Centerfield

Thanks for posting that Pat...I had actually seen it last night. Not only did she apologize, but she did it in a rather eloquent matter. By doing so, she has certainly earned my respect.

Saw it this morning, and she didn't stint on the mea culpa. Kudos to her.

Clear evidence of the desire to be an honest broker here.

This stands as a useful contrast to, say, Rick Santorum sticking to his guns about his view that Boston's liberals played a contributary role in the Catholic church's clergy's child sex abuse and its cover-up.

What exactly would it have cost Santorum to say this:

" I still believe strongly that a liberal atmosphere such as is found in Boston has a profound negative effect upon our culture. But in this case, I need to acknowledge the fact that child sex abuse by catholic clergy turns out to have occurred in many places across our nation. This shows my previous comments to be foolish and embarassing. I apologize for them, and indeed, I retract them. The blame for the clergy child sex abuse scandal lies squarely at the feet of the administration of the Catholic church. As a Catholic I give the church credit for acknowledging this, and for taking steps to overhaul its policies as a result.

Abel... I just couldn't take any more of Rove and was desparate to find something - anything - else to talk about!

Brian... I don't know that doing the right thing one time can really convince me that Ms. Ivins really desires to be an honest broker of information, but I do appreciate her effort here. As for comparing her mea culpa with Santorum, I think that's a stretch. Her claims concerned a matter of relatively straightforward fact, that can be confirmed or refuted with relative ease. Santorum's comments concerned less a factual matter than a political claim of social cause and effect, something to which there is no concrete answer. It is the sort of claim which we generally spend untold amounts of time debating and arguing about in our political discourse in this country. I disagree with him, but it's not objectively wrong the same way that Ivins' original statements about the occupation killing more civiians than Saddam was.

Good for Molly Ivins -- very, very big of her.

This stands as a useful contrast to, say, Rick Santorum sticking to his guns about his view that Boston's liberals played a contributary role in the Catholic church's clergy's child sex abuse and its cover-up.

Did he really Brian? Oh man. Truly amazing.

Pat, not conclusive evidence to sure. A positive sign, as you suggest.

I also agree with your point that Santorum's general point as he sees it is not objectively verifiable or falsifiable via concrete data in the same way as Ivin's.

But what he said, as quoted (in a column that it turns out was by Brian McGory, not Scott Lehigh, BTW) was this:

...it is no surprise that Boston, a seat of academic, political, and cultural liberalism in America, lies at the center of the storm.

But subsequent to Santorum's remarks, there were discoveries of widespread clergy child sexual abuse in other dioceses acroos the nation. If I am not mistaken, some or even many of these occurred during the same time frame as the Boston abuses. This means that the know facts fail to support the notion that Boston was at the "center of the storm" in the causal way that Santorum was clearly suggesting. Boston wasn't at any causal center, it's just the place where the first cases of widespread abused were exposed, which is very different.

So while the issue of liberal mores causing sexual depravity is still debatable in a way that death tolls are not, the particular notion that Santorum put forth really is belied by a sensible reading of the quote and of the facts, if you ask me.

Anyone want to debate the point of Ivin's column, about the consequences of repealing the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935?

Ha! Just kidding.

I remembered reading an email on another blog site from an Irish reader. I thought it as at least an interesting rebuttal to Santorum's theory that the culture of liberalism contributes to this horrid behavior. I searched again for it and paste it below: Of course I don't live in Ireland, so I dont know how true the facts espoused are (I did do some checking and (1) the Magdelan laundries appears true until recently and (2) crimes of buggery and gross indecency applied against homosexual behavior making it criminal until 1993). Here it is:

Senator Santorum proposes an interesting hypothesis regarding the sexual abuse of children by Roman Cathoic clergy based on his experience in the USA. I live in Ireland where we have had an equally serious problem, but in a society which was, until very recently, Roman Catholic in everyway the Senator could wish for. Yet the sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy was rampant here during the period when Catholic moral teaching was universally accepted by the general population, and enforced by the state through its civil and criminal law. When I moved to the Republic of Ireland in 1990 contraceptives were illegal – with the exception of condoms, these being available to married couples at the discretion of their family doctors. Girls who had babies out of wedlock were commonly incarcerated in Church-run 'Magdalen Laundries' for the rest of their lives, and their children adopted or kept in children's homes were they were easy prey for pedophile priests. Homosexuality was so thoroughly driven underground that I know people my age (now 41) that had never heard of it, and the Irish language had no word for it. 99% of schools were Catholic, 90% of the population were weekly mass goers and monthly confession was the norm for the majority. Divorce was banned by the constitution. There was no “plague of cultural liberalism”; there was no liberalism at all! It was almost a perfect Catholic State.

Yet the physical and sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy was rampant. Indeed it has been the exposure of these crimes that has revolutionized Irish society in the course of 10 years. In the past 10 years the Catholic Church’s standing in Ireland has totally collapsed. Now the state-run TV service carries adverts encouraging contraception. Homosexuality is now legal, gay couples are common and unremarkable, the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) is a separated man who lives with a woman he is not married to. This is not remarkable to anyone. Mass attendance though still high by international standards, has plummeted, and there aren’t enough seminarians in the country to fill a booth in my local 'Eddie Rocket’s' diner. Irish society has never been so open, liberal, pluralistic, and so safe for our children. Senator Rick Santorum could not be more wrong. Liberalism has been good for Ireland culturally and economically, our children are well educated, confident and much much less likely to suffer sexual abuse at the hands of Catholic priests.

I disagree with him, but it's not objectively wrong the same way that Ivins' original statements about the occupation killing more civiians than Saddam was.

Once again, Pat, you have gone out of your way to jump to Santorum's defense. This time you use Clintonian hair-splitting and relativism ("not objectively wrong").

I've only been reading and posting here for a couple of days, but I have to wonder: Do you agree with Santorum? If so, do you honestly consider yourself a centrist?

You can disregard that question, Pat, as I have read your response in the other thread.

No, I don't agree with his comments as stated. I think the particular problems in the Catholic Church were the result of the Church Bishops being way too willing to look the other way than to deal appropriately with pederast priests. Senator santorum's larger point was that a particular philosophy which became prevalent in seminaries of the Church caused the Church officials in charge to become overly worried about the "rights" of the priests and treating their personal problems than on removing evil men from the positions of authority which they had so brutally abused.

But on the larger philosophical issue of the consequences of the growing focus on individual material happiness in our society, I am agnostic. I don't think it is firmly established that our society is going to hell in a handbasket because of social liberalism, but I do think social liberalism may be responsible for some of our current ills. I think the debate over the effect of these consequences is a legitimate debate to have. I don't purport to be the most centrist person on this board, but I think being open to calm, rational debate is centrist, regardless of where you might come down at the end of the debate.

And acknowledging the difference between facts which can be objectively established and facts which are far more in the realm of opinion and political theory than objective fact is hardly splitting hairs. One can be proved objectively, and reasonable people must ultimately, when presented with the evidence, agree. But equally reasonable people can continue to disagree on the more philosophical issues when a tremendous amount of evidence is available. The precise outlines of human nature are not rigorously definable.

Mod, brilliantly well done. I can't imagine a more complete and total rebuke of Santorum's idiotic notions.

Senator santorum's larger point was that a particular philosophy which became prevalent in seminaries of the Church caused the Church officials in charge to become overly worried about the "rights" of the priests and treating their personal problems than on removing evil men from the positions of authority which they had so brutally abused.

Pat, can you document that this was indeed Rick Santorum's larger point? It may well have been, but I dunno, which is why I'm asking. I confess that to me it sounds like a more clever and sophisticated point than the kind I'm used to him making. I'm compelled to wonder whether this is actually an idea of your own that you connected to when you read Santorum's comments.

Even if these are Santorum's thoughts, I wonder how he'd account for mod's tale. And mod, it's really someone else's email, right?

Yes... i remembered it being posted when Santorum was in the news earlier. The guy has a knack for making the news.

I actually work with a guy who met a girl from the United States, moved here from Ireland a few years back and is working toward becoming a citizen. I meant to ask him his thoughts about Ireland to see how true that comment indeed was. He was out though. If I catch up with him Ill let you know if he concurs regarding the past social climate there.

Brian,

Sorry about that! I can't believe I didn't post a link to the original article by Santorum, which was what led me to start the post to begin with! I've updated my Santorum post with a link to it. I think it is relevant to the larger issue that the article was aimed directly and pretty exclusively at Catholics; it was not an address to the general public (although it is obviously available to anyone, as it is a public web site).

I'll go it one further, as off-topic as it is. I think the basic problem clearly lies with a shrinking "pool" of men willing to be priests, and the Church's insistence on celibacy and chastity for priests.

And I actually know a married Catholic priest, though they are far from common.

Mod,

I agree, that was an excellent comment. Generally, I want to agree with it. I like a pluralistic, tolerant society. But I think it begs the question of, for instance, whether rates of child molestation, rape, and other terrible offenses are in fact lower than they were back when the Irish Church was so strictly in control of society. Anybody have any stats on that?

Tully,

I've often wondered if any Catholic man ever intentionally converted to Episcopalian for the specific purpose of becoming an Anglican priest, getting married, then converting back. What do you think?

The ship has sailed, and we'll never have good data that will allow us to accurately determine the variance in the incidence of pedophilia over the course of the 20th century.

But I strongly feel that any such change is not closely related to current liberal attitudes. If anything, tolerance for pedophilia and other forms of criminal sexual deviance is lower than ever, in the sense that we're willing to tackle this topic head on.

I'm now going to genuinely go out on a limb with the following and am willing to be slapped back in places where my personal impressions turn out to be off base:Others may disagree, but my sense is that our groth in willingness to tackle such ugly issues was driven by people who align with liberals. This has at the least been very true in my personal experience. To my knowledge, the vast majority of people willing to think about pedophilia was always willing to say it was wrong, but openness about the fetid cesspool of pedophilia and especially incestual pedophilia was an issue forced out by the left. (Sometimes, it went too far, as in the questionable "recovered memory" movement)

My sense is that the longstanding aversion to facing such distasteful issues was driven by a personal conservatism about the sorts of ugly things one didn't talk about. Whether this particular conservatism is related to political conservatism, I can't say. But I am pretty sure that culturally, the force that protected the ongoing preference for sweeping such behavior under the rug was an authoritaran conservatism.

It is of course true that some very liberal people in the 70s went along with an anything goes attitude that advocated eschewing judgement upon a wide variety of sexually peculiar practices, including ones that ranged into criminal deviancy. Like pedophilia. But my sense is that this was very much a fringe movement, peopled largely by opportunistic pedophiles. And granted, the liberal fringe of unwitting ennablers in some cases. I could be wrong, but I think that it may turn out that the left's permissiveness may have in some sense unwittingly led pedophiles into the spotlight. I'm unconvinced that the fringe of maximum permissiveness actually created more pedophilia.

I also have deep deep doubts about the notion that pedophile priests were a product of homosexuality. There does seem to be a higher incidence of of homosexual pedophilia than heterosexual pedophilia . In the general public, there are PLENTY of heterosexual pedophiles. (In fact, I believe that father-daughter incest is the most common form, but I am open to correction on that, I've never seen data.) However, the opportunities for heterosexual pedophiles within the catholic church are just nowhere as vast as for homosexual pedophiles. A trusting catholic mom would at one time have looked with loving admiration upon a priest suggesting a sleepover with a 12 or 14 year old boy. But even in 1940 or 1950, that same mom would have looked askance at the request for a sleepover with a 12 or 14 year old girl.

I think the catholic church would be well-served to get rid of celibacy because I think it would correct what I see as the sampling error of the celibacy policy. The policy selects out all males with a very strong heterosexual sex drive. And it also selects out all women, who have a much much lower incidence of pedophilia. Is it then any surprise that many of the priests chosen were sexual deviants? Seriously.

Brian,

See, now this is a worthwhile debate, and you make excellent points. But I would balance your idea that liberal philosophies have forced the problem into the open and encouraged us to deal with the problem with the possibility that the liberal philosophies for many years sought "treatment" as opposed to incarceration for sex offenders. I wonder how many children were molested by repeat offenders who were caught and released with therapy, or who were let out on technicalities when the police forgot to read the offender his rights. Part of the problem in the Church was in fact that the Bishops trusted therapy to cure these priests. They shipped them off to therapists who treated them, pronounced them cured, and shipped them back.

As for the priests, in the first place most of the abuse seems to have been of adolescent boys, making it closer to pederasty than to pedophilia. Wrong all the same, but different disorders with different causes and motivations.

I don't know that there is any data to suggest that the incidence of sexual abuse by priests is any different from that of teachers, scouting leaders, etc. We would need that data to analyze your argument that priestly celibacy is dangerous.

Pat, those are all good points, and I agree. It's becoming increasingly clear that most serious criminal sexual deviants are incurable enough that letting them go is usually or almost always a bad idea.

The efficacy of treatment seems questionable enough that it should only rarely mitigate incarceration. I note that the idea of redemption manifested itself in the hope for rehabilitation, so I won't go too far in condemning the early treatment attempts. But facts so far seem to have proven that they are to a large extent misguided, and even a failure. I'm not against treatment, but I'm against treatment as a substitute for incarceration whenever necessary to protect kids from pedophiles. In essence, with pedophiles, I think that once convicted of a serious offense, the burden of proof should shift to the convicted offender as far as needing to PROVE that they are no longer a threat beyond a reasonable doubt.

Part of the problem in the Church was in fact that the Bishops trusted therapy to cure these priests. They shipped them off to therapists who treated them, pronounced them cured, and shipped them back.

To a substantial extent, this is true. But to some extent the documents I've read suggest there's been some @ss-covering going on. Many adminstrators seemed to have used this as an excuse to tolerate something that they should have taken more seriously, but chose not to because of the very fraternal nature of the priesthood. This is a fraternal brotherhood which thinks that outsiders don't understand, and that you are loyal to, and you protect your own, sometimes overlooking right and wrong.

Here's the thing, at some point high-level adminstrators should have known better, but they chose to look away far longert than they should have, and then chose to cover things up instead. And the way the treated the abused was unforgiveable in many instances.

I don't know that there is any data to suggest that the incidence of sexual abuse by priests is any different from that of teachers, scouting leaders, etc. We would need that data to analyze your argument that priestly celibacy is dangerous.

Well, those are all traditional "candy store" environments for pedophiles. Just to be clear, I'm not contending that priests offend more than those particular other pursuits.My guess is that, if data existed, the most fruitful comparison would be of pedophilia among priests as compared to religious orders that don't have a celibacy requirement.

I'm very intrigued by your point that much of the sexual abuse by priests was committed against adolescent victims. ***warning, psych major mumbo jumbo***The reason it intrigues me is that I believe that the priests themselves, once they chose the priesthood during adolescence, were required to sublimate (or pervert!) their natural sexual drives. A part of them always mourns the denial of this form of expression of their selves. The following is a psych mumbo-jumbo way of saying it, but these priests mourn the slaying of a part of themselves that occurred at exactly the time of life when the body was telling the brain how crucially important sex was. Or in laymen's terms, celibacy is very hard to do, and adolescence is the hardest time to try. And the hardest time to make a promise to NEVER do it. So it's hardly a surprise that the casualty rate is so high.

I've often wondered if any Catholic man ever intentionally converted to Episcopalian for the specific purpose of becoming an Anglican priest, getting married, then converting back. What do you think?

I worked with a former Catholic priest who converted to Episcopalian to get married, had children, and hoped to be allowed back in, but I don't think he was successful. But the Episcopalians are short of people too, so he wasn't out of a job.

The one I know that managed it was an Episcopalian priest who converted to Catholicism in his 50's after his kids were grown.