* Here are the stats:
Victims’ ages: 5.8% under 7; 16% ages 8-10; 50.9% ages 11-14; 27.3% ages 15-17.
Victims’ gender: 81% male, 19% female
http://archives.weirdload.com/stats.html
So there were indeed pepophile priests. 3/4s of the victims were age 14 or less – this is disgusting by any standard. Age of consent laws in the US vary from 16 to 18 but even for those over the age of consent (and who actually consented) the priest is supposed to be in a relationship of trust and not having sex with his parishioners or students. Even putting aside that in the eyes of the Church itself, to whom the priests swore sacred vows, priests should (A) not be having sex at all , (B) not be having sex outside of marriage and (C) not be having gay sex. In other words, 100% of these priests were in the wrong one way or another.
* The data issued by the Diocese of Syracuse suggests that the point of origin was with cohorts ordained in the late 1920s with the peak of trouble being with the ordination classes of the mid-1960s. National data suggested the problem was at its worst with the 1970 class. Also, the type of accusation changed over time. Accusations of male on male activity were more common in all eras, but in supposed incidents from 1955, the ratio of one to the other was 1.8 to one. Re incidents occurring ca. 1985, it was 6 to 1. About 80% of the accusations on file were male-on-male incidents.
The Syracuse data suggest the propensity to report misconduct was quite low prior to 1980, something you can also see in larger diocese when looking at the Bishop Accountability case files. It’s doubtful that bishops of that era were all that aware of the problems. There was an abrupt shift in the ecosystem around about 1983, when bishops who might have fielded one accusation a decade were now fielding two or three a year. By and large, offenses are not reported in real time. Roughly 15 years after the fact is about normal with the accusations lobbed in 2002 and 2003 often 3, 4, 5 decades after the fact.
There were a great many accusations of offenses against presumptively prepubescent males. I think about 40% concerned males past their 14th birthday. Accusations of fondling were the mode, not actual sex acts (much less ‘rapes’).
The ‘cover-up’ meme is largely nonsense. Bishops were assessing accusations made long after the supposed fact without corroborating information. If a priest confessed or if a priest was the subject of multiple accusations from persons unknown to each other, that was one thing. For the most part, though, these cases were impossible. Corporate organizations do not publish their personnel files, but people retrospectively expect bishops to do so. Nearly all civil disputes are settled with negotiations and pecuniary transfers, no matter what sort of party brings suit and what sort is the defendant, but, somehow, this is sinister when a bishop does this. Criminal prosecution was never feasible in the vast majority of the cases. The accusations were made after statutes of limitations had run out or were of a nature that they’d make insufficient evidence in most cases. The prosecutors in the John Geoghan case were able to find just one case which was not time-barred and the witness in that case was so scatter-brained that the prosecutors were relying on inverted jury nullification to put Fr. Geoghan away. (Recall that what Geoghan was accused of doing in that case was squeezing the rear end of a 14 year old youth).
If you can locate Paul Mankowski’s article ‘Tames in Clerical Culture’, that I think will provide you with a better explanation for the behavior of men like Cdl. Law (who is not known to have been a member of any gay social networks). (Most bishops were more prudent than Law and pulled accused priests out of circulation). You did have some bishops were were known to be part of gay social networks. The lay organization Roman Catholic Faithful identified a few. (The founder of RCF had a business to run so shut down the organization a number of years ago).
The real problem was the quality of those recruited to the priesthood. They seem to have developed after 1970 methods which screened out the most troublesome characters. The very real threat of exposure after 1983 persuaded nearly all the rest to keep it in their pants.
* I think its pretty clear that the crisis concerned one generation of priests. The number of ordained priests in America doubled between 1950 and 1960. And the real trouble started in 1960, and peaked in 1975. After 1985, incidents sharply and steadily declined. That would seem to pretty well chart one cohorts’ sex drive, plus their position of power. A priest ordained in 1960 would be responsible for scheduling altar boys, but he would become a pastor about 1975 and be responsible for qualifying and largely attracting them, and he would enter middle age about 1985 when his libido went away.
I find it highly probable that Fulton Sheen attracted a wave of gay men into the priesthood during the 50s. He was very popular on TV from 1951-1968. Watching old videos of him now, I gotta say, he looks like an awfully commanding man with a sensationally gay wardrobe and a delicate if authorial voice.
* The gay bishops did the most covering up, followed by the gay-friendly bishops, and both continue to do so. Cardinal Dolan in New York, for example, has allowed a gay priest in the Bronx to embezzle church funds to cavort with a gay-for-pay prostitute, and hasn’t removed him from his post/ job.
Most of these bishops have had evidence for years of which priests in their parish are gay, and instead of rooting them out, they cover for them. When a “scandal” breaks, its almost always on a priest who is already “known” by the diocese/bishop for his gay behavior. And they did almost zero investigation, just moved a priest until the heat was off.
It’s like with Weinstein. No one in Hollywood is surprised at the allegations because anyone in Hollywood had heard rumors or seen Weinstein’s behavior before, they just ignored it or covered up.
* Rod Dreher: A longer look, from 1950 to 2002, found 10,667 children allegedly victimized by 4,392 priests. Half of their victims were found to have been between 11 and 14 years of age; about 80 percent of them were male…
In my reporting on the scandal, I learned (from Sipe and others) that the clerical gay networks, especially in seminaries, sought to draw in gay priests in part to neutralize them. If a seminarian became sexually involved with other men, even if that seminarian never abused a minor, the network had his name, and had compromised him. He knew that he could never rat out those who did abuse minors, because they had his own sexual secrets to hold over his head…. The point I want to make here is that the lavender mafia phenomenon is pretty well known among journalists, both religious and secular, who cover or did cover the church and the scandal. And in many cases, it was deliberately not reported on, mostly, in my opinion, out of fear that it would validate the views of those journalists considered bigots.
Despite the gruesome example of defrocked Boston priest John Geoghan, whose case started the current tidal wave of revelations, the overwhelming majority of priests who have molested minors are not pedophiles – that is, like Geoghan, among the rare adults sexually attracted to pre- pubescent children. They are, rather, “ephebophiles” – adults who are sexually attracted to post-pubescent youths, generally aged 12 to 17. And their victims have been almost exclusively boys.
Stephen Rubino, a New Jersey lawyer, says that of the over 300 alleged victims of priest sex abuse he has represented, roughly 85 percent are boys, and were teenagers when the abuse occurred. Dr. Richard Fitzgibbons, an eminent Catholic psychiatrist who has treated scores of victims and priest-perpetrators, says 90 percent of his patients were either teen male victims of priests, or priests who abused teen boys.
“I think we have to ask the question: Why are 90 percent to 95 percent, and some estimates say as high as 98 percent, of the victims of clergy [abuse] teenage boys? . . . We need to ask that question, and I think there’s a certain reluctance to raise that issue,” said the Rev. Donald B. Cozzens, author of The Changing Face of the Priesthood, on a recent Meet the Press.
* The elephant in the room is that male-female relations are essentially a zero-sum game. What’s good for men as a group is necessarily bad for women as a group, and vice-versa. Crudely, from a biological standpoint, men seek to inseminate whomever they want without any further commitment, and women seek to be inseminated by the hottest guys and then be supported by whoever is able and willing to do so (generally not the same guys they want impregnating them).
These biological imperatives manifest themselves differently according to culture, but, when boiled down, one finds the same fundamental ingredients.
Today in the US we are arguably closer to an unalloyed matriarchy than any society in history has been (except maybe Sweden(?)), and the latest moral panic is bringing us even closer. Ultimately, feminists want the ability to destroy the reputation of any man at whim (if not have him imprisoned or killed). This is what the “always believe the victim” thing is about. By definition, to reflexively believe the accuser means one must disbelieve the accused (unless the accused admits to the accusation).
Weinstein, Spacey and Moore have been proven to be scum beyond a reasonable doubt, although it’s likely that at least some of their accusers are not being entirely truthful. As for everyone else, we should not jump on the bandwagon simply because we dislike them. Franken is a case in point.
* Not zero-sum at all. There are stable setups that would make both men and women better off overall. Go ask the Mormons about it.
* Male-female relations are indeed sort of zero-sum in our current feminist environment everywoman-for-herself environment where the sexes have been sundered from their culture and each other. Sure in it, women want free provisioning–welfare, child support, soft-jobs, AA promotions, etc. etc. etc.–without having to make any commitment, plus sexual freedom–play the field, blow up marriages on demand. Men–who can–will pump and dump–as long as they can.
But traditionally we had this non-zero-sum thing called “marriage”, where both sexes gave up some freedom in order and had to resist some of their sexual impulses, but were both rewarded with an overall better deal–for both long term happiness and genetic survival. It was the bedrock of civilization.
Now, after the feminist blew this up, with sluts and the divorce industry, the grotesquely slanted playing field makes marriage more and more unpalatable to men. But, of course, that doesn’t actually benefit women whom as they age and thoughts turn to children, tend to really really want the goodies that marriage provides, not just the “free” provisioning the super-state provides as husband-replacement.
But the positive sum solution between men and women is still out there. We just have to roll back a lot of the cultural damage that the left has inflicted to get back there.
