A New Report Finds That Homosexuality Is No Factor in Abusive Priests

.

Report commissioned by the U.S. Catholic Bishops
says that there is no data indicating that
homosexuality was a predictor of sexual abuse.

Thanks to Terence over at the excellent Queering the Church, I’ve become aware of the Associated Press article below. I appreciate Terence’s take on the issue this article addresses. Here’s a little of what Terence has to say:

The fact that this report confirms what the rest of the world knows [i.e., that homosexuality is not a factor in the cases of abusive priests], is welcome, but not earth-shattering. Don’t hold your breath for the bishops to announce that they accept the report, or will act on this finding, or even for them to release the full report when it has been concluded.

The real causes of the problem lie within the church’s own structures, as numerous observers have noted: the appalling monopoly and abuse of power, compulsory clerical celibacy, and a deeply flawed, seminary based training system that is a hangover from the Middle Ages, leaving priests with minimal understanding of human sexuality, their own or anyone else’s. (Reports elsewhere state that this same interim John Jay report concludes that priests with the better training in human sexuality were the least likely to offend).

Following is the Associated Press article.

_________________________

Report: Homosexuality No Factor
in Abusive Priests

By Rachel Zoll

Associated Press
November 17, 2009

A preliminary report commissioned by the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops to investigate the clergy sex abuse scandal has found no evidence that gay priests are more likely than heterosexual clergy to molest children, the lead authors of the study said Tuesday.

The full report by researchers at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice won’t be completed until the end of next year. But the authors said their evidence to date found no data indicating that homosexuality was a predictor of abuse.

“What we are suggesting is that the idea of sexual identity be separated from the problem of sexual abuse,” said Margaret Smith of John Jay College, in a speech to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. “At this point, we do not find a connection between homosexual identity and the increased likelihood of subsequent abuse from the data that we have right now.”

The question has been raised repeatedly within and outside the church because the overwhelming majority of known victims were boys. As part of the church’s response to the crisis, the Vatican ordered a review of all U.S. seminaries that, among other issues, looked for any “evidence of homosexuality” in the schools.

Yet, many experts on sex offenders reject any link between sexual orientation and committing abuse. Karen Terry, a John Jay researcher, said it was important to distinguish between sexual identity and behavior, and to look at who the offender had access to when seeking victims.

The bishops commissioned the $2 million study as part of widespread reforms they enacted at the height of the abuse crisis. The scandal erupted in 2002 with the case of one predator priest in the Archdiocese of Boston, then spread to every U.S. diocese and beyond.

Almost 14,000 molestation claims have been filed against Catholic clergy since 1950, according to tallies the bishops have released in recent years. Abuse-related costs have reached at least $2.3 billion in the same period.

At the meeting Tuesday, Bishop Edward Braxton of the Diocese of Belleville, Ill., asked the researchers whether their study indicated that homosexuality should be considered when evaluating a candidate for the priesthood. In 2005, the Vatican issued a policy statement that men with “deep-seated” attraction to other men should be barred from the priesthood.

Smith said: “If that exclusion were based on the fact that that person would be more probable than any other candidate to abuse, we do not find that at this time.”

The latest findings affirmed previous reports that the rate of clergy abuse has declined steeply since the mid 1980s. Most of the claims being made now involve allegations of abuse from decades ago.

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To supplement this latest report (and Terence’s erudite observations), here is an excerpt from an insightful commentary by Richard Sipe, first published in 2005 in the San Jose Mercury News. (Sipe is pictued at right with Anderson Cooper in 2002.)

As you’ll see, Sipe’s commentary discusses an earlier report by the John Jay College. I can recall that when this report was released in 2002, some anti-gay elements within the Church actually tried to use it to blame homosexuality for the clergy sex abuse scandal.

Yet as Louise Haggett notes in her article, “Clergy Sexual Abuse, Mandatory Celibacy, and Homosexual Priests,” “nowhere in the John Jay College Report is it indicated that homosexuality is a factor. Conclusions drawn about homosexuality were merely commentary by clergy panel members on EWTN the day the report was made public. There is no basis for the argument that homosexual priests were responsible for the majority of the abuse, and there are too many arguments against it.”

Sex, Lies, and Priesthood

By Richard Sipe

San Jose Mercury News
October 2, 2005

Some church leaders have assumed that the large number of priest sex-abuse cases reported in recent years can be blamed mainly on gay priests, even though there is not a shred of scientific proof to back that up.

Part of the fuel for that mistaken belief is a recent study of the sex-abuse crisis in the U.S. church. The study, ordered up by the church and conducted by John Jay College of Criminal Justice, concluded that at least 4 percent of priests were alleged to have abused minors in the 52 years ending in 2002. (That translated to almost 4,400 priests.)

John Jay also concluded that 81 percent of the alleged victims were boys. Some people assumed, as a result, that sexual abuse is a homosexual problem.

Not so. First of all, there have been no studies in the general population that have even suggested gays are any more likely than heterosexuals to be pedophiles.

Plus, there are other, more likely explanations for why the majority of abused children were boys.

Studies of the priesthood have indicated that 66 percent of priests are psychosexually underdeveloped or maldeveloped. Part of the reason is that clerical culture encourages the idealization of adolescents (for their purity and passion), as well as encouraging dependency and conformity in its priests.

When adults – gay or heterosexual – function on a level that is equal to most adolescents, it’s not surprising that the people they’re sexually attracted to are adolescents. And in general, the adolescents whom priests spent time with were boys – mainly altar boys. No one was suspicious when priests spent time with those boys – even after Mass – because part of the priests’ duty was to mentor boys they thought would make good priests.

In the end, the root of the sex-abuse problem may well be the church’s demand for celibacy without adequately training for it and responsibly supporting it. That’s not to say that many men cannot choose to remain celibate and be happy with that life. But for those who joined the priesthood failing to make such a decision, or because they were confused about their sexuality, celibacy can become too difficult to sustain.

In my own ethnographic study of 1,500 priests from 1960 to 1985, I found that only 50 percent, at any one time, were practicing chastity. Gays do just as well – or poorly, take your pick – as heterosexuals in observance.

The structure, if not the intent, of the Vatican’s seminary investigation – combined with the possible ruling against gay seminarians – is a smoke screen to cover up the fact that too many priests and bishops, gay and straight, are not practicing the chastity they promised and did not protect the children in their care.

So if you really want to be a Catholic priest, when you go to a seminary and they ask you what your orientation is, tell them it doesn’t make any difference. You want to be an honest and trustworthy celibate, dedicated to the work exemplified by men like Francis, Ignatius, Pope John XXIII, and even John Paul II, who initiated the idea of a ban on gay priests.

To read Sipe’s commentary in its entirety, click here.


See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Homosexuality and the Priesthood
• Vatican Stance on Gay Priests Signals Urgent Need for Renewal & Reform
• The Pope’s “Scandalous” Stance on Homosexuality
• “Spiritual Paternity”
• Weakland, the Clergy Sex Abuse Scandal, and Homophobia
• Abuse Survivor Says Scapegoating Homosexuality for Clergy Sex Abuse is “Ill-informed, Ignorant, Corrupt, and Dishonest”

Recommended Off-site Links:
Fig Leaf Removed: Clerical Abuse is NOT Caused by Gay Priests, After All – Terence Weldon (Queering the Church, November 17, 2009).
John Jay Study: No Correlation Between Sexual Orientation and Catholic Clerical Sexual Abuse – William D. Lindsey (Bilgrimage, November 19, 2009).
Gay Groups Praise Report on Gay Priests and Sexual Abuse – Michael Consoli (BeliefNet.com, November 18, 2009