Articles

TRUTH AVOIDANCE MAKE SEMINARY INVESTGATIONS SUSPECT

by Bishop Paul Peter Jesep

There's no need to bang on the table.
The facts will do it.
Manhattan District Attorney Thomas E. Dewey

 

Spiritual violence is being waged against some Christian men. Last month the Vatican announced that it would investigate 229 American seminaries for "evidence of homosexuality." The erroneous implication is that gay men are susceptible to pedophilia. Although the investigation amounts to a modern inquisition, the latest Machiavellian tactic may cause the backlash needed to finally reveal the truth behind the child abuse scandal.

     Very troubling is the far-reaching impact the Church's approach could have on society. If the Church's position regarding pedophilia becomes widely accepted then why would an employer hire a gay man as a banker, waiter, teacher, engineer, librarian, store manager, or for any other job, who is inclined to commit a despicable act?

     At the same time this Faustian public relations ploy goes on, there is solid evidence to support that same-sex couples make good parents. According to Dr. Ellen Perrin, professor of pediatrics at Tufts School of Medicine, "over and over again, the data [shows] no reason to worry about these kinds of family structures for children. It's encouraging, because there's really no reason to think that these children would be worse off or different in any problematic way. And so the research really just confirms [this]. We have no indication that children who grow up with gay or lesbian parents are more likely to be gay or lesbian themselves. We have a lot of evidence that children do best in a two-parent, stable, committed family. What's important is that there be two stable, committed, conscientious, caring parents."

     In addition, the callous disregard for the welfare of children is still being documented. What the facts show is a culture of abuse that cannot be pinned on a segment of the church community. Evidence came to light late last month when The Washington Post reported that, "Cardinals John Krol and Anthony Bevilacqua, deliberately concealed the sexual abuse of hundreds of children by at least 63 priests in [Philadelphia] from 1967 to 2002."

     Last month a Philadelphia Grand Jury issued a hard hitting 418-page report that includes such horrific crimes as the rape of an 11-year-old girl who was later taken in for an abortion. Another case involved the groping of a teenage girl by a priest while she lay immobilized in traction at a hospital. The report is based on 45,000 documents that the archdiocese refused to release, but were forced to under subpoena.

     According to Ronald Eisenberg, a deputy district attorney, quoted by The Washington Post, "The manner in which they responded to the report does not create confidence that there has been a significant change in their attitude toward the underlying problem." Truth avoidance should make the Church's seminary investigations suspect.

     Complaints by girls, The Boston Globe reported in 2003, were routinely dismissed. The abuse of boys is taken far more seriously than the rape of girls by priests. David Clohessy, national director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP), said, "victims, male and female, were discounted, but it was even more pronounced with respect to women."

     In 2002, The Kansas City Star quoted Gary Schoener, a clinical psychologist in Minneapolis, "The double standard is terrible. It is presumed that the abuse of young boys is more deviant and therefore more harmful." Barbara Blaine, president and founder of SNAP, said "We're treated like we're the evil sinner, like we caused the good, holy priest to sin."

     "People who say fundamentally it's homosexuality are almost as much off-base as those who say it's about our litigious society or our salacious media," David Clohessy told The Star. Crimes of violence are not linked to sexual orientation.

     In 2003, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that thousands of nuns had been sexually victimized. "A national survey," the paper reported, "completed in 1996 but intentionally never publicized, estimates that a minimum of 34,000 Catholic nuns, or about 40 percent of all nuns in the United States, have suffered some form of sexual trauma. Some of that sexual abuse, exploitation or harassment has come at the hands of priests and other nuns in the church."

     According to the study's co-author, John T. Chibnall, a research psychologist and associate professor at St. Louis University, "These women have been the stalwarts of the Church for centuries, and a significant percentage of them have been victimized as a result of the structure of the very institution to which they have dedicated their lives."

     Ann Wolf, also a researcher for the report, said that "the bishops appear to be only looking at the issue of child sexual abuse, but the problem is bigger than that. Catholic sisters are being violated, in their ministries, at work, in pastoral counseling."

     She added that many nuns would not publicly make known their victimization. "These women," says Wolf, "have to ask themselves what are the benefits and what are the costs. The church is the only corporation in town." The Church has yet to acknowledge this problem, and if it ever does the institution will be hard-pressed to find an identifiable scapegoat.

     Although there is overwhelming evidence to prove that the travesty is far larger than Church officials are willing or able to admit, the mass media, as evidenced by USA Today last month, still reports: "the clergy sexual abuse crisis in 2002 --which revealed that the majority of victims were teenage boys . . ." This is just one of numerous examples which gives the Church's seminary investigation an air of credibility.

     Mental illness and an inclination to violence have contributed to the unacceptable abuse of boys and girls as well as adult nuns. Deceit, hypocrisy, and spiritual victimization can't be stopped unless information is made widely available. During morally challenging times each Christian must ask, "What would Jesus Do?" Injustice of any kind is intolerable. Those who encourage it, regardless of their lofty titles and self-perceived sense of holiness, should be publicly taken to task.

The Most Rev. Paul Peter Jesep is a Bishop in a branch of the Eastern Orthodox Church. He is also a lawyer, former aide to U.S. Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) and has studied at Bangor Theological Seminary. He may be reached at VladykaPaulPeter@aol.com.