NEW ORLEANS (LA)
The Advocate
June 12, 2019
By James Gill
When the Baptists this week trooped off to Birmingham, Alabama, for their annual convention, for instance, sexual exploitation by clergy and staff was much in their thoughts. What used to be regarded as a Catholic curse has gone ecumenical. Thus, in April, repeat child molester Jonathan Bailey, former youth pastor at First Baptist Church in New Orleans, was sentenced to 23 years.
An investigation by the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News identified Bailey as one of 400 Southern Baptist church officials — four of them in Louisiana — to have been accused of sex crimes in the last 20 years. “There seems to be a growing sense of vulnerability and a willingness to address this crisis,” the Rev. Russell Moore, the Southern Baptists’ head of public policy, has said.
It’s about time, but then the Catholics were in no hurry to come to grips with the sins of their ministry either. Even now, 34 years after the Rev. Gilbert Gauthe’s guilty plea in Lafayette first revealed how the church was protecting the pederasts in its ranks, the Vatican is not insisting that sexual predators be turned over to the police. The suspicion remains that the church’s first concern is its own.
The Catholic church has identified thousands more sexual transgressors than any other faith, but this, perhaps, is a result of universality rather than openness. Religion evidently offers a cover for many a pervert; Episcopalians have been confessing their sins in this area, too.
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