George Weigel skrev ganske nylig en artikkel i The National Review, som han kaller: «Priests, Abuse, and the Meltdown of a Culture – The lessons of an important new study.» Her nevner han først flere grunner til at Den katolske Kirke i stor grad ble kritisert for feil ting i media:
One: Most clerical abusers were not pedophiles, that is, men with a chronic and strong sexual attraction to pre-pubescent children. Most of those abused (51 percent) were aged eleven to fourteen and 27 percent of victims were fifteen to seventeen; 16 percent were eight to ten and 6 percent were younger than seven. …
Two: The “crisis” of clerical sexual abuse in the United States was time-specific. The incidence of abuse spiked in the late 1960s and began to recede dramatically in the mid-1980s. In 2010, seven credible cases of abuse were reported in a church that numbers over 65 million adherents.
Three: Abusers were a tiny minority of Catholic priests. Some 4 percent of Catholic priests in active ministry in the United States were accused of abuse between the 1950s and 2002. There is not a shred of evidence indicating that priests abuse young people at rates higher than do people in the rest of society. On the contrary: Most sexual abuse takes place within families. The John Jay study concludes that, in 2001, whereas five young people in 100,000 may have been abused by a priest, the average rate of abuse throughout the United States was 134 for every 100,000 young people. The sexual abuse of the young is a widespread and horrific societal problem; it is by no means uniquely, or principally, a Catholic problem, or a specifically priestly problem.
Four: The bishops’ response to the burgeoning abuse crisis between the late 1960s and the early 1980s was not singularly woodenheaded or callous. In fact, according to the John Jay study, the bishops were as clueless as the rest of society about the magnitude of the abuse problem …
Five: As for today, the John Jay study affirms that the Catholic Church may well be the safest environment for young people in American society. It is certainly a safer environment than the public schools. …
So: If the standard media analytic tropes on clergy sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in the United States have been proven false by a vigorous empirical study conducted by a neutral research institute, what, in fact, did happen? …
Til dette spørsmålet svarer han først at det er korrekt at spørsmålet hadde problemer i samfunnet generelt:
But if the Times, the Globe, and others who have been chewing this story like an old bone for almost a decade are genuinely interested in helping prevent the crime and horror of the sexual abuse of the young, a good, long, hard look will be taken at the sexual libertinism that has been the default cultural position on the American left for two generations. Catholic “progressives” who continue to insist that the disciplinary and doctrinal meltdown of the post–Vatican II years had nothing to do with the abuse crisis might also rethink their default understanding of that period. The ecclesiastical chaos of that decade and a half was certainly a factor in the abuse crisis, although that meltdown is not a one-size-fits-all explanation for the crisis and the way it was handled.
Men han har likevel en alvorlig kritikk av «John Jay rapporten», hvorfor i all verden mener de at dette ikke hadde noe med homofili å gjøre?
The John Jay study is less than illuminating on one point, and that is the relationship of all this to homosexuality. The report frankly states that “the majority of victims (81 percent) were male, in contrast to the distribution by victim gender in the United States [where] national incidence studies have consistently shown that in general girls are three times more likely to be abused than boys.” But then the report states that “the clinical data do not support the hypothesis that priests with a homosexual identity or those who committed same-sex sexual behavior with adults are significantly more likely to sexually abuse children than those with a heterosexual orientation or behavior.”
The disconnect, to the lay mind, seems obvious: Eighty-one percent of the victims of sexual abuse by priests are adolescent males, and yet this has nothing to do with homosexuality? …
Spørsmålet er vel om «pedofili» som sådan kan knyttes til homofili – Det finnes såvidt jeg vet ingen seriøs forskning som støtter dette.
Det som man kan stille spørsmålstegn ved er om overgrepsskandalen i den katolske kirke egentlig kan betegnes som en «pedofiliskandale» i den forstand at de fleste ofrene befant seg rundt puberteten (12-18). Noe som selvsagt ikke gjør skandalen noe mindre for noen av partene.
Andreas: Spørsmålet er vel om “pedofili” som sådan kan knyttes til homofili – Det finnes såvidt jeg vet ingen seriøs forskning som støtter dette.
Dette er imidlertid ikke nødvendigvis del av det spørsmålet Weigel stiller ettersom det ser ut til at rapporten støtter konklusjonen om at overgrepene ikke ble begått av «men with a chronic and strong sexual attraction to pre-pubescent children» og heller ei, såvidt jeg forstår, hovedsaklig mot barn som definitivt var under pubertetsalderen. Fra artikkelen: «Clerical ephebophilia (a sexual attraction to adolescents, often boys) was clearly a serious problem. But to label this a “pedophilia crisis” is ignorant, sloppy, or malicious.» Dette regner jeg med forsåvidt ikke er noe nytt for de fleste av oss.
Så dermed kan jeg ikke si at jeg umiddelbart forstår din kommentar om at spørsmålet vel er om pedofili kan knyttes til homofili. Det er jo nettopp ikke spørsmålet, eller ihvertfall ikke hovedspørsmålet, med mindre man ikke også vil utfordre konklusjonen om at overgrepskrisen ikke var en pedofilikrise.
Oooops…jeg ser det mangler et ord i min første setning. Det jeg mente å si var selvsagt at overgrepene ikke hovedsaklig ble begått av «men with a chronic and strong sexual attraction to pre-pubescent children».
Nå må jo også de yngste barna være inkludert i statistikken over andel gutter som ble misbrukt kontra andel jenter, men en eventuell sammenheng mellom pedofili og homofili vil uansett ikke være en nødvendig del (og langt mindre hoveddelen) av spørsmålet om der var noen sammenheng mellom homofili og overgrepene i Kirken totalt sett.
Jeg leser dette slik, Andreas, at Weigel understreker det denne svært grundige rapporten slar fast; at disse seksuelle misbrukene i Kirken i svært liten grad handler om pedofili.
Men på den annen side syns Wigel at rapporten på uforklarlig måte klarer å hevde at det heller ikke handler om homifili – selv om det i 81% av tilfellene var snakk om homofile handlinger.
Men homfili og pedofili er ikke knyttet sammen, verken av Weigel eller av denne store rapporten fra John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
Enig både med Oddvar og Kirsten
I den offentlige debatten er pedofili og overgrepsskandaler mer eller mindre synonymt. Min kommentar rettet seg til hvordan dette samfunsproblemet blir oppfattet i norsk offentlighet , og tror jeg, av de fleste katolikker.