ARTICLES
June 2002 ARTICLES
Contents © 2002
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.
As Feckless and Chaotic as Democracy
Is More Lay Governance the Solution to the Molestation Crisis?
By George Neumayr
The lesson Cardinal Roger Mahony seems to draw from the ongoing abuse scandal is that the shepherds must follow the sheep. "What has become obvious to me is that too much of this has been functioning within the close clerical circles," he told the Los Angeles Times in April. "We're much better served when we involve ... lay people."
But do the sheep know where they are going? Are they blameless in the scandal? Have they covered up for bad priests and bishops? Do they reject the culture of laxity in the Church that made the scandal possible? A dissenting, decadent laity leading dissenting, decadent clergy is a case of the blind leading the blind, as traditional Catholics see it. That "Spirit-of-Vatican-II" model also denies an obvious fact: lay-dominated sects outside the Church display the same level of abuse and sexual confusion as American Catholicism.
If democratic religion is the solution to the abuse scandal, why do sects formed in that democratic ethos allow so much abuse? Shouldn't these sects be paragons of responsibility if lay decision-making is the key to sound governance?
The laity in non-Catholic denominations appear as capable of bad judgment in screening clerical candidates as the American Catholic bishops. Thomas Plante, a psychology professor at Stanford University, who studies clerical abuse, told me that clergy in lay-dominated sects are guilty of the same percentage of sex abuse offenses as Catholic priests. "The best data on clergy sex abuse," he said, "suggests that the percentage is similar between Catholics and non-Catholics." Plante, a Catholic, supports increased lay involvement in the governance of the Church, saying that 30 or so "eyes" on an abuse panel will diminish the likelihood of a cover-up. But when asked if lay panels could also cover up sex abuse, or deal with it indecisively, like the Catholic bishops, he replied, "Sure. They can."
And they have. Every religious faith and denomination in the country betrays evidence of a sexual culture gone haywire. In a recent review of convictions, the Christian Science Monitor found that at least "75 clergy members have been convicted of child sexual abuse charges since 1985." The breakdown: "38 were Roman Catholic priests, 10 Baptist ministers, five were Methodist ministers, three Pentecostal pastors, and two Episcopal priests."
"When these cases started to be reported, we realized there were a hell of a lot more out there than anyone realized," Gary Schoener, a Minneapolis psychologist who works with clerical sex abusers, has said in press reports. When it comes to pedophilia, heterosexual sex or homosexual sex, "offenders exist in literally every faith group," he said.
The Star Tribune, a Minnesota newspaper, conducted a poll in 1993 finding "that 6 percent of Minnesotans said they personally knew of someone who had been sexually abused by a member of the clergy. There was no difference in the responses of Protestants and Catholics." The Center for the Prevention of Sexual and Domestic Violence in Washington state reports that the percentage of clergy members of all faiths engaged in some kind of sexual misconduct could be as high as 15 percent.
The Star Tribune more recently reported that "in 1999, the Hartford Institute for Religion Research interviewed 76 clergy members, most of them Protestants, who had served 532 different congregations over the years. Just over half said their congregations had experienced a 'breach of trust,' with 122 cases involving sexual conduct. The vast majority of those cases involved affairs between consenting adults. Noting that the study remains anecdotal because the participants weren't chosen randomly, the authors called the results 'a fairly well-informed suggestion of what may be going on in American congregations.'"
Did these researchers find the culture of secrecy peculiar to the American Catholic Church -- which is the favorite claim of proponents of democratic religion? No, the researchers found "the instinct toward secrecy make[s] getting solid numbers nearly impossible" in all faiths.
At Schoener's counseling center in south Minneapolis, the Star Tribune reported, "he and his colleagues have consulted on more than 2,000 cases of clergy sexual misconduct. About two-thirds of those cases involved Protestants, and he said he sees no reason to think that rates of abuse are higher among Catholic priests." Said Schoener, "whether it's Protestant, Jewish, Hindu or Catholic, the more devout a person is, the more they trust their clergy -- and the more vulnerable they are."
In the wake of the Boston scandal, many lay-dominated sects feared a similar media exposure, and so they scurried to strengthen their standards. Ernest Lyght, bishop of the United Methodist Church, New York region, told the press that the scandal inspired him to educate the Methodist clergy and lay people on the church's sexual ethics policy. "We have to have a continuing practice of educating clergy and laity around issues of sexual misconduct. It's our responsibility to assure the safety of the children," said Lyght.
After the scandal hit Boston and New York, the Episcopal diocese of New York quickly posted the church's policy on sexual misconduct on the diocese's web site. New York papers noted that an article in the church newspaper, Episcopal Life, asked the question: "Recent revelations of sexual abuse of children by Roman Catholic priests may cause Episcopalians to wonder: Can it happen here?"
The answer is yes. The solutions proposed for the Catholic Church -- married priests and lay panels -- have not prevented sex scandals in the Episcopalian faith. In 1991, a Colorado woman won $1.2 million in a judgment against the state diocese and then-bishop William Frey. In February of this year, former Episcopal priest Kenneth Behrel was convicted of sexually abusing a 14-year-old boy in the 1980s while he served at St. James School in Hagerstown, Maryland.
Liberalized American Judaism isn't a model of zero-tolerance enlightenment either. New Jersey Rabbi Baruch Lanner, a leader in the Jewish Orthodox Union's National Conference of Synagogue Youth, was accused last year of abusing more than 20 teenage girls and physically abusing boys over a 30-year period. In April, he faced trial on charges of criminal sexual contact with two teenage girls. It wasn't until this year that Jewish leaders at the Union thought it necessary to institute a system addressing sex abuse complaints.
Non-Christian denominations without much semblance of hierarchy have also been rocked with sex scandals. The Hare Krishnas, a Hindu sect, face physical, mental, and sexual abuse allegations from 100 former Krishna children. The press recently reported a lawsuit filed in Texas state court demanding $400 million in damages from the International Society for Krishna Consciousness.
But the problems in the non-Catholic world do not seem to dissuade local priests from thinking that the windows of the Church are still not sufficiently open to the world. The remedy to a crisis created by liberal reforms, they think, is to push even more of them.
Mahony and Orange County Bishop Tod Brown insist that the scandal proves the need for the "reforms of Vatican II," even though those reforms were instituted a long time ago in the seminaries from which the molesters sprung. Father John McAndrew, parochial vicar for St. Angela Merici Church in Brea, said to the Los Angeles Times, "this is the worst scandal since the Reformation. This is the moment for reform." Such as? "McAndrew said diocese of Orange priests are discussing a proposal to place lay members for the first time on boards that hire and assign priests. Some Los Angeles clergy back that idea as well." In 1997, reported the Times, "500 Southern California priests unanimously decreed at a Palm Springs conference that the priest's most important role was to empower the laity."
The Associated Press reports that "Mahony did not call for major changes in such hot-button church policies as priestly celibacy and the ban on ordination of women. These matters are better left to members of a lay commission expected to be formed at the Dallas meeting, he said. Los Angeles already has such a commission, Mahony said, 'and I follow their advice to the letter.'"
Southern California Catholics should find this rhetoric familiar. Mahony has used it before to explain away another priestly crisis -- the vocations crisis. In his 2000 pastoral letter on ministry, he described the disappearance of vocations at St. John's Seminary and elsewhere as one of the "fruits of the Second Vatican Council." Fewer and fewer priests mean more lay ministers, he wrote in As I Have Done For You. "It has taken the shortage of priestly and religious vocations to awaken in us an appreciation of a broadly based shared ministry and a realization that it is in the nature of the Church as the Body of Christ to be endowed with many gifts, ministries and offices." Mahony continued, "what some refer to as a 'vocations crisis' is, rather, one of the many fruits of the Second Vatican Council, a sign of God's deep love for the Church, and invitation to a more creative and effective ordering of gifts and energy in the Body of Christ. This is a time of great challenge and opportunity in the Church, not least of all because the gifts of the lay faithful have been flourishing in unprecedented numbers and unforeseen ways."
Is the abuse crisis also one of the fruits of Vatican II -- an occasion to rely ever more deeply on the laity? The cardinal's curious reasoning in As I Have Done For You suggests as much.
Mahony's confidence in the laity seems selective, extending not to the traditional lay people who saw the crisis coming, but to modernist lay people who denied its seriousness. His confidence also presupposes that modernist lay Catholics possess better judgment and character than his priests. Maybe so. But recent incidents in his own diocese illustrate that the modernist laity's capacity for denial and tolerance of abuse equals that of Church officials.
Consider the laity's response to a victims' protest at an Azusa parish in late April. Parishioners at St. Frances church lashed out at the protesters, some of whom were victims of priestly abuse. "Go home," said one parishioner. "This is a place of worship. You have no place here." Parishioners cursed and insulted the protesters, according to the Los Angeles Times. "One man who stood outside the church to keep out activists and the media told protest organizer Mary Grant, who said she was molested by a priest as a child, 'I bet you enjoyed it, didn't you?'"
"A female parishioner charged a man holding a picket sign and hit him in the chest," reported the Times. "Norma Arista, 42, of Azusa, was arrested for allegedly assaulting protester Jim Falls of Los Angeles."
"Sadly, this has been the posture of the Church," said one protester of the parishioners' backlash. "To treat us as the enemy. If they blame the victim, then they don't have to take responsibility."
The confrontation between parishioners and protesters lasted for hours. "As protesters tried to hand out fliers, angry parishioners tore them up and some tossed the shredded paper at protesters," reported the Times. "You don't know our church. I don't believe any of this stuff. Just get out of here," said a parishioner. One protester, who described herself as a victim of abuse, ran away from the parishioners' insults in tears. "They kept calling me a stupid idiot and liar," she said.
The laity's willingness to side with bad priests was also seen in the case of Father Michael Harris, a popular Orange County priest who headed up Santa Margarita High School. Known as "Father Hollywood," Harris received a passionate defense from a prominent Catholic businessman, even as evidence of repeated molestation surfaced. Despite a settlement of $5.2 million to one of his accusers (Mahony and Brown's admission that the defrocked priest was guilty?) many lay Catholics, charmed by Harris, continued to defend him. And where is this accused molester today? On the fringes of the lay world? No, these days, according to the Los Angeles Times, he is "hosting gatherings of young men in his home as part of an unpaid job as an advisor to college fraternities."
Finally, there is the problem that democratic religion can prove as feckless and chaotic as democratic government. Anyone who trusts a lay council of dozens to take swift and unanimous action probably hasn't sat on one. A recent Times report on a lay assembly in Boston suggested the inertia characteristic of such groups. "Two hours into the meeting, 250 people were still trying to agree about the first sentence of a statement (the group) had drafted in response to Cardinal Law's refusal to resign from his office," said the report.