Understanding the Past

By Russell Shaw
Herald Columnist
(From the issue of 2/26/04)

On Friday, Feb. 27, the bishops of the United States either will seize a golden opportunity, take an unavoidable but profoundly risky step, or roll the dice and hope for the best. That’s when findings of a survey of sex abuse by American priests covering 52 years will be released by the National Review Board created by the bishops to monitor their response to the crisis.

Hoping to get out ahead of the story, many dioceses already have issued their own figures (Arlington released its figures on Feb. 18). And more than a week before the official release, CNN, apparently working from a leaked draft of the report, said it showed 6,700 confirmed instances of abuse of minors out of 11,000 allegations involving 4,450 priests between 1950 and 2002. That’s about 4 percent of the total number of men who served as priests in that time.

What should people be looking for come Feb. 27? Here are some suggestions.

The chronological distribution of abuse is a key issue. When did these things happen? Lacking a full picture, some people — including me — have said that far and away the largest number of cases was clustered in the 1970s and 1980s, with a notable drop-off in the 1990s as dioceses adopted new, tougher procedures.

If so, it appears that, although the problem of clerical sex abuse of minors was not entirely solved during the past decade, solid progress was made. But if it’s not so — if the incidence of abuse remained high throughout the ‘90s — that will suggest that the draconian "zero tolerance" policy which the bishops put in place in 2002 wasn’t just a reaction to pressure but was absolutely required to deal with the situation.

Another key question to which the data should supply an answer concerns the age and gender profile of the abuse victims. When this story broke two years ago, the media commonly spoke of "pedophile priests." As time passed, however, it began to appear that most of those who had been abused weren’t small children but male adolescents. In that case, rather than being a pedophilia scandal, this was mostly a homosexual scandal.

By now, of course, this point has been made so often that in some circles it’s taken as established fact. The numbers presumably either will bear it out or else show that something else was the case. We need to know. Not for the sake of launching a witch hunt against homosexual clerics but as a factual basis for making decisions about what needs to be done. For if anything is obvious now, it’s that once the causal factors that produced this disaster are established with certainty, serious steps must be taken to deal with them. Ducking and denial won’t wash.

Undoubtedly the release of the findings represents a big risk on the part of the bishops. There is a real danger of media distortion and sensationalism, things not lacking in the coverage of the scandal to date. There also is a danger that, instead of trying to understand the story told by the numbers Catholics will react with more of the simplistic finger-pointing that already have accompanied the scandal’s unfolding. And on the bishops’ side there is a risk that releasing the numbers will encourage some to say, "We’ve gotten the worst behind us — time to get back to business as usual."

Sensationalism, unfocused anger, and business as usual aren’t the answer. A clear understanding of the past is essential to resolving this crisis. And when the past is understood, it will be time to start shaping a better future.

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