The National Catholic Reporter took up the issue so vigorously for praiseworthy reasons, seeking to expose what the paper regarded as a crying abuse of power by the Church, in which ecclesiastical self- protection
took priority over the interests of victims and their families. But clerical abuse served the purpose of those for whom a general "crisis" showed the severity of problems within the Church. The exploding concern with clerical abuse in 1986 and 1987 coincided with a "Catholic civil war" in which dissidents fought the Church hierarchy over such issues as sexual ethics,
academic freedom, and the role of women. Not all the commentators shared the whole reformist agenda, and Greeley remains a defender of clerical celibacy, but the centrality of the abuse theme is evident in their books and articles.
Of course 6 percent of priests are pedophiles, the Catholic reformers argued, and who knows how many more are involved with teenagers. What else can we expect from a Church that keeps its clergy in a lifelong state of sexual immaturity, that denies the spiritual gifts of women, that preserves an authoritarian system? The abuse issue illustrates (the indictment continued) the secretive workings of the hierarchy, the neglect of the laity, and the pernicious effect of celibacy. For feminists, epidemic clerical abuse is
precisely what their theories would predict of a patriarchal institution that permits unchecked sexual exploitation.
From this perspective, the answers to abuse are obvious: the ordination of women, the end of mandatory celibacy, the democratization of traditional
hierarchies, and perhaps the reform of distinctive institutions like confession (which can offer the predatory priest the opportunity to identify and seduce his victims). Nothing will suffice short of the creation of an authentically American Catholic church. As so often in the past, a sexually rooted anticlerical polemic is used to attack the Church. In the last two years, clerical abuse scandals have been employed in precisely this way to undermine the legal and political position of the Church in such strongly
Catholic nations as Ireland and Austria.
Due notice should also be paid to the traditionalist and conservative groups that publicized the pedophile issue and exaggerated its severity in order to counter what they regarded as homosexual subversion of the Church. It was the traditionalists in 1989 and 1990 who organized demonstrations at national gatherings of Catholic bishops and focused media attention on the sins of the Church-hoping to discredit liberal and modernist prelates. For both the ecclesiastical left and right, pedophile charges found audiences predisposed to take up an issue that could be used to promote specific policy agendas. It was the enormous utility of clergy abuse that ensured the absence of a
pro-Church reaction or even criticism of the often outrageous exaggerations of the problem.
If Catholic factional conflicts encouraged the sensationalistic treatment of priestly misdeeds, so did the Church's organizational structure. Compared to
other American denominations, the Catholic Church produced a disproportionately high level of reported scandals, for, unlike most of its Protestant counterparts, the Catholic Church is a hierarchical organization with parish clergy subordinate to Episcopal authorities who observe and record their behavior. Each Catholic priest has a diocesan dossier
that records official complaints-and such dossiers have ironically provided the material for many legal actions. Lawsuits against the Catholic Church can
follow established paper trails to ensure large financial judgments against a whole diocese. The typically more decentralized and congregational polity
of Protestant churches makes them less attractive targets. In large measure, this is why the "pedophile pastor" rarely appears in the demonology of television talk-shows and why celibacy occupies center stage in so many analyses of priestly depredations.
During the 1970s and 1980s, psychological values and assumptions permeated the religious world no less than the secular culture, often through the vehicle of self-help and recovery movements. But an intellectual chasm separates the assumptions of traditional churches from those of mainstream therapy and psychology. The medicalization of wrongdoing sharply
circumscribes the areas in which clergy can appropriately exercise their professional jurisdiction, and this loss of acknowledged expertise
to therapists and medical authorities at once symbolizes and accelerates a substantial decline in the professional status of priests and ministers.
And yet, not only were the clerical abuse scandals generally interpreted according to therapeutic views and policies, but the churches themselves adopted the rhetoric of the therapists. When a crisis was acknowledged in the early 1990s, most statements by the Catholic hierarchy accepted the notion of the compulsive and irreformable nature of adult sexual activity with children and admitted the radical tenet that implicated priests should never be restored to parish ministry. They agreed that child victims urgently required therapy from secular psychologists and counselors, itself a rejection of the means of healing offered by the Church. Catholic authorities accepted without qualms the expansive claims made by therapists about the massive extent and life-long consequences of sexual abuse-both ideas that are in reality open to serious challenge.
The clerical abuse scandal wrought great damage upon American churches, and above all upon the Catholic Church, which suffered blows to its morale and
prestige far more serious than its large pecuniary losses. Can anything positive be drawn from this whole mess? Chances of avoiding repetition seem slight: it is probably too much to ask that the news media will in future exercise caution before making wild generalizations indulging ancient religious stereotypes. Meanwhile, the relationship between clergy and laity has been severely tested, and it will be many years before priests are able to associate with young people on anything like the free and easy
terms that provided opportunities for abuse. Father Porter casts a long shadow.
Yet other more favorable images emerge from the crisis, including the juries who were able to acquit some falsely accused priests and to reject demands for large financial damages. But two individuals particularly deserve commemoration. One was Stephen Cook, the former seminarian who reported his falsely "recovered" memories of sexual violation by Cardinal Bernardin. His charges were instantly and widely cited by the media, which face no restrictions on quoting the most extravagant allegations once they have been
lodged in a civil lawsuit. While many plaintiffs would have pressed their charges ruthlessly in the hope of gaining some compromise settlement, Cook came to realize the falsity of his supposed recollections and publicly withdrew the allegations. Bernardin, who had reacted with astonishing dignity and courage, made a heroic effort to reconcile with Cook and spoke
eloquently on the occasion of Cook's death in 1995. Suffering, manipulation, slander, and injustice thus gave rise to charity, strength, forgiveness, and love: a lesson that the oddly matched images of Bernardin and Cook should epitomize many years after the memory of the abusive clergy has passed into oblivion.
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Philip Jenkins is Professor of Religious Studies at
Pennsylvania State University and author of Pedophiles
and Priests (Oxford University Press).