Is it a good idea to make men who desire to serve God with fervor pick between that profession and the propagation of a family? Were not so many of God's chosen Prophets married with children? When Paul said he wished that all were single like him, did he literally mean every single person? Wouldn't Christianity have become extinct? Those like him, who were going to spend their lives travelling (by foot) and relying on the local churches for needs would not be able to care for a family properly, but now when travel is so much easier, missionaries and minsters are given a stipend to live on, and there are plenty of workers to share the task, is it wise to make a man chose, and then leave him to deal with his God-given, pure and necessary sexual needs?
1 Corinthians 7:8-9 "I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, it is good for them if they abide even as I. But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn."
LA Church to Pay $600M for Clergy Abuse
By GILLIAN FLACCUS
LOS ANGELES (AP) - The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles will settle its clergy abuse cases for at least $600 million, by far the largest payout in the church's sexual abuse scandal, The Associated Press learned Saturday.
Attorneys for the archdiocese and the plaintiffs are expected to announce the deal Monday, the day the first of more than 500 clergy abuse cases was scheduled for jury selection, according to two people with knowledge of the agreement. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because the settlement had not been made public.
The archdiocese and its insurers will pay between $600 million and $650 million to about 500 plaintiffs - an average of $1.2 million to $1.3 million per person. The settlement also calls for the release of confidential priest personnel files after review by a judge assigned to oversee the litigation, the sources said.
The settlements would push the total amount paid out by the U.S. church since 1950 to more than $2 billion, with about a quarter of that coming from the Los Angeles archdiocese.
It wasn't immediately clear how the payout would be split among the insurers, the archdiocese and several Roman Catholic religious orders. A judge must sign off on the agreement, and final details were being ironed out.
Lead plaintiffs' attorney Ray Boucher confirmed the sides were working on a deal but would not discuss specifics. He said that negotiations would continue through the weekend and that there were still many unresolved aspects.
Tod Tamberg, archdiocese spokesman, declined to comment on any settlement details.
``The archdiocese will be in court Monday morning,'' he said.
Steven Sanchez, 47, was one of the plaintiffs set to go to trial Monday. He was expected to testify in the trial involving the late Rev. Clinton Hagenbach.
Sanchez, a financial adviser, said the past few months have been especially difficult because he had to repeat his story of abuse for depositions with his attorneys and archdiocese attorneys in preparation for trial.
``We're 48 hours away from starting the trial, and I've been spending a lot of time getting emotionally prepared to take them on, but I'm glad,'' he said. ``It's been a long five years.''
The settlement would be the largest ever by a Roman Catholic archdiocese since the clergy sexual abuse scandal erupted in Boston in 2002. The largest payout so far has been by the Diocese of Orange, Calif., in 2004, for $100 million.
Facing a flood of abuse claims, five dioceses - Tucson, Ariz.; Spokane, Wash.; Portland, Ore.; Davenport, Iowa, and San Diego - sought bankruptcy protection.
The Los Angeles archdiocese, its insurers and various Roman Catholic orders have paid more than $114 million to settle 86 claims so far.
The largest of those came in December, when the archdiocese reached a $60 million settlement with 45 people whose claims dated from before the mid-1950s and after 1987 - periods when it had little or no sexual abuse insurance. Several religious orders in California have also reached multimillion-dollar settlements in recent months, including the Carmelites, the Franciscans and the Jesuits.
However, more than 500 other lawsuits against the archdiocese had remained unresolved despite years of legal wrangling. Most of the outstanding lawsuits were generated by a 2002 state law that revoked for one year the statute of limitations for reporting sexual abuse.
Cardinal Roger Mahony recently told parishioners in an open letter that the archdiocese was selling its high-rise administrative building and considering the sale of about 50 other nonessential church properties to raise funds for a settlement.
A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge overseeing the cases recently ruled that Mahony could be called to testify in the second trial on schedule, and attorneys for plaintiffs wanted to call him in many more.
The same judge also cleared the way for four people to seek punitive damages - something that could have opened the church to tens of millions of dollars in payouts if the ruling had been expanded to other cases.
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I'm not sure that if you have the desire to have s*x with teenage boys, that being married is really going to help that any. The pedophiles that you see in national news are always married. It's a good cover. The reality is, that pedophiles are attracted to positions where they can gain the trust of children, and that includes ALL clergy, as well as sports coaches, teachers, etc.
This is worth a read: http://www.catholicleague.org/research/abuse_in_social_context.htm
"Finally, in the authoritative work by Penn State professor Philip Jenkins, Pedophiles and Priests, it was determined that between .2 and 1.7 percent of priests are pedophiles. The figure among the Protestant clergy ranges between 2 and 3 percent."
"In a 1984 survey, a Fuller Seminary survey of 1,200 ministers found that 20 percent of theologically “conservative” pastors admitted to some sexual contact outside of marriage with a church member."
"In the spring of 2002, when the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church was receiving unprecedented attention, the Christian Science Monitor reported on the results of national surveys by Christian Ministry Resources. The conclusion: “Despite headlines focusing on the priest pedophile problem in the Roman Catholic Church, most American churches being hit with child sexual-abuse allegations are Protestant, and most of the alleged abusers are not clergy or staff, but church volunteers.”
I guess it depends on where you read.
http://www.religioustolerance.org/clergy_sex8.htm
"very few of those priests who do abuse are actually pedophiles, as the media often reports. Rather they are hebephiles -- adult priests with a homosexual or bisexual orientation, and who are also sexually attracted to post-pubertal males. Their victims are teenage males who are under the age of 18."
"The percentage of Roman Catholic priests who abuse children and youths is much greater than for other Christian and non-Christian religious leaders (gurus, imams, ministers, pastors, priests, priestesses, rabbis, etc.)."
"A:This may or may not be true. No reliable data exists."
"Philip Jenkins, is a professor of history and religious studies at Penn State University, and has written a book on the topic. 3 He estimates that 2% of priests sexually abuse youth and children."
Both our articles cite the same guy from Penn State, but give different percentages for the numbers of perpitrators in each religious group. Someone is going to have to read the book I suppose! (I couldn't get your site to come up. Did some of the link get lost in bloggerland?)
That middle part is a question and the answer. The answe got knocked down below it.
I've actually read that more teachers have been charged with child molestation than priests. There is no marriage ban on teachers.
I don't think celibacy breeds immorality.
However, I do think that priests should be allowed to marry (I understand that some do, already). I have seen good reasons for remaining celibate. If a pastor has a family, he is supposed to put them before his church. But, I have seen many pastors who put their church before their families and the families have suffered greatly.
I do see the benefits of remaining single when you are in the ministry, but I don't think it should be mandated.
-Zan
Yes, some of the link got lost, it was a little long for the comment, I think.
http://www.catholicleague.org/research/
abuse_in_social_context.htm
You'll have to cut and paste, but that should take you there.
The figure from your article came from a survey only from the Chicago diocese. My figures were for national surveys. Some diocese, such as Chicago, Boston, or Louisville had much higher abuse figures than other areas. The criteria for who was admitted to seminary and how an abuser priest was handled varied by bishop.
My article did give citations for the various studies. Your article says that there is no reliable data for clergy abuse. It is possible that since the studies in my article were from the 80's, that they weren't current enough for your article. However, most of the abuse that was in the news regarding the Catholic church took place in the 60's and 70's, so I'm not sure it's comparing apples to oranges there.
I think the article was referring to compiled data, not just Chicago, because I went back to cross-reference it. I also found much writing, and I'm gonna have to go back and see which reference led to which and so on, that there aren't necessarily more priests who abuse, but that there are more victims; that is that a priests has a more victims and molested them more times on average than other molesters, for two common reasons:
1. Victims are often reluctant to tell anyway. When you add to the equation that the person who perpetrated was in fact a priest, which gives him more authority over the lives of his congregants than the average clergy of another church, the victim is less likely to be believed. Witness to this point is the number of priests who were moved around and the cases that were buried by church authority who said the claims were 'unsubstantiated'.
2. The victims see the priests as holy and allowed to do as they wish, so that they see the fault as really theirs for feeling this way. That is not to say that this feeling only occurs in victims of Catholic molestations, but that the feeling was more prevalent in those interviewed. It was apparently a problem of seeing the man as more than a man (and I am going on the interviews, not personal experience, so it cannot be deemed absolute, it's just the gist of what they were saying). I am sure there will be disagreement with this point by some, that someone who would feel in such a way against the true doctrines of the church or whatever wasn't 'in the truth' to begin with, but you'll have to take it up with the people who wrote their abuse accounts.
The point I was making earlier is that most priests who molest do NOT molest little children. They are not pedophiles. They are actually drawn to those who have gone through puberty, or physically adults. So while it is never right to force yourself on anyone, it was not a matter of being unfathomably attracted to little children. It is more peer attraction. If they had the opportunity to chose to marry, they would have an outlet for that sexual energy.
The numbers may say more teachers molest than priests, but this isn't the same for two reasons: 1. Teachers are not allowed to influence their students in the areas of morality and ethics (except the bland humanistic ethics classes in High Schools). That is why so many parents have elected to remove their children from public schools. A priest on the other hand has the position to tell those in his congregation what is right and what is wrong. Teachers are not expected to be guiding the souls of youngsters, but priests are. 2. Again, the number of priests who molest might be fewer, but the number of victims and the length of time of the abuse are much higher on average. I have yet to read of a case of teacher abuse that went on for 20 years. Most of the cases in schools involve inappropriate comments, exposure, or rubbing up against the victim. VERY RARELY does it involve actually touching of private areas or intercourse. http://www.musc.edu/vawprevention/research/sexharass.shtml
The victims see the priests as holy and allowed to do as they wish, so that they see the fault as really theirs for feeling this way. That is not to say that this feeling only occurs in victims of Catholic molestations, but that the feeling was more prevalent in those interviewed.
No, I do agree with your point here. There is actually another denomination that has a similar problem. There is a column in Dallas called "Bible Girl" that focused on abuse in black Pentacostal churches. She writes:
" . . . a common teaching in black Pentecostalism is that a church member should never make an accusation against a man of God. Instead, he or she should pray privately that God deals with the minister's sin. The two women I interviewed, in fact, each cited this teaching, which is apparently based on a biblical statement, "Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm," that is mentioned twice in the Old Testament."
You can read the whole article here, but I warn you that it is has graphic parts, and is disturbing. The intro paragraphs are okay, and she warns you before you get to the graphic part.
http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/
unfairpark/2007/02/
this_is_what_god_told_me_to_do.php
They are not pedophiles. They are actually drawn to those who have gone through puberty, or physically adults. So while it is never right to force yourself on anyone, it was not a matter of being unfathomably attracted to little children. It is more peer attraction. If they had the opportunity to chose to marry, they would have an outlet for that sexual energy.
I still disagree with this point. I mean, I agree that most won't pedophiles, but were attracted to teenage boys. I don't think that a 30 or 40 year old man and a teenage boy is a "peer" relationship. It is the same sort of thing where a high school teacher or coach uses their authority to manipulate a student into having a relationship. Those sorts of abusers are attracted to positions of authority for that reason, and in this case, some bishops did a very lousy job of screening them out in the application process.
I don't think this would be different if they were allowed to marry. If that were the case, then they would have gotten an adult girlfriend, which has certainly happened before with priests.
Just found one more:
From Christianity Today:
http://ctlibrary.com/11718
"April 1, 2004
In what may be the largest per capita clergy abuse settlement ever, nine victims will receive $36.8 million from the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America's Northern Texas/Northern Louisiana Synod and two former officials. The civil case follows the conviction of Gerald P. Thomas, former pastor of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Marshall, Texas, for sex crimes against children. An additional $32 million out-of-court settlement was reached before the trial ended. Total awards amounted to nearly $69 million awarded to 14 victims.
Individual awards ranged from $50,000 to $9.8 million depending on medical needs and the amount of abuse suffered. The settlements involve Trinity Lutheran Seminary in Ohio, a Michigan candidacy committee that ordained Thomas, Good Shepherd Church, the Northern Texas/Northern Louisiana Synod, and Bishop Mark Herbener of the Northern Texas-Northern Louisiana Synod and his assistant Earl Eliason. According to the ELCA, the 5 million-member denomination will pay $8 million of the total settlement.
Thomas was first accused of misconduct in a West Texas church, where he served as an intern. The Marshall News Messenger writes, "Among the information the synod did not disclose was that Thomas had given tequila shots to two teenage boys and that the boys had found a homosexual pornographic video in the parsonage when Thomas served as a ministry intern."
I think you're both missing what's going on here, which is understandable given that you're outsiders of sorts.
The connection between celibacy and the abuse scandal has nothing to do with celibacy in and of itself, but with the closed, exclusive, hierarchical nature of the Catholic priesthood, as well as social and cultural practices regarding the priesthood.
In generations past, and perhaps to some degree today, the priesthood was looked upon as a dumping ground of sorts for any male child who showed homosexual or sexually deviant tendancies (personally, I don't find homosexuality to be sexually deviant, but that has nothing to do with anything. Just wanted to make that clear for my own sense of integrity).
Add to that the secrecy, the outside-the-law status, and the power of the clergy, and you've got, well, the makings of a hell of an abuse scandal.
Also, the scandal itself is not the abuse, which is horrific, but the cover-up and facilitation of further abuse by the Church itself. Pedophiles usually choose jobs that put them in proximity of potential victims, that provide them with opportunity. Coaches, teachers, scout leaders, etc., all manifest rates of pedophilia slightly higher than the general population, as do priests. But it is only the Catholic Church that aided and abetted abusers by covering up their crimes and continuing to place victims in harm's way. That's the scandal -- that's the real obscenity here -- that an organization that claims it has the fullness of Truth of Jesus Christ proactively furthered the abuse of children and young people merely to save face. For decades.
This happened because of the exclusive, secret nature of the priesthood, and the exclusive, secret and arrogant nature of Church hierarchy.
As for marriage, there are those who believe that had there been married priests in the rectories and schools, with their wives, and with their own children among the pool of potential victims, this scandal would have been ended before it began. Women are more attuned to adults who are a little "off" around children, as are men who are fathers of children. In other words, some members of the clergy would have enough at stake on a personal level that they would have acted sooner and by calling in the law.
So, celibacy, as is practiced by the Catholic Church is a factor, as is the nature of the hierarchy.
But, yes, most pedophiles are married men who abuse their own children, mostly their daughters, so it's not celibacy in and of itself, just the environment and atmosphere that particular brand of celibacy created.
Also, I'd like to add that there were female victims -- not as many as male, but they do exist. The Church has tried to sweep this under the rug, too, in a truly pathetic and evil attempt to make this a "gay" thing.
Anon writes:
I think you're both missing what's going on here, which is understandable given that you're outsiders of sorts.
I'm Catholic. Are you referring to me as an outsider because I'm not a member of the clergy?
In generations past, and perhaps to some degree today, the priesthood was looked upon as a dumping ground of sorts for any male child who showed homosexual or sexually deviant tendencies
And what evidence do you have to the reality of this?
That's the scandal -- that's the real obscenity here -- that an organization that claims it has the fullness of Truth of Jesus Christ proactively furthered the abuse of children and young people merely to save face. For decades.
This happened because of the exclusive, secret nature of the priesthood, and the exclusive, secret and arrogant nature of Church hierarchy.
I've given links as to evidence that this is not specifically a Catholic phenomenon, even the covering it up by the hierarchy. I suppose black Pentecostals don't have a hierarchy per se, but abuse was still covered by those in the church. Besides the Pentecostal and Lutheran church links that I provided, I can also point to Jehovah's Witness articles as well.
Clearly, this is not a problem which is not contained to just the Catholic church, hence celibacy is not the cause.
Also, I'd like to add that there were female victims -- not as many as male, but they do exist. The Church has tried to sweep this under the rug, too, in a truly pathetic and evil attempt to make this a "gay" thing.
I don't think that anyone has tried to deny that there were some female victims. But when 90% of the victims were teenage males, then I think it is denial to say that it wasn't "a gay thing."
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