OPUS BONO SACERDOTII CRITIQUE OF THE NATIONAL REVIEW BOARD  REPORTS

• John Jay College of Criminal Justice Research Study Website
• The US Conference of Catholic Bishops Research Study Website
• The Catholic Review Board Research Study Website
  Note: The documents are large and in PDF format. You may need to install Acrobat Reader on your machine.
• John Jay Survey Questions

Positive Points

On February 27, 2004, the National Review Board issued two reports, The Nature and Scope of the Problem of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests and Deacons 1950-2002 (hereafter referred to as “The John Jay Report”) and A Report on the Crisis in the Catholic Church in the United States, produced by a committee chaired by Robert Bennett (hereafter referred to as “The Bennett Report”).

The John Jay Report contains an impressive accumulation of data and analysis. It is a significant contribution to understanding the nature and scope of the allegations against priests and deacons of the sexual abuse of minors. The Bennett Report attempts to explain factors which may have contributed to the problem of sexually abusive clergy and to identify faults in the institutional response to the problem.

Foundation of Sand

Although there is much to praise in both reports, there are also serious defects. Both reports are built on a foundation of sand because they are based almost entirely on unproven accusations. The John Jay Report is relatively careful to refer to “alleged” abuse and “potential” victims.  The Bennett Report does not exercise the same care. 

Of the 10,667 accusations against priests and deacons in the years 1950-2002, twenty-six percent were never investigated because the accused was dead or had left the priesthood.

The John Jay Report refers to  “substantiated” and “unsubstantiated” allegations. However, there seems to have been no clear criterion used by dioceses in making this distinction. It seems that if a diocese determined that an accusation might be true, it was classified as a substantiated allegation.

As the report from the Archdiocese of Los Angeles summarizes:                            

"We must all resist the temptation to assume that because an allegation has been made, it is therefore true. We have experienced an unprecedented flood of allegations from the distant past.

"While many of the claims are undoubtedly and tragically true, supported by consistent reports and sometimes even by the conviction of the perpetrator, there are also those that are demonstrably false... Some claims are against priests who could not have been there in the place or at the time of the alleged crime... There are also examples of apparently mistaken identity.
 

"The vast majority of the claims against priests fall elsewhere, impossible to responsibly verify or to disprove. The victim claims it occurred; the priest denies it or is deceased; and therefore there are no witnesses.”

Looking at the Numbers

The John Jay Report analyzes the numbers many ways and that information is helpful; however it fails to give sufficient attention to the fact that of the 10,667 accusations made in this  53 year period, forty-four percent (4,533) of the accusations were made in 2002-2003! Why this astounding spike in accusations? Is it due to victims now feeling able to come forward?

Could it not be that many of the claims are due to the effects of a national hysteria? Could it not be that some claims were stimulated by possible financial gain? Could it not be that many of the memories are planted by unqualified therapists?

Most of the claims accuse priests or deacons of  abuse from decades ago. Indeed, most of the accusations allege abuse in the 1970's, about thirty years before the accusations were made. Reliable studies demonstrate that memory is notoriously unreliable and hysteria can create false memories. Recent studies by Terence W. Campbell^[1], Richard J. McNally^[2], Elizabeth Loftus and Katherine Ketcham^[3], Dorothy Rabinowitz^[4], and others document the unreliability of many claims of sexual abuse, especially those that allege abuse decades ago. They also explain the role of “confirmatory bias,” whereby accusers are confirmed in their mistaken memories of abuse by the affirmative responses they receive from Church officials and the media.

Fifty-six percent (2,411) of the accused priests have only one allegation against them, despite all of the recent media focus on this issue. Another 27% (1,160) have 2 or 3 accusations against them. Thus, of the 4,311 accused priests, there are 749 priests with 4 or more accusations against them. Fully 27% (2,880) of the accusations are attributable to the 149 priests with ten or more accusations; these 149 priest represent one-tenth of one percent of all the priests who served during those years.. It is apparent that a relatively small number of cases have distorted the way in which the problem is framed.

Context: Sexual Abuse of Minors in Society

The John Jay Study makes an effort to situate the accusations against Catholic clergy in the context of national estimates of sexual abuse of minors (pp. 13-15).  To greatly simplify the national data, in the 1990's about 100,000 cases of sexual abuse of minors were substantiated

each year. Both the John Jay Report and the Bennett Report repeat estimates that one out of every four women and one out of every seven men experienced some form of sexual abuse as minors and that most of this abuse occurs in families.

Here is some additional data:

• It is estimated that each year more than 200,000 children are sexually abused in the United States.^[5]

• About 500,000 reports of child sex abuse are made yearly to state child prevention agencies.^[6]

Comparing these statistics, we can conclude:

• that the sexual abuse of children is an enormous societal problem;

• that abuse of minors by Catholic clergy represented a very small part of this societal problem;

• that most child abuse allegations are untrue.

The U.S. Department of Education commissioned a national report on child sex abuse by educators in public schools. The author of this report, Dr. Carol Shakeshaft, professor of educational policies at Hofstra University, says that the research indicates:

            ... roughly 290,000 students experienced some sort of physical sexual abuse by a public school employee from 1991 to 2000—a single decade, compared with the roughly five-decade period examined in the study of Catholic priests. Those figures suggest that "the physical sexual abuse of students in schools is likely more than 100 times the abuse by priests"....^[7]

To cite these statistics is not to condone or to minimize the harm of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic clergy. However, it is does show that focusing on this as a problem of Catholic clergy (as the media has done for the past two years) is a gross distortion of the facts.

Bennett Report’s Disdain for Canon Law 

The Bennett Report is dismissive of canon law as too protective of the rights of the accused priests.  Given the number of lawyers and judges on the National Review Board, this attitude is surprising.  The presumption of innocence and the right to due process of law are cornerstones of the American system of justice. Their historical antecedents come from church law.

The Sunday after the US Bishops’ meeting in Dallas in June, 2002, newspapers gave extensive coverage to the bishops’ adoption of a one-size-fits-all, zero tolerance policy. Ironically, many of those same newspapers also gave extensive coverage to Russia’s adoption of a new criminal code. Experts praised  Russia for joining the ranks of civilized nations by guaranteeing defendants the presumption of innocence and the right to due process of law. Just as Russia recognized these fundamental principles of human rights, the bishops abandoned them.

Robert Bennett has called on all dioceses to publish lists of their accused priests, as a few have done. This shows  no regard for an accused priest’s right to his good name. Under the guise of transparency, dioceses publicly announce the names of accused priests, often without any proof of the accusation.  Dioceses routinely announce that “Fr. X has been removed from ministry because of a credible accusation of sexual abuse.” The determination that an accusation is “credible” is not based on any legal standard. In the mind of the public, the diocese is saying that the priest has been found guilty. Once that bell has been rung, it can never be un-rung. Once a priest has been publicly accused of sexual abuse of a minor, his public ministry is effectively destroyed. To post these names on the Internet is to compound the injustice.

 At the very least, the U.S. dioceses should follow the Australian bishops’ guidelines and announce that  “an accusation has been made against Fr. X and he has gone on administrative leave while the matter is further investigated. Everyone is to be considered innocent unless they are proven guilty.”

One-Size-Fits-All

The Bennett Report provides a balanced analysis (pp. 57-60) of the U.S. bishops one-size-fits-all, zero tolerance policy. It says that “zero tolerance is too blunt an instrument.” However, contrary to logic, the report holds that this policy must be maintained for now in order to restore the credibility of the Church.

To get around the obvious injustice of the U.S. bishops’ one-size-fits-all policy, the Bennett Report  recommends that diocesan bishops and their review boards assess each case to strive for “individualized justice.” However, the diocesan review board is an advisory committee, not a judge or jury.  The individual facts and circumstances are to be determined and judged through the process of canon law. The Bennett Report is straining to make sense of a bad law.

Bennett Report Too Harsh on Bishops

Society is on a learning curve about sexual abuse of minors. Until the 1970's almost nothing was written about it. The Bennett Report seems to say that the bishops should have known more than the rest of society did.

It also unfairly criticizes particular bishops for asserting the confidentiality of privileged records and communications.

It also seems to overlook the fact that it is not – and should not be –  the practice of the Church to announce publicly the sins of any of its members, be they laity or priests. 

The role of the Church: Reconciliation or Prosecution?

The Bennett Report seems to call for a more punitive approach by bishops. It faults the bishops for not expressing more condemnation of perpetrators. However, Church law is primarily remedial, not punitive. Our theology tells us “hate the sin, but love the sinner.”

The Essential Norms require the bishop or superior to permanently remove from ministry a priest who is living an exemplary life, if he ever acted improperly with a minor, even forty or fifty years ago. Is this not denying the power of grace to effect a radical transformation in a person’s life, as Pope John Paul II said?

Relationship Between Bishops and Priests

The Bennett Report seems to overlook the theological relationship between priests and their bishops and to reduce this to a relationship between employer and employee.

Barring Priest from Ministry

The Bennett Report is misleading when it asserts (p. 101) that there is no presumed right to ministry. It does not define the term “ministry” and then it uses it in different senses. The Bennett Report falsely implies that a bishop has the right to exclude a priest from public sacramental ministry, even if there has been no proof that he is guilty of any delict.

This assertion has echoes of Article 9 of the Essential Norms which has been misused by bishops to remove from ministry priests who have not been proven guilty of any canonical delict.

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Endnotes