{"id":21070,"date":"2011-05-19T06:43:50","date_gmt":"2011-05-19T12:43:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/?p=21070"},"modified":"2011-05-19T06:43:50","modified_gmt":"2011-05-19T12:43:50","slug":"the-jay-report-on-priestly-abuse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2011\/05\/19\/the-jay-report-on-priestly-abuse.html","title":{"rendered":"The Jay Report on priestly abuse"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s probably unfair to comment too much on this new report based solely on a newspaper account of what it contains<\/a>, but lacking an actual copy, take the following with that caveat.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The report, \u201cThe Causes and Context of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests in the United States, 1950-2010,\u2019\u2019 was done by researchers at John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York, paid for mostly by the Catholic Church itself and initially to be released to the US bishops. Some will probably find that suspicious, but let’s move on.<\/li>\n
  2. The report suggests the primary factor was societal: “the documented rise in cases of abuse in the 1960s and 1970s is similar to the rise in other types of ‘deviant’ behavior in society, and coincides with social change during this time period.”\u00a0 Assuming it’s not a matter of changes in reporting levels (e.g., a change in societal mores, including reduced respect\/deferral to authority, increased the number of abuse cases reported<\/em>, not the number happening<\/em>), this seems to be a modern way of saying “The Devil made me do it.”\u00a0 Don’t blame the individuals involved, for heaven’s sake, blame the society in which they are living. That seems an odd theology. Plus, that one expects more <\/em>from those taking holy orders, and, in fact, would expect a devotion to God to make priests less <\/em>vulnerable to these sorts of temptations of the flesh, doesn’t seem to register.<\/li>\n
  3. The church policies on priestly celebacy are, according to the report, not to blame.<\/li>\n
  4. Nor would better screening at seminaries have helped, since there was no common profile. Nope, no responsibility on the church’s part there, either.<\/li>\n
  5. The report doesn’t seem to address any issues of the church hiding, shuffling around, or otherwise protecting the priests it knew were abusers (or, perhaps more properly, protecting\u00a0 its reputation).\u00a0 It does note that until the early 2000s, when all of this really broke open, the church seemed more interested in working with the abusers than with the victims.<\/li>\n
  6. More significantly, though, it blames (or tries to enlist pity for) the abusive priests themselves: “The report also states that poor training of priests, combined with social isolation, job stress, and few support mechanisms likely contributed to the abuse problem.” One would think those were all factors that were, in fact, under the church’s control, as demonstrated in the following sentence, “The decline of sexual abuse in the mid-1980s coincided with better training for seminarians in human sexuality and relationships.”<\/li>\n
  7. Disturbingly, the report downplays the child abuse aspect of the scandal, claiming that only 5% of cases involved pedophila.\u00a0 It does this, though, by redefining the term.\u00a0 Though most psychiatric associations consider pedophilia to involved youths age 13 or younger, the report uses 10 and younger as the classification.\u00a0 Quoting the report, “The majority of victims were pubescent or postpubescent. Thus, it is inaccurate to refer to abusers as pedophile priests.” As the father of a daughter about to turn 11, I’d still consider any adult abusing an 11-year-old to be a pervert, especially if they were doing so under the cover of some sort of sacred authority.<\/li>\n
  8. Interestingly enough (and the part that will doubtless be least <\/em>quoted by folks like Bill Donohue, the report “concluded that homosexual priests were no more likely to abuse than heterosexual priests.”<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    No other great conclusions here, except it doesn’t seem the report does much more than try to enlist sympathy for the priests involved, swept up unprepared in a great societal upsurge of “deviancy,” isolated and untrained too handle such things, and, at the very least, mostly abusing only tweens, not actual children.<\/p>\n

    I feel much better, don’t you?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    It’s probably unfair to comment too much on this new report based solely on a newspaper account of what it contains, but lacking an actual copy, take the following with that caveat. The report, \u201cThe Causes and Context of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests in the United States, 1950-2010,\u2019\u2019 was done by researchers … Continue reading “The Jay Report on priestly abuse”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":21681,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2011\/07\/22\/unblogged-bits-fri-22-jul-11-1130.html","url_meta":{"origin":21070,"position":0},"title":"Unblogged Bits (Fri. 22-Jul-11 1130)","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 22-Jul-11 11:30am","format":false,"excerpt":"Links (most recent first) that caught my eye, but did not warrant full-blown blog entries .... Bishop Magee lied and deliberately misled, says Cloyne Report \u00ab Michael Nugent - The Cloyne Report is a review of the handling of sexual abuse allegations by the Catholic Diocese of Cloyne, Ireland. Bottom\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Potpourri"","block_context":{"text":"Potpourri","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/potpourri"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":32260,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2013\/01\/21\/sins-of-the-past.html","url_meta":{"origin":21070,"position":1},"title":"Sins of the Past","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 21-Jan-13 3:33pm","format":false,"excerpt":"While this is, in some ways, \"old news,\" it also includes previously unrevealed details about how the Catholic Archbishop of Los Angeles actively participated in cover-ups to make sure that child abuse cases did not come to the attention of the police.This isn't \"Oh, well, we didn't understand it\" or\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":49849,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2015\/03\/16\/taking-the-ferguson-doj-report-seriously.html","url_meta":{"origin":21070,"position":2},"title":"Taking the Ferguson DoJ report seriously","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 16-Mar-15 8:16am","format":false,"excerpt":"This is welcome news. The tribalistic political Us vs Them has, in this case, blinded conservatives to what should be red meat for them: abuse of government power and infringement on civil liberties. If the FBI were accused of committing half the crap that the Ferguson PD is (based on\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":127464,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2015\/08\/06\/for-dark-things-cannot-stand-the-light.html","url_meta":{"origin":21070,"position":3},"title":"For Dark Things Cannot Stand the Light","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 6-Aug-15 10:48pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Granted that pictures can be deceiving, it still seems to me that the freedom to investigatively report (or even muckrake) has a value greater than an \"ag gag\" veil of privacy over what goes on behind the scenes in the livestock world. \"What do they have to hide\" is certainly\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2479,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/06\/17\/the_bishops_dec.html","url_meta":{"origin":21070,"position":4},"title":"The Bishops decide","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 17-Jun-02 2:02pm","format":false,"excerpt":"The USCCB (United States Council of Catholic Bishops) new policies regarding the abuse scandal came on Friday, just when I was dealing with other stuff in my schedule (and lack...","rel":"","context":"In "Religion"","block_context":{"text":"Religion","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":49539,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/11\/comply.html","url_meta":{"origin":21070,"position":5},"title":"COMPLY!","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 11-Feb-15 7:26am","format":false,"excerpt":"Oh, yes, this sounds like a fantastic idea, taking an existing, highly subjective offense that's already open to abuse by the police and making it a felony. What could possibly go wrong? Originally shared by +Les Jenkins: Because it's not like Resisting Arrest charges are tossed around like complementary breath\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21070"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21070\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}