Customer Reviews

Pedophiles and Priests: Anatomy of a Contemporary Crisis

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Professor Jenkins contributes immeasurably to the current discussion of clergy sexual abuse by doing what every social scientist should. Jenkins steadfastly refuses to add to the volume of this shrill and partisan debate by offering conjectures or personal opinions. Instead, he calmly presents the data in a detached manner, and then draws his conclusions based solely on the data.

Anyone with an interest in the current crisis would benefit from reading Professor Jenkins' sane, calm, and lucid analysis.

Philip Jenkins has written a first-rate book, not just about the "moral panic" over "pedophile priests", but about our tendency as a society to seek simplistic answers for complex social problems. Jenkins argues persuasively, on the basis of extensive evidence, that the portrayal of the Catholic Church as a haven for pedophiles is just the latest version of the anti-Catholic stereotype which dates back at least as far as the Reformation. The scapegoating of the Catholic Church is also facilitated, as Jenkins points out, by the bureaucratic tradition of the Curia: keeping centralized records of abuse allegations makes a Catholic diocese an easy target for litigation, in a way which a dispersed Protestant denomination can never be.

Highly recommended. Very clear, accessible, and thoroughly researched.

Priests and pedophilia is a subject not easily discussed without arousing deep emotional reactions. Phillip Jenkins, however, has taken an objective scholastic approach that backs each assertion with stong quotations and clear logical arguements. He shows how a national history of anti-catholicism, a sensationalistic-hungry mass media, a changing legal environnment, new definitions of 'sex-abuse', and a factional struggle for change within the Roman Church, all set the stage for what inevitably became the 'clergy-abuse crisis'. He offers much new insight and a good bibliography. I think at times however, he overestimates the power of the laity, and democracy; and underscores the 'Divine' origin and mission of the Roman Church. The book also lacked what I had hoped for by way of statistics. I would still recommend this book for anyone interested in catholic apologetics, or anyone just looking for a more scholarly diagnosis of the 'pedophile/priest crisis'.

Informative, balanced, scholarly, balanced, excellent, balanced, balanced, balanced (did I say balanced?). It puts to shame the absurd media hype cluttering newspapers and airwaves. Jenkins is realistic about the really real problem, because sexual abuse of minors is an undeniable social problem-at-large - but ridiculously and sensationalistically framed by the media these days with in a rather narrow setting as if that setting it the ONLY or the MAJOR place where sexual abuse of minors happens. Jenkins, a non-Catholic, does a service to the United States (which the media does not) to set the problem in the proper context of Western Society's near-collapse of sexual morality. Let this book be a wake-up call on this issue, and every "journalist" in America should be required - absolutely - to read it before ever again being allowed to print or utter on t-v or radio a single word on this topic. I'd like to buy ten million copies of this book and disperse them from airplanes coast to coast. Thank you, Professor Jenkins, for sorting out for us a proper understanding of what's-what .. . a positive contribution far outweighing all the negative journalism of our national press and networked t-v & radio.

I tend to try not to think about things I find disgusting, so I more or less believed the headlines regarding this subject. You know, that there is a vast "network" of predatory priests, that everyone else in the Catholic Church was involved in a vast coverup, that celibacy was the root cause, and so on. Then I happened to read that the incidence of pedophilia in Catholic priests is less than, or the same as, other groups with access to children, such as other clergy, coaches, and teachers. That being the case, it was clear to me that this was yet another subject where the press has led me by the nose to an incorrect conclusion. This book was really informative on the subject. It served as an excellent case study on how the press comes to framing a story a certain way, as well as the roles of various interest groups in making certain that a story is framed in the way that is most advantageous to them. The objectivity and impartiality of the author is really refreshing in this era of polemics. If you want to learn something, by all means read this book. If you are simply looking for someone to validate your preconceived notions, you will not like it.

If you were to rely on soley media reports, you would think that there was some unique problem in the Catholic Church in America pertaining to child molestation. The trial lawyers in America have a vital interest in you believing that. Jenkins's study, however, makes it abundantly clear that this problem exists in other faiths as well as in secular institutions -- indeed in any institution where it can be expected that adults come in regular, systematic contact with children enstrusted to their care. Although the anti-Catholics among us may be disappointed to learn that the incidence of molestation by Catholic clergy is lower than in Protestant denominations or in society as a whole, Jenkins's findings, which are thoroughly documented, make it clear that we do our children a disservice by writing this issue off as a "Catholic problem" related to the celibacy of its clergy. By doing so, we fail even to begin to understand the root causes of such conduct, which means that our children entrusted to the care of other institutions, including secular institutions, remain at risk for abuse by their adult supervisors. By ignoring Jenkins's findings, we will make few true advances in understanding what causes such conduct, who is susceptible to such conduct, and how to prevent adults with such pre-dispositions from being placed into positions of responsibility and care over our children. As for the reviews below critical of Jenkins and accusing him of being a Catholic shrill, ignore them. Jenkins's study is published by Oxford University Press, which means it was subject to a rigorous academic peer review before it was published. Moreover, the objective of a scholarly press is not to maximize sales, but to advance scholarly research on an issue -- in contrast to the "for profit" publishers who circulate the sensational books attacking the Catholic faith, marketed to the anti-Catholic bias in this nation.

This is a scholarly and erudite examination of the Pedophile Priest Scandal. Almost out of the block we are informed that the scandal is not one of pedophilia, which is an attraction to prepubescent child; rather the scandal centers around homosexual ephobophilia an attraction to post pubescent males. Further, this scandal did not involve more than 2%of all priests. If you're interested, abuse patterns indicate approx .03% of being pedophiles and 1.7% of being ephobophiles). Early on author shows how the same type scandal unfolded in Canada, so bad was it there the C of E almost withdrew from public ministry. This is informative because, in the C of E priests can marry, this would indicate an inability to marry is not the cause of the scandal, it is what Jenkins and everyone else knows, the cause of the scandal was predatory homosexual males. In these PC times you can't say that though, you can however, impugn the reputation of many good priests. Jenkins also argues that anti-Catholicism informs much of the coverage of the scandal, I suspect this is true, anti-Catholicism in America is very strong, but in all honesty such an observation begs the question, "Why didn't The Church and Her children rise to its own defense?" The simple answer is, they have no balls. Caught up in the psychological worldview they saw sin as something to be addressed medically via psychology, rather than morally through discipline. The Faith of the Crusaders became the faith of Freud. Simple Truths became obscure when viewed through the fog of psychology. It bears telling that in no way does Jenkins condone or minimize the scandal, he does however, tell the Truth. A great book about a sorrowful subject.

Philip Jenkins "Pedophile and Priests" is the classic resource for anyone interested in obtaining an even-handed review of the contemporary clerical abuse scandal involving the Catholic Church in America. Jenkins has often been only sober voice in media discussions on the so-called pedophile priest scandal, such as when he points out that the rate of sexual misconduct is no higher for Catholic priests than it is for other clergy and occupations.

Jenkins is a historian, and in many ways, his book is a historical retrospective of the causes and players in the creation of the public perception that there is a unique problem with "pedophile priests." Jenkins' book was that it was published in 1996, so that it traces the history of the scandal from the early 80s through to around 1993. Of course, we know that after 2000 - and particularly when the Boston Globe began reporting on the scandal in the Boston diocese in the early 2000s - the scandal really took off in the public mind. The surprising things about Jenkins' books are (a) how much was going on before the 2000 and (b) how the memes and tropes established in the 80s and 90s continued to play themselves out after 2000.

Jenkins develops his book around the idea that the "priest pedophile" scandal is a matter of "social construction." As he points out, it is one thing to have objective facts, another to construct those objective facts into a public perception that the objective facts hang together in a particular way that has particular meaning worthy of attention. The way that such a "social construction" is created is by "framing" the objective facts in a particular way that attracts attention, fits the presumptions of the public and invests the objective facts with meaning.

Since it is objective facts that are being framed, the question is "who did the framing"? In answer to that question, Jenkins looks at the players who were able to frame individual scandals involving Catholic priests, invariably homosexual, and boys in their mid to late teens, in order to frame the image of the "pedophile priest" as somehow being the norm of Catholic priests. The players included victim groups, lawyers, dissident Catholics, therapists and the news media.

Jenkins does a fantastic job of explaining how these players managed to frame a "pedophile priest" scandal as a matter of established fact in the public mind, notwithstanding the fact that the individual cases did not usually involve pedophilia - which is an attraction to prepubescent child - but homosexual ephobophilia - which is an attraction to post-pubescent males - and did not involve more than around 2% of all priests (approximately .03% being pedophiled and 1.7% being ephobophiles) based on a review of records of the Diocese of Chicago (and largely confirmed in subsequent studies.)

Jenkins does a great job of explaining how this scandal emerged in large part because of changing value systems, including a change in the perception of the seriousness of sexual misconduct with minors. For those reading this in 2010, the Roman Polanski case offers an interesting proof to Jenkins' argument about changing attitudes. Namely, in 1977, Polanski was sentenced by a prosecutor to no time in jail and a 90 day psychiatric assessment for sodomizing a 13 year old girl. By standards of 2010, that now seems to show incredible insensitivity on the part of the prosecutor, but as Jenkins notes, by the therapeutic standards of the `60s and `70s, the psychiatric approach was normal, and it is potentially misleading to judge the motivations behind decisions made 30 years ago by standards held by people living today. That, however, is something endemic in Catholic priest scandal cases, where the bulk of such cases involve decisions in the `90s and `00s for decisions made in the `60s and `70s.

Another sea change in American life was the fact that in the `70s and `80s, the media stopped showing religion in general and the Catholic Church in particular the deference it had traditionally shown. Thus, scandals that would not have seen the light of day in 1965 were front page news in 1995. Undoubtedly, the Catholic Church and its members have had their welfare improved by this development, albeit the constant focus of news stories on the Catholic Church exclusively makes media coverage something of a wash.

Jenkins is quite good when he points out that the Catholic Church became a particular target for lawsuits because of its centralization - thereby offering "deep pockets" to pay judgments - and its bureaucratization, which included maintaining records that lawyers could obtain in discovery for the purpose of securing new defendants and plaintiffs. So, while there has been a tendency to make the Catholic Church's problem a matter of its theology or practice, the fact is that the Catholic Church is simply a much more attractive target for lawyers for the same reason that bank robbers rob banks - because that is where the money is. Also, as a practicing plaintiff's trial attorney, I have to hand it to Jenkins for being the first person I have read to make the connection between the rise of liability insurance and the development of novel legal theories of liability. The layman probably isn't aware of the fact that law often develops in one area because lawyers are attracted to that area because the possibility of obtaining a recovery is guaranteed by an insurance policy.

Jenkins' is also quite good in his observation that Catholic internal politics played a key role in making the scandal a particularly Catholic scandal. He points out that the scandal arose at a time when the American Catholic Church was transforming itself from a "sect" into a "religion." As a sect, Catholicism had high internal cohesion and high conflict with society. After Vatican II, it appeared that American Catholicism was becoming a "religion, with low internal cohesion and low conflict with society, by essentially transforming itself into something like a mainstream Protestant denomination. However, this process of transformation fell short some time after the election of Pope John Paul II in 1978, resulting in liberal Catholics with an axe to grind against the hierarchy, and against the practice of celibacy for priests, as well as other traditional doctrines and practices, and a Catholic membership that would not circle the wagons the same way that they would have back when they belonged to a "sect." This then permitted Catholic voices - such as the liberal National Catholic Register - to engage in internal Catholic polemics that were then picked up by the mainstream media that otherwise might have been accused of anti-Catholicism but for the fact that it was parroting things said by Catholics. The conservative Catholics likewise played into the "framing" of the "pedophile priest" scandal because of their agenda in undermining what they perceived to be non-orthodox homosexual activist priests.

I heartily recommend Jenkins' book as a primary source for anyone who wants an objective, outsider's perspective on how the subject. Although it was written in 1996, the analysis seems to remain pertinent to the situation of the Catholic Church after 15 years.

Jenkins has written by far the most balanced analysis of sexual abuse by Catholic priests by placing the topic within its cultural and historical context. In so doing presents a devestating critique of the media's coverage of, and role in, constructing the "crisis" in the Church. This book is must reading for anyone trying to place the current crisis in a broader perspective based on actual data and sound balenced analysis. An eye opening book which reveals much about the current state of Catholicism and of our culture in general.

This is a non-Catholic scholar who makes the case that there is an objective anti-Catholic agenda at work behind the expolitation of the relatively few cases of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.

Pedophilia is a sociatal problem and about 3% of the members of organisations (Scout, community and other key groups in society) are pedophiles. In the Catholic church the percentage is .02% of priests.

In the current crisis there are about 200 cases in the current scandle (some going back 30 years), however the Christian Monitor reported that EVERY YEAR in the Protestant churches there are about 2000 cases of sexual scandle! Why don't we hear about this in the media?

Read this book and find out. . .

The media is losing its creditability in America. Its prejudice against the Catholic Church is at best unprofessional and at worse evil.

This book offers the balanced, thoughtful and unbiased evidence of the prejudice. You will be shocked and given new eyes with which to see the truth behind the endless waves of media trash.