Catholic League president Bill Donohue said that a recent study on
sex abuse within the U.S. Catholic Church defies its own research in
concluding that homosexuality was not a significant factor in the
crisis.
“While there are many exemplary aspects to the study, the clear
failure on the part of the researchers to pinpoint the role that
homosexuality played in accounting for the abuse crisis is
unacceptable,” Donohue told CNA on May 24.
“Indeed, their own data belie their conclusion that this had nothing to do with homosexuality,” he said.
The sex abuse report began to receive criticism on May 17, the day
before it was released, in both the secular press and from Catholic
experts who have studied the issues involved closely.
The study by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York
cites the sexual permissiveness of the 1960s and poor seminary training
as the root causes of the crisis.
The report is the third commissioned
by the U.S. bishops since the break of the scandal in 2002 and was
intended to address the patterns and pathologies behind the abuse.
Despite the report showing that nearly 80 percent of victims were
post-pubescent and adolescent males, the study concludes that clinical
data “do not support the hypothesis that priests with a homosexual
identity ... are significantly more likely to sexually abuse.”
However, statistics from the recent John Jay report show that less
than 5 percent of abuse took place with prepubescent children, making
pedophilia a fraction of the core issue and
sexual activity with
adolescent males the primary occurrence.
Donohue issued his own 25-page critical analysis of the report this
week, saying that although there are praiseworthy aspects of the study,
it fails to sufficiently address the unavoidable factor of homosexuality
in the findings.
“I spent a lot of time reading and writing my response to the John
Jay study because the public, especially Catholics, deserves to read a
rejoinder,” said Donohue, who holds a doctorate in Sociology from New
York University and has developed and taught courses on victims of
abuse.
In his analysis, Donohue clarified that “it is not my position that
homosexuality causes predatory behavior,” adding that “this argument is
absurd.”
However, it “is the job of the social scientist to follow the evidence, and not be driven by ideological concerns.”
Donohue noted that a main problem in the study was that it focused on
self-described sexual identity of the abusing priests as opposed to
their actual behavior.
The John Jay report states that priests “who identified themselves as
bisexual or confused were significantly more likely to have minor
victims than priests who identified as either homosexual or
heterosexual.”
“But if these 'bisexual and confused' priests chose to abuse mostly
males – and they must have since 81 percent of the victims were male and
nearly 80 percent were postpubescent – wouldn't that mean that these
abusive priests were practicing homosexuality?” Donohue countered.
“Again, the emphasis on self-identity gets in the way of reality,” he
said. “Indeed, the attempt to skirt the obvious is not only
disingenuous, it is bad social science.”
“My main point is that social science research should be driven by
the data, not ideology,” Donohue said in comments to CNA.
“Moreover,
there can never be progress if we make the wrong diagnosis.”
Despite the disagreement incited over the particulars of the report
in recent days, the numbers ultimately show a drastic decline in sex
abuse occurrences within the Church over time.
The “peak of the crisis has passed,” the John Jay report noted.
Because the Church “responded,” abuse cases decreased and sexual abuse
of minors “continues to remain low.”