Sucker-Punched
: Editorial
from National Catholic Register 23 Feb 03
People
with an ax to grind and lawyers with a buck to make were listening in.
Something
unintended has happened as a result of the U.S. Church's response to the
sex-abuse scandal. While Catholics were admitting the worst about the Church, people
with an ax to grind and lawyers with a buck to make were listening in.
Don't
get us wrong. Catholic bishops who covered up sexual abuse are undeniably to
blame for current Church woes. Looking the other way at charges of sex abuse is
inexcusable. The first, and worst, victims were those children who suffered
abuse. They are owed an unpayable debt.
But
Catholics, shaken by the scandal, exaggerated how widespread it was. To hear
many tell it, you would think that the biggest problem facing the Church today
was the safety of children in parish halls.
It's
easy to understand why. The sexual abuse of children is so horrifying it justifies the
strongest possible condemnations - like Christ's proverbial "millstone
around the neck."
But
that's all the more reason the Church should have been willing to tell the
world the true scope of the problem.
At
the height of the media frenzy last April, the Associated Press reported that
it could find only half of 1% of priests guilty or accused. And only a tiny
percentage of this tiny percentage had anything to do with pedophilia. Yet that
statistic found practically no echo among Catholics.
Instead,
Catholic journalists with quick-hit Web sites seized on abuse case after abuse
case, bringing them to the public's attention and creating the
impression that clergy sex abuse of children was rampant. If anyone dared stray
from this counterintuitive orthodoxy, they were denounced as part of the
cover-up. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger himself was ridiculed for pointing out the
demographic fact that priest-abusers are few.
Last
month, The New York Times did its own exhaustive study of the percentage of
priests accused of sex abuse of minors (not the infinitesimal percentage
accused of pedophilia) and found that - after a year of the media telegraphing
that the Church was ripe for abuse claims - the number was only 1.8%. That's
1.8% accused, not convicted. And the paper had to go back decades to get the
number up even that high.
The
Times sounded disappointed that the percentage was so low, but, by then, a year
of exaggeration allowed them to say something incredible without fear of being
called to task by Catholics: "[A]lthough the problem involved only a small
percentage of priests, it was deeply embedded in the culture of the Catholic
priesthood." (emphasis added).
Now
the chickens are coming home to roost, in state after state.
Responding
to the scandal, California instituted a one-year moratorium on the statute of
limitations in that state for the filing of lawsuits regarding sexual abuse of
children. Kentucky wants to do the same but make it permanent. This allows
allegations too old to be proved or disproved to ruin priests' reputations -
often, posthumously.
Other
states want to follow suit. In each case, Catholic priests are at the center of
the argument for trouncing legal precedent.
Why
is the Church's small percentage of abusers receiving so much attention from
victims' rights organizations? If they want to stop abuse, why are they
ignoring places (schools, for example) where far more abusers lurk?
The
Portland, Ore., case we report on in this issue might explain why: because
lawyers are drawn to money. The Church has a lot of assets, and it has a real and
heartfelt repentance over even its small percentage of abusers. It's a ripe
target.
Did
lawyers cause the abuse crisis in the Catholic Church? Of course not. Abusers
and enabling bishops did. But as horrifying as their stories are, there are
fewer such stories in the Church than outside it.
The
Church isn't ours, in the end. It's Christ's. He created it as his way of
reaching the world. Catholics have a duty before God to not let his Church's
reputation be unfairly tarnished. We have shown we can admit when we have been
wrong. Let's also show we can stand up for the Church where it has been
unjustly accused.
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Editor@FaithfulVoice.com