Monday, April 26, 2010

Reply to Tad’s Atheism Essay

       I was approached recently by Joshua, whose friend Tad had recently decided against Christianity, opting instead for atheism. Tad wrote a short apologia what led to his decision. Joshua asked me if I would like to write a 45-minute talk and deliver it to a group of LifeTeens. I was delighted to do so. It occurred to me that you might like to read it.

       I approach this topic as a Catholic, not as a representative of generic Christianity. Only the Catholic faith embodies all truth; the 38,000 Christian sects have varying degrees of Truth. Much of my talk is derived from the audio book, “What’s so Great about Christianity” by Dinesh D’Souza. You all need to listen to this book several times, as he gives great answers to questions raised by today’s atheistic authors.
       Tad says that neither he nor his family were particularly religious. I suspected that this was the case. An old proverb says, “As the twig is bent, so grows the tree.” He was probably sent to public schools, which in our day tend to turn students against religion in subtle ways. If teachers are not teaching goodness, they are teaching badness. There is no neutral ground: they have to be teaching SOMETHING. So Tad’s decision is less his own and more a result of the way he was raised.
       Tad says, “I took a fancy to biblical prophecy at a young age, thinking it to be a fascinating matter of mystery.” Biblical prophecy exists to point the way to fulfillment in Jesus, not to be mysterious. We say the Old Testament points to fulfillment in the New.
       Tad says he had a generic understanding of the (religious) matters at hand. He needs to expand this at some length. What did he know exactly? Where did he learn it? How long did he study? Who were his teachers?
       Tad says, “Biblical prophecy being dense, however, I looked to the work of Nostradamus for easier-to-digest work.” Going to Nostradamus for knowledge about religion is like going to Madonna for knowledge about Relativity. Nostradamus dabbled in the occult, a practice forbidden by the 1st Commandment. Even if lots of Catholics paid attention to his predictions, that does not make him a Catholic in good standing. Catholics believe that there IS objective truth, that the Holy Spirit keeps the Catholic Church teaching it. So even if a majority of Catholics wind up believing a certain error, that does not change error into truth. Truth is not decided by “majority rules”. It’s possible to be the only one with the truth in a stadium of 70,00 people.
       I quote Tad: “Anything written as cryptically as the Bible can be interpreted any way at all”. Cryptically means obscurely. Well, there are many books that are hard to understand. One doesn’t throw up his hands and look for easy books to read. One develops a life-long habit of study, especially of a book like the Bible that makes the claim that it has the way to life eternal. When Martin Luther and the other “Reformers” broke away from the Catholic Church, they invented the new idea that anyone could go to the Bible and interpret it without the interpretation of the Catholic Church, and that the Holy Spirit would give all readers the same interpretation. Clearly this has not worked, as it has led to the existence of 38,000 Christian sects, each in good faith thinking it has the true meaning. Some of them were founded just last week. So, yes, an interpreter of the Bible is needed, and Jesus has made the Catholic Church IT.
The Bible is not a book of universal knowledge. Fundamentalist Protestants believe that. If you want that, go to the encyclopedia. It’s a book whose purpose is religious. We Catholics say that God used human authors to speak His thoughts. That means that the authors of the Bible used their own literary styles, their choice of genres, their understanding of the physical world around them. One writes in a very descriptive style, another uses few words. One writes a romantic poem (The Song of Songs), another writes a short history (the book of Samuel). One describes a great dome in the sky keeping rain water up there; another believes that having sheep and goats mate in front of poles whose bark has been removed in alternating strips - will produce striped offspring. Gen 30:35-43. God allows such idiosyncrasies (personal peculiarities) to show that He is making use of individuals’ uniqueness. That is why we call them, “The Gospel according to St. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John”. When re-telling a story, no two people will get all the little details the same. That doesn’t invalidate the story.
       Tad confuses Intelligent Design with Creationism. They are not the same. Creationism holds that everything that the Bible says about how the world was created is exactly as the Bible describes it. This is what Protestant Fundamentalists believe. In a moment I will explain the Catholic view on Creation. Intelligent Design says that when you look at, e.g., the way the body works, it shows that some intelligence must have put it all together. To believe that such a complex organism just evolved out of nothing is really not very intelligent. Look at all the things that the skin does, for example. Look at the marvel that is the eye. Or take the fact that certain things in nature can be reduced to a mathematical formula. We call these the Laws of Nature. That shows intelligence. Scientists that refuse to look at Intelligent Design are really not being open-minded.
       As far as ID advocates forcing their views into classrooms, isn’t it really a case of atheistic scientists forcing their view - that kids can’t look at both sides of things?
       Tad says, “I realized there are many creation stories out there.” There ARE many creation stories out there. When one accepts the Catholic faith, he accepts all that the Catholic faith prescribes. So what DOES the Catholic faith say about Creation? It holds that at one time there was nothing beside God, not even time or space. At a certain “moment” God decided to create angels, the universe, then Man. Science says that the universe evolved out of “space dust” that was always there. It’s funny: they can’t believe in a God who had no beginning, but they CAN believe in “space dust” that was always there. We believe that He created the first Man and Woman. Whether their names were Adam and Eve is unimportant. We believe that Man may have evolved from apes, so long as you grant that at a certain point God put a soul in two of them. I believe OUR creation story because I believe that Jesus gave the Holy Spirit to His church to keep it in the truth. All those other creation stories are false in varying degrees.
       Tad says, “Creationism could not be tested as a science”. There are lots of things that we hold valuable that are not “science” if by that term you mean, “It needs to be put under a microscope”. Take Sociology, Art, and Literature. And think about Paleontology. How do we REALLY know what happened to the earth millions of years ago? We’re in the area of speculation, and today’s theory is replaced by next year’s.
       Tad says, “…it doesn't hurt anyone physically to consider that something had to start the process…” The pagan philosopher Aristotle was a great thinker who lived about 300 BC. He saw that there is a kind of chain in which one thing causes another. He deduced that there had to be a beginning to that chain; there had to be a prime mover. He called that prime mover God.
       Tad brings up the harm that religion does, citing the Inquisition. Those who hate the Catholic Church love to trot out the Inquisition, hoping to embarrass the Church. The common ideas about the Inquisition are myth, shaped mainly by 19th century English writers who hated Spain. The English had already regarded Spain as an enemy for a long time before that. When England went Protestant, there was all the more reason to hate Catholic Spain and vilify it.
       All kinds of claims are manufactured from thin air. I’ve heard that “95 million people were burned at the stake during the Inquisition’s heyday”.
       Finally, a historian (Would you call a Historian a scientist?) by the name of Henry Kamen – a Jew, so he has no reason to whitewash the Church – wrote most recently a book called, “The Spanish Inquisition, a Historical Revision”. I read it, and found it written in a very well-balanced way, ie, without hidden persuaders, without the author’s showing hostility. Much of the Spanish Inquisition was aimed at certain Jews, so this is very remarkable.
       One of Kamen’s chapters is called, “Inventing the Inquisition”. He means that much of what has been received was made up. Inquisition trials were fairer and more lenient than their secular counterparts, says Kamen. Frequently the only form of punishment was fasting or doing “community service”. Torture as a means to get information was a method that went way back in history. You can’t entirely blame the church for using it, for not rising above it. To do so is to apply 21st century standards to the Middle Ages. As it was, very few heretics were burnt at the stake. The figure given in the book is about 2,000, and that is over a 350-year period. I recommend reading the book. It gives the historical background out of which the Spanish Inquisition evolved.
       Another area that Tad brings up of the harm that religion does, is The Salem Witch Trials. I believe that the number of people executed was less than 25. There are some authors who say that it was no more than 17.
       But what of the harm that atheists have done? First of all, there was the hunting down and killing of priests, nuns and nobility in France during the French Revolution. They even enthroned a statue of the goddess of Reason on the main altar of Notre Dame Cathedral.
       There is the hunting down and killing of priests and nuns in Mexico in the 1920s. The same thing was carried on by the “Republicans” during the Spanish civil war of 1936. “Republicans” refers to a group that wanted to replace the Spanish monarchy with a republic. There is no relation with our American Republican party.
       Then there is Adolph Hitler. It is ludicrous for Tad to call him a Catholic. If you want to see how a practicing Catholic talks, read the works of St. Francis of Assisi or St. Faustina. Hitler’s parents were nominal Catholics; they probably had him baptized only out of social custom. But he declared an all-out war against Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular. Why would he go against his own religion? Hitler regarded Catholicism as a religion for slaves. He detested its ethics.
       In his climb to power he sought the support of German Catholics and Lutherans, so he occasionally used rhetoric such as Tad quotes from Mein Kampf: "I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.” This is said without any real conviction and has to be viewed in the context of Hitler’s whole life. It shows that Hitler has lost sight of reality. Hitler’s leading advisors – Goering, Goebbels, Himmler, Heydrich and Bormann - were atheists who hated religion and sought to eradicate its influence in Germany. There was the SS and the Gestapo.
       Working for Hitler was Dr. Josef Mengele, who experimented on living people in the Auschwitz concentration camp.
       Hitler was responsible for 10 million deaths.
       Then there is Joseph Stalin and the millions he has murdered. After invading Poland in 1939 he rounded up all the Polish generals and upper brass of the army – 14,500 men, and had them shot in the back of the head in the Katyn forest near Smolensk. That plane that went down with the Polish president and 95 government officials was on its way to a commemoration of that event. Stalin set up a string of slave labor camps all over the USSR, called the Gulag. He starved to death about 10 million Ukrainians during the 1930s. He set up show trials and firing squads of his enemies. He relocated entire populations. Besides Stalin there were the other atheistic murderers Lenin, Khrushchev, and Brezhnev. There was the NKVD and later the KGB. Stalin is responsible for the deaths of 20 million people.
       Let’s not forget other atheistic murderers from the satellite nations. Enver Hoxha of Albania, Nicolau Ceaucescu of Romania, Fidel Castro of Cuba, Ho Chi Minh of North Viet Nam, Kim Jong Il of North Korea.
       Or Pol Pot of Cambodia. He set up “Killing fields”. There was a movie made about this. For 4 years he carried on mass relocations and killings, eliminating 1/5 of the Cambodian population: 1.5 – 2 million people.
       Chairman Mao is responsible for the deaths of 70 million people. Even today, China practices the “one-child” policy. If a woman gets pregnant a second time, they kill the baby in the womb. If somehow the baby gets born, they inject poison into the soft tissue of the skull, killing it. They even have restaurants where human fetuses are served up in a variety of ways. They harvest the internal organs of prisoners without their consent and sell them. Much of the goods we buy these days are made by slave labor. Girl babies are undesirable, so they are killed. There is now a serious woman shortage in China.
       All in all, atheistic regimes in just one century are responsible for the deaths of over 100 million people. Religion-inspired killings don’t come anywhere near the murderous atheistic regimes. Taken together the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, and the witch burnings killed perhaps 200,000 people. Adjusting for population increase, that’s the equivalent of 1,000,000 deaths today. Now I’m sure that Tad is not going to give up atheism after hearing these statistics, but I’ll bet he thinks Christians should give up Christianity because some of its members did not practice its principles. Remember: the atheists WERE living up to their principles, for if there is no God, do what the 19th century atheistic philosopher Nietzsche suggests: go for it. Do whatever you please.

Let’s look at the good that religion does: Science as we know it owes its origins to the theological reasoning and philosophical debates held in medieval universities. Science was originally called “natural philosophy” there. In fact, Universities owe their existence to the Catholic Church.
        But there are good things at the heart of the Catholic religion itself. I will list only 6.
       1. Love of neighbor. Look at Maximilian Kolbe giving his life for another prisoner at Auschwitz, or Mother Teresa, gathering up the dying in Calcutta so that they could spend their last days in clean, safe dignity. I very much doubt that if Christianity, more specifically Catholicism, were removed from the earth, that Atheists and Agnostics would practice love of neighbor.
       2. Deriving meaning out of suffering. I can use my sufferings to alleviate my time in Purgatory, or to ask God to give grace to someone else. If one doesn’t have God, suffering is something to be avoided. It has no meaning. Hence, one can become addicted to drugs, or resort to suicide.
       3. Servant leadership. Jesus told His disciples not to imitate the pagans who see being in leadership positions as an opportunity to lord it over the masses. Remember His washing of the feet at the Last Supper.
       4. Helping the needy. When I left Chicago in 1992 Catholic Charities supported over 107 agencies. All this charity is given without trying to turn the recipients into Catholics. Call the diocese of Jacksonville and ask them how many agencies are supported here. I attend 12:10 Mass almost daily at Immaculate Conception church. Catholic Charities shares the block. Daily I rub shoulders with lines of people coming for free food. It’s hard enough to get Catholics to give to charity or to put themselves out to help the needy. I can’t imagine atheists doing this at all.
       5. The exaltation of women. In the world before Christianity women counted for little. Christ changed that. He accepted their ministrations. He talked with the woman at the well. Look at all the religious orders founded by women in the last 2000 years. Look at all the women saints and their writings that have influenced the Church. Radical feminism has turned women into little more than sex objects.
       6. The idea that all men are created equal. It is interesting to study atheistic Communism, esp. as practiced in the USSR, to see the reverse of all these Christian ideals.

       Tad devotes some time to Homosexuality.
       One doesn’t have to go to religion to see that homosexuality is a disordered condition. All one needs to do is to study Nature itself. Let’s say that you ARE an atheist. You would have to agree that the inborn goal of animals as well as plants is survival and to multiply. The human race is no different. A man’s body has a penis, and a woman’s has a vagina. These complement each other. This means that they complete each other. They fit. Not to mention that a man’s personality is to provide, to lead, to analyze, while a woman’s is to be provided for, to be led, and to be intuitive/nurturing. When two men try to make a marriage, you have 2 with the same equipment, physically and emotionally. There is bound to be conflict. One of the things that is operative for the male homosexual is the search for the daddy who is perceived to have rejected the boy, or whom the boy has rejected. When 2 homosexuals try to get together, you have friction, since both are looking for the same thing. Each resents that the other will not act as father.
       “Well, speaking of complementarity, there is anal intercourse”, you say. The anus is the expulsion chute of corrupt matter that the body needs to eject. It is full of germs and disease. Unprotected anal intercourse can guarantee a host of lesser diseases and many major ones, not the least of which is AIDS. And the act does not result in a child.
       Let’s look at heterosexual intercourse between a married man and woman who came to marriage as virgins. The marital act is the fruit of their love and is open to a child. Not only is marital intercourse of penis and vagina not harmful, but it is beneficial. A man’s semen and a woman’s vagina produce hormones that benefit the spouse.
       Tad says, “Many of my friends at the time were gay rights supporters”. Gays already have the right to vote, to hold office, to live with each other, to have sex with each other, to rent an apartment or own a house, to hold a job, to be evaluated fairly on how well they do that job. Gays occupy a substantial part in the entertainment industry, the hairstyling, art, dance, librarianship and interior decorating industries and other fields. Many, many laws are written with a provision that “no discrimination will be exercised on the basis of sexual orientation”. There is no right that they do not have.
       Tad really should be talking about What Gays Want. They want our schools to teach that the practice of homosexuality is OK. No society - going way back into history - has considered homosexuality OK, except the Greeks. They want to deprive Christians of their 1st-amendment rights to free speech. They want priests and ministers not to speak out against gay sexual practices. They want to shut them up. They want to force landlords to rent to them, even tho their lifestyle offends their consciences. They want to call their couplings Marriage and to be given all the benefits of Marriage. They want priests and ministers to be forced to perform these “marriages”. They want gays who desire to go straight to be deprived of that right; they want mental health professionals - who treat homosexuals wanting to recover their heterosexuality - to be prevented from doing that. How are gays being suppressed? Seems to me that THEY want to do the suppressing.
       Homosexuality is a mental/emotional disorder and the compassionate thing is to do what one can to see that gays receive treatment. Contrary to Tad, it’s not just “the archaic standards of a 2000-year old book” that condemn the practice of homosexuality; as I said, that condemnation is much more universal. By the way, the Catholic Church doesn’t say that a person is going to hell merely because he IS homosexual. Certain Fundamentalist Protestant sects say that. The Catholic Church condemns the practice of homosexual acts.
       Tad implies that Christians say, “Gays are ‘different,’ so what harm is there in hurting them?” Homosexuality is a protected lifestyle in our politically-correct culture. The media - newspapers, magazines, movies, TV - blow up and milk incidents of crimes against homosexuals and ignore incidents of homosexual crimes against straights. The handout will lead you to a website where you can learn about a case in which 2 gays in Arkansas threw a young boy face-down onto a bed, to which they duct-taped him, stuffed his shorts into his mouth and repeatedly sodomized him. He eventually died of asphyxiation.
       There was a time in the past when police made raids on gay bars, and names of the habitués were printed in the paper. Of course that was unjust. There was nothing particularly religious about that. The situation has completely reversed itself today. I doubt that Tad knows any gay who has suffered harm.
The media deliberately misled the public in the recent Sexual Abuse Scandal among Catholic clergy, slyly calling it pedophilia. The latter is sex between an adult man and a pre-pubescent boy. This was true in less than 1% of cases. The fact is that the overwhelming number of cases was between homosexual priests and teen-age boys, ie., boys between 13 and 19. The media had to hush that up because homosexuality is a protected lifestyle.

       It is sad when Christians harm abortionists. They are acting against Christian principles. There have been just a few incidents of violence against pro-abortion people; there is far more violence against pro-lifers. The media refuse to report this. Abortion is another protected practice in the USA. Every year on January 22nd there is a march of about 700,000 people in Washington, DC. You won’t see any reference to it on TV or in the newspapers. Check me out next January in the media. Then turn on EWTN. I was active in the pro-life movement in Pittsburgh and was the victim of pro-abortion violence myself. The handout will give you 3 websites where you can learn about violence against pro-lifers.
       Tad says, “Worse, however, were the crimes and violence committed in the name of that book (the Bible).” People DON’T commit atrocities in the name of the Bible. Jesus told us to love our enemies.
To my mind, Agnosticism makes more sense than Atheism. Atheism is a religion, for it relies on the FAITH that there is no God. That is Atheism’s main dogma. Some of its other dogmas appear in this paper. Agnosticism says it just doesn’t know.
       Tad says, “…so I began to study religion itself…” I wish he had studied the Catechism of the Catholic Church. It puts things that are all over the Bible into a logical, systematic form, with one idea flowing naturally out of the last. It saves a lot of time.
       Tad says, “…People see some happy event, a coma patient waking up after 10 years for example, and are all too eager to praise god (sic) for it, but when something goes catastrophically wrong, it's the doctors (sic) fault.” That isn’t necessarily true. Still, God has described Himself as good in various places in the Bible. It’s natural to attribute good things to Him. But He permits evil so that good can be drawn out of it. It may not have been God’s will that the coma patient woke up, and God doesn’t have to grant success to a doctor. We don’t know His actual will in any particular case. All we know is that He does not wish evil; He wishes good.
       I have never understood the problem people have with evil in the world (Theodicy). God, in His extreme goodness, gave us free will. He wants to be loved by choice, not force. But man can misuse his free will. Much of the horror in human history arises precisely out of man’s not using his free will correctly.
I agree with Tad that natural disasters – tornadoes, tidal waves, earthquakes – merely happen; they are not punishment for anything. Pat Robertson famously said that the Haiti earthquake was God’s punishment on Haiti. He is a Fundamentalist; of the 38,000 Christian sects, Fundamentalists comprise a small number. He doesn’t speak for Catholics.
       Tad refers to books that were burned or banned. He should give instances. Gay activists would ban the Bible because it condemns the practice of homosexuality. No Catholic opposes the printing or distribution of books like The Golden Compass. We oppose its being taught in schools. Atheists would oppose the Bible’s being taught in schools. Atheists oppose Intelligent Design’s being taught in schools. Seems atheists have a double standard here.
       We Christians will use all legal means at our disposal to fight books or ideas that we find harmful. That’s how politics is supposed to work. Do atheists see something wrong with that? When I was a pro-lifer in Pittsburgh we took our 4’x8’ signs showing what an aborted baby looks like to West Virginia U. An opposition quickly formed of people planting themselves in front of our signs so as to keep the truth from the students. In Vancouver at a Provincial university pro-lifers set up a large display like a maze involving many huge free-standing signs and tables with literature. The students came in and destroyed everything. No one from the University did a thing to stop the rampage. So much for freedom of speech.
       When the Judeo-Christian ethic was in the driver’s seat at universities, speakers with disagreeable views would be invited in to speak. Audiences were polite and asked courteous questions. Now that an atheistic ethic is in control, such a speaker would more than likely not be invited in the first place, and if he were lucky to get by the thought police, instead of polite questions he would be mooned.
       Tad says, “…the church does quite a lot to halt progressive thinking…” Tad needs to spell out the “progressive thinking” that the church is against. Truth does not change. The Catholic Church has been teaching the same truth for 2000 years. Just because the mores of a society degenerate and some people want to call that “progressive” is no reason for the Church to go along with that.
       Tad says that the church interferes in fields that some people feel they should have no hand in. There are no areas that are outside of the purview of the Catholic religion, and that includes politics. Who are the people who think the church interferes? Religion is a total way of life.
       Tad says, “Atheists are not rebelling against God”. If Tad were not rebelling against God he would not have written his paper; he would have just let believers believe. Why didn’t he write a paper against Zeus or unicorns? Atheist writers like Hitchens, Dawkins et al are NOT content just to live and let live; they attack Christianity. Atheistic organizations like the ACLU hammer Christians.
       Catholics don’t go around hurting others who don’t believe in hell. Remember Pascal’s wager: Let’s say that I live according to Jesus’ teachings but there is no heaven or hell. Well, I’ve had a pretty happy life and that’s the end of it. Let’s say that there IS a heaven and hell. I live according to Jesus’ teachings as found in His church and I go to heaven. Let’s say I don’t and I go to hell. So the best bet is to live according to His teachings whether there is a hell or not.
       Tad says, “The Golden Rule is a secular guideline as much as a religious one.” If there is no God, it makes the greatest sense to follow the teachings of Nietzsche, who said, “Use your fellow man. To hell with everyone but ME.” Hitler followed Nietzsche. Both of them went mad.
       Tad says, “…Faith has, in my opinion, very little bearing on a moral standard…” I’m not quite sure what he means here. For me as a Catholic, my opinion has nothing to do with getting to heaven. God has revealed certain things that He wants believed and practiced. We believe those things. That’s Faith. If I did not believe that there is a God, or that there would be a reward in heaven, or a punishment in hell, I might not be very anxious to comply with The Golden Rule, especially when what is required is tough.
Is human reason the only way to comprehend reality? Atheists think so. There was a philosopher named Immanuel Kant. He came up with 2 words. The first one is phenomenon. It means what a thing seems like to me by using my 5 senses. Joshua, what color is this? I call it black, too. Now how do you or I know what true black looks like? Only God knows. So that leads to the 2nd word: noumenon. That means what a thing really is. Science can only deal with the world of the phenomenon – what a thing appears to be, based on our 5 senses. All they know about reality is their experience of it.
       We Catholics believe that there is another world not accessible to the 5 senses. God has been revealing it for several thousand years, and that revelation is found in the Bible. We would never be able to figure that out by our reason alone, or by consulting our 5 senses.
       Catholics believe in Reason and Faith. Thomas Aquinas and the Schoolmen used their reason to work out much Theology in the Middle Ages. St. Augustine said, “Fides quaerens intellectum”: faith seeking understanding. Or “I believe so that I may understand”, meaning that once a person believes, there is so much knowledge open to him from then on. There is another saying: “Intellectum quaerens fidem.” Translated strictly it means, “Understanding seeking faith”. Translated roughly, it means “I will believe only when I understand everything”. This would be a good motto for Unitarians, or atheists, who may be said to think there is nothing that a human being should not be able to understand. The wise person realizes that there may be things that we will never understand.
       One atheistic scientist advocates their calling themselves “Brights”, (You know, as in “He’s such a bright boy!”) to show that they’re smarter than we are. But Christianity exalts the common man. Certain atheistic writers advocate indoctrinating kids away from the beliefs of their parents. They would like to use the power of the state to impose their religion on our school kids.
       Western civilization was built on Christianity, specifically Catholicism. Christianity is responsible for many of the values atheists treasure most. You’ll have to read What’s so Great about Christianity? for examples of this. A state has to be based on some philosophy. Ours was based on Judeo-Christian beliefs, but it grants to all believers, including atheists, the right to practice their religion. Our founding fathers believed that we can’t maintain morality without religion.
       Separation of Church and State is actually a Catholic idea. This idea has been wrongly interpreted in the USA as, “Get rid of religion”. Christ said, “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s”. Later, St. Augustine wrote 2 books: “The City of God”, and “The City of Man”.
       How can we say that the Catholic Church is holy when some of its members have done so much bad? It is holy because its Head - Jesus, its Teaching, its Sacraments, its Grace, its Saints in heaven and Purgatory - are all holy. Yet on earth it is composed of sinful human beings.
       Jesus wanted everyone in the world to become Catholic so that everyone would be following the same standards. That’s why Catholics put themselves “under the book”. This means that we put ourselves under the authority of the Bible, Sacred Tradition and the teaching authority of the Church (the Magisterium). In the political realm it means that we put ourselves under the Constitution and the rule of Law. Atheists don’t agree among themselves as to what standards to follow. If atheism became the official religion of the land we’d have one atheist conflicting with another to try to impose his will on the people.
       We Americans don’t know what living in a completely atheistic society would be like, but we get hints from the Obama regime. He may call himself a Christian, but he – and those he puts into political positions – are in practice atheists. They don’t follow our Constitution. His judges interpret laws arbitrarily. They make laws, in clear violation of their designated duties. Obama forced his health care on a society, 63% of which did not want it. Senior citizens like me will be called before “Death Panels” who will determine whether we are worthy to continue to live.
       Those who control our media are in practice atheists, too. Like atheist Karl Marx they and the Obama regime promote class warfare: the poor against the rich, Blacks against Whites, gays against straights, women against men. They all promote the state coming between parents and their children. Are they “doing unto others as they would have done to themselves?” I think not.
       It’s interesting that all the atheistic regimes mentioned in this paper were also totalitarian regimes. I think it is inevitable that totalitarianism follows on atheism. The Bible preaches “servant leadership”, “I must decrease; He must increase”; “Love thy neighbor as thyself”; “Turn the other cheek”; and that there will be a reward for such behavior in heaven. Obviously if there is no heaven, one has to get his reward in this life, and that means imposing my will on my fellow man. We are seeing this develop in our country under the current regime.

       Atheists are fond of stating that religion is against science.
       The greatest ideas in modern science are based on one article of faith that comes from Christianity. It is this: that the universe is rational, that this is true everywhere in the universe and has been true, and will be true, for all time. Another way of saying this is that there is order in the universe based on laws such as E=mc2. There is no way to prove this article of faith.
       The myth of a warfare between religion and science was begun by 2 men.
       1. John William Draper in his 1874 book, “The History of the Conflict between Religion and Science”.     
       2. Andrew Dixon White, president of Cornell University in his 1896 study, “The History of Warfare of Science with Theology and Christendom”.
       The atheists Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin both persecuted scientists. And by the way, BOTH banned and burned books.
       Evidence has been found in physics and astronomy for the creation of the universe. Modern scientists have discovered that the universe was created in a huge explosion, now called the Big Bang, calling to mind Creation in the book of Genesis. The universe was created in a burst of energy, manifest in the form of light. Since then the planets etc. have been traveling apart from each other. We call this the expanding universe. The sun was created later, so Genesis is right, for it describes the creation of light in Gen 1:3, and the creation of the sun in Gen 1:14.
       Much more detail about all this is given on Disk 5, tracks 1-17 of “What’s so Great about Christianity?”
       When the universe was just the right age, and had expanded to just the right vastness, life began. It couldn’t have begun before, and it would have been too late afterwards. This shows Intelligent Design. Physicists call this the Anthropic Principle. (Anthropic comes from Anthropos, Greek for Man.)
Anthony Flue was an atheistic scientist; now he believes in God.
Darwinism is not the same as the theory of Evolution because it includes the notion that there is no God. Darwinism is the atheists’ spin on evolution. Catholics are not opposed to evolution, as this paper shows.

       Why do people REALLY go atheistic? In my experience it is because they don’t want to be constrained by morality. The biggest part of morality that they object to is in the area of Sex. That’s why atheists try to reduce us to being no more than animals. The 19th C atheistic philosopher Nietzsche insisted that the “death of God” would signal the end of morality. He explained it in a book called, “Beyond Good and Evil”.

       I will conclude by asking, How Is Catholicism Better than Atheism? I’ll give you 5 points. There certainly are more.
       1. Catholicism has a better way to deal with suffering in the world, either personal suffering or natural catastrophes. Where are the atheist agencies, like Catholic charities, that respond to tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes? Religion “works” at a time of tragedy. Where are the atheist chaplains on the battlefield telling a dying soldier, “That’s all there is; there ain’t no more”?
       2. Catholicism infuses life with a powerful sense of purpose, while atheism posits a universe without meaning, a universe that is irrational.
       3. Catholicism offers a solution to the cosmic loneliness that we all feel.
       4. Catholicism helps us to cope well with death.
       5. Catholicism enables us to become the better persons we want to be.

       I want to thank Tad for giving me the opportunity to gather my thoughts on this subject. Thank you for your attention.

__________________________________________________________________________________
Pertinent books I’ve read:
What’s so Great about Christianity?, by Dinesh D’Souza. Excellent defense of Christianity against its modern critics, e.g., Christopher Hitchens CD 230 D’Souza
Best work on the Inquisition is by Henry Charles Lea. 4 volumes, 1870s.
The Formation of Christendom, by Christopher Dawson 261 D
Progress and Religion, by Christopher Dawson 201 D 1929
Religion and the Rise of Western Culture, by Christopher Dawson 901.9 D
Ten Books that Screwed up the World, by Benjamin Wiker 909.09821 Wiker
How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, by Thomas J. Woods
Pedophile Priests, by Philip Jenkins
The Spanish Inquisition, a Historical Revision, by Henry Kamen. Jax Cat #272.20946K.

Basic Library on Homosexuality:
Homosexuality: a New Christian Ethic, by Elizabeth Moberly
Reparative Therapy, by Dr. Joseph Nicolosi
The Battle for Normality, by Gerard van den Aardweg
The Politics of Homosexuality, By Jeffery Satinover

For information on the rape and killing of Dirk Hising
http://www.covenantnews.com/dirkhising.htm

Violence conducted by pro-abortion people against pro-lifers:
http://www.abortionviolence.com/ http://www.lifenews.com/nat1519.html http://sflillinois.org/1127/violence-against-pro-lifers

Atheist Authors attacking God
The End of Faith, by Sam Harris
God, the Failed Hypothesis, by Victor Stenger
The God Delusion
God Is not Great, by Christopher Hitchens
The History of the Conflict between Religion and Science, by John William Draper, 1874.
The History of Warfare of Science with Theology and Christendom, by Andrew Dixon White, president of Cornell University, 1896.

Atheist Authors Saying Things Favorable to God
Just Six Numbers, by Martin Reese

Other authors
Paley, an Anglican theologian who proposed a famous argument that the universe shows signs of design, 1802
Lee Smolen, Fred Hoyle, astronomers. Owen Gingrich, biologist
Steven Hawkins, Robert Jastrow, Theodosius Dobrzanski

Friday, March 12, 2010

Priest Sex Abuse Scandal

Interesting Sentences Culled from reading
Pedophile Priests, by Philip Jenkins, Ph.D. 1996.
Mr. Jenkins is NOT a Catholic.

Chapter I: The Construction of Problems and Panics

Recognizing a Problem
The importance of the issue is beyond question, but it is by no means obvious how it came to be perceived as a problem or, once it was recognized, how the problem came to be defined in those particular terms rather than others. p.4

The Problem of Social Construction
The problem is defined less by rational criteria than by a complex rhetorical and political process that is commonly described as "social construction". This depends on the ideologies and assumptions of a particular society at a given historical moment, and the rhetorical work of the various interest groups and individuals who make and establish claims about issues. p.4

Constructing "Pedophile Priests"
From a constructionist perspective, a large gulf separates the objective and verifiable basis at the heart of the clergy-abuse issue from the subjective definition that is so generally accepted. p.7

...A pedophile is a man sexually attracted to children below the age of puberty, but the vast majority of recorded instances of clergy "abuse" or misconduct involve an interest in teenagers of either gender, often boys of 15 or 16. The difference may seem trivial, but most psychological opinion holds that pedophiles are far more difficult to treat or control than offenders who direct their attention to older targets. Nor is it possible to speak of a younger child's genuine consent to a sexual act, so that the conduct necessarily implies the use of force or grave deception. To speak of a "pedophile priest" implies that the victims are younger and more defenseless than they commonly are and that the offenders are severely compulsive and virtually incurable. The very term most commonly used to describe this problem has powerful rhetorical connotations in its own right, even before a given writer or journalist has begun to select and describe cases to illustrate the phenomenon. p.7

The Catholic Dimension
The construction of the problem has gone thru 3 successive stages, which can be summarized by the 3 following sentences:
1. Many clergy are active in the sexual abuse of children.
2. Many Catholic priests are active in sexual abuse.
3. The structure of Catholicism makes priests more likely to abuse children.
Each of these statements is open to debate, but a daring leap of logic occurs in the transition from the 1st sentence to the 2nd. In reality, it is not obvious that public attention should be focused so absolutely on the Roman Catholic dimension normally attributed to the question.

...In reality, Catholic clergy are not necessarily represented in the sexual abuse phenomenon at a higher rate than or even equal to their numbers in the clerical profession as a whole. p.8

...A cyclical process was at work here, in that a proliferation of cases involving Catholic clergy encouraged other individuals to report incidents involving the Catholic church, and to begin litigation, which in turn encouraged future complaints. p.9

...The fact that the church kept such records has probably been the largest single element in inflating the number of Catholic clergy who have come to the attention of the courts. p.10

The Book
...The chapters of this book informally fall into 3 sections. Chapters 2-5 describe the generation of the clergy-abuse problem and the means by which the media came to accept one particular construction of the issue. Chapters 6-9 identify the major claims-makers and interest groups whose agendas shaped this construction, and ask why the issue was formulated in the way that it was. Finally, chapter 10 explores the significance of the findings both for the nature of social problems and for the current state of organized religion in North America. p.13

...By these standards much of the analysis of the "pedophile crisis" from 1985 onwards can legitimately be described as anti-Catholic. p.14

...The conventional view of church behavior also ignores the radical change in attitudes toward child sexual abuse that had occurred during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Prior to this point, professional and scholarly opinions generally underplayed the significance and harmfulness of "sex abuse", and the term itself acquired its present meaning only about 1977 or so. This perspective makes it easier to understand why church authorities were so prepared to exercise tolerance toward priests found to be sexually involved with minors: the behavior was not then thought to be harmful or "abusive". In fact their attitude was well in tune with the best educated opinion of the time, and it is perhaps harsh to evaluate it by the much more rigorous standards of recent years. In questions of child abuse and child sexuality, a quite revolutionary gulf separates us from the thoughts of the 1970s and before. p. 16

...In summary this book does not deny either that sexual abuse by clergy is prevalent and harmful or that ecclesiastical authorities have made persistent errors in dealing with the issue. However, the sins and crimes of a number of priests have been built into a problem with implications that extend far beyond the original behavior. p.18


Chapter 2: The Anti-Catholic Tradition
In 1993 A Gospel of Shame offered a historical context for the recent "pedophile crisis" in the Catholic church. ...Gospel of Shame presents an exceedingly dark view of Catholic history, suggesting that in every era distinctively Catholic doctrines were the product of a cynical raison d'etat and were imposed by naked repressive force.

...That such an account could be published as historical in the 1990s is startling evidence of the legitimization of traditional anti-Catholic imagery by the abuse scandal of recent years. p.19

...This is certainly not to assert that modern instances of molestation by clergy are similarly fictitious but that ancient stereotypes contributed to the specific construction of "priest pedophilia". p.20


Chapter 3: The Discovery of clergy Sex Abuse

The 1980s
In the early 1980s public attitudes toward child sex abuse were being redefined, and the courts were increasingly willing to hear lawsuits alleging malpractice and negligence by professional groups and organizations. p.34

The Impact of the Gauthe Case, 1984-1989
The major breakthru in establishing the scale and reality of a "clergy-abuse" problem occurred in the Louisiana diocese of Lafayette in 1984-85, when Fr. Gilbert Gauthe was tried on multiple counts of molestation. p.34

...The case achieved national news coverage in June, 1985, when a detailed account was published by Jason Berry in the National Catholic Reporter, and shortly afterward the affair was reported across the nation. p.36

The Gauthe affair did much to establish the stereotypical characteristics expected of the "clergy-abuse" offender. ...The affair set the precedent that failure to intervene should result in serious financial penalties and compensatory damages for the families. p.36

The New Wave of Cases, 1989-1992
...The sudden upsurge of cases became an "epidemic", implying that the incidence of the behavior itself was undergoing a dramatic increase rather than simply reflecting increased recognition. p.41

The Cycle
The sudden upsurge of complaints and prosecutions from about 1989 onward requires explanation, especially in contrast with the relative rarity of such incidents 20 years previously. The post-Gauthe scandals had a snowball effect, in that intense reporting and news coverage encouraged past victims, real or imaginary, to recognize the nature of their past experiences and then to come forward and register their complaints. p.47

...After 1985, however, criminal justice agencies realized that traditional qualms about embarrassing church authorities were increasingly questionable, and restraint that once seemed politically wise would now be legally dangerous. Victims and attorneys recognized and exploited the new social environment. p.48

Restoring Trust
...Reforms began piecemeal, with the archdiocese of Seattle taking the lead in instituting a policy requiring all clergy to complete training on sexual ethics and sexual abuse, and some smaller communities such as Salt Lake City and Davenport, Iowa, formulated quite elaborate documents as early as 1990. p.49

...In September 1992 the Chicago archdiocese instituted the most comprehensive changes, including a pledge to remove forthwith any clergy accused of child abuse in order to prevent any potential harm to future victims. A toll-free number was available to encourage the reporting of allegations, and a wholly new review procedure was created to defuse charges that complaints were being dealt with by clandestine internal tribunals. Under the reforms instituted by Bernardin, cases would be examined by a 9-member review board that included 3 lay professionals (a psychiatrist, a psychologist or social worker, and an attorney), 3 priests and 3 lay representatives (a parent, a member of a parish council, and an abuse victim or the parent of such a victim). The board would thus have a lay majority, and none of the lay people should be church employees. The Victim Assistance Ministry would offer therapy and guidance to those abused by priests, and any substantive allegations would automatically by reported to a state agency.
Where charges were substantiated, priests would in effect pay for the offense for the rest of their lives. There would be years of therapy and counseling, and even after this: "We recommend for each priest that has successfully completed the four year aftercare program: restricted ministry, a mandate restricting access to children, supervised residence, participation in a support group, assignment of a monitor or supervisor for life, and if indicated, ongoing therapy."
The Chicago policy was widely imitated, especially the use of a lay-dominated review board. The American church now sought national policies in response to the continuing scandals, and in June 1992 the president of the NCCB (National Council of Catholic Bishops) told the assembled bishops, "Far more aggressive steps are needed to protect the innocent, treat the perpetrator and safeguard our children." In November the bishops undertook to create a standard policy based on 5 principles: prompt response to accusations, swift suspension of an offender where charges were supported by evidence, full cooperation with civil authorities, support for victims and their families, and forthright explanations of the church's conduct. Pressure for change was reinforced by the presence of a delegation representing victims of abusing priests, including some molested by Fr. Porter, and groups like SNAP regularly used NCCB meetings to organize demonstrations and press conferences.
In early 1993 the NCCB convened a panel to formulate policy responses to what they described as "a sustained crisis in the church". This group, chaired by Fr. Canice Connors, comprised 31 therapists, officials and victim advocates... Following the policies developed in both Chicago and Canada, the panel suggested that if a priest was proven to have molested children, he should be placed under permanent supervision and should have no further contact with children. The following June NCCB created a special ad hoc committee of 8 bishops to organize a comprehensive plan for treating victims and preventing future misconduct, and this resulted in a standardized policy manual entitled Restoring Trust. Church authorities also took steps to improve screening of seminary applicants. The urgency of resolving the crisis was reinforced by the Pope, who issued a statement on the scandals in the American church and warned of "the sin of giving scandal to the innocent". p.50

Not Just Catholics
...As with Tony Leyva (Pentecostal abuser of as many as 100 boys) such cases (of Protestant clergy) were not widely reported because they did not fit within what had come to be the well-defined frame of the recognized problem, no matter how close the resemblances to the archetypical Catholic incidents. The media both reflected and reinforced public expectations, and reporting now examined the Catholic church to find what had been determined a Catholic problem. In so doing, both print and visual media offered remarkably condemnatory interpretations of church actions, and found themselves in alliance with the specific reform agendas of dissident Catholic groups. Consciously or other wise, the secular media were claiming a role in the making of internal church policies that would have been unthinkable without the impetus supplied by the abuse scandals. p.52


Chapter 4: The Media and the Crisis
...The interpretations that now emerged were severely critical not merely of individual priests and clergy but of the Catholic church in general, with charges of systematic corruption and illegality, cynical exploitation of the laity, and extensive sexual perversion. Moreover, the solutions offered to the "abuse crisis" involved a reform of precisely those Catholic characteristics that had so long offended mainstream Protestant sentiment, including mandatory celibacy for priests and religious, the exalted concept of the priestly role, and the seminary system. This approach was all the more influential because there was no effective attempt at rebuttal, no serious effort to indicate distortions or exaggerations in the criticism.
Altho the coverage may appear to reflect popular anti-Catholic and anti-clerical sentiment, in reality it owed far more to the political interests of the activists and groups who used the media to project their particular interpretation of the putative crisis. The nature of clergy abuse reporting was determined not so much by any general bias as by the changing commercial, social and legal environment in which the media operated during the 1980s, together with the selection of the experts who were called upon to interpret the abuse issue. p.53

The Use of Language
..."Crisis" interpretations were reinforced by the hyperbole that we regularly encounter, especially the memorably brief phrases that attempt to place the issue in a historical context. p.54

One of the commonest phrases refers to the "Sins of the Fathers"a Biblical reference that calls to mind the offenses of Catholic priests, who are known as "father". ..."Unholy Orders" similarly associates the priesthood with wrongdoing or hypocritical behavior, as do "Is Nothing Sacred?", "Breaking the Faith", "Priests Who Prey", "Heavenly Silence, Hellish Acts", and "Just Following Orders"...
The title of Jason Berry's Lead Us not nto Temptation implies that the abuse is promoted by the "tempting" situation in which the institutional clergy find themselves, a theme emphasized in the book itself. ..."The Sacred Secret", and "Clergy Sexual Abuse: Dirty Secrets Come to Light". Altho the secret may be that held by an individual offender, the ecclesiastical context suggests rather that it is the church itself that has prevented the exposure of this behavior. ...The harm done by abuse is portrayed in religious phrases that stress the extreme psychic and spiritual damaged caused: typical titles include "Soul-Stealing" and "Slayer of the Soul".
Every chapter in A Gospel of Shame bears such a religious title, and the book is in the form of a near-religious epic, ... p.55

..."Mafia" and organized crime analogies are common, as when a journalist describes the code of secrecy said to exist within the clergy: "clerical omerta' was a given".

Equally common are metaphors that place opposition to church misdeeds in the tradition of populist activism against overmighty institutions. p.56

The Cartoon Vision
The censorious tone of media reporting of the Catholic church is illustrated by some of the newspaper cartoons that appeared at the height of the public outrage.

...In 1994 (political cartoonist) Oliphant combined 2 current abuse panics when he depicted singer Michael Jackson, then facing a much-publicized civil action for sexual misconduct with a teenage boy, alongside a pedophile priest, the point being that both shared the same sexual predilection. Utilizing a priest in this context suggests the degree to which Catholic clergy had been thoroly and successfully stereotyped as molesters. p.57

Changing Media Values
In retrospect the period between 1977 and 1981 marked a bold departure for the American press in coverage of Catholic matters. ...this was also the time when sporadic accounts of child molestation began to appear in newspapers, albeit "unconstructed". p.62

...On the other hand, presenting media restraint as a simple response to "Catholic power", is misleading because, before the 1970s, similar attitudes prevailed towards the sexual and financial irregularities of all kinds of public figures, including politicians, sports stars, and film personalities.

...A definite change in the tone of coverage can be discerned during the 1980s, and this affected the Boy Scouts and the Protestant churches no less than the Roman Catholics. ...There was a shift toward sensationalist coverage in many news sources, toward "tabloid" television news shows, prurient talk shows, and "true crime" documentaries that blurred the line between fact and fiction. Local news shows were affected quite as dramatically as network programming, with a wave of lurid multipart series purporting to investigate and expose some novel social menace. p.63

Constructing Crisis
...One issue of National Catholic Reporter (June 7, 1985) deserves emphasis for its crucial importance in shaping later commentary, and indeed was the first source to depict a problem that was both systemic and nationwide. Not only did it draw the various cases into a single account, but it published the actual names and details of the individual scandals. The source was significant because publication in a Catholic paper defused the potential objections that would have arisen if the story had run in a mainstream paper.

...This one paper contained virtually all the elements that would dominate reporting of the clergy-abuse problem over the next decade (1985-1995). ...Thruout, pedophilia is presented as being synonymous with a sexual attraction to minors of any age, and this inaccurate usage occurs even in the interviews with psychologists and therapists. The paper's editorial was entitled "Pedophilia Problem Needs Tackling", and the following year, NCR reported on the bishops' reaction to the issue of "clerical pedophilia".

...NCR had not only defined the abuse problem; it had established itself and its journalistic sources as authoritative experts on the question. Indeed the 1985 NCR stories set in place a generic pattern that was closely followed by virtually all later reports, and that became predictable in that it was noteworthy when one element was missing. Names and places might vary, but overwhelmingly the stories told of repeated rumors of molestation, increasingly troubled parents, and diocesan authorities who ignored warning signs. A disclosure would reveal that this priest or other colleagues had been known for years to be potential molesters, and the history of "reshuffling" would be made public. Commentary would be provided by a predictable cast of victim advocates and experts on the Catholic church,who would cite a range of similar or comparable incidents. Pundits would usually agree on the depth and severity of the structural crisis facing the church, declaring that the problem was the most serious encountered by that body in centuries. p.65

Television
The same group of experts (those regularly cited by journalists) was repeatedly cited and interviewed in TV coverage, producing a solid consensus of interpretation.

...60 Minutes itself used the "pursuit" device with no less powerful a cleric than archbishop Roberto Sanchez, in the context of the scandal linking him to several young women. This report itself was a remarkable departure from earlier broadcast standards: the bishop was interrupted while leading a pilgrimage, an interference with a religious ceremony that would have been inconceivable even a decade previously. p.68

...The Catholic aspects of the abuse problem were analyzed in 2 major documentary programs broadcast during 1993. In both an Investigative Reports special on the Arts and Entertainment network and a CNN Presents special, the preponderance of speakers was from groups inimical to the clergy and the hierarchy. p.69

Defending the Church?
Catholic authorities themselves contributed by default to promoting the bleak image of the clergy. After so many years of favorable media coverage, the Catholic church found itself poorly prepared for the onslaught of denunciation over abuse, and could mount little effective opposition even in the face of the more egregiously hostile news pieces that invoked so many anti-clerical stereotypes.

...Some dioceses simply refused to respond to journalistic questions, asserting accurately that a particular case was in litigation. In practice this was a disastrous course because it allowed a news program to present a host of allegations, followed by, "Church authorities declined our request for an interview". p.72

...It was far from obvious what arguments would be most successful. ...For example, it was occasionally argues that the bulk of the offenses involved older boys and teenagers, who might be expected to have a greater degree of responsibility, and who could even be said to have provoked the offense or led the priest on.

Initially, church leaders argued that media reporting reflected anti-Catholic bias, "Catholic-bashing". This was an effective rhetorical strategy, in that it mobilized a common Catholic perception that the church was under attack from the secular world. p.73

...Once it was acknowledged that at least some of the cases were genuine, the best that could be done was to assert that the conduct of a Fr. Porter was wildly untypical of the behavior of the vast majority of clergy, and that extending blame to other priests in general reflected anti-Catholic stereotypes and controversies. p.75

Chapter 5: Pedophilia and Child Abuse
In recent studies of social problems, the media have come under attack for the dissemination of false or misleading information; an element of "media hype" is widely acknowledged. This is especially true in the presentation of exaggerated statistics.

...In reality there are 3 major areas where the construction of the problem was flawed, and where it would have been possible to mount quite a plausible defense of the church's behavior. Respectively these involve:
1. the definition of the offenses charged
2. the number of perpetrators
3. the historical context in which most of the gravest allegations were set.
All these issues were approached quite selectively in order to render the behavior of the church and its clergy in the most sinister colors. This process of selection is important in illustrating the agendas and policy goals of the groups seeking to define and describe the abuse problem because all benefitted to a greater or lesser extent from producing the darkest possible construction of the problem. p.77

1. Defining the Problem
...much remains uncertain about the real scale of the problem, notably about the question of definition. What exactly are we counting?

...When considered in detail, the cases often suggest sexual liaisons between priests and boys or young men in their late teens or early 20s. This behavior may be reprehensible in terms of violating ecclesiastical and moral codes of conduct, and breaching vows of celibacy, and the power relationship betweeen priest and and young parishioner renders it difficult to speak of the behavior as fully consensual. However, it is not properly pedophilia, which according to the standard psychiatric manual, DSM-III-R, specifically refers to "sexual activity with a prepubescent child". When a 30-year-old priest has a sexual relationship with a 16-yar-old male, the act may be described in many ways, but "pedophilia" is as inaccurate as "child abuse" or "molestation". p.78

Contemporary English lacks a common word for the behaviors included in the great majority of "clergy-abuse" cases, in which the "abused " is often 15 or 16years old. ...We are therefore left with the obscure word, "ephebophilia": the sexual preference for boys upon puberty. ...Writers fall back on the better-known but inaccurate pedophilia with all its connotations.

The difference between ephebophilia and pedophilia may seem purely semantic, but it has many implications in terms of the potential for treatment and therapy. In the prevailing psychiatric opinion of the 1970s and early 1980s, it would have been quite appropriate to return to a parish setting a man who had been successfully treated for ephebophilia but not for pedophilia, and it was precisely this issue of the employment of past offenders that led to such scandal following the Gauthe case. It was dangerous for church authorities to permit a known pedophile such as James Porter to be in unsupervised contact with children, but such a decision would have been defensible with an ephobphile or homosexual. p.79

...Suggesting that the church concealed or tolerated pedophiles is much more destructive than the charge that it granted a certain degree of tolerance to priests involved consensual relationships older boys or young men. p.79

The problem of definition is complicated by the nature or degree of sexual contact, whatever the age of the young person involved. ...Many of the cases involved far slighter contact or interference, such as fondling or kissing. p.80

2. How Many Priests?
Very few abusers are pedophiles. One of the most experienced persons in the treatment of disturbed clergy is Fr. Canice Connors, the director of the St. Luke's Institute, and he suggests that true pedophiles are quite rare. Connors contends that about 3% of American Catholic clergy might have tendencies toward the abuse of minors, but that pedophiles make up only 10% of this group, or 0.3% of the whole body of the clergy. If this is correct, then it is quite justifiable to argue that "it is rare to find a true pedophile in the priesthood or religious life", however much this contradicts the recent popular literature. Of the 57 accused priests examined in the Chicago survey, 49 cases involved teen-agers: 39 boys and 10 girls, and the commonest complaint involved boys of 15 or 16. "The overwhelming number of cases, in other words, involved homosexual ephebophilia, in other words priests attracted to young teen-aged boys...There was only 1 found case of pedophilia, involving a priest-uncle with 2 six-year old nieces." Without this one sad individual, the "pedophile crisis" in Chicago would have conspicuously lacked pedophiles. p.82

3. Child Abuse: a Historical Context
Questions of number and definition illustrate how popular constructions of the clergy-abuse issue made it appear larger and more pernicious than the evidence would justify. p.83

...It is far from obvious that a given sexual act between individuals of widely different ages constitutes ... criminal behavior, still less that it causes grave harm to either participant. ...The history of public attitudes toward sex offenses can with some oversimplification be summarized as shifting from near-panic in the 1930s to complacency in the 1960s, and back to panic in the 1980s. Many of the clergy abuse incidents occurred in the age of complacency, but the resulting scandals occurred in the later era. p.83

The Age of Complacency
...During the 1960s an intense public campaign against the sex-crime laws drew on the rhetoric of civil liberty and procedural justice, and this was seen as part of the more general due-process revolution initiated by the US Supreme Court. ...Courts regularly decided against the constitutionality of sexual-psychopath laws, asserting that the danger posed by sex offenders was too slight to justify the incursions on legality and individual rights.
Both court decisions and academic works suggested that the sexual-offender laws reflected the prudery of an earlier generation, which had similarly stigmatized consensual activities such as homosexuality, fornication and the enjoyment of pornography.

...Liberal therapists and academics led a reaction against what they perceived as hysteria, and aimed to quiet public concern by debunking excessive concerns about rape, incest and sexual violence. p.84

Incest or child molestation was regarded as so rare as not to require mention in most general works on crime and deviance, and when it was discussed (however briefly) it was in the context of a sympathetic response to acute family dysfunction. p.85
In 1948 the Kinsey Report suggested a high prevalence of adult-child sexual contact, affecting some 25% of girls, but this document was gravely flawed methodologically. p.85

Formulating Child Abuse
Between about 1950 and 1977 mainstream professional opinion did not regard child sexual molestation as a serious danger or indeed as a serious social problem. p.85

Scale and Effects
...Opinions about the potential harm wrought by sexual abuse changed quite as dramatically as estimates of the frequency of the offense. Medical opinion had hitherto been divided over the degree of real or lasting trauma, and there was real skepticism about the effects of a sole incident of fondling or exhibitionism. Paul Tappan had rejected the view "that the victims of sexual attack are 'ruined for life' " as one of the pernicious myths diverting social policy. He argued, in contrast, that little lasting harm need be caused by the experience of "rape, carnal abuse, defloration, incest, homosexuality or indecent exposure".

...This tradition dominated the professional literature for many years, and even a text co-authored by C. Henry Kempe argued in 1978 that "a single molestation by a stranger, particularly of a non-violent kind, appears to do little harm to normal children living with secure and reassuring parents." Another authoritative text stated: "Early sexual contacts do not appear to have harmful effects on many children unless the family, legal authorities or society reacts negatively."
By the late 1980s such comments would appear callous because the new orthodoxy was asserting the devastating and lifelong consequences of even brief or isolated sexual impropriety committed against minors. Inevitably such an intellectual environment severely narrowed the acceptable range of discussion on issues of children's sexualityand their right to grant even limited consent. ...The change of attitude is suggested by the frequent application of the term "survivor" to the victims of rape, incest or sexual abuse, with the implication that they had passed thru an ordeal comparable to that of a natural disaster or homicidal attack, and that the experience would in a sense define much of the rest of their lives. p.88

Reframing the Sex Offender
...In those years there was contention between those who advocated purely therapeutic solutions, and the libertarians concerned with the excessive use of enforced therapy under the sexual-psychopath laws, but neither side showed any sympathy for penal solutions to a relatively trivial and non-threatening symptom of sexual inadequacy. Nor were sex offenders necessarily the persistent monsters of popular mythology. p.89

Framing Clergy Sex Offenders
The discovery of clergy abuse as a national problem during 1985 therefore occurred during the peak of concern about child molestation, when the most extravagant claims were being made against offenders and the consequences of their actions. Since the mid-1970s the image of the sex offender had changed from that of a pathetic social and sexual inadequate to the much more threatening portrait of a violent predator potentially associated with abduction, child pornography and even serial homicide. p.90

Treating Clergy Abusers
If, however, we place the response of the church in the context of the prevailing expert attitudes of the 1960s and early 1970s, they become more understandable. p.91
...In line with mainstream criminological and psychological opinion, religious leaders acted on the assumption that adult sexual activity with children was quite a rare phenomenon.

...In short, the Catholic authorities acted exactly according to prevailing liberal opinion, altho they demonstrated excessive generosity or credulity in permitting an individual to reoffend repeatedly before taking decisive action. Liberal ideas were at their most influential between about 1964 and 1974, exactly the years that church authorities were making their decisions about James Porter.
Church attitudes were also conditioned by demographic changes within the priesthood, which suffered an alarming decline in numbers from 1968 onward. Particularly in western and southern dioceses, the shortage of clergy became acute, and by the 1980s there was a growing number of priestless parishes, in which many clerical functions were exercised by laypeople or women religious. In consequence clergy and seminarians were a scarce commodity whose careers should not be lightly jeopardized. For that reason, dioceses granted a wider latitude in accepting ordinands of suspected homosexual disposition, and were reluctant to take severe action against priests with a sexual predilection for minors. Clerical authorities were predisposed to place their hopes in the efficacy of treatment and therapy rather than punitive measures. p.91

...In 1990 a group of clergy and therapists published a collection of essays on clergy abuse under the title Slayer of the Soul. Altho granting the extreme harm that might be caused by abuse, they came to conclusions that were much more optimistic than would be accepted even 2 or 3 years later. Two of the group (Rosetti and Lothstein) argued strongly that sexual contact with young people need not incapacitate a priest from pursuing his vocation, even in a parish setting; "more than a few" clergy have already been "successfully returned to ministry." However they drew a key distinction between pedophiles and ephebophiles; the condition of the latter was much more amenable to treatment.

...This therapeutic view of the sex offender was associated with an ambiguous depiction of the other party in the sexual activity, who was occasionally seen less as a pure victim than as an active participant, all the more so when the case involved a boy in his mid or late teens.

...The Catholic authorities thus suffered for maintaining an essentially liberal and therapeutic approach years after that approach had been overtaken by events that wrought a revolutionary change in the public consciousness. p.93

...The common construction of "pedophile priests" thus distorted reality in a number of important areas, exaggerating the scale and seriousness of the problem, and placing an anachronistic interpretation uoon the conduct of the Catholic church. p.94


Chapter 6: Conflict in the Churches
The abuse crisis was not inevitable. The individual cases could have been interpreted in a manner more sympathetic to the institutional churches, and the media need not have accepted the extremely high estimates of clerical misconduct advanced by certain authorities.

...An alternative view suggests that the dissidents were successful in using clergy abuse as a vehicle for projecting their long-established grievances, so that the construction of the problem reflected the problem of the internal politics of the Catholic church. p.95

Homosexuality
...As the priest shortage became acute during the 1970s, the church was apparently willing to accept homosexual clergy on the understanding that they remain strictly celibate on the model of their heterosexual counterparts. p.100

Clergy Abuse as a Liberal Issue
It would be simplistic to present Catholic activism in regard to sexual abuse as entirely the product of the Left/liberal wing of the church, but it was these latter dissenters who did most to shape and define the issue during the 1980s. p.105


Chapter 7: "Sins of the Fathers: The Feminist Response

Feminism and Sexual Abuse
...The "believe the children" ideology meant that feminists accepted the intrinsic likelihood of allegations against the clergy, while also suggesting the appropriate package of policy responses and safeguards. p.114

The Uses of Abuse
In the Catholic church the issue of misconduct with minors provided a weapon in the arsenal of reformers anxious to restructure the church away from traditional concepts of hierarchy, male dominance, and clerical elitism.p.112


Chapter 8: The Legal Environment
...Intensive litigation and high damage awards effectively create a range of interest groups with a powerful interest in discovering and exposing new clerical-abuse cases, and in the most visible public forum. Apart from individual victims of abuse, potential beneficiaries of the new environment include attorneys and the therapists and others likely to serve as expert witnesses. Legal circumstances vastly enhance the likelihood that individual instances of clerical misconduct will be reported, and that each particular abuse lawsuit will in turn encourage the reporting and prosecution of new cases. p.125

...The legal system has thus played a vital role in the definition and shaping of the clergy-abuse problem. Moreover, legal ideas and doctrines contributed to focusing the issue on the Roman Catholic church, as opposed to any of the less centralized or bureaucratic organizations whose ministers had been implicated in misconduct. p.126

The Litigation Explosion
...International differences have grown enormously in recent decades, in part because the American legal profession abandoned earlier ethical restrictions on seeking clients or fomenting lawsuits, and the increasing acceptability of contingency-fee arrangements makes litigation both more likely and more profitable. p.127

Litigating Child Abuse
The growing emphasis on child abuse cases in the 1980s reflected radically new social and legal attitudes toward the credibility of child witnesses, and the accuracy of memories recollected by adults who have been victimized as children. p.127

Clergy Abuse in the Courts
...The attractiveness of the church as a target for litigation is not difficult to explain. At the most cynical level of interpretation, the church represents a multibillion dollar economic enterprise with vast holdings in property and real estate. ...Ecclesiastical lawsuits also had the practical advantage that it was easy to establish a chain of responsibility. Many dioceses operate as a "corporation sole", which means that the bishops "take total control of all real estate, stocks and assets in their diocese, and no external or internal check can limit their power. The individual bishop and his aides reign as a one-man corporation." ...(This setup) raised the danger that litigation would target the diocesan authorities who were liable for actions carried out by priests in the course of their employment, under the familiar legal doctrine of respondeat superior (let the higher-up answer for it). Detailed records provided a paper trail that could not only demonstrate a pattern of official misconduct in one particular case but also might lead to the names of other suspected malefactors.

...The large sums were justified by litigants on the basis of the extreme psychic trauma alleged to have been caused by abuse, damage too severe ever to be compensated fully.

...Some attorneys may be sincerely dedicated to obtaining justice for their clients in the face of perceived church villainy, and Anderson in particular represents some individuals on a pro-bono basis, but for others the potentially lucrative rewards of church litigation are an obvious temptation. p.130

Expanding the Liability Net
...Traditionally, criminal prosecutors had been reluctant to press charges against clergy, but by the 1990s they were demonstrating real ingenuity in their quest for legal remedies. The RICO Act (Racketeer-Influenced and Corrupt Organization), the Mann Act, were 2 that were resorted to. p.131

The Effects of Litigation
In many cases of alleged child abuse by clergy, the reported offenses had occurred some years previously and were thus sheltered from prosecution by a statute of limitations. This meant that legal action had to be pursued thru civil litigation, which made it easier to establish and publicize misconduct. For example, civil cases are decided on the basis of a preponderance of the evidence rather than the criminal criterion of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. In addition, litigation can be begun on the bsis of relatively slight evidence, unlike the substantial evidence normally required to launch a a criminal prosecution. p.132

...Nor do civil suits offer an accused person the protection he or she would receive in a criminal court for actions committed many years before. A statute of limitations has many justifications, including the likelihood that memories will fade and that eye-witnesses will no longer be available or credible after so many years. In the clergy cases, however, there is the added issue that social and legal attitudes towards the offenses have changed so radically that to prosecute now for acts committed 20 or 30 years ago is virtually to create an ex post facto law: to punish someone for a behavior that was not criminal at the time it was committed. p.133

Defending the Suits
...However the Catholic church encountered a severe ideological and practical dilemma in using these defenses. Altho the institutional continuity of the church depended on the maintenance of its property, the ideological framework of Christianity notionally disdained material goods and praised peacemaking and reconciliation. The injunction to love enemies was all the more urgent in the context of fellow members of the church, and most suits in these years were begun by Catholic laity. Using aggressive legal tactics, "playing hardball", drew charges of hypocrisy; failing to use them invited financial destruction. p.134

...Such reporting is somewhat misleading in suggesting that ecclesiastical tactics were in any sense unusual in confronting these potentially crippling suits; expansive counteractions and countersuits have become a fundamental weapon of insurers and their lawyers, and are an essential tool of self-defense in a social and legal environment as litigious as the contemporary United States.

..."Lawsuits based on an assumption that the church is a bottomless financial well are simply unjust". said by cardinal O'Connor.
Equally controversial was the common practice in civil suits of requiring as part of the settlement that both sides maintain strict secrecy about not only the terms of the settlement but also the events leading to the case. This has led to charges that the Catholic church has sealed the records of pedophile clergy, who can then be placed in unsuspecting parishes. However the church is by no means unique in demanding confidentiality; this is common practice for corporations and insurers.
The condemnations of church conduct do assume that all plaintiffs are accurately recounting genuine abuse and that no charges are either spurious or based upon false recollection. ...It is disingenuous to suggest that every plaintiff has impeccable credentials. p.136



Chapter 9: Defending Therapy
Like lawyers, therapists as a group have a vested interest in the promotion of distinctive views of the clergy-abuse problem. For purposes of litigation there is a natural commality of interest between therapists and child-abuse experts on the one hand and the lawyers who are seeking to prove the extent and harm of clergy abuse on the other. ...The common assumptions and interests of (the therapeutic community) helped to determine the ways in which the problem would be formulated.
...(Criticisms over matters like memory therapy and alleged ritual abuse) threatened the gains not just of the therapeutic professions but the feminists and other activists who had come to set such ideological store by the portrayal of an abuse menace. For a profession accused of inventing abuse or else exaggerating trivial incidents out of all proportion, it was invaluable to find in clergy abuse a type of offense concerning which the earlier orthodoxies remained unchallenged and expert announcements retained public respect. p.140

Believing the Children
...Prior to the 1980s both lawyers and psychologists had been similarly skeptical about the value of children's charges about sexual abuse, a doubt influenced by Freudian beliefs about the power of infantile fantasy, usually directed against parents or other authority figures.

Following the redefinition of the child-abuse problem after 1977, matters changed substantially. Psychologists and therapists now commonly accepted the very high figures offered for the incidence of child molestation and argued that many or most cases involving alleged abuse were genuine. p.140

The reaction against earlier skepticism went so far that it became virtually unacceptable to suggest that such charges might be false, the product of either fantasy or deliberate lying. To reject children's testimony was presented as, at best, a psychological problem of "denial" on the part of the critic, and, at worst, the moral equivalent of acquiescence in the act of molestation. It was "blaming the victim". p.141

The Recovered-Memory Debate
The issue of interviewing children soon became linked with the still more difficult question of repressed memory and the problem of whether therapists were able to draw forth early memories that an adult subject had concealed because they were too troubling for the conscious mind to confront. p.142

Thruout the 1980s some academics and psychologists had been skeptical about the possibility of recovering supposedly lost memories, suspicious both of the techniques employed in therapy and of the chance that recollections would accurately reflect events that had genuinely occurred. p.143

...The obvious charge was that the concern over sex abuse had led to the creation of a therapeutic "industry" with a vested interest in the identification of sexual trauma and that innocent individuals were being falsely accused in consequence of dubious therapies.

...In mid-1993 the media began sympathetic reporting of the academic work of psychologist Stephen Ceci, who showed how repeated questioning of children over lengthy periods could generate false but plausible-sounding memories that the subjects could report with absolute conviction as objective reality. p.144

Defending Therapy
Clergy-abuse cases reinforced therapeutic assumptions about the treatment and healing of abuse, not least thru the near-universal acceptance of the idea that abuse victims urgently require extensive psychological treatment. That this concept seems so self-evident is in itself strong testimony to the recent influence of the child-abuse ideology and the assumption that molestation caused extensive psychic damage. p.149

Backlash
(Stephen Cook accused cardinal Bernardin of having abused him.) ...The National Catholic Reporter commented that Cook had been counseled by a priest who had long been critical of the cardinal, and Commonweal used the case to remark on the perils of using false memories as legal evidence.
When Cook announced some months later that he had come to doubt the accuracy of the memories recovered under hypnosis, the case was reported as another reason to cast doubt on memory therapy and as a reminder of the dangers that could arise if another complainant were not as scrupulous as this one. p.151


Chapter 10: Meanings and Directions
The construction of the clergy-abuse problem can be approached in a number of ways. The issue's origins can be traced to the interplay of various interest groups, who made effective use of opportunities arising from developments in the mass media and the legal environment. p.153

Constructing the Problem
Successive studies of social problems and moral panics have suggested a number of critical preconditions for the generation and acceptance of a given issue, for a problem to "succeed", and clergy abuse exemplifies most of these. p.153

...The powerful incentive to seek remedies thru the courts reinforces and rewards what has been described as the "victim culture", the tendency of groups and individuals to seek external culprits for disorders or difficulties that afflict them. A threat or promise of large damage payments has become a powerful force motivating the reformulation of social issues. p.154

...Without the requisite ideology, there would not have been the upsurge of child-abuse prosecutions, nor would anything have appeared amiss about the church's handling of its offending priests. Without the litigation explosion, attorneys would have lacked the ability to begin the investigation and prosecution of church authorities that so swiftly developed a cyclical and self-sustaining character. And had the Catholic church not been so divided, it would have been easier for the hierarchy to win credence for the assertions that the charges were simply another chapter in the American pattern of hysterical anti-Catholic agitation. Finally, the critical news coverage of the abuse cases owed much to the revived muckraking traditions that had grown out of the Watergate affair and the anti-war protests, and that caused a general distrust of government and powerful institutions. p.155

"The Greatest Crisis"?
...In the past decade (1985-95) a sinister and unsavory vision of the Catholic church has come close to being a routine part of perceived reality in this culture, with the required institutional quality provided by recurrent reinforcement thru newspaper headlines and TV news stories, rumors and jokes. p.168