AP: Nearly 1,700 accused priests living free in US

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If Catholics trust the social media of the secular USA, then it just shows how lazy and ignorant we have become in this Nation.
 
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Without oversight, scores of accused priests commit crimes Catholic News
This is a double topic. We surly don’t need two of these in CAF…not sure what can be done.
 
Judge Kavanaugh was accused. Clarence Thomas was accused. Lot of free people are accused. The number is meaningless.
 
But nowadays, accusations are treated as proof of guilt. Evidence be jammed.
 
KMC said:
This puts the AP article in perspective
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I am not sure it does. The Catholic league article says that there were 2570 school teachers dismissed because of accusations or convictions of abuse. But that would be out of a population of 3.7 million US teachers. If it is 1700 priests accused of abuse, that would be out of a population of 37000; i.e. the school teacher population is 100 times larger than the number of Catholic priests in the US. Wouldn’t that show that the problem is much worse among Catholic priests than among the US school teachers?
 
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AlNg said:
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KMC:
This puts the AP article in perspective
Click to expand...
I am not sure it does. The Catholic league article says that there were 2570 school teachers dismissed because of accusations or convictions of abuse. But that would be out of a population of 3.7 million US teachers. If it is 1700 priests accused of abuse, that would be out of a population of 37000; i.e. the school teacher population is 100 times larger than the number of Catholic priests in the US. Wouldn’t that show that the problem is much worse among Catholic priests than among the US school teachers?
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The figures may not be comparable.
  1. Most teachers have union contracts that make formal termination very difficult and expensive for a district. What almost always happened, maybe not so much now, is they are allowed to resign. In one nearby district a teacher got a modest buyout(!). (That would not happen today).
    These cases are not in those teacher figures, nor are the teachers who got reported to other systems, such as cps.
  2. I was a child abuse investigator for years. About 40 percent of sex abuse reports were substantiated, but only a small fraction of those were taken to criminal court. Of that number, some were allowed to plead down to something less than a sexual offense.
  3. In my diocese, most of the priests who the diocese has substantiated would have been unfounded if child protection were investigating, due to age of report. Of the 140 or so cases reportedly referred to the police and DA, by policy, about 5 priests have been convicted in the past 40 years. There is little relationship between the number of teachers convicted or discharged for abuse, and number of those with some credible evidence of abuse.
 
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The Catholic League piece is a hack job. Most of it is a stawman argument. The part of the Catholic League article that its title comes from is an out of context misrepresentation of the AP article.

From Catholic League:
The AP story on the Catholic Church really starts to overheat when it says that “Priests and other church employees being listed on sex offender registries at all is a rarity.” Have the reporters lost their mind? These priests have been accused—they have not been found guilty!

How could they make such an irresponsible comment? There are only two plausible answers: their hatred of the Catholic Church is off the charts, or they are just plain stupid. No accused person is registered as a sex offender unless he has been convicted. On this score alone, the AP study on the Church deserves an “F.”
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From AP (in context):
Five failed to register in their new communities as sex offenders as required due to their sex crime convictions.

Priests and other church employees being listed on sex offender registries at all is a rarity — the AP analysis found that only 85 of the 2,000 are. That’s because church officials often successfully lobbied civil authorities to downgrade charges in exchange for guilty pleas ahead of trials. Convictions were sometimes expunged if offenders completed probationary programs or the charges were reduced below the level required by states for registration.
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Dr_Meinheimer said:
Judge Kavanaugh was accused. Clarence Thomas was accused. Lot of free people are accused. The number is meaningless.
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That’s not the point of the AP’s research. They cite numbers but they are all small numbers. It’s obviously not the point.

The research sheds a light on a very important issue, which is the point of the article. That a number priests who are credibly accused by the Church, and put out of ministry, are not being ‘tracked’ in an effective manner. If it’s important inside the Church, isn’t it important outside the Church.
 
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1Lord1Faith said:
Priests and other church employees being listed on sex offender registries at all is a rarity — the AP analysis found that only 85 of the 2,000 are. That’s because church officials often successfully lobbied civil authorities to downgrade charges in exchange for guilty pleas ahead of trials.
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The vast majority of all persons identified (indicated) by some system (church, child protection, education, mental health, etc) for sex offense do not get criminally convicted, or plea down to a non sex offense. So “lobbying” isn’t a factor.

In most systems, “some credible evidence” is the standard, which less than the standard for Family Court, which is less than the standard for indictment, which is less than the standard to convict. Criminal conviction specific to sex charge gets you on the registry in most states.

So 85 on registry out of 2000 is not unusual or suspicious, considered the often long period between incident and reporting. “Some credible evidence” is an extremely low standard, and “beyond a reasonable doubt” extremely difficult standard.
 
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AlNg said:
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KMC:
This puts the AP article in perspective
Click to expand...
I am not sure it does. The Catholic league article says that there were 2570 school teachers dismissed because of accusations or convictions of abuse. But that would be out of a population of 3.7 million US teachers. If it is 1700 priests accused of abuse, that would be out of a population of 37000; i.e. the school teacher population is 100 times larger than the number of Catholic priests in the US. Wouldn’t that show that the problem is much worse among Catholic priests than among the US school teachers?
Click to expand...

Here is one study that shows the overall prevalence of abuse in public schools (8th-11th grades) is approximately 7% of all students have been abused, and if you expand the definition of abuse to include showing porn, explicit language, or exhibitionism, it goes up to 10%. Certainly, one teacher can abuse more than one child, but this shows an extremely high amount of abuse in the public school system.

This article cites a 2004 Dept of Education study that shows approximately 1 in 10 children will be abused during their school career.


The part of the Catholic League article that I think sheds light on the AP article is the rebuttal to the AP’s comment about how the CC has little to no supervision over the 1700 priests. The CL states that many of them are former employees…ie. they have been terminated, and thus would not continue to track former priests. Does the AP hold other organizations to the same standard?

The thrust of the articles I have seen from the CL, is not a defense of abusive priests, rather shining light on the double standard that exists in the media and with politicians: Catholic Church abusive priests are a continuing problem, but there is nothing to look at in the public school system. The fact of the matter is that due to the reforms taken by the CC, the number of credible accusations against priest is approx 7 per year, which represents .02% of all priests. That is still 7 too many, however, if buy into the narrative of the media, you would think the CC is doing nothing.
 
Divine3 said:
If Catholics trust the social media of the secular USA, then it just shows how lazy and ignorant we have become in this Nation.
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Associated Press isn’t social media, it’s one of the most highly respected news agencies in the world.
 
What do other organizations have to do with what the Catholic Church is doing? That’s some sort of appeal to hypocrisy instead of addressing the issue.

The issue is a legal one. The Church cannot legally track people in that way. Because of that, someone in the article states that it’s not a good idea to laicize priests in the US. Pensions and insurance can also be used as leverage to keep a priest from leaving the Church. All in an effort to track them.

Lay groups are shouldering the responsibilities of warning organizations about the former priests and other Church workers who cannot legally be tracked. And journalists are part of that effort also.

The AP article even admits that the only reason that they could do this research is because the Church is being transparent (mostly) about all of this. No other organizations are doing that, or have any incentive to do so. But the Church is suppose to take the moral high ground. The Church is not just an ‘organization’. It’s something much more and holds itself to higher standards. So comparing the Church to public schools, or any other institutions isn’t going to fly.
 
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There is a juxtaposition throughout the AP article. On one hand, the legal issues regarding the weight of evidence for a criminal conviction. One the other, the evidence that’s required by the Church for a “credible accusation”. There is obviously a gap between the two.

So problem is that the Church’s moral authority is implicitly being called into question. The Catholic League doesn’t like that, but they aren’t capable of publishing a coherent rebuttal either. Even the folks from the AP know that the Church regards itself as a moral authority. Hence the appropriateness of an article highlighting the gap between what’s legal and what’s moral.
 
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Should the Church keep these priests who have been disbarred from ministry on the payroll so it will be able to track them? Will there be a new office at the chancery to keep track of priests no longer in ministry? I can see the headlines now: "Church continues paying credibly accused priests who have been disbarred from ministry!
 
1Lord1Faith said:
What do other organizations have to do with what the Catholic Church is doing? That’s some sort of appeal to hypocrisy instead of addressing the issue.
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The Church (at least in the US) IS addressing the issue, but if you follow the narrative portrayed in the media, the CC is doing nothing to minimal to address the issue. Comparison to other organizations is helpful to understand that the Church has made major progress (its work is certainly not done), and is doing more than virtually every other organization.
1Lord1Faith said:
The issue is a legal one. The Church cannot legally track people in that way. Because of that, someone in the article states that it’s not a good idea to laicize priests in the US. Pensions and insurance can also be used as leverage to keep a priest from leaving the Church. All in an effort to track them.
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Why is in incumbent on the Church to NOT laicize priests? Why keep them around, and why be responsible for their behavior? The Church is certainly not equipped to handle that responsibility. It would only open the Church up to more liability, more lawsuits, and more accusations that its doing nothing. All of that inhibits its mission.
1Lord1Faith said:
Lay groups are shouldering the responsibilities of warning organizations about the former priests and other Church workers who cannot legally be tracked. And journalists are part of that effort also.
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Journalists should be interested in protecting all children. Why focus on an organization that has a better current record than any other organization in America? Why ignore those organizations with much worse track records. I would argue they have ulterior motives.
1Lord1Faith said:
But the Church is suppose to take the moral high ground. The Church is not just an ‘organization’. It’s something much more and holds itself to higher standards. So comparing the Church to public schools, or any other institutions isn’t going to fly.
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The Church has implemented higher standards…but the vast majority of “news” I see paints a different picture.
 
Laicization is a complicated question, with pluses and minuses both ways. People are “tracked” only to the extent they choose to be. McCarrick for years was disregarding his conditions, so keeping a collar on him was a disaster. For another man, keeping that connection may be important.

Even if the Church laicized a man, he may choose to work as a “Catholic priest” anyway. There’s at least one organization that promotes this. They do sacrament, cruise ships, whatever, in defiance of the Church.

The AP has no way of measuring if a man is still going to Confession or spiritual direction, even if laicized. Does that count as supervision?

Laicization should be decided on a case by case basis.
 
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