THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, May 5, 1996 TAG: 9605030749
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY JUNE ARNEY
LENGTH: Medium: 79 lines
PEDOPHILES AND PRIESTS
Anatomy of a Contemporary Crisis
PHILIP JENKINS
Oxford University Press. 171 pp. $27.50.
The story of the ``epidemic'' of sexual abuse among clergy is as much a tale of the inner workings of the news media as it is a study of society and church history.
So claims Philip Jenkins in his well-researched account, Pedophiles and Priests: Anatomy of a Contemporary Crisis. Jenkins takes a dispassionate position - void of sensationalism or apology. The author is a professor of history and religious studies at Pennsylvania State University. His other books include Intimate Enemies: Moral Panics in Contemporary Britain and Using Murder: The Social Construction of Serial Homicide.
Pedophiles and Priests is not for every reader. This is a scholarly account, plodding in places but always rich in detail. Occasionally, Jenkins gets repetitious. But for anyone who has wondered how the scandal of sexual abuse in churches got started, here is the definitive analysis. Here Jenkins lays out a crisis he views as all but inevitable.
Jenkins reacquaints us with the real-life sordid stories of priests Gilbert Gauthe and James Porter whose exploits filled the news pages and national consciousness of the 1980s and '90s.
Jenkins contends that the problem is not uniquely Catholic and not as far-reaching as described. Yet he also offers a simple explanation for why the Roman Catholic Church fared so poorly as cases of abuse became publicized.
``The Catholic Church in particular had been more concerned with protecting the reputation of the institution and the clerical profession than in safeguarding real or potential child victims. In consequence, abusive priests were placed in circumstances where they had enormous opportunities to molest, though with little chance of being caught or punished, a combination of circumstances that offered a near-perfect criminogenic environment.''
He attributes the high number of cases involving Catholic priests, in part, to the sheer size of that denomination in the United States. But he goes further, writing:
``Generations of jokes and rumors have helped create a willingness to believe the worst of a celibate clergy, so that the reporting of a few authentic cases of pedophilia quickly leads to acceptance of the most extreme charges about systematic corruption.''
Jenkins says it is tempting to believe that the sexual abuse issue ``legitimized the outpouring of a vast reserve of latent anti-Catholic sentiment among journalists,'' and came at a time of increasing sensationalism throughout the news media. Among the first to write of the problem, however, were The National Catholic Reporter and other Catholic publications.
In the 1980s, many of the attacks came from within the church itself as reformists latched on to sexual abuse by clergy in the rhetoric they used to argue for married and female priests.
The decade heralded a willingness to hear such issues in civil courts. And the church was an attractive target for litigation, Jenkins argues, because a person can sue not only the local church, but also the archdiocese and national church.
The author contends that Catholic authorities themselves contributed to the bad press.
``Insofar as they made statements about the problem, the statements were largely of a negative character,'' he writes, ``asserting weakly that the issue was not perhaps as bad as it seemed.''
It was late 1993 before the photogenic Bishop John Kinney became an effective church spokesman.
But Jenkins believes the damage was done by then. Fewer people now want to become priests, and priests are greatly constrained in their dealings with children.
Pedophiles and Priests is a thoughtful and exhaustive explanation of sexual abuse in the realm of the sacred. MEMO: June Arney is a staff writer. by CNB