Q. Friends of mine believe that the clergy sexual abuse problem in the Catholic Church is ongoing, but I don’t think that’s true. Can you help me with this? — T.S., Florida.
A. Your friends probably think this because the media continue to present a distorted picture of the problem. For example, a Pew Research Center study released earlier this year found that 80 percent of Americans surveyed believed that sexual abuse by Catholic priests is an “ongoing problem,” while only 12 percent said that these problems “happened in the past and mostly don’t happen anymore.” The latter group is correct that clergy sexual abuse is negligible today.
For example, the 2018 Annual Report of the U.S. Catholic Bishops found that, during the period from July 1, 2017 and June 30, 2018, there were 26 new allegations involving minors, but only three were substantiated and all three men were removed from ministry.
“If we consider the three cases that were substantiated,” said Bill Donohue of the Catholic League, “this means that only .006 percent of the 50,648 members of the clergy had a substantiated accusation made against them in that one-year period. Everyone will agree that ideally the figure should be .000, but fair-minded people will conclude that .006 percent is a negligible amount.”
He said in the July-August issue of Catalyst that “as usual, most of the alleged victims were male (82 percent). Only about a fifth were prepubescent, meaning that once again we are dealing with homosexual predators, though, as always, the annual report refuses to so say.”
Donohue also said that “we could go further. Show us a demographic group, or an institution, secular or religious, where adults intermingle with minors on a regular basis, which has a better record than this. As we have said many times before, Catholics are being played by those — many of whom are Catholic — who do not want the scandal to go away. That way they can push for their reforms. This includes those on the right as well as the left.”
Q. St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Alpha, N.J., has The Catholic Worker in its lobby for anyone to pick up after Mass. It has no theological content. A front-page article (“Red-baiting Then and Now”) in the August-September 2019 issue reveals its agenda, which is socialism. The front page of every Wanderer has a quotation from Pope Pius XI: “No one can be at the same time a sincere Catholic and a true socialist.” Is it wrong for St. Mary’s Catholic Church to make this newspaper available? — D.P., New Jersey.
A. When you think of how ignorant many Catholics are about the teachings of their Church, one would think that a Catholic parish would make available to its parishioners such reliable Catholic publications as The Wanderer and the National Catholic Register, instead of a newspaper that promotes socialism under the guise of social justice.
The Catholic Worker newspaper was started in 1933 by Dorothy Day, who edited the paper until her death in 1980. Its circulation quickly reached 150,000, but plummeted during World War II when the paper advocated Christian pacifism. The Catholic Worker Movement has attracted Communists, socialists, anarchists, pacifists, and those sincerely interested in helping the poor and homeless through soup kitchens, hospitality houses, and farming communes.
Its members have spent time in jail protesting against racism, unfair labor practices, militarism, economic exploitation, and more recently “gender discrimination,” something that its founders surely never envisioned as a social justice issue.
“We try to shelter the homeless and give them clothes,” said Dorothy Day, “but there is a strong faith at work. We pray. If an outsider who comes to visit us doesn’t pay attention to our praying and what that means, then he’ll miss the whole point.” She once wrote that “what we do is very little, but it’s like the little boy with a few loaves and fishes. Christ took that little and increased it. He will do the rest.”
Day entered the Catholic Church in 1927 and her cause for sainthood is currently being pursued. Her life story is told in the 1996 movie Entertaining Angels.
Q. In your recent replies about our bishops’ concern about “climate change,” but not about Holy Communion being given to politicians who publicly promote abortion and other evils, you could have quoted St. Augustine’s strong words, and those of Msgr. Charles Pope, about weak and cowardly shepherds. — M.H., via e-mail.
A. Thank you for calling this to our attention. In his column, Msgr. Pope quoted from a sermon by St. Augustine on a text from the prophet Ezekiel:
“After the Lord had shown what wicked shepherds esteem, he also spoke about what they neglect. The defects of the sheep are widespread. There are few healthy and sound sheep, few that are solidly sustained by the food of truth, and few that enjoy the good pasture God gives them. But the wicked shepherds do not spare such sheep.”
While Augustine was speaking in the fifth century, said Msgr. Pope, his words of warning are relevant in the twenty-first century when, Pope said, “we are in the midst of one of the most shocking and rapid cultural meltdowns imaginable. We have seen the demise of marriage through divorce, cohabitation, contraception, and its very redefinition. Here are just a few examples: More than 50 million abortions since the Roe v. Wade decision, sexual promiscuity, rampant single motherhood (and absent fathers), widespread sexually transmitted diseases, sexual abuse of minors and vulnerable adults (including by clergy), sexual harassment, rampant pornography that is becoming even baser, celebration of homosexual acts, and a sexual confusion that has led some to claim that there are more than 50 ‘genders’ and that a male can make himself female (and vice-versa) simply by declaring it so.
“Add to this the deepening toll of greed and gluttony, as well as a dramatic falling away of religious practice. Fewer than one in four Catholics attend Mass weekly, down from more than three in four in the 1950s and before.”
But while the situation continues to grow worse, he said, “many pulpits are strangely silent, as are catechetical programs and nominally Catholic universities and colleges. It’s still business as usual even though most don’t come to Mass anymore to know that. You’d never know that there was a tsunami raging outside the doors. . . . Taking a moral stand is ‘controversial,’ and too many Catholic leaders, both clergy and lay, are allergic to controversy. There is endless talk about being a ‘welcoming parish,’ but never the fuller development of that idea: All are welcome to come and hear the truth of Jesus Christ, repent of their sins, and thereby grow in holiness.”
Even more shocking than failure to preach the whole truth, said the Monsignor, is the shepherds who attack those who are faithful to the Church’s teaching. In the words of Augustine: “It is not enough that they neglect those that are ill and weak, those that go astray and are lost. They even try, so far as it is in their power, to kill the strong and healthy. Yet such sheep live; yes, by God’s mercy, they live.”
“There is a frightful and hurtful dynamic today,” said Pope, “among many bishops and other clergy to excoriate the very Catholics who have stayed with us through thick and thin, who still come to Mass and believe the doctrines. Too easily they are dismissed as being troublemakers, extreme, and overly rigid. Little attention is given to their concerns even when the matters involve serious doctrinal issues, liturgical abuses, or outright malfeasance. If such Catholics receive any reply at all from bishops or pastoral leaders, it is often terse and stern.”
Contrast that treatment, said Pope, with efforts by these Church leaders to placate politicians, clerics, and others who publicly dissent from Church teaching, to treat them with great tolerance, and to honor them in our universities and at public gatherings. He said that all of this “causes great grief among the faithful who have tried to remain loyal during this maelstrom,” and he recommends prayer for these neglectful shepherds because “much has been given to us, much depends on us, and much is expected of us. We will face judgment one day. May our ministry not condemn us.”
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