The LA Times provides a lot of details in its breakdown of information about priests accused of sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

been alleged at roughly 100 parishes. But because the accused priests moved around the archdiocese on average every 4.5 years, the total number of parishes in which alleged abusers served is far larger — more than three-fourths of the 288 parishes, according to the study, which examined records back to 1950.

The affected parishes were in neighborhoods of Los Angeles, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties both rich and poor, suburban and urban, some predominantly white and others with African American or Latino majorities. The study does not support the contention made by some critics of the church that problem priests were dumped into poor, Latino and African American communities.

Based on the allegations, the number of abusive priests peaked in 1983. More than 11% of the diocesan priests — those who worked directly for the archdiocese, rather than for religious orders — who were in ministry that year eventually were accused of abuse.

Now one issue I have with this survey is that it appears to presume that every accusation was a valid accusation. Some weren’t – and one of my mentors during my seminary years was the victim of a false accusation, so I am quite sensitive to that reality. Another is the implicit assumption that those who relied on the advice of psychologists giving the best current clinical advice decades ago were somehow insensitive and immoral in their actions of sending accused abusers to counseling and then reassigning them after treatment. They were following the best practices of the day – practices we know are wrong.

But one thing we did not get from the times is this little tidbit of information that was noted by the Catholic League’s William Donahue – information that strikes me as rather significant in discussing the abuse scandal.

“We know from the files that have been released that in 79 percent of the cases, the alleged victim was male; this comports with the figure of 81 percent cited by the John Jay study of priests nationwide. And we know from the latter study that almost 8 in 10 of the alleged male victims were postpubescent, meaning that the problem is homosexual priests. Yet many in the media continue to lie—they say the problem is pedophilia when the data directly say otherwise. No, homosexuality does not cause molestation, and there are many good gay priests, but the fact remains that most of the problem priests are gay.

Yeah, you read that right – the problem was not pedophilia. It was homosexuality. Pedophilia, properly defined by the psychological sciences, is sexual desire and contact with prepubescent males. A man having sex with 15-18 year olds is not a pedophile, but is instead likely a homosexual acting out a homosexual orientation. The behavior is still wrong and still unacceptable, but let’s at least name it as what it is. So let’s tell the truth and state that about 60% of all priest sexual misconduct was homosexual activity with teenagers – that would go a long way towards making it clear what happened and why.

That is not to blame all homosexual priests for the abuse, or to label them as abusers. They are not. But it does explain why there might be a desire on the part of senior members of the Catholic hierarchy to discourage the ordination of homosexuals to the priesthood.

Posted by: Greg at 12:39 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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