Catholic League: Shifting blame on sexual abuse
The conservative, contentious Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights on Monday bought a full-page ad in the New York Times to attack “those who are distorting the truth about priestly sexual abuse.”
The lengthy letter from League president Bill Donohue argued, talking about priests: “There is no other group in the U.S. which is subjected to such abuse.”
“What accounts for the relentless attacks on the Church? Lets face it. If its teachings were pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage and pro-women clergy, the dogs would have been called off years ago,” Donohue wrote.
The letter contrasts with recent expressions of repentance heard in the Seattle Archdiocese. A recent commentary at Seattle’s Jesuit-run St. Joseph Church talked of “a communal responsibility, a responsibility too often avoided in our culture and in our church.”
The commentary followed a recent $166 million settlement between Northwest Jesuits and plaintiffs, mainly Native Americans, who claimed abuse at schools in Washington and Alaska. It spoke of “repentant listening that is needed in the church.”
“Where would we all be, for instance, had not many voices, including those of victims and of people in the pews, spoken up and told the awful truth about clergy sexual abuse and the way the Church handled it, when speaking up was regarded by many as an act of disloyalty,” Fr. Michael Ryan, pastor of St. James Cathedral, said in a recent homily.
Donohue, by contrast, charged that “some are exploiting this issue for ideological and financial profit.”
He also took issue with allegations of widespread child rape from victims and their advocates.
“Lets get it straight — they weren’t children and they weren’t raped,” Donohue alleged. “We know from the John Jay study that most of the victims have been adolescents, and that the most common abuse has been inappropriate touching (inexcusable though this is, it is not rape).
“The Boston Globe correctly said of the John Jay report that ‘more than three-quarters of the victims were post pubescent, meaning the abuse did not meet the clinical definition of pedophilia.’
“In other words, the issue is homosexuality, not pedophilia.”
He was referencing a 2004 study by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, which was paid for by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.”
Using the study, Donohue argued that claims being litigated are “almost all old cases,” and that “most of the abuse occurred during the heyday of the sexual revolution, from the mid-1960′s to the mid-1980′s.”
Donohue paid to have his views published in a newspaper that has been critical of and frequently at odds with the church.
The New York Times has lately devoted extensive coverage to a scathing grand jury report, which said that the Archdiocese of Philadelphia took no action against more than three dozen priests accused of improper behavior.
Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York recently described an essay by NYT columnist Maureen Dowd as “intemperate and scurrilous” and said of Dowd that she “digs deep into the nativist handbook to use every anti-Catholic caricature possible.”
But Donohue on Monday took aim at other critics, namely The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP). He called it “a professional victims’ group, dogmatic in their convictions, their hatred of the Catholic Church is palpable.”
The Catholic League is self-described as “the nation’s largest Catholic civil rights organization.”
Donohue has frequently been on the front lines attacking what he describes as a “war on Christmas” that seeks to remove religious symbolism from the holiday.”
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