As a practicing Catholic, priests in my parish have played a critical role in my life. I entrust them with my problems and my joys. I could never imagine any of them doing anything to hurt me. Unfortunately, with the media spin and the faltering of the Catholic Church, many Catholics aren't so sure if they can trust the Church anymore. Parents are pulling their kids out of Catholic schools and not allowing their children to be altar servers. In order to stop this hysteria in its tracks, we must examine the facts through glasses untainted by the media. I do not intend to dismiss the pain the victims of the alleged molestation are experiencing, but I do think that we are pulling a bit of a McCarthy.
The media is only helping to encourage the hype. As with school shootings, they have blown the scandal out of proportion. In almost every newspaper and television news report there have been headline stories pertaining to the child abuse scandal.
In a Pennsylvania State University study in 1995, pedophilia among Catholic priests was found to be no more common than among clergy of other faiths, or in the population-at-large. It seems as though the "pedophilia priest crisis" is a contemporary moral panic that has captured the media spotlight. Additionally in our rather secular society, the media seems to want to drag the Church through the mud for the purpose of spectacle. According to the media, priests are supposed to be superhuman. Although molesting children is a grievous offense, priests aren't above having that illness. The media seems to be harder on the priests than it would be on laypeople that are accused of molesting children every day.
Another controversial aspect of this crisis is that many of the alleged victims coming forward are alleging abuse that happened decades ago. Although some victims of childhood sexual abuse do repress the memories or feel too guilty to tell their story, it is strange that there aren't many of these cases in which the alleged victims have been abused in the past five years. With the increased media attention and big monetary payoffs, could at least some of these cases be fabrications or possibly false memory formations? Oftentimes in abuse cases investigators tend to ask leading questions, which can cause an alleged victim to "remember" something that didn't really happen.
Many critics are also citing the Catholic Church's rule of celibacy for all members of the clergy as a possible cause of the alleged sexual abuse. Although Roman Catholicism is the only sect of Christianity to require celibacy, that doesn't dictate that celibacy is the sole cause of the abuse. Not all celibate people are pedophiles and some married people are. In reference to the proposal to remove the celibacy rule, Bishop Wilton Gregory, President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, told The New York Times that, "not only would it not help, but it still remains contrary to the teachings and traditions of our church. We cannot address the crisis by denying who we are as a people of faith."
The blame should be falling squarely on the shoulders of the individual perpetrators, not the Catholic Church. In a child abuse case involving a teacher, is the school also blamed? Then why is our legal system even entertaining the idea of court proceedings in which the Pope is being named as a defendant? Of course some cardinals and priests have been instrumental in covering up the abuses, but that is not the manner in which all the clergy have been acting. A prime offender has been Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston. He admitted to shuttling former priest John Geoghan from parish to parish despite evidence that Geoghan had molested children. Yes, some of these men are criminals and they belong in jail. The justice system should be treating the perpetrators independent of the organization they belong to just like they do in any other case.
Most priests aren't pedophiles. And most Catholics don't sweep serious crimes under the carpet. I don't believe that the Catholic Church needs to continue to wear the scarlet letter of shame, as long as we take the measures to rebuild trust in the church and implement policies that will hold priest responsible for sexual misconduct. Bishop Gregory plans on asking the Vatican to approve a binding sex abuse policy for the American clergy. This is the first step towards healing the badly bruised Catholic Church.