesn't mean anything.

BTW, I think we're not hearing screaming about public schools because the code of silence there is as strong, if not stronger than in the RCC. Also a priest remains "employed" by the church through his career

I agree with this. It's sad, though, the media doesn't seem to care about kids in schools.

My complaint is that guys like Rod who get upset at churches - which is a good thing - tend to dismiss people like me who point out the lack of reporting on other abuse.

It's not the kids reporters care about. Just the story. It's sad.

M_David,

I'm a little burned by your assertion that "reporters" (which isn't me, OK) don't care about children. I don't really think that's true, but I guess you'd have to ask "reporters" that.

As for sexual abuse in schools, like most sexual abuse, there are dark waters in there. There is not and probably cannot be any sort of accurate reporting about the frequency of child sexual abuse in this or that situation, or in general. All statements you sometimes read to the tune of "sexual abuse by Catholic priests, proportionately to the population of priests, is no more frequent that sexual abuse by [teachers][scoutmasters][the public generally][aliens from outer space]" are all pure fluff. We don't have reliable numbers, or really numbers at all, to make such comparisons, for obvious reasons. How many teachers proportionately abuse children? How many grandfathers? No one knows, and of the nature of it, no one can know.

So your assertion, founded on nothing much, that there is a whole huge population of teachers sexually abusing children, is useless in this discussion. You might be right, you might be wrong, there's no way to know.

What I DO know is the following:

1. I have been involved with our local school system for in excess of 30 years, and I went to school myself for longer than I care to reckon, and in all that time only ONE person known to me has even been accused as a pedophile. Even then, this man did not abuse children in the schools - any abuse took place elsewhere.

2. I have been involved professionally and personally with the Roman Catholic priesthood for about that long. I'm not counting second and third hand information, much less newspapers. Frequency of misbehavior I've seen personally, or heard about first hand, usually from the offender? Don't ask.

3. Once anyone in California is convicted of a sex offense, they become a leper for the rest of their lives. They cannot teach school (!!), live near children, take a deep breath. They have to register with local law enforcement. The idea that we move teachers around and no one knows seems...odd.

But in a way you're right. The RC Church does seem more important to me, as a rapist of children, than the local school district. There are a number of reasons for this, some of which I've already listed. The Piedmont School District does not claim to be the One True Church. I'm not expected to kiss the ring of the Superintendent of Schools.

I never believed anything supernatural of the Piedmont School District, and it never claimed my belief. Even if, which has NOT happened, they had a record like that of my local diocese (which may God forbid!) I wouldn't be as disappointed. And I wouldn't feel that these monsters had attempted to horn into my relationship with God. I'd just go out and throw the offenders in jail, the enablers out of office, end of story.

Furthermore, following up on this, whereas no lay person has any vote in the RC Church at any level, the schools are ultimately controlled by PARENTS, who will unhesitatingly vote pedophiles and their enablers out of office instantly the minute they find out about it. Trust me on this.

M_David, of course reporters care about the story, not "the children." It's their professional responsibility not to get emotionally involved in the things they cover, as difficult as it may be. I think one thing you might not appreciate is how hard it is to cover these child sex abuse stories in the absence of documentary evidence. Believe me, when I was writing about this more regularly, I had Catholic priests and laypeople contacting me all the time with really good stories. But I couldn't write anything at all about them unless the accusers were willing to go on the record and provide me some kind of proof -- usually documents. I was morally certain that what most of these people were telling me was true. But that's not a high enough standard for publication.

Remember too what broke the floodgates on the scandal in 2002: the judge in the Geoghan case in Boston turned down the archdiocese's request to keep the documents sealed, and instead opened them to the public. There was a rich vein of hard evidence regarding what the archd of Boston knew, and what it had done. The media had a field day, as well it ought to have: this was a shocking story, a hugely important story, and a story that could finally be told because of all the documentary evidence.

Plus, that evidence convinced a lot of people who had kept silent, in Boston and across the country, to come forward to tell their stories. Moreover, the overwhelming amount of evidence released by the court in Boston and reported on by the Globe sparked journalists in other cities to re-examine the problem in their cities.

If the sex abuse crisis is as bad and as systematic in public schools as you say, I would love for journalists to write about it. But you have to present reporters with evidence. The thing that made journalists so hungry to go after the Catholic Church story was not that Father X. abused children; it was that church officials knew this was going on for a long time, and shuffled these priests around systematically. That, and that there was documentary evidence to prove it, via court proceedings. If you can find those documents, and a systematic cover-up, in the public schools, you've got a great story on your hands.

Another thing to remember is that American journalistic institutions only have limited resources. Reporters can't be everywhere, and cover everything. Injustices go unreported all the time, even though reporters may be aware of them, simply because there just aren't enough of us, and we have to make decisions about how best to spend our time and limited resources. I would encourage any readers who have personal knowledge of a big scandal, or something that ought to be reported, to get in touch with journalists at your local newspaper. So many stories come to us from the public, in the form of tips. We're not omniscient.

I don't at all mean to discount the reality of media bias, but as with anything, there are complicated reasons why some stories get covered and others don't.

One last reason: newspapers are also businesses, and are at times driven by the business bottom line. The reading public long ago decided it had heard enough of the priest-pedophile story. Back in 2003, I had a meeting with a famous, and famously blunt, publisher. I pitched a book to be written with Father Tom Doyle, about the priest-pedophile scandal. She turned me down flat. She said: "People will pay 50 cents to read about priests f----g little boys, but they won't pay $26.95 for it." And it wasn't long before people didn't want to pay 50 cents for that information either.

Of course. After what we've seen, we expected these men to tell the truth? That's why they fought so hard to prevent the release of these records - because they knew they'd be exposed as liars.

This is OK with some Catholics. That these men, who claim to be successors of the Apostles, and "alter Christus" even, are systematically liars. To the people who accept this, these facts do not at all compromise the extraordinary supernatural claims these men make for themselves. To those Catholics who think all this is OK, for whatever reason, I say, go for it.

Susan;

I agree with Bruce. Being angry all the time is getting you nowhere. Your hyperbole and anger on this issue is not doing you or anyone else any good.

However I want to thank you for one statement: ".. alter Christus" even, are systematically liars. To the people who accept this, these facts do not at all compromise the extraordinary supernatural claims these men make for themselves. To those Catholics who think all this is OK, for whatever reason, I say, go for it."

A priest is supposed to be an icon of Christ, Imago Christi. It is built into the ancient theology. Now you say that is alright for us to think that. Thank you. You don't think that, so it is time for you to move on.

I suspect Rod has much darker intentions on this overall subject even though he is more composed and expresses less vitriol than you do. I hope in his current frame of mind he never has any power.

Satan can walk on both sides of the street.

M_David, Um, gee, I'm not sure how to say this without being insulting, but you do realize that there is no denomination called "Evangelical" don't you? So, in any survey of denominational affiliation, the number of people claiming to belong to the denomination of "Evangelical" would be like, you know, um, almost ZERO! Sheesh! That's like saying there are almost no "born again" Christians in America because they don't show up on surveys of religious affiliation. If you add up the number of people who belong to relgions which are considered to be evangelical in belief, the number comes up to at least 30%. I'm going to go try and pry my eyes back from the back of my head. I think they got stuck there while I was rolling them.

You know, I can't shut any thread down, but I think it would be in everybody's best interest to walk away from this one. I'm going to do that after this post. Let me say before doing so that Susan and I have different views on the scandal and one's response to it. I don't believe the only rational or respectable response is to leave the Catholic Church. I really don't. I have the greatest respect for Catholics who can look squarely at the scandal and choose to remain Catholic, with their eyes wide open. That wasn't how I ended up, but anyway, we've been over that.

I need to remind you all, though, about what Father Doyle told me in 2001: that if I was going to write about the sex abuse scandal in the Church, I needed to realize "that you are going to go to places darker than you can imagine." I had no idea how true that was going to prove to be. You think you can handle evil, and then you speak on the phone to a woman who had to clean the Vaseline off the altar in her parish in the mornings, and was warned by the priest who was responsible for it getting there the night before that it would do no good to tell the bishop, because "when you have them by their balls, their hearts follow." (That priest eventually went to jail for sex crime). You think you can handle evil, then you talk to a man whose son blew his own brains out after spending 14 years suffering horrible depression -- all this tied to the same molester priest. Five young men killed themselves, all victims of this priest. You hear from the mouth of the father of the dead boy about the runaround church officials gave them, and you just have to sit very quietly and think about how very little you understand about how the world works. And on and on.

I have on my shelf the manuscript and the galley copy of a forthcoming book about the scandal that my friend Lee Podles has written. I talked with Lee, a faithful orthodox Catholic, about this book while he was writing it a few years back. He showed me some of the evidence of what he'd uncovered. It is enough to turn your hair white. I have been staring at that MS, and now the book, for a long time, literally afraid to open it because I know some of what's in it. I cracked the book open the other day, and had to close it, because I'm still too close to this story. I'm telling you, this kind of knowledge can break a person if you hold it too close.

I don't know Susan personally, and I wish she wouldn't be so hard on the rest of you. I disagree with her conclusions. But listen, I know where she's coming from. If you've had to see and hear up close the kind of stuff she has, and I have (to a much smaller degree, I'd guess), are you entirely sure that you'd handle it dispassionately?

Rod, last comment -- the same excrutiating painful details and after-effects apply to the victims of the 4 to 5 million and possibly more abusers in this country. If the outrage continues to be focused at the tip of the iceberg and only the very tip, we leave millions of children at risk. It doesn't matter where the vaseline is found. The pain for the victim is real.

My larger than life father was J.Minos Simon. He was the attorney that first represented the victims of Gilbert Gauthe. I worked for my father during this era and sat in on the depositions of these monsters that represented the church. I firmly believe if it werent for my father, the catholic church to date would still be fostering these slimy pedophiles. As mighty as my father was in shaking out the liars cloaked behind a collar, predators such as Gauthe will always exist in the catholic church.