UNITED STATES
Catholic Culture
By Dr. Jeff Mirus February 05, 2013
That I believe Catholic bishops have no justification for recycling priests guilty of sexual abuse is clear from yesterday’s essay, Cardinal Mahony’s Therapeutic Excuses. But this does not mean there is nothing to be said on the other side. Let me list some of the ancillary concerns. They are not necessarily related to each other, and I do not intend to treat them in detail.
•Priests as people: I once knew a priest who was an abuser. He felt as if he were caught in a net he could not escape. It constantly weighed him down. Bishops have (or certainly ought to have) a fatherly and/or brotherly concern for their priests. The desire to “redeem” the priest must be very strong, along with the natural hope for rehabilitation.
•First-time mistakes: Without prior experience, it may be difficult not to be swayed by expert opinion or common practice the first time a bishop must deal with the problem. In reality, the recidivism of abusers should have been well-known in many Catholic dioceses by, say, 1950 (if not earlier). But so should it have been known to the experts, except the whole problem was hushed up and glossed over everywhere, before the sexual revolution. Bishops who were badly burned for their handling of sexual abuse should have had experience and documentation to rely on from their predecessors.
•Problematic evidence: Realistically, sex abuse is difficult to substantiate, and abusers are often effective dissemblers. A certain reticence in believing unsubstantiated claims is understandable; a lack of such reticence can destroy a good priest. Handling the complaint, rumor and report pipeline is not necessarily simple.
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