#472: How Could This Horror Happen?

The sex abuse crisis has flared up more than ever with the Pennsylvania grand jury, the Cardinal McCarrick case, calls for bishops to resign, and allegations against Vatican officials including the last three popes. Clearly there is no easy fix--if any fix at all.  But any fix must answer three major questions.

Current investigations focus first on (1) What has happened? and it will be urgent to follow with (2) How can it be stopped? But any solutions depend on good answers to (3) Why did it happen? beacause if we misunderstand why this crisis could arise we may apply false solutions that fix nothing--or make matters worse.

The problem comes in two parts: priestly abuse itself and the hierarchical cover-up.  In my last blog (CrossCurrents #471) I argued that the cover-up was largely the result of the Church’s culture of clericalism - - and even my most chronic critic, in his comment on the blog, agreed that “clericalism is pernicious insofar as facilitates cover-ups.”

But he then goes on to claim that I ignored the “rainbow-hued elephant in the room” responsible for the crisis itself--namely, “distorted liberalism and rampant and homosexuality in the clergy.” He claims that, to put out the flames of scandal, we must “identify and name the arsonists responsible.” I agree with the general idea, but I believe he has named the wrong “arsonists.” Indeed, I have concluded that, while clericalism is the clear cause of cover-ups, the causes of the abuse itself are much more complex than a single set of villains.  And if we get this wrong any solutions will be false solutions.

Let me survey what I believe are the main factors contributing to the horrific assaults of too many priests and even bishops on children.

First, I must warn that these factors are generally not of recent vintage.  The Pennsylvania cases go back 70 years, and I am personally familiar with cases from the 1940s.  And data on child abuse indicates many abusers were themselves abused as children, which pushes the crisis back into the early 20^th century or further.  For all we know, given the secrecy attending clerical cover-ups, priestly sex abuse of children goes back centuries. Any simpleminded targeting of the “distorted liberalism” of the last 50 years is much too recent to explain priests committing abuse before, say, Pearl Harbor.

And scapegoating homosexuality is a similar dead end.  As Benedict XVI pronounced in 2008, the abuse of children and homosexuality “are different things,” not to be confused.  Homosexuals are attracted to same sex partners, while pedophiles are not attracted to adults of either sex.  The Pennsylvania cases included both male and female victims.  What they have in common was not their gender but their age: they were minors, children. 

So to really understand why this happened we must begin with the basic fact: for generations, some priests have been attracted to sexually assaulting children.  Clericalism allowed them to get away with it, but that does not explain what caused it.

So we face the question: “How could such horror occur in the first place?”

For me, the answer is a complex “perfect storm” of interlocking factors.

I begin with original sin.  We’re all morally frail, unable to do the good consistently.  And since the 5th century Catholic tradition has included the Augustinian notion of “concupiscence”--the idea that we are particularly vulnerable to our sexual impulses.  Thus everyone struggles with desire, and social structures and mores have often been designed to help people control these desires.  Sometimes these were rigid or even cruel, such as the stigma on premarital pregnancy that aimed to limit premarital sex but ended by traumatizing millions of young women with shame, scandal, secrecy, and even imprisonment.

Of course, in any population, people’s desires vary.  If our desires conform to cultural norms, controlling behavior becomes relatively easy: millions of young Catholic men and women, for example, dealt with their desires by getting married.

But in any population, some have more difficulty, since their desires did not fit them norm.  This includes both those with same-sex attraction and those attracted to children of either or both sexes.  These are not the same category of people, but both groups face the same challenge: what to do with my desire?

For some, of course, marriage was a tempting solution simply because it conformed.  But this often backfired: in the case of pedophiles, law enforcement officials report that a high percentage of child abuse is incestuous.  In these cases, pedophiles did not avoid children; they simply produced their own victims.

But for Catholic males, the Church offered both groups another, near-perfect refuge: the celibate priesthood. Priestly celibacy offered a socially acceptable form of sexual nonconformity.  One’s out-of-the-norm attractions did not really matter if one practiced celibacy.

Today the Catholic Church teaches it is not wrong to be homosexual, but that homosexuals must live celibate lives.  Ask yourself: where in our culture is that possible? To this day I recall the priest who confided that he rejected a theatrical career in New York for fear of his own desires.  For him, priesthood and celibacy was much the safer option.  And for many gay young Catholics, seminary brought an end to all the family peer pressure to “find a good Catholic girl” and settle down.

Over 40 years I have observed the result: the percentage of gay men among priests is higher than in the general population.  Nearly all of these men have been good priests leading celibate lives--just as the Church teaches they should.  Indeed, given that teaching, I am forced to ask: where else in the Church do they belong, if not in the celibate priesthood?

But gay priests are not “the arsonists” here.

Abuse expert Jason Berry has studied the crisis for more than 30 years, and he identifies the problem in another group: “psycho-sexually immature” men who find the seminary and the priesthood a “safe” refuge from ordinary norms, only to enter parishes and schools that give them not only contact with children but almost absolute power over them.

We may indeed ask if seminaries were incubators of abuse, since many seminary classes had unusually high numbers of such disordered man.  In Boston it appears that nearly 10% percent of priests committed child abuse 1950-2000—that is more than TWICE the percentage of pedophiles in the male population in general (believed to be less than 5%).  In other words, it’s possible that a sexually repressed culture, combined with the refuge of celibacy, funneled high concentrations of these distorted individuals into seminaries. 

Until we have good data on the history of such seminaries, we do not know the impact of concentrating so many disordered men under one roof for long years of study, often isolated from outside normal family life. No doubt the rule of celibacy provided a protective cover, while traditional teachings on sex as a sacred/taboo subject drove any dysfunctions deeper under cover.

What we do know, from the data available, is that the population of priests entering parish work at least from the 1940s was a disproportionately disordered population, and that a well-established culture of clericalism placed these men in positions of respect, authority, and power with no effective oversight.  Laypeople were taught to obey priests at all costs, were taught that priests were better than the rest of us, and indeed were taught-- another consequence of our sex-as-taboo tradition--that priests were nonsexual beings, above the struggle of desire and self control.  I still recall how shocked I was, perhaps at 12, to learn that priests actually went to confession!

Now we know that the widespread presumption of priestly “purity” combined with real power to create a recipe for disaster.  In hindsight, we see a highly concentrated population of disordered men who could commit atrocities with impunity.

The case history shows that fear kept most children silent, that the myth of pure priestly asexuality ensured that no one believed those who spoke up, and that clericalism ensured the cover-up of the few cases where children were believed.

We must add another factor: the Catholic moralization of all things sexual.  This ensured that, when abusers were exposed, their superiors (usually bishops) assumed the problem was simply sinful behavior.  This meant the solution was equally simple: confession and penance.  And after completing penance (sometimes including rehab), priests were routinely reinstated on the assumption that they had repented their sins.  The result was the notorious pattern of the secret recycling of abusers that enabled them to rape more children.

One may argue that those superiors were simply ignorant of the pathology that rendered penance an empty remedy. But there were enough cases of abusers who repeatedly abused for years, in multiple parishes, that one must ask: did such superiors possess no common sense at all?  Did it not eventually occur to them that penance was not working---that a disordered psyche was not the same as moral failure?  Did they never realize that they were enabling the rape of children?

It is possible, of course, that there’s some overlapping in the categories of priests I have described.  It is possible, for example, that some gay priests abused children, just as some heterosexual priests may have abused children.  But there is no evidence that gay priests represent a statistical threat to the well being of children.  Do some gay priests violate their celibacy?  Probably they do, just as there is a long history of heterosexual priests who had mistresses.  But when we try to analyze the cause of disordered behavior, it makes sense to begin with disordered people.  And screening out gay men from the priesthood, as some alarmists demand, would do nothing to address the problem if such screening still allows the “psycho-sexually immature” to enter seminary life.

If my description of the factors contributing to the sex abuse crisis is at all accurate, then we must acknowledge the painful truth: our entire system of Catholic life--our attitudes toward sexuality in general, our treatment of people who violate sexual rules, our pressures on people who do not fit the norms, our seminary cultures, our demand that all priests must be celibate, our myth about the asexual “purity” of ordained men, our acceptance of the clericalism, our moralization of all things sexual and our blindness about pathological disorders--all these things combined in what I am calling a perfect storm.

Thus the idea that simply screening gay men out of the priesthood will solve the problem is wrong-headed: typically gay men are not disordered by attraction to children; they can make perfectly good priests as long as they obey the same rules as heterosexual priests must obey.

It is time we accept that in any population there will be other men--men who are not capable of either normal married life or the life of the celibate priest.  And we must begin to think about how such men will live in our communities without endangering our children. The priesthood cannot be their refuge. So then what?

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2018

#471: Ending Clericalism, Our “Original Sin”

  [Pope Francis’ letter on the Sex Abuse crisis

 has received praise and criticism. 

But one idea deserves deep reflection by all of us.]

The recent outbreak of the sex abuse crisis (Pennsylvania, Australia, Cardinal McCarrick, etc.) prove that any notion that this nightmare was over was just wishful thinking.

Pope Francis’ letter expressed remorse for the church’s failures and empathy for the victims. He clearly is appalled by both the depravity of individual clergy and the equally scandalous (if not worse) cover-up by bishops.

But critics argue we need real change, not just talk. Surface reforms won’t do. We must identify and uproot the underlying causes. This crisis is about failed leadership and governance. We know “This is no way to run the Church,” and we need a different way.

So we must first understand why it runs the way it does.

I think Pope Francis offers the best answer: “To say "no" to abuse is to say an emphatic "no" to all forms of clericalism.” I could not agree more—but to end clericalism we must understand what it is, where it came from, and why it is so dangerous.

Hierarchy vs. Clericalism. People may think the problem is the church’s top-down structure. I would argue, instead, that the problem is not the structure but the culture than drives it.

The Catholic Church’s hierarchy is hardly unique. Over centuries, the church’s hierarchy provided the model for most major organizations in Western culture. Even democratic institutions, like the US government, are heavily hierarchical. The President may be elected, but the entire executive branch is a complex ranking of appointed superiors and subordinates. Hierarchy permeates contemporary society--it has become the dominant way to organize any large institution. The Church is simply the world’s largest and oldest hierarchy--it is, in a word, the mother of all hierarchies.

Lord Acton, referring to Pius IX’s papacy, warned “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” But not all hierarchies are corrupt, because they place checks on power.

The American military is hierarchical, but its Commander-in-Chief is a civilian. The executive branch is a hierarchy, but it is checked by the legislative and the judiciary. Corporate hierarchies may be checked by forces either within the organization (unions, directors, shareholders) or outside it (e.g., regulatory agencies, legislation).

The common denominator in all these: while hierarchies place people in positions of authority, those people remain accountable to someone else for the way they use their authority. Accountability is what keeps those in authority honest, by ensuring that, if authority is abused, there will be consequences for the abuser.

What sets Catholic governance apart is not its hierarchical structure, but the absence of accountability.

We should ask:  Why is there no accountability?

Because, while the basic structure of Catholic hierarchy has remained relatively intact for centuries, an evolving Inner Culture was permanently altering the roles of both clergy and lay people. This inner culture, Clericalism, is the “original sin” that has made our present crisis inevitable. The Culture of Clericalism has prevented the accountability we needed to keep hierarchy honest.

In its broadest sense, Clericalism evolved in two dimensions: (1) The clergy became a privileged class, and (2) Lay people became totally dependent. In a word, clergy became the Church’s parents, and laity its children.

 A Privileged Clergy. Over centuries, the top-down hierarchical structure was accompanied by privileges not available to laity. Pastors began functioning as proprietors entitled to income and even to property, as though the parish belonged to them. Priests eventually acquired titles, uniforms, incomes, land, exemptions from ordinary public duties (from jury duty to paying traffic fines), rights and even “special graces” denied to lay people.

The cumulative effect was a caste system: the priesthood became an entitled, elite club, which tended to operate by its own (often secret) rules, invisible to outside view and immune to outside accountability. The Church’s inner culture developed a chronic double standard--one for clergy, and the other for laity.

Modern reforms leading up to Vatican II (1962-1965) stripped away many privileges, but the double standard itself remained. The long history of clergy being above accountability to anyone “below” them continued—and so did the history of the clericalism’s gravest abuse: the abuse of power.

Authority without accountability becomes dangerous. Once I am in a position of authority, I may be tempted to make it my shield. Instead of using authority to serve the Church, I abuse it, controlling whoever challenges my will, demanding obedience and loyalty. People simply follow my orders. So my human weaknesses are hidden. My arrogance goes unchallenged, my dishonesty goes unchecked, my misdeeds go undiscovered. I remain a flawed human being, but authority covers up my flaws like a bullet-proof vest, so I begin to seem invulnerable, morally superior to ordinary humans, hardly human at all. The notion that I stand in Jesus’ place cements my super-human status.

It takes rare moral strength to resist such temptation consistently. Among US Catholic immigrants, the priesthood represented the only privileged state available to most Catholics. The priesthood became such a powerful vehicle of personal advancement—the “Cadillac among professions,” once diocesan vocations director called it—that many priests retired wealthy, with legacies and seashore estates. And all priests faced the diabolical temptation to wield their authority to acquire virtual moral immunity. Too many men succumbed to that temptation. Pretending to be angels, they fell.

And a dependent laity. The deep cultural roots of clericalism have a lay side as well. At the same time that priestly privileges were mounting (from the 4th century on), the Roman Empire was crumbling. Schools closed, civil government yielded to Church control. Eventually the laity were nearly all illiterate and powerless, and it naturally became common to regard lay people as helpless children. (James Carroll has termed this the “infantalization” of Catholicism).

Monasteries, cathedral schools, and even universities in this period were open only to those seeking ordination. The parish priest was thus the only literate member of most parishes. Holy Orders took the place of Baptism as the prime sacrament of vocation, and the priest became the central figure in church life. He was shepherd to his flock, “father” to his family, making the parent-child relationship the controlling metaphor for all clergy-lay relations. The Church’s parents could do as they liked, and the children—the laity—were kept “innocent” by being kept ignorant.

Modern life, of course, eventually rendered this metaphor obsolete. By late 20^th century, American Catholics were as educated, independent, capable and sophisticated as clergy. Yet this obsolete parent-child relationship persisted—and it persisted despite official Church teachings against it, teachings that called for its end.

Vatican II proclaimed the need for a holy, mature, adult laity. In 1985, the US bishops spoke of the laity’s “Call to Adulthood” in the church. Yet many priests still defined clergy-lay relations by the same old cynical rhyme: “We hatch, match, and dispatch; they pray, pay, and obey.” Meanwhile most laity accepted a passive role; those asserting themselves often met resistance, anger, rejection. At best, relations progressed from “parent-child” to “parent-adolescent”—rebellious hostility vs. threatened defensiveness.

Why, despite such calls for a new relationship, has the parent-child model persisted?

My answer: many clergy have clung to the obsolete model precisely to protect their privileged state. An empowered laity raises the threat of accountability—and many clergy, horrified to think of answering to their own people, cling to their role as the Church’s parents, wielding their authority like a personal shield. So, in the present crisis, Church officials opposed laws requiring clergy to report abuse, rationalizing their elitist arrogance with a perverse logic that erupted naturally from the inner culture of clericalism like lava oozing from split rock:

“We clergy (the parents) know clergy sex abuse exists. But the laity (the children) could never handle discovering this, it would destroy their child-like faith, and that would be a scandal. It is our duty to protect them from this truth, so we must take any measure to hide it from them.”

In short, the Church’s culture of clericalism has perverted its hierarchical structure, keeping clergy immune from accountability—and that immunity has now led to disaster on two levels: the sexual abuse by priests, and gross abuse of power by bishops.

What can be done about it? The short answer is: we must institutionalize accountability. And since the hierarchy itself is not about to disappear, the question becomes: how to institutionalize accountability within hierarchy?

Replacing Clericalism.  One thing is clear: operating without accountability is no longer an option. Henceforth the secular society—media, courts, legislatures—will police the Church if the Church cannot police itself. But any solution within the Church will require broad support. Clergy and laity must act to replace clericalism with a new way of running the Church. 1000 Catholics have already petitioned all US bishops to resign as a collective symbol of their willingness to act.

Structural change will be needed: We need effective ways of ensuring that everyone in authority answers to someone else. One priest has already proposed a “Council for Clergy Accountability” with lay, religious, and clergy members.

But structural changes will not be enough. For years police, DAs, and courts possessed the structures to hold the Church accountable, but failed to employ them out of deference—that is, because of clericalism.

Bad leaders can pervert the best structures, but good leaders can improve even bad structures. That means getting leaders whose character, training, support systems, and operating culture make them effective at empowering others instead of controlling them.

This means a variety of cultural reforms: in seminary formation, in the professionalism of clergy and lay leaders, in the Church’s work environment. It also means serious formation that empowers lay people to take on their new responsibility to keep clergy accountable.

Calling out priests for acting privileged was once unthinkable. NOW it is essential, and that means lay people must step up to the plate and do the calling out.

This happens in very mundane ways. Example: a parish council is supposed to be an advisory body. But too often pastors ask council members for individual opinions, rather than asking the council body for its advice. That requires decision-making: do we advise this or that? And if the council decides by consensus, with the pastor present, that can check his authority by giving everyone a veto. This is how accountability can work on the local level.

I’ve worked with pastors whose councils use consensus, and with dozens of other local initiatives that already show us better ways of running the church together: A pastor who invites his staff to evaluate his performance; clergy who consult parishioners to develop priorities for the future; youth ministers, religious education directors and worship coordinators who consult volunteers to keep them involved and invested—all are part of the solution. They model authentic authority, accountable leadership, and transparent operations.

Such “best practices” have already transformed Church leadership in some places, and they need to be more widely appreciated and nurtured. 

These initiatives remind us that Vatican II offered an alternative to Clericalism in the form of Conciliarism—the ancient (but underused!) church culture that brings people together for consultation “as much as possible” at all levels whenever decisions are needed or action is to be taken.

Vatican II was itself an example of conciliarism in action. Many effective parish staffs and parish councils I consult with model conciliarism. But too many priests and bishops still give lip service to conciliarism, resisting efforts to expand it while clutching all control behind the scenes.

But lip service for conciliarism is no longer acceptable. If Vatican II is the work of the Spirit, then its intentions are the Will of God—and God’s Will must be done.

Acting to end clericalism is doing God’s work.

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2018