The sex abuse problem in the Catholic Church is very bad, but it is not at all unique. The problem permeates through our entire culture and infects every institution. Media, Hollywood, sports, medicine, Catholic churches, protestant churches, public schools -- all of these institutions are plagued by abuse. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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| I must admit that there is a tendency among some Catholics to shy away from discussing the abuse scandals. | |
| And I think this reluctance, well, it could have two causes. | |
| Number one, it's a horrible and painful thing, so it's easier not to talk about it. | |
| And that feeling doesn't justify ignoring the situation, but of course it is an understandable feeling. | |
| But number two, I think many Catholics know that the outrage against the Church, though deserved, objectively speaking, is in many cases disingenuous. | |
| You know, they know that a lot of people simply hate the Catholic Church, and they hate Catholics, and they're eager to jump on any opportunity to criticize it. | |
| And they also know that That if they themselves, as Catholics, publicly criticize the church for the sex scandal, a lot of other people will join them in the criticism, but the criticism will quickly morph into an assault on the church in general and on Catholics in general. | |
| I've experienced that myself this week. | |
| I can't tell you how many times, as I've been talking about the scandals, I've had people say, I agree! | |
| Catholics are Satanists! | |
| And I'm like, no, that's not what I'm saying. | |
| That's not what I said at all. | |
| No, you don't agree. | |
| And so there's a lot of that. I think a lot of Catholics are like, I don't want to end up as part of that conversation. | |
| And there's also a double standard, that many of the people who are so worried about sex abuse in the Catholic Church are not worried about it anywhere else, even in their own institutions. | |
| So it seems like there are people who are super focused. | |
| They're so concerned about sex abuse at the Catholic Church, even though they're not Catholic themselves. | |
| They don't send their kids to the Catholic Church. | |
| They're so worried about that. | |
| But in the institutions where they send their kid to public school or they go to a different church, they're not focused on it there. | |
| They don't care about that. It's only in the Catholic Church. | |
| And so I think a lot of Catholics, they see that, and then they say, you know what, even though the abuse is horrible, I don't want to talk about it publicly for that reason. | |
| Now, I very much sympathize with that inclination, but I also feel that it's our obligation all the same to discuss the scandals and to publicly voice our outrage and disgust And so that's what I've tried to do this week. | |
| No matter the double standards, no matter the hypocrisies, no matter the anti-Catholic bigotries, all that exists, but still the fact remains that these terrible things have happened, are still happening, most likely, and so they must be exposed and condemned by not just people from without, but by people from within. | |
| When you get to the point where it's only people from without criticizing, then you've got a big problem. | |
| I think in life, you just need to do the right thing personally and say the right things and not worry about how other people are going to react to it or how they might use it and twist it to their own benefit. | |
| You just do the right thing and let the chips fall where they may. | |
| I think that's the only way to approach life. | |
| Still, I do feel the need to, after I, you know, I've been focused on this issue a lot this week, been talking about it, I've obviously made my feelings perfectly clear. | |
| But I do feel the need to expand this conversation beyond the Catholic Church for a moment. | |
| Because although I expected this reaction, I have still been very disturbed by much of what I'm hearing and reading from non-Catholics. | |
| Much of the email I've received from non-Catholics, especially non-Catholic Christians, I would say that easily the majority of the emails and messages from that latter group have been extraordinarily prideful and almost gloating in tone. | |
| I cannot tell you how many times I've read this week words to the effect of, I'm so happy that doesn't happen in my church. | |
| Now, most people aren't saying it exactly like that, although a few people have told me exactly that verbatim. | |
| But most people don't say it like that exactly, but that's the general message of, oh, that's a Catholic problem. | |
| I'm so glad. That's why I'm not Catholic, so I don't have that Catholic problem. | |
| I've been informed by many people that the Catholic Church's abuse problem is unique, and other churches, better churches, don't have these issues. | |
| I've been told that if somebody wants to escape the religious sex abuse problem, all they need to do is escape the Catholic Church. | |
| That's what I've been told. Oh, you know, just leave the Catholic Church, and that's the problem solved, because that doesn't happen anywhere else. | |
| Flee into the arms of other churches where these things simply don't occur. | |
| Because we've got it figured out. | |
| It doesn't happen here with us. | |
| It only happens over there with those guys. | |
| Secular people have displayed a similar attitude. | |
| Of course, the media in Hollywood is always eager to spike the football any time the Catholic Church lands in hot water. | |
| They're always eager to jump on that. | |
| They're very excited about it. | |
| And they will usually do so as insultingly and degradingly as possible. | |
| Trevor Noah, for instance, said yesterday on The Daily Show that the Catholic Church is now nothing but a quote, molesting club with opening prayer, which is obviously a slam, not just on the bishops and priests responsible, it's a slam on all Catholics. | |
| It's a saying that all Catholics are part of a molesting club. | |
| Now, I find this especially ironic coming from someone in the Hollywood media world where child rape and sex abuse are extremely and now infamously common. | |
| I might even call Noah's industry a molesting club with green screens. | |
| Can I say that? It's interesting to me that Trevor Noah has never described Hollywood and the media in those terms, has he? | |
| No, he saves that level of disgust for the institutions that he is not himself a part of. | |
| As for the other Christians who have been doing the Pharisee routine of, thank you, Lord, that I am not like them, I should tell you that your churches are not immune to this. | |
| Far from it. Sex abuse is a very serious problem in the evangelical world and across all Protestant churches. | |
| A report that was published a few years ago from three of the companies that insure most of the Protestant churches in the country revealed that they handle around 260 abuse claims every year in Protestant churches. | |
| Now, if that average holds year to year, that means the abuse problems in terms of sheer numbers is actually worse in Protestant churches than it is in the Catholic Church. | |
| That was actually the opinion of a Liberty University law professor, and I think it's the grandson of Billy Graham, who said recently that he thinks Protestant churches are worse than Catholics, at least when it comes to responding to abuse claims. | |
| So, at the very least, what I'll say is, and the last thing I want to do is get into a competition of, you're worse. | |
| No, you're worse at sex abuse. | |
| There simply is, what I'll say is, the point I'm trying to make, there simply is no evidence and no reason to think that the abuse situation is better in Protestant churches than in Catholic. | |
| There's no reason to think that. | |
| No evidence, none. | |
| I have heard from some people that this is less of a problem in Protestant churches because those churches don't have a global mechanism by which to cover up these crimes, and that's true. | |
| But that doesn't mean they don't have a mechanism. | |
| Even if the mechanism consists of just one pastor who rules over the church by himself and is accountable to no one, and so is in effect a sort of little pope unto himself in his church, well, that's a mechanism. | |
| There are many cases of that. | |
| A pastor, he's accountable to no one in his church, he abuses someone, well, okay. | |
| Then the mechanism to cover it up is pretty simple, because he's the only guy in charge. | |
| Or maybe the mechanism is a church board or whatever. | |
| The point is, abusers will find a way to exploit the circumstances, no matter the circumstances. | |
| As an abuser, there are certain advantages that you can exploit in the Catholic Church environment. | |
| There are certain advantages that you can exploit in the Protestant Church environment. | |
| It changes either way. | |
| So we know it's a big problem in media and Hollywood. | |
| It's a big problem in the churches, Catholic and Protestant. | |
| It's a big problem in the sports world. | |
| Think of Penn State. | |
| Think of women's gymnastics. | |
| It's a problem in the medical profession. | |
| There was a recent report that was published that found thousands of cases of physician sex abuse across America. | |
| The worst child molester in history was a pediatrician in Delaware. | |
| He molested hundreds of children for years before he was caught. | |
| And then what about public schools? | |
| Our school systems are crawling with sex predators. | |
| There was a study commissioned by the Department of Education which found that 1 in 10 public school students are targets of sexual misconduct by teachers. | |
| That works out to over 4 million victims. | |
| And out of that number, three million have experienced actual sexual assault. | |
| So that's another million. You've got four million. | |
| A million of that could be sexual harassment or some other form. | |
| And then three million, according to this report, is actual sexual assault by teachers against students. | |
| The epidemic in our schools statistically is 100 times worse than it is in the Catholic Church. | |
| Though it's probably gotten about 100 times less media attention. | |
| And that's just abuse by teachers against students. | |
| And then you have abuse by students against other students, which is a problem unto itself. | |
| Recently, the AP found 17,000 cases of student-on-student abuse in a four-year period. | |
| So you've got 1 in 10 students who are victims of sexual misconduct by teachers, 17,000 cases of student-on-student abuse. | |
| Just to put this in perspective, the situation in Pennsylvania, which is a horrible situation, and I've been railing against it all week, but in that case, you have, I believe it's 1,000 victims, something like 300 priests accused over five or six decades. | |
| Which is still terrible and awful and demonic and every word and you run out of adjectives to describe it because it's so terrible. | |
| But even that does not represent the kind of volume. | |
| It doesn't come anywhere near the kind of volume that you have in the public schools. | |
| So why aren't we having a national conversation about that? | |
| Why aren't we having a national conversation about the crisis in our schools? | |
| Why isn't anyone talking about it? | |
| I mean, I've talked about it many times. | |
| Nobody cares. That's the incredible thing to me about this issue. | |
| People care so much more about the Catholic Church situation. | |
| Meanwhile, most people who care about it, they don't even go to Catholic. | |
| Their kids are not threatened by priests. | |
| If you send your kid to public school, you should care about this. | |
| It is extremely common. | |
| One in ten students, I think that qualifies as extremely common. | |
| I think it does. 17,000 cases, I think that qualifies as a huge problem. | |
| If you send your kid to public school, how could you not be focused on this? | |
| How could you be more focused on the Catholic Church when you're sending your kid into this environment for six hours a day, five days a week, nine months a year, for 13 years? | |
| Do you understand the statistical probability that he will be, at a minimum, sexually harassed by a teacher? | |
| The probability is substantial. | |
| Let's put it that way. So why aren't we talking about that? | |
| And why isn't Trevor Noah describing the public school system as a, quote, molesting club with textbooks? | |
| So media, Hollywood, Catholic Church, Protestant Church, sports, medicine, public schools... | |
| I bring all this up not to minimize the problem in the Catholic Church, but to do the opposite. | |
| The point I'm trying to establish is that the problem is much bigger than the church. | |
| I wish it was just confined to the Catholic Church or to some other institution. | |
| I wish most of all I could look at Hollywood and say, oh yeah, it just happens in Hollywood. | |
| You know, because my kids are never going to be in Hollywood. | |
| I'm never going to go to Hollywood. And it's easy for me to say, oh yeah, those debauched perverts in Hollywood. | |
| And there are a lot of debauched perverts in Hollywood, but I wish I could say, oh yeah, it's all happening there. | |
| But I can't. The problem is much bigger than that. | |
| And if you're sitting off and thinking, whoa, I'm so glad I don't have to worry about it because I'm not Catholic. | |
| Well, if you're thinking that, you're a fool. | |
| If you send your kid to public school, if he plays sports, if he goes to the doctor, if he's in a youth group at church, you know how often you hear about youth pastors molesting their 14 and 15-year-old kids that are in their charge? | |
| You know how common that is? | |
| So if you send your kid into any of those environments, there is a real possibility of abuse. | |
| This is a disease that infects the culture, and every institution is vulnerable to it. | |
| Every institution. Nobody is exempt. | |
| The problem not only exists everywhere, it is really bad everywhere. | |
| These other institutions that I've mentioned, it's not like there have been a few cases there. | |
| There have been a ton of cases in all of those institutions. | |
| Until we start to see the problem in these terms, until we stop acting like this is a danger confined to places where we don't go and we don't send our children, until we face the full reality, nothing will get better. | |
| That's the point I'm trying to make. | |
| That provides no excuses whatsoever for any of these particular institutions or anyone in those institutions. | |
| Not at all. And the people who are, you know, if you're in a Protestant church, you need to be focused especially on what's going on in Protestant churches. | |
| If you're in the Catholic church, you gotta be focused especially on that. | |
| If you're in Hollywood, then you gotta be focused especially on that. | |
| People in these institutions have to be looking within themselves, in their own ranks first, and then look without. | |
| Because it's so easy. | |
| I could sit here all day railing against Hollywood, and they deserve to be railed against. | |
| And of course, we should talk about it. | |
| I'm not saying we should never discuss it. | |
| I'm not saying if you're not in Hollywood, it means you should never talk about it. | |
| But it's easy to do. | |
| It's so easy. You risk nothing. | |
| It doesn't make you at all uncomfortable because it's all about them. | |
| It's the other. It's over there. | |
| It's not me. And so, yeah, we got to do some of that because we all have to be holding each other accountable. | |
| But if we're only doing that, if we're only looking without and we're never looking within, then we are only contributing to the overall cultural problem. | |
| Because that's a big part of the reason why... | |
| These situations get so bad within these institutions because the people in the institution do not want to look within themselves, and they're always looking out there. | |
| Now, you may ask, why is this problem so prevalent? | |
| Now that we've established that it's not so easy as saying, oh, yeah, it's a Catholic problem, or, oh, it's a Protestant problem, or, oh, it's a Hollywood problem. | |
| Now that we've established that and we see how prevalent it is, it creates a whole new... | |
| You know, it creates a whole new... | |
| Mystery, a very disturbing one. | |
| Where we say, how is this so common in our culture? | |
| How is this going on everywhere? | |
| Well, we know that at root, as Christians, we know that this goes back to the fall of man. | |
| We are a fallen species. | |
| And so these sins have always existed. | |
| Ever since the fall of man. | |
| And they always will. | |
| But we can ask ourselves, have they always been this common? | |
| Has it always been the case that every institution in American culture is riddled with abuse, molestation, rape, etc.? | |
| Has that always been the case? | |
| I guess there's no way to know for sure. | |
| You can't really look back into the past and quantify these sorts of problems. | |
| Especially by the nature of the problem means people doing it are not going to exactly be keeping records of what they did. | |
| So it's hard to know exactly. | |
| But it certainly seems like it's worse now. | |
| I would like to think that anyway. | |
| I'd hate to think that it's just always been this way forever, that it's always been this bad forever, because if that's the case, then you really think, well, it'll never get better. | |
| There's no point in even trying to make it better, because apparently it can never be better. | |
| But I don't think that's the case. | |
| I do think it appears to be worse now than in the past, and I think that it is. | |
| And I think that goes back to a general moral breakdown in our culture and a kind of moral indifference, a breakdown of empathy, which has led to this moral indifference. | |
| And when you've got a breakdown in the kind of moral code, and then you have perversion, debauchery, hedonism that becomes more prevalent, and at the same time, people are becoming desensitized and indifferent And less able to see and recognize the dignity in their fellow man, and often these things happen at the same time, but as they happen and as they get worse, I think, of course you're going to see more of this. | |
| And when you read about these horrible cases in any of these institutions, but talking specifically about the Catholic Church, you read about some of these things that these priests were doing, You see not only that are these depraved perverts, but also they just have no. | |
| They just simply do not recognize the humanity of anyone other than themselves. | |
| And so they can look at children and see nothing but objects to be used for their pleasure. | |
| And I think we see that more and more in our culture where we we look at each other. | |
| Even people who aren't child molesters, I still think there is this tendency among a lot of people to see other people as just objects, not as human beings, but as objects. | |
| To be used, to be exploited, to be tossed to the side, whatever. | |
| And all of that, I think, leads us here. |