The recent discovery of the involvement of Fr. Bradley Schaeffer, SJ in the Donald McGuire child molestation case was deeply troubling to the Boston College community, and his resignation from the Board of Trustees last week comes as welcome news.
After Fr. Schaeffer’s mismanagement of the McGuire affair and before his time at BC, he was president of the national Jesuit Conference in the United States. This promotion calls into question the leadership of the Society of Jesus on an international level. If Fr. Schaeffer’s superiors in Rome were aware of what had happened during his tenure in Chicago, it is shameful that they would have promoted him.
While it was right for Fr. Schaeffer to resign, it would be nice to see a day when clerics, who are involved even tangentially in abuse or its mishandling, either voluntarily step aside or are removed from prominent roles by their superiors immediately, and not only when the media reveals the facts and public outcry escalates.
Ten years after the revelations of rampant child sexual abuse by Catholic clergy came to light, it is very sad to see that full transparency is still not yet a reality.
You refer to this being “(t)en years after the revelations of rampant child sexual abuse by Catholic clergy came to light.”
Rampant? How are you redefining “rampant”? Child sexual abuse even now is more common in the home and in the public schools of America than it ever has been or is now in the Catholic Church, in all her manifestations.
Way south of 1% of Catholic priests have ever had an arguable charge of sexual abuse of a minor levelled against them, and less than 1% of that 1% involved paedophilia as properly and legally defined. This is hardly “rampant”.
On the other hand, since way over 90% of alleged sex abuse complaints levelled against Catholic priests are wholly unfounded, and the overwhelming majority of these involve what amounts to criminal intent to felonious enrichment, abuse of the American legal system IS rampant.
I agree with Mr. McLoughlin. It’s unfortunate that the editorial staff on a “conservative” Catholic newspaper blindly regurgitates baseless allegations leveled against the Church with no fact-checking. Also, this editorial leads to zero new insights regarding the discussion about sexual abuse. What does it mean to be tangentially involved in the mishandling of allegations of sexual abuse? Some things simply can’t be discussed in 200 words or less. A little more depth on these would be nice.
Mr. McLoughlin,
I am a very conscientious writer, and so before publication of this editorial, I did in fact look up the definition of rampant precisely because I did not want to use the word if it did not accurately convey the circumstances of the situation. The dictionary that I referred to defined rampant as “(esp. of something unwelcome or unpleasant) flourishing or spreading unchecked.”
A few years ago, I read through the John Jay Report that was commissioned by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in 2004 to investigate the allegations around this country. Thus, I am well aware of the statistics and the relatively few priests who were involved in the sexual abuse of minors. I am also aware of the many decent priests who were falsely accused and have sadly never received the exoneration that they deserve in the court of public opinion.
According to the statistics in the John Jay Report, however, the cases of sexual abuse of minors do fit the definition of rampant as given above. In the 1960s and 1970s, the instances of abuse rose sharply. Fortunately, they did decline even more sharply beginning in the 1980s and are continuing to decline even now. It is the occurrences of abuse in the ‘60s and ‘70s that were first coming to light ten years ago, and the facts indicate that abuse was “flourishing…unchecked” in the ‘60s and ‘70s as bishops sadly did little or nothing to stop it.
I have defended the Church regarding this matter countless times, citing many of the same points that you have made here in your comment. My generation is hostile to the Church because as we have grown up, we have only ever known the Church under this haunting specter of abuse. One of the things that bothers me so much about the abuse is that it gives my generation, already living in a world that is violently inimical to the Faith, another reason for hating and abandoning Catholicism. I, however, love the Catholic Church, and so I have on numerous occasions found myself in the position of defending her against vitriolic attacks by my peers. I will always stand up to defend the one, true Church founded by Christ.
The situation involving Fr. Schaeffer and Fr. McGuire is a remnant of that sad time in the past when some of our shepherds committed horrific sins that cried to heaven for redress, doing great harm to God’s children and to our Holy Mother, the Church.
Chris Canniff