Tinfoil Hat

Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened round his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.
– Christ Jesus, The Bible; Matthew 18.6, Mark 9.42, Luke 17.2

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The 2004 Los Angeles Times article “Vatican Aware of Abuse for Centuries, Study Says” notes a report “by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles… [which] said Cardinal Roger M. Mahony and other bishops didn’t realize until 1985 that sexual abuse by clergy was “more than a matter of tragic but isolated incidents.” The article continues:

But a North Carolina priest and two former monks who live in Southern California say they have scoured ancient Vatican records and forgotten Latin texts to show just the opposite: that the church has recognized the problem of abuse by priests for at least 1,700 years and has failed to address it successfully.

“The contention that the present scandal is isolated to this era is completely debunked by the Roman Catholic Church’s own documents,” concluded Father Thomas P. Doyle and former monks Richard Sipe and Patrick Wall in their 375-page report, “Canonical History of Clerical Sexual Abuse” ¹ [later published as Sex, Priests, and Secret Codes: The Catholic Church’s 2,000-Year Paper Trail of Sexual Abuse].

After the Catholic Church abuse scandal began in 2001, Cardinal Bernard F. Law of the Boston diocese resigned in 2002 “amid a Boston Globe investigation reporting allegations of more than ninety clergy perpetrators under his authority. That number [grew to more than 200], according to BishopAccountability.org, an online archive on the church crisis.² Pope John Paul II then promoted Cardinal Bernard Law to be a “pastor of the historic basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, with an estimated $12,000 monthly salary, according to the New York Times.” It should be noted that in the Vatican City, “the age of consent is 12.” ³

Pope John Paul II’s successor Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger then came under fire the week after becoming pontif:

Pope Benedict XVI faced claims [23 April 2005] he had ‘obstructed justice’ after it emerged he issued an order ensuring the church’s investigations into child sex abuse claims be carried out in secret. The order was made in a confidential letter, obtained by The Observer, which was sent to every Catholic bishop in May 2001. It asserted the church’s right to hold its inquiries behind closed doors and keep the evidence confidential for up to 10 years after the victims reached adulthood.…

Lawyers acting for abuse victims claim it was designed to prevent the allegations from becoming public knowledge or being investigated by the police.… The letter, ‘concerning very grave sins’, was sent from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican office that once presided over the Inquisition and was overseen by Ratzinger.… Ratzinger’s letter states that the church can claim jurisdiction in cases where abuse has been ‘perpetrated with a minor by a cleric’.⁴

The Associated Press reported in 2002 that “until recently, lawsuits by alleged victims usually were settled quietly out of court, and police and prosecutors often were content to give church officials leeway to handle discipline internally, lawyers said.” The article continues:

“In the past there was a minimum level of scrutiny to anything the church did because it was presumably acting in the best interests of people,” said the Rev. Raymond C. O’Brien, a Catholic University law professor and a parish priest.… “Prosecutions prior to the mid-80s were virtually unheard of,” said Stephen Rubino, a New Jersey lawyer who has brought more than 200 lawsuits seeking damages from the church over alleged abuse. “Law enforcement kept their hands off. Nobody wanted to get involved with churchmen committing crimes,” Rubino said.… “The sexual abuse scandal now has changed everything,” O’Brien said.⁵

Former monk Richard Sipe estimates that six percent of Catholic priests have sexually abused children.⁶ “In 2004-FEB, CNN was able to view a draft copy of a survey prepared by the church,” according to the ReligiousTolerance.org website. “It reveals that 4,450 of the 110,000 Roman Catholic clergy (4%) who served between 1950 and 2002 have been accused of molesting minors. This has resulted in 11,000 individual abuse claims filed against Catholic clergy during that interval.” ⁷

Thomas Fox, writing in the National Catholic Reporter, estimates that the average pedophile priest molests 285 victims.⁸ The 2002 Zogby International/Le Moyne Contemporary Catholic Trends Poll Report found that one in 11 American Catholics say they have “personal knowledge” of child sexual abuse by a priest.⁹

The AmericanCatholic.org website reports of the research study by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice published in 2004 discovering that:

No action was taken against a priest in 10 percent of the allegations, and in 6 percent of the allegations the priests were reprimanded and returned to ministry. Other actions included suspending priests involved in 29 percent of the allegations and placing priests involved in 24 percent of the allegations on administrative leave.

[There was a] drop-off in reported incidents after 1985.… Robert Bennett, National Review Board member, said… that it was in part due to bishops becoming alarmed about the situation in the 1980s and ’90s and starting to take preventive measures.¹⁰

“The scandals have cost the Church billions of dollars in settlements and driven prominent dioceses into bankruptcy,” notes NBC News.¹¹

“A Catholic order has agreed to pay $166 million to nearly 500 survivors of sexual abuse at Jesuit-run reservation boarding schools,” reported the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in March 2011. “Attorneys for the abuse victims – nearly all Native Americans and Alaskan Natives abused at the mission schools in Washington and around the Northwest – described the settlement as the largest in U.S. history.” The article continues:

In a statement, the attorneys said the Society of Jesus’ Oregon Province and its insurer agreed to make the payment and issue a written apology to the victims, who were sexually and psychologically abused from the 1940s through the 1990s. The abuse was alleged to have taken place at Jesuit operated mission schools and boarding schools on Indian reservations in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Alaska and Montana.¹²

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[redacted]¹³

According to an Associated Press release, The Kansas City Star reported in January 2000 that “Roman Catholic priests in the United States are dying from AIDS-related illnesses at a rate four times higher than the general population, and the cause is often concealed on their death certificates.” ¹⁴ Further research by The Star “found that the AIDS-related death rate among priests ‘exceeds earlier estimates.'” ¹⁵ Judy L. Thomas writes in her article “Catholic Priests Are Dying of AIDS, Often In Silence” for The Bible Study that “other statistics and experts suggest that those estimates are too conservative.… [A.W. Richard Sipe] who has spent more than 30 years studying sexuality issues in the church, thinks that about 750 priests nationwide have died of such illnesses. That would translate into an AIDS-related death rate eight times that of the general population.” ¹⁶ The Kansas City Star also reported that “the Rev. John Keenan, who runs Trinity House, an outpatient clinic in Chicago for priests, said he believes most priests with AIDS contracted the disease through same-sex relations. He said he treated one priest who had infected eight other priests.” ¹⁷

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