Philip Jenkins writes at RealClearReligion about “the church boom that never happened.” Taking us back twenty years, to 1992 (the first time charges against a Catholic priest received heavy national media attention), he reflects on the strangeness of everything that has unfolded since, and attempts to chart out what was lost:
If the abuse crisis had never happened, American cities would probably be in the middle of a church building boom much like that of a century ago, with all that implied for construction, investment, and social capital. Scholar Anthea Butler observes that the Catholic meltdown has neatly coincided with the economic collapse of many big city Pentecostal churches, which had suffered from unwise investments or outright fraud, aggravated by the 2007-2008 economic crash. Combining the two crises has left America’s already troubled urban heartlands far weaker than they might otherwise have been.
Politically too, the crisis has eviscerated what had long been one of the America’s most powerful institutions. Now, the Catholic Church of the 1980s was nothing like as potent a force as it had been in the age of Cardinal Spellman, when it could count on the solid electoral support of most of its faithful, and it already faced major revolts over issues of gender and sexuality. During the crisis years, though, the bishops have constantly found themselves on the defensive whenever they venture into politics.
Of course, this falls into the category of historical counterfactual, and because it’s history (and not an abstract logic game) there’s no way to verify whether his prediction *would have* been correct or fantastical had his conditionals been met. His optimism about an inner-city church-building boom does seem almost far-fetched, but perhaps incredulity towards that simply underscores his point about how much the American Catholic imagination has been circumscribed since the early 1990s.
Jenkins is certainly right to remind us that the abuse crisis is not a minor bump on the road. It deeply wounded the Church, both publicly and internally, and shifted the foundations of our engagement with the culture in ways still not fully understood. It imposed, as Fr. Neuhaus termed it, a “long Lent.” Even if history hadn’t played out quite as Jenkins predicts, it’s worth pondering not only what the crisis cost in terms of holiness, reputation, or dollars, but also (and this is impossible to quantify) in terms of how much potential good was suffocated and refused.
July 26th, 2012 | 12:05 pm
I just don’t have time to look up the source, but I recall reading somewhere in the last year that both in sheer number and in per capita terms the sexual abuse cases in the Catholic Church doesn’t even register against the far greater number of identical types of abuse in our public schools. (Since I’m not going to look it up right now, let’s just accept that as true for the sake of argument.)
But how could this be? No one has heard about any kind of sexual abuse scandal in our public schools. Sure, everyone knows there are sickos out there, but nothing systemic like we saw in the Catholic Church, right?
And yet…if what I read is true, then despite the evil that infiltrated the church, it would seem to stand as a haven of safety compared to what children are subject to in our public schools.
Obviously my point is not to cut an ounce of slack to anyone guilty of these horrendous crimes, or their coverup, in the church. For whatever reason this scandal came to light, it’s a good thing that it did.
But man is fallen and will continue to commit these evil acts in and outside of the church, and most likely in far greater numbers outside the church. When we pretend the Catholic Church is somehow unique or even a prime source of these crimes, we participate in a similar sort of coverup about what is happening in our public schools and elsewhere as did those Bishops who moved these pederast priests from post to post. The church becomes the scapegoat for the evil we do.
Again, let’s assume for the sake of argument that the information I’m recalling is accurate. If a graph showed the frequency of these abuses in our public schools vs. our government foster care system vs. the Catholic Church and so on, and the church came out as the safest place for children, what should we conclude? How does that impact the argument being made by Philip Jenkins (a man who has written a book I liked a great deal)?
July 26th, 2012 | 12:52 pm
The real cause of the absence of new inner city churches has an explanation that is more economic and cultural. (1) The rise in urban crime during the 70s and 80s caused a mass exodus of anyone whose economic status lay above lower middle class — in other words, precisely the kinds of people who have the money to fund church building. Hence, the “Our Lady of the Suburbs” boom, with both the positives and negatives that this entailed. (2) The reining in of crime rates, and the subsequent gentrification of the 90s and 00s, brought in the very high class — who tend to be areligious, if not anti-religious, are for that reason going to direct their funds to charities that are secular, rather than religious.
I also think part of the problem is the media’s belief that the only positive things worth observing are those that occur in urbanized, cosmopolitan states, especially up North and in California, while the only negative things worth observing are those that occur in rural, backwater states, especially down in the South. I have it on good authority that southern Catholics, for example, are building and filling an awful lot of schools and churches, but that growth doesn’t fit well into the media narrative.
July 26th, 2012 | 6:34 pm
The widespread rejection of Humanae Vitae as soon as it was published in 1968 was a red flag that all was not well in the Catholic Church well before the abuse scandals became public.
July 26th, 2012 | 7:38 pm
The financial calculation to determine what possibilities were shred with the priest-abuse cover-up crisis (as Mr. Douglas points out-the numbers involved were not the problem-quite obviously the intentional cover-up was and yet our language for it provides outsized deference to the bishops who are the cause of the crisis, not the priests) is called “opportunity cost.”
In this instance the cover-up crisis can be thought of as “opportunity lost.”
July 27th, 2012 | 12:53 am
The “Long” in Long Lent will be about 500 years. The orgaznizational corruption of the Church (not to be confused with sexually abusive priests) will be almost lethal to the Church institution as we know it.
July 27th, 2012 | 11:25 am
I am in the business of church restoration, the
Catholic crisis has been devastating to the health and optimism of catholic churches, in addition it has demoralized many priests who used to be very respected members of the community. There is a significant “Catholic Bashing” aspect to the whole thing.
Don’t forget that the fastest growing religious affiliation in the USA is “No Religion” a possible outgrowth of the Catholic crisis, This is a cultural shift that is growing rapidly and threatens organized christianity. We are slowly becoming Europe
July 28th, 2012 | 10:26 am
The situation with a decade of covering up child sexual abuse by the Penn State football program does not seem to carry over into a stigma against other universities. Yet surely this cannot be a unique circumstance.
One can find cases of sexual abuse of minors by public school teachers in every county of the US. But it is not perceived as an institutional problem of the schools. It is instead seen.as a lot of separate personal criminal conduct, even though there is a lot of it, and even though school administrators failed to detect it or prevent it. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the public is willing to forgive managers who were merely incompetent and unobservant (as in most schools) but is much more angry about managers (including overseers, literally episkopos = bishops) who deliberately took actions to protect the abusers. That is why Penn State is going down, and that is why the Catholuc Church is hurt so much by these cases.
The question that arises for many is, if a priest confessed such misconduct to his superiors, why did not the superior prescribe.penance that included public repentance and confession to those harmed, including their parents, and confession to the judicial system? How could any penance be complete without seeking to restore the dignity of the victims and assuring them that it was the abuser who violated standards of morality, not them? Child sexual abuse inevitably involves pressure on the child to not reveal the crime, and until that pressure is lifted by the confession to public authorities by the abuser, the original offense continues, day by day, and has never been repented of. The apparent lack of appreciation of these facts is what has implicated the Catholic Church in the abuse by individuals.
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