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Commencing on January 6, 2002 with a news report of a former priest who was accused of molesting boys. the Roman Catholic Church entered a major scandal that continues to harm its reputation to this day. Prior to the media scandal however, some of the priests who would be implicated, such as Paul Shanley, had been openly promoting pedophilia and other forms of sex since the 1960s and '70s. Conservative and traditionalist Catholics had long claimed in fact that a significant minority of the clergy had been practicing such behavior for decades, alleging that a "homosexual collective" within the priesthood viewed it as a "religious rite" and "rite of passage" for altar boys and young priests.

The scandal involved a series of allegations of sexual abuse reported by the media. The initial cases involved abuse of pre-pubescent children. The "overwhelming majority" of the balance of the abuse reported involved adolescent males or youths.

Some media sources have noted that when placed in perspective, the documented cases in the Catholic Church are much lower than incidents of pedophilia in the public school system. For the latter, the problem is over three times higher (up to 5% of teachers, versus estimates of 0.2% and 1.5% of Catholic priests), and only an estimated 1% of pedophile teachers have faced the loss of their license since most are merely moved to other districts. The police are rarely notified.

The incidents in the pedophile priest scandal involved Catholic priests (who are all male) and members of the various religious orders (both male and female). Many cases involved seminaries, schools and orphanages, where young people were in the care of clergy. Many of these allegations led to successful prosecutions. For the purposes of this article, these cases are referred to as the Roman Catholic sex abuse cases.

In some cases the crimes were covered up by Church authorities and the perpetrators moved to another location, sometimes repeatedly. In the worst cases these involved pedophile priests with continued access to children as a result (see, for example, the Ferns report). Criticism of the Church and its leadership followed, especially as some high-ranking Church clergy failed to disclose information about certain sex abuse cases involving law breaking to government authorities.

While the reported sexual abuse by the clergy related to incidents predominantly from the 1960s to 1980s. some cases occurred in the 1990s and sexual abuse has also happened in the distant past. It was the topic of Pope Benedict XIV's apostolic constitution Sacramentum Poenitentiae in 1741.

Twofold allegations

The allegations concerned:

1. The sexual abuse by some clergy of people with whom clergy had contact in the community; and the sexual abuse of seminarians and children² in seminaries, some religious-run houses, orphanages and schools, by both clergy and laity;

2. The policy of Catholic clergy in dealing with the abuse, namely failing to dismiss abusers and moving them from location to location. Other problems alleged were a failure to report criminal acts to the police, and efforts to pressure the victims, their families and independent witnesses into not reporting the incidents to civil authorities. Canon law (internal church law) was often given priority over secular criminal law, an action which led some Catholic Church leaders to be accused of "perverting the course of justice", itself a criminal act. (Note: for many centuries churches sought to retain exclusive legal jurisdiction over their own members in place of state law, but clergy are nowadays nowhere exempt from state law).

While not every allegation stood up to scrutiny, most did, resulting in the criminal prosecution of those who engaged in the acts. Senior church leaders, including the Archbishop of Boston, Cardinal Law (USA) and Bishop Brendan Comiskey of Ferns (Ireland) resigned over their mishandling of cases in their dioceses, and in particular their failure to report incidents to police. In the aftermath, some national hierarchies introduced new rules of childcare and in the reporting of sex abuse allegations.

Sexual Abuse

Perhaps the most serious recent allegations facing the church relate to Father Marcial Maciel, founder of the Legion of Christ, a Catholic order of priests founded in Mexico. Nine former seminarians of his order accused Maciel of molestation. One subsequently retracted his accusation, saying that it was a plot intended to discredit the Legion. Maciel has always denied the accusations.

In early December 2004, a few months before Pope John Paul II's death, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (who would replace him as Pope) reopened a Vatican investigation into longstanding allegations against Maciel. Father Maciel then declined to be elected again as general director of the Legion on 20 January 2005 at the order's annual meeting; a spokesman denied that this decision was related to the investigation.

On 19 May 2006 Pope Benedict XVI ordered 86-year-old Father Marcial Maciel to give up his ministry and retire to a life of "prayer and repentance". A Vatican statement said that he had only escaped a full trial in an ecclesiastical court because of his "advanced age frail health". The statement noted that the sanctions had been personally endorsed by the Pope. Commentators said that this was a clear departure from the timorous policy of Benedict's predecessor, John Paul II, and appeared to be a first step toward fulfilling the new pontiff's vow to sweep "filth" from the church.

Prior to the Roman Catholic sex abuse cases this "filth" was considered to be a rare individual problem on the part of an offending priest. However media reports during the scandal uncovered a number of cases of sexual abuse.

Clergymen, who had been in a position of trust, had largely unrestricted contact with people through parish links with families, seminaries and other institutions run by religious orders including, regular and reform schools, orphanages, and hospitals, and social work organisations. Although sexual abuse by priests was of primary concern to the public, media reports during the height of the scandal revealed a number of examples of laity being involved in abuse at these institutions.

The clergy were involved in every aspect of the lives of the families of their communities: from baptising the young to the weekly celebration of Mass, giving children First Communion to marrying couples and being the celebrant of their funerals.

Apart from direct family connections, many Catholic families sent their children to Catholic schools, where Catholic priests either taught as teachers or visited regularly as the local parish priest or curate. Participation in the Catholic faith involved a close association with, and proximity to, priests. While the vast majority of priests never abused any children (99.8%), the small minority who did had easy access to children.

One of the worst examples of a clergyman using his links with families to facilitate sex abuse occurred in Ireland, where one priest ² systematically raped and sexually abused hundreds of boys between 1945 and 1990. The scandal over the Fr. Brendan Smyth case, and the systematic obstruction of justice in his case by the Norbertine Order caused immense damage to the credibility of the Catholic church in Ireland, as did other cases, such as that of Fr. Jim Grennan, a parish priest, who abused children as they prepared for First Communion, and Fr. Sean Fortune, who committed suicide before his trial for the rape of children. The abuse by Grennan and others in the Diocese of Ferns in south-east Ireland led to the resignation of the local bishop, Brendan Comiskey, while similar scandals in the Archdiocese of Dublin severely damaged the reputation of its archbishop, Cardinal Connell. Although there were other social factors at play, some have argued that the ten-year drop in the percentage of Irish people attending weekly Mass (from 63% to 48%) was related to these events.

Enquiries have also established the existence of abuse in institutions, and a failure by those responsible for running and overseeing the institutions, when confronted with evidence of abuse, to act in the best interests of the victims or in accordance with the criminal law in their jurisdiction. Governmental institutions have also been heavily criticised for neglecting to adequately ensure that young people placed in those institutions by agents of the state were properly looked after.

Some of the most serious allegations of abuse were made against clergy who either worked in the institutions, or who were allowed unlimited visitation rights and access to young people. As with the clergy in parishes, many allegations have resulted in criminal convictions of the abusers.

In Canada the Mount Cashel Orphanage scandal in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador and the Duplessis Orphans in the province of Quebec were of great public concern.

Ferns Inquiry 2005

On 22 October 2005 a government-commissioned report compiled by a former Irish Supreme Court judge delivered a damning indictment of the handling of clerical sex abuse in the Irish diocese of Ferns. The report revealed over 100 cases of child sex abuse in the small diocese, involving a number of clergymen, including Monsignor Micheál Ledwidth, the former head of the National Catholic seminary, Maynooth College.

Among the facts revealed were

• the "inexplicable" failure of Bishop Donal Herlihy to exclude clearly unsuitable candidates from the priesthood;
• his failure to report incidents of proven sexual abuse to the legal authorities and his failure to acknowledge that abusers needed to be kept from children;
• the failure of his successor, Brendan Comiskey to report incidents of abuse and remove abusers from positions where they worked with children.

Among the cases revealed were

• the rape of teenage girls² on the altar of a church by one priest;
• the use of blackmail by another priest to force children to perform sex acts on him;

The report was also highly critical of the failure of the Garda Siochána (police) to properly investigate incidents reported, and in particular the disappearance of one file detailing serious incidents of clerical sex abuse. The local health authorities also failed to protect children even when aware of allegations.

There was however praise in subsequent debates and among survivors of abuse of the actions of the new Apostolic Administrator (acting bishop) for instituting wholesale reforms, including the toughest anti-abuse rules in any diocese in the Catholic Church, and also his willingness to hand over all files and all information to the inquiry. Victims' spokesman and himself one of the victims of one of the abusers, Colm O'Gorman praised the administrator and compared his actions with the inaction and incompetence of his predecessors.

Forthcoming Dublin Inquiry and Irish Parliamentary comment

Following November confirmation concerning a subsequent child sexual abuse Inquiry for the Diocese of Dublin, on November 09 2005, TD Liz O' Donnell, former Government Minister and member of the liberal Progressive Democrats governing alliance, spoke at length in the Irish Parliament concerning the necessary changes required following the Ferns report.

O' Donnell stated that it was clear to her, and to everyone, that the Ferns report would prove to be entirely typical of any such report carried out in any Irish Diocese, and that therefore the relationship between Church and state in Ireland must now change from that of deference towards complete separation .

O' Donnell characterised the Catholic Church in Ireland and as a whole as a secret, un-accountable, and anti-democratic organisation at variance with the State through its inability to uphold or adhere to civil law. She called for immediate financial auditing of all Church assets in Ireland .

Liz O' Donnell also called for termination of deference to supposed Church morality in the fields of IV treatment, stem cell research, abortion, homosexuality and Third-world birth-control programs. Ireland does not possess civil legislation for the protection of children, and the references to separation of Church from State arises in the context of providing such legislatory enaction.

Media programming containing debate upon the Roman Catholic sex abuse cases has focused particularly on the fact that Diocesan insurance policies against financial reparation claims by the victims were opened from 1987 throughout Ireland. The contradiction between this action and the complete inaction and failure at civil reporting, coupled with continuance of ministry by the very numerous offenders, has led to a point in Ireland where even the Church's senior theologian is unable to continue the general hierarchy claim of being within a "learning curve" at that time. On state broadcast, it is admitted that indeed this contradiction is as indefensible as the crime and the seeking of insurance against sex abuse settlements overshadows the validity of what O' Donnell referred to as Catholic Church "denial" and "self-preservation" .

The question of "canon law" and its quasi-legality in a modern state has been democratically raised amidst general popular shock that abusive rapist pril continuance of their abusive behaviour (as was the case in the seminary). The leading Irish theologian Father Twomey, on the same evening as the O'Donnell intervention, was unable to publicly affirm, on State broadcast, that any one of the 26 diocesan bishops of Ireland would, in 1987, have understood or recognised that child sexual abuse (statutory rape) was a civil crime. This contrasted weakly against Deputy O' Donnell's assertion as to the necessity for legal accountability of the Catholic Church in Ireland in 2005.

Flawed policies

Abusers moved from location to location

Some bishops have been heavily criticized for moving offending priests from parish to parish rather than seeking to have them stripped of their faculties. Many dioceses submitted priests accused of sex abuse for intensive psychotherapeutic treatment and assessment, with the priests only resuming pastoral duties when the bishop was advised by the treating psychologists or psychiatrists that it was safe for them to be so assigned.

In response to questions, defenders of bishops' actions suggest that in re-assigning priests for duty after treatment they were acting on the basis of the best medical advice then available. Critics have questioned whether bishops are necessarily able to form accurate judgements in serious circumstances on the nature of the recovery of a priest based on advice from professions widely considered to have shifting opinions.

Critics have also condemned bishops for acting as business managers who viewed the issue as a disciplinary and medical matter for the priest and were concerned about secresy for optimal financial management rather than the interests of the victims.

"Ancient Catholic tradition codified in the Church's canon law, has long held that certain grave sins by their nature disqualify a man from further public exercise of the priesthood. The issue is not retribution; the issue is iconography. A priest who sexually abuses children has grossly disfigured himself as a living re-presentation of the Christ who asked that the little children be brought to him. A priest who sexually abuses post-pubescent minors in a habitual way is almost certainly guilty of the sin of seduction as well as the specific sin of sodomy or fornication. Don't habitual sins of this sort also render a man incapable of manifesting that spirtual fatherhood that is the essence of Catholic priesthood? These are fundamentally theological questions, not simply questions of "Church discipline."... When a bishop has neglected his fatherly responsibility to his priests, when he has been accustomed to treating clergy sexual abuse as a disciplinary matter only, and when the pressures of the therapeutic culture begin to weigh on him, a noble virtue, compassion, can be transformed into a vice - episcopal irresponsibility. The bishop fails to understand that some acts make a man unfit for any priestly ministry. And so the bishop recycles into his parish (or to other dioceses) men who are both threats to their potential victims and irreparably disfigured icons.".(pp105-106)

An example of the policy of shifting offenders from place to place is demonstrated in the case of Fr Ramos. Typical of these examples he was reassigned to another parish after treatment. Below is a copy of the letter reassigning him after his treatment.

Below is the telephone notes of an unknown Church official in 1985 which indicates an awareness of his continuing child molestation by Church officials well after his initial psychological treatment in the late 1970s. In spite of this knowledge that he re-offended, he continued to molest for a further two years and accumulated 25 allegations of abuse in total.

Failure to report criminal acts to police

From a legal perspective, the most serious offence, after the actual sexual abuse, was the failure by senior Church leaders aware of the facts to report the crimes directly to the police. This happened in many cases in many countries, and is proving to have extremely negative consequences. The Norbertines, for example, knew not merely of Fr. Brendan Smyth's apparently pedophilic tendencies but also of allegations of sexually interfering with children from as early as 1945, yet it was only in the late 1980s and early 1990s that the police forces of the Republic of Ireland, the Garda Síochána, and of Northern Ireland, the Royal Ulster Constabulary, were able to gather sufficient information to prosecute Smyth.

In May 2001, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and later elected Pope Benedict XVI on the death of his predecessor, sent a letter to all Catholic Bishops declaring that the Church's investigations into claims of child sex abuse were subject to the pontifical secret and were not to be reported to law enforcement until investigations were completed, on pain of excommunication. The secrecy related only to the internal investigation, and the letter did not attempt to discourage victims from reporting abuse to the police.

In response to the failure to report abuse to the police, lawmakers have changed the law to make reporting of abuse to police compulsory. An example of this can be found in Massachusetts, USA. (See external link near bottom of article)

Allegations of systematic plots to conceal evidence

Reviewers of the Smyth case differ as to whether it was a deliberate plot to conceal the nature of his behaviour, or whether much of what happened involved complete incompetence by his superiors, the abbots of Kilnacrott Abbey, or perhaps a mixture of an institution presuming that what happened to its members was its own business, plus the complete incompetence of his superiors, who failed to grasp the human and legal consequences of the actions of a particularly manipulative child molester, who found ways to circumvent whatever restrictions the abbots placed on him. (Cardinal Daly, both as Bishop of Down and Connor (where some of the abuse took place) and later as Cardinal Archbishop of Armagh, is recorded as having been privately scathing at the Norbertine "incompetence".)

William McMurry, a Louisville, Kentucky lawyer, filed suit against the Vatican in June 2004 on behalf of three men alleging abuse as far back as 1928, accusing Church leaders of organising a cover-up of cases of sexual abuse of children. Legal experts predict an unsuccessful outcome to this case, given the sovereignty of the Holy See and the lack of evidence of Vatican complicity. Sovereign immunity however, was recently denied upon appeal in a separate (WW II/ Vatican Bank/Ustazhe Genocide) United States federal lawsuit .

Payments to victims

Some have even gone so far as to allege that Church members paid off victims of child abuse, either in settlement of compensation claims, or in order to prevent them reporting to the police. In the mid-1990s, Archbishop (later Cardinal) Connell of Dublin lent money to a priest who had abused altar boy Andrew Madden; this money was used to pay compensation to Madden and to prevent him from reporting the abuse to the police. Connell later claimed never to have paid money to a victim, insisting that he had simply lent money to a priest who independently, and without Connell's foreknowledge, used the money to pay off his victim.

Implications of the scandal

Seminary training

The late Pope John Paul II took a number of steps to address the problem of priestly formation. On March 25, 1992, he completed the apostolic exhortation Pastores Dabo Vobis one of the longest papal documents in history. This explored the crisis of priestly identity, the renewal of priestly life and the reform of seminaries in detail. Some have attributed the scant number of abuse allegations from the 1990s as evidence that the late Pope's reform efforts were fruitful.

Clergy themselves have suggested their seminary training offered little to prepare them for a lifetime of celibate sexuality; a report submitted to the Synod of Bishops in Rome in 1971, called The Role of the Church in the Causation, Treatment and Prevention of the Crisis in the Priesthood by Dr. Conrad Baars, a Dutch-born Catholic psychiatrist from Minnesota, and based on a study of 1500 priests, suggested that some clergy had "psychosexual" problems. It is a matter of speculation as to how much of the Catholic Church's mishandling of sex abuse cases was influenced by such problems.

In some countries in the aftermath of the crisis caused by the sex abuse allegations, the Church has begun reforming seminary training to provide candidates for the priesthood with training to deal with a life of celibacy and sexual abstention.

Homosexuality within the clergy has also come under scrutiny, as most of the Roman Catholic sex abuse cases involved post-pubescent males. (See Ephebophilia.)

Rather than reforming the seminary training itself, an official document by Rome's Congregation for Catholic Education, the Instruction Concerning the Criteria for the Discernment of Vocations with regard to Persons with Homosexual Tendencies in view of their Admission to the Seminary and to Holy Orders (2005), puts the focus on restraining access of candidates with a doubtful sexual past, or outspoken LGBT sympathies, to seminaries.

Declining standards explanation

Traditional Catholics have made the charge that the Second Vatican Council fostered a climate that encouraged priests to abuse children. The council essentially directed an opening of the doors to meet the world. This was considered an appropriate way of going forth and spreading the Good News. However traditional Catholics believe that this led to a conversion of Catholics to secularism rather than vice versa. In the January 27, 2003 edition of Time Magazine, actor and traditional Catholic Mel Gibson charged that "...Vatican II corrupted the institution of the church. Look at the main fruits: dwindling numbers and pedophilia." However it is important to note that abuse by priests was occurring long before the start of Vatican II and most of the Roman Catholic sex abuse cases did not involve pedophilia.

Supply and demand explanation

It is also true that Catholic clergy are in short supply in North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Catholic doctrines outlined below (Other Catholic Teachings, Practices) and this understaffing combine, it has been claimed, to make Catholic clergy extraordinary valuable human capital. It is alleged that the Catholic hierarchy acted to preserve this human capital and ensure that they were still available to supply priestly services, in the face of serious allegations that these priests were unfit for duty.

Others, however, disagree and believe that the Church's mishandling of the sex abuse cases merely reflected prevailing attitudes of the time towards such activity, in which the tendency was to suppress the information lest it cause scandal and a loss of trust in the institution, an approach reflected in the manner in which the media and secular organisations hid damaging information or ignored it; from the sexual promiscuity of leading politicians to domestic violence. They see the Church as having made horrendous but genuine mistakes, their leaders being out of touch with society's increasing demand for exposure and retribution.

Celibacy explanation

It has been suggested that the discipline of celibacy in the Catholic priesthood offers a means by which priests with sexual urges that are aimed towards children rather than adults can hide those tendencies, their lack of sexual feelings towards adults being unnoticeable in a completely unmarried clergy. It is believed that those with a predisposition toward child molestation and/or pedophilia would be drawn to the celibate lifestyle due to a confusion about their sexual identity or orientation. There have also been suggestions that those who are already child molesters, either already acting or on the verge of acting on their disposition, deliberately enter the Catholic clergy due to the "cover" its celibacy provides, and due to the fact that clergy have frequent access to children.

In response, it has been said that there is no indication of a higher level of child-oriented sexual activity among the unmarried Catholic clergy than that of the married clergy of other denominations and of schoolteachers. If this is the case, (i) those with a predisposition to molest children are no more likely to end up among the Catholic clergy, and (ii) already active child molesters as a group have not specially targeted the Catholic clergy for entry, though it seems likely that some child molesters have entered its ordained ministry as they have other ministries elsewhere. It has also been noted that the easiest way to access children is to have a family and pedophilia is statistically most commonly associated with families. Thus deliberately choosing a celibate profession can also be considered to make things harder for a prospective pedophile.

Molestation of pre-pubescent children was rare in the Roman Catholic sex abuse cases and opinion is very divided on whether there is any connection between the Catholic institution of celibacy and the incidence of child abuse, for a number of reasons: there are relatively few statistical studies on the issue of sexual abuse among the clergy; sexual abuse rates among the general population are almost impossible to determine, since 90-95% of instances of child molesting go unreported; and many of the parties in the discussion are trying to further their own pro- or anti-celibacy agenda, regardless of statistical or factual evidence. Therefore, no consensus can be reported here. Examples from each side of the debate are shown below.

Advocacy against mandatory celibacy

The Center for the Study of Religious Issues (CSRI), the research division of CITI Ministries (an anti-celibacy advocacy organization), published a book about quantitative studies 1999-2004 (The Bingo Report, pub. CSRI Books, 2005, ISBN 0-9770402-0-8), which argues that a connection exists between mandatory celibacy and sexual abuse. Based on her research, the author states:

"The evidence is so strong that we can predict a continuation of the crime as long as mandatory celibacy exists in the priesthood."

Chapter 1 of the book is available online. The book concludes:

"A demonstrable link exists between mandatory celibacy and clergy sexual abuse. Sexual abuse by Roman Catholic clergy is different from sexual abuse by other populations in almost every aspect of the victim/perpetrator profiles and characteristics, differences that can only be seen by segregating respective demographics and other specifics from general population abuse."

The author of The Bingo Report, Louise Haggett, has been a leading activist in the push for married priests for over a decade. In 1992, she founded Celibacy is the Issue (CITI) Ministries, whose "Rent-a-Priest" program promotes the activities of priests or laicized priests who have married without authorization. Her personal opinion against celibacy should be taken into account: to what extent do her opinions affect her conclusions, rather than derive from the evidence? The available statistical evidence needs to be studied carefully, not just the published conclusions.

Advocacy for mandatory celibacy

Prof. Philip Jenkins, Professor of History and Religious Studies at Penn State University, published the book Pedophiles and Priests: Anatomy of a Contemporary Crisis in 1996. In it, he calculated that approximates 0.2 percent of Catholic priests are pedophiles or child molesters. His 2002 article "The myth of the 'pedophile priest'" expresses his views. In contrast to Louise Haggett's statement, Professor Jenkins states:

"My research of cases over the past 20 years indicates no evidence whatever that Catholic or other celibate clergy are any more likely to be involved in misconduct or abuse than clergy of any other denomination -- or indeed, than nonclergy. However determined news media may be to see this affair as a crisis of celibacy, the charge is just unsupported."

Media hype explanation

Some —including non-Catholic academics such as Philip Jenkins—have observed that the Catholic Church is being unfairly singled out by a secular media which they say fails to highlight similar sexual scandals in other religious groups, such as the Anglican Communion, various Protestant churches, and the Jewish and Islamic communities. In particular the Catholic Church may have a lower incidence of pedophile priests than Churches that allow married clergy. Statistically pedophilia occurs within families but Catholic priests do not have families. Similarly, the term pedophile priests, widely used in the media, implies a distinctly higher rate of child molesters within the Roman Catholic priesthood when in reality the incidence is lower than most other segments of society".

In response it has been said that irrespective of disproportionate attention lavished upon Catholic priests by the media or misrepresentations that pedophilia priests were involved, the media did not conjure up the examples of law breaking priests and dangerously incompetent bishops. The public had a right to know that trust in Catholic priests can sometimes be misplaced.

Other Catholic teachings, practices

The Catholic Church clearly teaches the sexual abuse of children to be gravely sinful. In the Catechism of the Catholic Church's list of moral offences, one finds:

"...any sexual abuse perpetrated by adults on children or adolescents entrusted to their care. The offense is compounded by the scandalous harm done to the physical and moral integrity of the young, who will remain scarred by it, all their lives; and the violation of responsibility for their upbringing." (CCC 2389).

In the Bible's New Testament, Jesus tells his disciples, "Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were put around his neck and he were thrown into the sea." (see Matthew 18:6; Mark 9:42; and Luke 17:2)

Despite these teachings, some critics have charged that specific doctrines or traditional practices in Catholicism contributed to the problem. Catholic teaching affirms that so long as the officiant has been validly ordained, his personal sins have no effect on the validity of the Masses, absolutions, baptisms, and other sacraments he has administered. The doctrine of apostolic succession makes valid ordinations and institutional affiliation the chief consideration in clerical status.

Episcopal resignations

• Bernard Cardinal Law, the Archbishop of Boston, Massachusetts, United States had come under enormous public pressure to resign after Church documents suggested he had covered up sexual abuse committed by priests in his archdiocese. There is, for example, the priest John Geoghan, who was shifted from one parish to another although Cardinal Law had often been informed of his abuse; for example, in December 1984 auxiliary Bishop John M. D’Arcy wrote to Cardinal Law complaining about the reassignment of Geoghan to another Boston-area parish because of his “history of homosexual involvement with young boys.”

The Vatican announced on December 13, 2002 that Pope John Paul II had accepted Law's resignation as Archbishop and reassigned him to an administrative position in the Roman Curia and named him archpriest of the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore. Cardinal Law later presided at one of the Pope's funeral masses.

Bishop Séan P. O'Malley, the Capuchin friar who replaced Law as archbishop, was forced to sell a good deal of valuable real estate and to close a number of churches in order to pay $120,000,000 in claims against the archdiocese.

• Bishop Brendan Comiskey, Bishop of Ferns, resigned under similar pressure.
• Cardinal Hans Hermann Groër had to resign from his post as Archbishop of Vienna over allegations of sexual abuse in 1995.
• Two Bishops of Palm Beach, Florida have resigned due to child abuse allegations, Joseph Keith Symons, who was replaced by Anthony O'Connell, who also resigned. O'Connell was replaced by O'Malley, who had earlier been appointed Bishop of Fall River following an abuse scandal, and who would later replace Cardinal Law in Boston.

Bankruptcy

Citing monetary concerns arising from impending trials on sex abuse claims, the Archdiocese of Portland filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on July 6, 2004, hours before two abuse trials were set to begin, becoming the first Catholic diocese to file for bankruptcy. If granted, bankruptcy would mean pending and future lawsuits would be settled in federal bankruptcy court. The archdiocese had settled more than one hundred previous claims for a sum of over $53 million. The filing seeks to protect parish assets, school money and trust funds from abuse victims: the archdiocese's contention is that parish assets are not the archdiocese's assets. Plaintiffs in the cases against the archdiocese have argued that the Catholic church is a single entity, and that the Vatican should be liable for any damages awarded in judgement of pending sexual abuse cases.

The Diocese of Tucson likewise filed bankruptcy in September, 2004, as has the Diocese of Spokane in December of that year. The Diocese of Tucson reached an agreement with its victims, which the bankruptcy judge approved June 11, 2005, specifying terms that included allowing the diocese reorganization to continue in return for a $22.2 million settlement.

ests were authorised to continue ministry, or treated as if for alcoholism prior to re-instatement, or simply allowed ful

Abuse in literature

A number of books have been written, see Pedophilia in literature, about the abuse suffered from priests and nuns including Andrew Madden in Altar Boy: A Story of Life After Abuse, Carolyn Lehman's Strong at the Heart: How it feels to heal from sexual abuse and the bestselling Kathy's Story by Kathy O'Beirne which details physical and sexual abuse suffered in a Magdalene laundry in Ireland. However grave doubts have been expressed about the authenticity of the latter book. The Magdalen laundries caught the public's attention in the late 1990s as revelations of widespread abuse from former inmates gathered momentum and were made the subject an award-winning film called The Magdalene Sisters (2002).

Endnotes

1. George Weigel, The Courage To Be Catholic (Basic Books, 2002). ISBN 0-465-09261-6
2. Among other sources, see the Boston Globe article:
   Sally Jacobs. 'If they knew the madness in me' A search for the real Rev. Paul Shanley suggests he was part hero, part horror Boston Globe, 7-10-2002. Online at: http://www.boston.com/globe/spotlight/abuse/stories2/071002_shanley.htm
3. Among the numerous books which had been published on the subject long before the media scandal broke was the book "Rite of Sodomy" by Randy Engel, first published in 1989. A review by Anne McGinn Cillis which covers some of the contentions made by the book may be viewed at: http://www.riteofsodomy.com/reviews/cillis.mht (accessed 11 October 2006)
4. George Weigel, The Courage To Be Catholic (Basic Books, 2002). ISBN 0-465-09261-6
5. Paedophilia and child sex abuse are not always the same: a paedophile may practice sexual abstinence, and not everyone who sexually abuses a child is a paedophile. For example a homosexual male having sexual relations with a 16 year old youth is a child molester due to the comparatively high age of consent for homosexuals.
6. George Weigel, The Courage To Be Catholic (Basic Books, 2002). ISBN 0-465-09261-6
7. Philip Jenkins, Pedophiles and Priests: Anatomy of a Contemporary Crisis (Oxford University Press, 2001). ISBN 0-19-514597-6
8. Among the sources for these statistics are the following:
   Berta Delgado and Sarah Talalay, “Sex Cases Increase in Schools; Many Acts of Teacher Misconduct Not Being Reported,” Sun-Sentinel, June 4, 1995, p. 1A.
   Alan Cooperman. “Hundreds of Priests Removed Since ‘60s; Survey Shows Scope Wider Than Disclosed,” Washington Post, June 9, 2002, p. A1.
   Charol Shakeshaft and Audrey Cohan. "In loco parentis: Sexual abuse of students in schools, (What administrators should know)." Report to the U.S. Department of Education, Field Initiated Grants.
9. George Weigel, The Courage To Be Catholic (Basic Books, 2002). ISBN 0-465-09261-6
10. Philip Jenkins, Pedophiles and Priests: Anatomy of a Contemporary Crisis (Oxford University Press, 2001). ISBN 0-19-514597-6
11. George Weigel, The Courage To Be Catholic (Basic Books, 2002). ISBN 0-465-09261-6
12. George Weigel, The Courage To Be Catholic (Basic Books, 2002). ISBN 0-465-09261-6
13. George Weigel, The Courage To Be Catholic (Basic Books, 2002). ISBN 0-465-09261-6
14. Philip Jenkins, Pedophiles and Priests: Anatomy of a Contemporary Crisis (Oxford University Press, 2001). ISBN 0-19-514597-6
15. Philip Jenkins, Pedophiles and Priests: Anatomy of a Contemporary Crisis (Oxford University Press, 2001). ISBN 0-19-514597-6
16. Philip Jenkins, Pedophiles and Priests: Anatomy of a Contemporary Crisis (Oxford University Press, 2001). ISBN 0-19-514597-6

See also

• Canon Denis Forde
• Daniel Doherty
• Ivan Payne
• Vincent Mercer
• Ronald Bennett
• Brendan Smyth
• Barry Ryan
• Hans Hermann Groër, Kurt Krenn (Austria)
• Homosexuality in the Roman Catholic priesthood
• Incest (Abuse of children by relatives)
• Jehovah's Witnesses and child sex abuse (for other religions with similar concerns)
• Paul Shanley
• John Geoghan
• Marcial Maciel
• Pontifical Secret
• Sexual harassment and abuse by teachers
• Cases of child sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church

Additional reading

• Philip Jenkins, Pedophiles and Priests: Anatomy of a Contemporary Crisis (Oxford University Press, 2001). ISBN 0-19-514597-6.
• Lobdell, William, Missionary's Dark Legacy; Two remote Alaska villages are still reeling from a Catholic volunteer's sojourn three decades ago, when he allegedly molested nearly every Eskimo boy in the parishes. The accusers, now men, are scarred emotionally and struggle to cope. They are seeking justice., Los Angeles Times, Nov 19, 2005, p. A.1
• Rose, Michael S., Goodbye, Good Men : How Liberals Brought Corruption Into the Catholic Church, Regnery Publishing, Inc. (June 25, 2002). ISBN 0-89526-144-8 Reviewed here

External links

General

• Sexual Abuse in Social Context - a Catholic League report
• Stop it now A campaign to prevent Child Sexual Abuse by calling on potential abusers to seek help
• Male Survivor - Overcoming sexual victimization of boys and men
• Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP)
• Bishop Accountability
• CatholiCity - 10 Myths About Priestly Pedophilia

Ireland

• Bishop Brendan Comiskey's resignation

United States

• Cardinal Law's statement on child sex abuse in the Church
• Vatican-U.S. Mixed Commission on Charter and Norms for Protection of Children
• CNN - 22 March 2002 'Pope responds to sex abuse cases'
• National Review Board, John Jay, and Audit Reports
• Experts: Tucson diocese settlement a bankruptcy model
• Los Angeles Files Recount Decades of Priests' Abuse October 12, 2005 New York Times
• Philadelphia Grand Jury Report on Pedophile Priests archived at The Memory Hole
• Sexuality, the Modern World, and the Catholic Church
• A Chicago trial lawyer discusses Chicago priest sex abuse cases
• Change of law to make reporting sex abuse mandatory

• Roman Catholic Church sex abuse scandal
• Anti-Catholicism
• Pederasty
• Sex scandals