Monday, April 12, 2010
Katherine Kersten: You'd think the evil of sexual abuse was exclusive to the Catholic Church
Herewith excerpts from this column in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune (the full column is here:
In 2004, a groundbreaking report commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education found that 6 to 10 percent of children in public schools have been sexually abused or harassed by teachers or school employees. Hofstra University Prof. Charol Shakeshaft, the report's author, estimated that about 290,000 students were victimized between 1991 and 2000. "So we think the Catholic Church has a problem?" Shakeshaft told Education Week. "The physical sexual abuse of students in schools is likely more than 100 times the abuse by priests."
How did the media respond to these shocking revelations? With a giant collective yawn. News reports could be counted on one hand, according to NewsMax.com, which contrasted the media's ho-hum reaction with its "wall-to-wall" coverage of Catholic scandals.
* * * *
Since 2002, the Catholic Church has labored mightily to clean up what Benedict has called "the filth" of priestly sexual abuse. In 2009, the U.S. Catholic bishops' annual audit included only six new allegations of clerical abuse of children younger than 18 -- in a church of some 65 million members. Abuse escalated between the mid-1960s and the mid-1980s, but now seems largely to have vanished.
So why does the Catholic Church continue to get all the headlines?
The church draws the mainstream media's ire because, in a world increasingly characterized by moral relativism, it continues to teach enduring moral rules that don't shift with cultural fashions. It dares to challenge the doctrine preached by America's new priestly class -- our opinionmaking elite -- on social issues ranging from abortion and embryonic stem cell research to same-sex marriage.
https://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2010/04/katherine-kersten-youd-think-the-evil-of-sexual-abuse-was-exclusive-to-the-catholic-church.html
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Greg Sisk says: "So why does the Catholic Church continue to get all the headlines? The church draws the mainstream media's ire because . . . ."
I would say the Catholic Church gets all the headlines and draws the media's *attention*. And why? Because it is a highly centralized, extremely large, very ancient organization that preaches sexual morality to the world. (One may agree or disagree with the morality it preaches, but it is the fact that it preaches morality to the world which is key here, and not whether the world likes or dislikes what the Church preaches.)
If one were to name a category that innocent children should beware of, Catholic priests would surely be lower on the list than the category of all uncles, or step-fathers, or mothers' boyfriends. But the set of all uncles (or step-fathers, or mothers' boyfriends) is not a highly centralized organization that preaches morality. Rightly or wrongly, if you hear a number of stories in which uncles are villains, you are unlikely to say, "I better watch out for uncles." Also, you won't react to villainous uncle stories by saying, "How ironic (or hypocritical) that uncles are preaching morality to the world and yet they have behaved badly themselves!"
*OF COURSE* a highly centralized, ancient organization with over a billion members that preaches sexual morality is going to get (and deserve) major news coverage in a way that the set of all uncles, or even the set of all public school teachers and employees is not going to get. Rightly or wrongly, if a janitor in Dubuque, a teacher in Cincinnati, and a cafeteria worker in Palo Alto molest children, it's just not the same as if a priest in Dubuque, a priest in Cincinnati, and a priest in Palo Alto molest children. The janitor, the teacher, and the cafeteria worker will not have their cases sent to Rome to be acted on by one office. They are isolated cases that will only be looked at collectively in a report on sex abuse in public schools.
Also, a Church that so harshly condemns homosexuality is bound to get attention when it is a fact that 80 percent of priests' victims were boys.
Finally, the fact that "since 2002, the Catholic Church has labored mightily to clean up what Benedict has called 'the filth' of priestly sexual abuse" doesn't render details of that filth of no interest. Probably a majority of the people who were responsible, as well as a majority of the people who were victimized, are still alive today (if we're talking about abuse from the 1970s and 1980s). And why anyone would be surprised that the smallest details of what Benedict did before he was pope are the subject of close scrutiny simply baffles me.
The Church is not a victim here. Maybe when Catholics didn't hold six of the nine positions on the Supreme Court, complaints of anti-Catholicism could be taken seriously. But those days are gone.