(2 of 3)
Nonetheless, the church still has not designed an effective nationwide policy to remedy its troubles. While pedophilia is considered a grievous sin, it is also seen as disobedience to the celibacy rule. The American Catholic Church does not even have a grasp of the numerical dimensions of the situation. How many pedophilia cases is the church dealing with? "I don't know," says Bishop Kinney. "We don't have the statistics yet." Each of the 188 dioceses in the U.S., he explains, is its own de facto principality, reporting directly to Rome. Thus, Kinney says, the U.S. bishops' organization cannot easily impose its will on any of them. Each diocese is also its own corporation and thus an attractive target for lawsuits. Does the church know how much money has been paid to settle claims of sexual abuse? "I don't know," repeats Kinney. "There has been no great effort to get at that figure." Estimates range from $60 million to an astronomical $500 million. Two weeks ago, a jury in Pennsylvania ruled that the Altoona-Johnstown diocese had to pay $1.57 million to a man who was sexually assaulted when he was a youngster by a local parish priest. The jury said the diocese was responsible because it deliberately ignored complaints of abuse.
The church has usually preferred to settle in secret and hush up scandal. According to a well-placed church insider, over the past quarter-century, at least five U.S. Catholic bishops were accused of sexual involvement with boys under 18. In each instance the bishop was deemed guilty by officialdom, called on the carpet but not removed from his post. Information about each case was restricted to a small circle of church officials in Rome and the U.S. Today the hierarchy can still resist suggestions to learn more about pedophilia. For example, there are no good data on pedophile recidivism. Dr. Leslie Lothstein of the Institute of Living in Hartford, Connecticut, proposed to the National Conference of Catholic Bishops three years ago that a study be conducted to learn, once and for all, what the rate is among pedophiles. The bishops declined the idea, according to Lothstein.
Furthermore, the church applies no set psychological standard for the selection of priests. Virtually every seminary uses some kind of test today to help identify the most obvious cases of potential pedophilia. (The test most often mentioned is the Minnesota Multi-Phasic Personality Inventory.) Still, says the Rev. Canice Connors, director of the St. Luke Institute in Suitland, Maryland, a treatment center for priests with psychological problems, there are dioceses today where "if you're 18 and breathing, you're in." The church may have a practical reason not to set too rigorous a standard for applicants: their ranks are thinning. In 1966 the number of preordination seminarians was 8,361; by 1992 it had plummeted to 3,651, a 56.3% drop.
"There is a major dispute about whether or not it ((sexual abuse)) is a moral question," says Connors. "As long as Rome sees it only as a moral violation of the celibate commitment," little will change. Says Dr. Gene Abel, a psychiatrist who last spring participated in a church-sponsored think tank on sexual abuse by clergy: "I was startled. They didn't talk about pedophilia. They talked about celibacy. They hadn't looked into pedophilia. They hadn't conceptualized it that way."