One of the most striking aspects of the Protestant clergy sex abuse pattern is that most people don't realize it is a pattern. The Catholic Church has taken a well deserved beating in the courts and in the court of public opinion as former altar boys, orphans and ordinary parishioners come forward with appalling stories of sex abuse. Yet equally egregious violations by Protestant clergy fail to generate the same level of outrage. Why?
You might answer that the problems in the Catholic Church are uniquely widespread, but that would be the wrong answer. Last week's Eddie Long scandal, in which one of the nation's most politically connected and homophobic mega-ministers was accused of strong-arming gay sex out of teens, was just one tip of an enormous Protestant iceberg. The news monthly Freethought Today has a regular feature called "Black Collar Crime Blotter," typically a two-page sampler of fraud, theft, and sexual abuse taken from the media across the country. They just turned their archive over to the Kinsey Institute. A website called ClergyGoneWild.com provides links to recent crime stories, including child abuse (206 articles) and internet solicitation (18).
This problem is nothing new. The first book on clergy sex abuse in this country, Betrayal of Trust, was published in 1988. The perception that Catholic priests are overrepresented among offenders is correct. They do offend at a higher rate. But because this country is predominantly Protestant, more children are abused by Protestant ministers than by Catholic priests. In 1990, the Freedom from Religion Foundation issued a study on pedophilia by clergy. At that time, two clergy per week were being arrested in North America for sex crimes against children. Fifty-eight percent of them were Protestant.
Why do we largely overlook the horrific pattern of Protestant pedophilia and sexual exploitation? Here are a few factors to consider:
Has the priestly pledge of celibacy contributed to a pattern of inappropriate and exploitative sex by Catholics? Probably. But a look at the behavior of politicians and Protestant ministers -- even just those iceberg tips that actually emerge into daylight -- should tell us that celibacy is a small part of the story. The reality is that power is arousing for many male humans (and that male power and status are arousing for many females). The pattern is plain as day in Hollywood dramas, rape statistics, sexual fantasies, D.C. dramas, and clergy sex abuse. (Where is the university research on the topic?) And yet we continue to delude ourselves that Protestant ministers are somehow exempt from the endemic, that the incidents are isolated. We say that "absolute power corrupts absolutely," and yet we give ministers a level of deference that is unparalleled -- and expect our vulnerable children to do the same.
When Annie Laurie Gaylor wrote Betrayal of Trust 22 years ago, the pattern in Catholic congregations was to huddle the wagons around accused clergy. She quotes one defense witness who described the abuse as "one drop of ink in crystal clear water." Today, after years of repeated exposure, Catholics are less likely to rally to the side of pedophiles, turning potentially devastating ire and scorn on the victims. To Gaylor, the New York Times stories this week of Eddie Long taking the pulpit amidst standing ovations and catcalls of love is déjà vu. "Some Protestants are where Catholics were 20 years ago," she says. "We have a long ways to go."
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It is disingenuous to suggest there is no connection or gender issue, and dangerous as well.
-That abuse occurs more among the Catholic clergy than among other denominations or religions.
-That priestly celibacy is partly responsible.
You have here two bigoted opinions about the Church. Is it a surprise that the rest of America is also bigoted against Catholics. The abusers and their protectors deserve the scorn but Catholics in general don't deserve the AntiCatholic bigotry that we so often find plastered all over the religion page of the HP.
I think it's important to add that Protestant ministers find it much easier to walk away from their ministry than priests who have made a sacred oath to be priests forever. If priests could easily opt out, children would be safer.
When a protestant minister is guilty of rape, his crime is not judged to be abetted by his church.
When a Catholic priest is guilty of rape, his self-proclaimed partnership in the apostolic succession implicates his church and even his God.
It is the hubris of the Catholic church and clergy that make their sins so newsworthy.
The Catholic church IS monolithic. Every one of the Catholic priests who have committed sexual abuse worked for the same boss. The church's policies (e.g., celibacy) seem likely to have contributed to the sexual abuse problem: denying sex to grown men tends to do that. And the church, despite knowing there was a pattern of sexual abuse, made a coordinated effort to conceal the issue, rather than confront and correct it.
There is no "Protestant Church." Eddie Long ran his own show and set his own policies; the guilt for his behavior stops with him. He has no Pope to blame, no "celibacy-induced madness" to hide behind, no global organization working to cover up his crimes and others like them. Each Protestant abuse crime is an individual act, whereas the Catholic crimes truly are part of a network.
If Eddie Long is a criminal for what he did, the Pope looks more like a Mafia boss. I've often wondered whether RICO laws could be applied to the Roman Catholic Church because of this pattern of sexual abuse and coverups.
Where the Church differs from the right wing Evangelicals is that it has the sacrament of Confession and absolution and a less judgemental worldview. We believe humans need a lofty standard but also mercy and forgiveness because we are bound to have weaknesses. Catholics don't see a black and white universe, but a universe where everything is working out and salvation is a lifetime experience.
Protestants often believe that sin is proof a person isn't "saved". So instead of examination of conscience and confession, they feel the standard should be lowered or changed for mercy's sake. This is a real confusion between the two kinds of thought.
Meanwhile, the Catholic Church is not going to get any shrift from the corporately owned media. It's too much competition. They aren't threatened by Baptist Youth ministers who commit crimes, even horrible ones.
The old bigotry that called Cuban weather men "Catholic monkeys" and rejected their projections of the hurricane that swept away Galveston, Texas...that old bigotry isn't what's behind today's media jumping on every Catholic failure.
Instead of doing what Catholics do, they have different ways of trying to turn victims into 'oppressors' and further stigmatizing them... They may not have a hierarchy to make it worse, or justify it all, they just act like all that matters is their 'sin,' and 'born-again-ness' when the smoke clears... Then on they go, just like the Catholics, still hurting people and blaming the victims.
Not much difference. It's just that megachurch preachers have corporate advertising, as opposed to an extraterritorial sovereign 'nation.'
Recommended solution: meditate on whether or not a clergy is necessary in this day when all can read the scriptures for themselves.
Political leaders are another case, but at least there we can easily recognize the overblown egos and appetites....
Religious hypocrisy of any sort is a more interesting narrative -- has anyone done a study of nonbelievers in positions of authority and their sexual abuse numbers?
Or isn't it.... which leads to a far more widespread problem: sexual contact between students and public school teachers. There are almost certainly more inappropriate relations between adolescent females and male teachers, or adolescent males and female teachers, going on at your local public middle school or high school than there are in all the churches in town -- but no one seems to want to consider that problem.
But there is a much more important point. The issue is not whether some public school teachers sexually abuse their students. Of course that happens now and then.
. The most important question is, How does the school system respond? I would like anyone to come forward with hundreds of cases where local public school authorities or the teachers unions, specifically knew a person was abusing students, and then deliberately transferred them to another city or state so that they could continue the pattern.
Public school teachers who are exposed as abusers go to jail. Only a tiny number of abusive priests have been arrested and the bishops who protected them are still in office.
I'm shocked! Theists making claims that they can't support?!
http://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/research/pubs/misconductreview/report.pdfhttp://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/research/pubs/misconductreview/report.pdf
Dr. Carol Shakeshaft of Hofstra University, the report's author, said in an interview with Education Week (March 10, 2004) that "the physical sexual abuse of students in schools is likely more than 100 times the abuse by priests."
You might also note this AP story: http://lubbockonline.com/stories/061002/nat_0610020035.shtml
The idea that "exposed teachers go to jail while priests go free" is baseless nonsense. Because so much sex abuse by teachers involves so-called "consensual" heterosexual activity, far less of it is ever to be the subject of a complaint and a prosecution in the first place. When prosecution does take place -- particularly for adult female/male child sex -- the criminal justice system uses a double standard and shows extreme leniency to the child molestor. For example, in the Diehl-Moore case mentioned in the AP story, she had repeatedly molested a 13 year old boy, but the judge only gave her probation, saying that the crime was actually satisfying the "sexual needs" of the child, and also "I don't see anything here that shows this young man has been psychologically damaged by her actions. And don't forget, this was mutual consent."
Consent? How can a child "consent"? Instead, teacher/student sex is being given a pass by press and prosecutors alike.