This is ridiculous:
The Archdiocese of Philadelphia announced this afternoon that it was putting on administrative leave 21 priests alleged to have behaved inappropriately with minors.
The archdiocese said it was acting in response to a Feb. 10 Philadelphia grand jury report that found that 37 priests, accused or suspected of misbehavior with children, were serving in ministry.
The archdiocese did not idenitfy the priests by name.
Days after that report, the archdiocese hired attorney Gina Maisto Smith, a former sex crimes prosecutor in the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, to review the personnel files of all the priests named in the grand jury’s report.
“I know that for many people their trust in the Church has been shaken,” Cardinal Justin Rigali said in a statement. “I pray that the efforts of the Archdiocese to address these cases of concern and to re-evaluate our way of handling allegations will help rebuild that trust in truth and justice.”
The archdiocese’s statement did not immediately explain what administrative leave entails.
How many priests are serving in the Philadelphia Archdiocese? I’m thinking thirty-seven perverts is a pretty decent percentage of them. And, by all means, don’t give us any of their names or tell us what “administrative leave” entails. Why should we know any of that pertinent information? I’m glad that the archdiocese is cooperating with the grand jury, but that’s about the lowest common denominator possible for cooperation. What’s the alternative?
The grand jury said it had learned directly from the archdiocese that least 37 priests remained in ministry despite what the jury called “substantial evidence of abuse,” but said it had seen the files of only about 20.
Of those files it reviewed, it asserted the archdiocese had dismissed credible abuse allegations on flimsy pretexts, such as a victims misremembering the layout of a rectory, or the year in which the priest served.
“We understand that accusations are not proof,” the grand jury wrote, “but we just cannot understand the Archdiocese’s apparent absence of any sense of urgency.”
I can’t say I quite understand the whole sad spectacle of rampant pedophilia in the Catholic Church, but it’s established enough that urgency is never witnessed in these cases. Here’s the worst part:
On the day the grand jury report was released, Cardinal Justin Rigali issued a brief response saying that “there are no archdiocesan priests in ministry today who have an admitted or established allegation of sexual abuse of a minor against them.”
Yet, a month later he suspended 21 of them.
I don’t like to mix religion with politics, but to say that the Catholic Church is a disappointment to its adherents is a vast understatement. Just a few days ago the New York Times ran a news article that was rather blunt on this point.
The possibility that even one predatory priest, not to mention three dozen, might still be serving in parishes — “on duty in the archdiocese today, with open access to new young prey,” as the grand jury put it — has unnerved many Roman Catholics here and sent the church reeling in the latest and one of the most damning episodes in the American church since it became engulfed in the sexual abuse scandal nearly a decade ago.
You’d think the bishops would have cleaned up their mess before now.
The situation in Philadelphia is “Boston reborn,” said David J. O’Brien, who teaches Catholic history at the University of Dayton. The Boston Archdiocese was engulfed in a scandal starting in 2002 involving widespread sexual abuse by priests and an extensive cover-up that reached as high as the cardinal…
…Philadelphia is unusual in that the archdiocese has been the subject of not one but two grand jury reports. The first, in 2005, found credible accusations of abuse by 63 priests, whose activities had been covered up by the church. But there were no indictments, mainly because the statute of limitations had expired.
Does anyone want to discuss why this happens in country after country and diocese after diocese? Who needs NAMBLA?
Would you send your child to a NAMBLA meeting?
This is my community.
And of the 37, why are nearly half (16) not being put on leave? I understand they’re only allegations blah blah, but wouldn’t an abundance of caution – not to mention wanting to retain the confidence of parents – entail, at minimum, moving the priests out of positions where they’re in contact with kids, until the allegations can be investigated further?
Of course, in a lot of these cases it usually turns out there are multiple accusers and plenty of evidence, if only the church wanted to look. And these are the people our society looks to for moral guidance and leadership?
It all gives “And God so loved His only son…” a rather creepy subtext.
this woman, whose office can be seen in the winter from my bedroom across Great Valley, agrees with you:
link
Boo:
Don’t forget yesterday’s paper and their report on what Tony did when he was in charge in Pittsburgh. And then they whine about people leaving the Church in droves. Stuff like this is why.
and just wait for the Daily News to publish another column by Christine Flowers blaming the victims fro embarrassing the church, and claiming it’s just a liberal attack on the religion.
well, it is, isn’t it? The victims don’t have to embarrass the church. Whose fault is it that they choose to do so?
And, of course Sen. Scott Brown is only trying to sell bookswhen he reveals some priest pawed his nether regions.
link, also, too.
Tell me again why it is that Sen. John Kerry and other Democratic politicians are not moral enough to receive communion.
The public piety of the conservative side of the Christian church has been shown over and over to be hiding behavior for which the aggressively pious should be ashamed.
It is time that the Roman Catholic church got off its high-horse about abortion and started dealing with the sin within its core institutions.
Like it or not, innocence until proven guilty is a bedrock of justice in this country, as well as fairness everywhere. Since it is so easy to make allegations, and since there are strong financial incentives to do so in many cases, it would seem that unless the evidence was pretty compelling any organization should be willing to uphold such a standard of believing in the innocence of an accused person among its employees and contractors until the evidence looks strong enough against that person.
Maybe that is the case here, as the grand jury’s opinion implies, but if the abuse accusations are anything like most others that have occurred to date, the vast majority will be not be found guilty of anything, even in an easier-to-win civil court.
This doesn’t let the Catholic Church or any of the the other organizations that have had documented abuse and cover-up problems (other social service groups, police departments, psychologists, U.S. Congress, etc.) off the hook in any way for turning a blind eye to such behavior), but we shouldn’t start demanding that lives and careers be ruined on the basis of mere accusations against people just because of some potentially socially constructed phrases like “child,” “sex,” and “abuse” might be present in an accusation.
It should really be egregious and clear before people get fired and jailed in a free society, even is that is to err on the side allowing some bad apples to escape justice and some victims to be subjected to abuse.
It really is better to let a guilty person go free than an innocent person to be subjected to unjust punishment if we are to remain a free society where the evidence is not compelling.
My comment (above) wasn’t a call to fire anyone; it was, pending further investigation, to put them in positions where parents don’t have to worry about entrusting their children to people who have been subjected to allegations where there’s serious incidations that they might be valid.
Police departments do this routinely; they place cops on desk duty or administrative leave automatically when they’re involved in an incident where lethal force is used. Most of these cops are found (rightly or not) to have been justified in their use of force, and their careers carry on unhindered. Why the Catholic Church can’t even be bothered with this minimal standard of acknowledging serious allegations, when the safety of children is at stake, utterly escapes me.
Police departments typically only put people “behind a desk” in very grave situations involving serious accusations and after a review board has looked at it, or after someone has been killed, rightly or wrongly, while waiting for the board to review it. Accusations of more frequent police misdoings, particularly regarding sex, typically do not result in any change in duty until and unless the evidence appears to be very strongly in favor of the accuser, which is usually not the case for the same reason that it usually isn’t the case for priests — people have strong incentives to lie or exaggerate actual events when they’re pissed off at someone for whatever reason.
Why aren’t they being prosecuted is what I wonder. Is it statute of limitations? Lack of evidence?
Most likely it is lack of evidence. The cases in Philadelphia appear to be too recent for statue of limitations issues.
I’m willing to bet that if a RC priest is caught misusing church funds, he’s quickly sent somewhere and supervised closely so he can’t continue to do it. That isn’t the way most bishops in many parts of the world dealt with pedophile priests.
An organization going to great lengths to cover up scandals isn’t unusual, or especially surprising. It isn’t right, but it’s a very common, very human response. But making no real effort to prevent child molesters and rapists from continuing to molest and rape is incomprehensible. If this kind of behavior was not seen as a terrible transgression— and often it clearly was not—- the inescapable conclusion is that a large portion of the clergy and hierarchy of the church have very sick and twisted views of sexuality and of children.
Having volunteered on church boards, I can assure that you’d be wrong on that. Priests get accused of misusing church funds all the time, and they don’t get separated from their fiscal functions unless it appears to be actually true that they did something wrong with the money instead of just pissing off a parishioner with an axe to grind. (But yes, like abuse, it does happen for real sometimes too.)
Think of the following, all-to-common situation that clergy, as well as personal counselors of all kinds, face at some point in their careers: A woman goes to a priest for advice about relationship issues, but really it’s because she has a crush on the priest. At some point, the priest becomes aware of this as breaks off contact by referring her to someone else, telling her why. Hurt and rejected, the woman accuses the priest of inappropriate behavior as well as implicating the possibility that he has engaged in such behavior with others, including her young, male child (since he must be gay if he rejected her, and it might even be complicated by the fact that he is gay). A crusading, but also income-seeking, lawyer starts investigating and finds some other boys who will testify about something that happened a few years ago, although nothing clearly implicating the priest in anything. The priest’s and the archdiocese’s insurance policies pays lawyers to defend them, successfully, first in the criminal system which is easy and inexpensive, but next in the civil system, almost invariably resulting in an out-of-court settlement of $25,000 or so to the accusers because it is much cheaper than the $100,000 it costs the insurance company to defend even an obviously innocent case.
Social service organizations of all kinds face the issue of vengeance or predatory accusers all the time because it is so financially rewarding to lawyers and sometimes to accusers, but the Catholic Church much more so recently because of the scandal. None of this, however, means that we should ever presume that a given, accused party is anything but innocent unless the evidence is really strongly showing that. Was this the case in Philadelphia? That’s what we need to know here.