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Sacrilege: Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church

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Podles has the investigative skills and background and the intellectual and academic credentials to present a book that not only tells the story of the tragic Catholic clergy sex abuse nightmare, but why it happened. This book is foundational to an accurate comprehension of this complex and highly emotional issue. Having read just about every book on the topic I find Podles' book a heavyweight in the very best sense. His style is somewhat unique in that he fortifies his analytical opinions with well laid out factual cases. The book reads well but it should and will evoke strong feelings as it brings to life one of the greatest scandals the instititional Catholic Church has faced and continues to experience.

As a journalist who has been doing research on clergy sex abuse for five years, I consider "Sacrilege" to be a seminal work, the best yet of the many books on this subject. It is biblical in its scope and depth. It provides telling detail of the horrific abuses of Catholic priests, but goes beyond that to blame the bishops for condoning and covering up this worst scandal in the history of the American Catholic church. And it puts a proper focus on the children who suffered greatly from the abuses. I recommend this book as a must read for all those who want to know how a lack of accountability allowed a huge religious bureaucracy to become corrupted at the core.--Joe Rigert, Minneapolis, MN.

Leon Podles is angry, and wants us to be angry, too. He wants us to be angry at the sin of sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy. But more than that, he also wants us to be angry at the bishops and pope for not being angry at that same sin. That's what irks him about this crisis more than anything else--never have the bishops or popes expressed any anger that priests molested kids or that other bishops covered it up and transferred the predators to new hunting grounds.

Podles had done his work well. Others who have written about the sexual abuse crisis, including Jason Berry and Gerald Renner, give us great detail about particular epicenters of the crisis and their own journeys as they covered the stories, but Podles' work stands out as a masterful portrayal of the big picture, linking the stories Berry and Renner reported with stories from other times and places. He paints with broad strokes in places, but gets into some very fine detail in others to help us to grasp the magnitude of some truly horrendous cases. Podles also gives us analysis of the abusers and the victims, and of how each was treated by bishops, and what went wrong.

The bishops are clearly the focal point of his anger. He asks pointed questions:

"Why hadn't bishops ever gotten angry at abusers? Why were abusers treated so gently, when men who left the priesthood to marry were treated so harshly? Why had bishops lied to parents? Why hadn't they disciplined their clergy, when they seemed so eager to micromanage everything else in America, from what married couples did in bed to what the government did about immigration?"(3)

But he goes further, seeing the crisis as about more than the bishops and the priests they coddled: Catholic culture is implicated; specifically a narcissistic clericalism in which the laity, including police and judges and prosecutors colluded.

The author purports to have gathered his facts from public records so we assume the facts are more or less accurate. They reveal a ecclesiastical corruption of the deepest hue at all levels, from the Vatican to the parishoner. Page after page of incredulous inhumanity should, but has not, caused Catholics to rise up in horror, demanding change and punishment. Should be required reading in every parish.

Be alert! This book: "Sacrilege - Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church," by Leon J. Podles (Crossland Press, P.O. Box 26290, Baltimore, Md., 2008)contains graphic descriptions of sexual abuse. In writing this book delineating how the clerlgy sexual abuse scandal developed and grew, Podles confined himself almost entirely to publicly available documentary sources -- newspapes, magazine articles, court documents and books. He lists by name, parish and diocese some of the clergy who received notorious press coverage because they were accused of sexual abuse. In later chapters he makes reference to these men, and what they said and did, when he seeks support for his claim that reform is needed. He has a genuine concern for the victims of sexual abuse, and points out that abuse is more than the violation of external law. Abuse results in physical and psychological harm to victims. In some cases children were abused (pedophilia). However, he indicates that far and away, post pubescent teenage boys make up a much larger percentage of the abuse victims (ephebophilia.)

Podles is highly critical of the Catholic Bishops in the United States because they tolerated a climate of clericalism in which he says sexual abuse could occur. He also faults certain Bishop for transferring accused priests from assignment to assignment. In effect, these transfers gave abusive clergy the opportunity to victimize other young people. In fairness, though, he also points out that sexual abuse is not confined to the Catholic Church, or to other churches. He states that all instituions who deal with children -- Scouts, schools, Big Brothers -- have to understand the conditons that set the sage for abuse so that they can prevent it. The author points out that sexual abuse was by no means limited to the United States. Ireland, Spain, Germany, Poland and Canada are cited as some of the countries where sexual abuse of minors was also a public scandal during the closing decades of the 20th century.

To deal with sexual abuse, the American Bishops adopted a "zero tolerance" policy which states that in the Unied States, if there is a substantial allegation against a priest in the matter of sexual abuse of a minor, the priest is to be permanetly removed from active ministry. Podles advocates for the removal of the statue of limitations in criminal law (called 'prescription' in Canon Law) and suggests that Canon Law be reformed to guarantee that bishops have authority over all priests and religous who work in their diocese, and to ensure that bishops are held accountable for any failure to supervise these priests. Podles also recommends that the Pope should not be the only authority to hold bishops accountable; Other bishops should be able to act, as he said they did in the early Church, when a bishop in a neighboring diocese starts creating [or refuses to deal with] problems for the Church.

Podles extensive research provides a panaramic view of the clergy sexual abuse problem from the early centuries of the Church through the last half of the 20th century in the United States. Note, though, that the author is not without his own prejudices which show through in the way he discusses homosexuality, and his extremely narrow view of North American Bishops. In fact, a very small percentage of clergy committed sexual abuse. It is important to note that not every priest and bishop is a pedophile. I recommend this book with reservations. It is for mature readers - beware of the very graphic descriptions of sexual abuse in this text.
James W. Garvey July 2009

In his 1999 book "The Church Impotent", former federal investigator Leon Podles employed his considerable skills in analyzing the gender imbalance in Western Christianity. In "Sacrilege", he takes as his subject the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church. Podles's exhaustive research makes this 676 page tome a landmark study on the subject, but I think it suffers from the same minor weakness as his previous book. Perhaps reflecting his background as an investigator, I found more value in the solid facts he brings to light rather than the hypotheses he puts forward to explain root causes. Although his theories are at least somewhat plausible, they don't all ring quite true to me, so I believe I would be more interested in an analysis by a professional historian, psychologist or theologian. Nevertheless, that is a very minor objection to a groundbreaking expose of a horrific corruption in the heart of Christ's Church.

Because the smears and distortions perpetrated by the popular culture in connection to this issue has been so outrageous, in every discussion of the abuse scandal a loyal Catholic, or any fair minded person, almost feels obligated to provide some facts to correct popular misconceptions and put things in perspective:

First, Catholic priests as a whole are now generally smeared as child molesters while, in fact, only a small minority of priests- from 2% to 4%- in the decades of the scandal were abusers. The vast majority of our priests were and are true to their vows. In reality, the number of sex abuse victims has been even higher in Protestant churches, although the media ignores it, and will probably become even greater due to the decentralized structure and the low bar to leadership positions in so many churches. The Boy Scouts are a magnet for abusers, as is the teaching profession, whose sexual abuse problem puts the Church's in the shade. Even 1 in 10 doctors have sexual contact with patients. So, in short, this was not a uniquely Catholic problem that could be blamed on celibacy or any other specifically Catholic characteristic. This is a common problem in institutions that deal with children, and the Catholic Church's offenses were actually less than many other groups which have never been similarly stigmatized.

The second misconception is that this was a scandal of pedophilia (abuse of prepubescents) when in fact the vast majority of cases were crimes of pederasty (abuse of post-pubescent adolescents). What that means is that, instead of this being an issue of deranged men violently raping little children, this scandal mostly involved homosexuals acting on their attraction to sexually mature but underage boys. That distinction doesn't mitigate their crimes in the least but it does present us with different implications.

The third thing to consider is the general attitude of society towards these crimes during the decades of the scandal. In the beginning of this period at least, the justice system saw pederasty as a minor transgression rather than a major crime. The police sometimes caught priests in the act but merely released them into the custody of their bishops. Judges were lenient. The psychological profession counseled the bishops that abusers could be cured through therapy and the best solution would be simply to transfer them to other parishes for a change of scenery. That doesn't change the fact that Catholic priests and bishops, as moral authorities and servants of God, should have known better than secular society, but it belies the popular notion that the Church perpetrated these crimes under the nose of a morally pure society.

Now, with all that being said, what must be admitted is that this scandal was a crime of monumental proportions that should elicit rage from every Catholic. Because the media usually employed vague words and euphemisms to describe the abuse, Podles made it a point to describe_exactly_what these vermin did to these children, and if these accounts don't move you to tears of fury, nothing will. Between 10-12,000 children were reported sexually abused in the United States, but the actual numbers are probably much higher. There were actual rings of abuser priests who pimped out boys to each other. One priest probably even murdered one of his victims. There were bishops who abused children and who covered up for abusive priests under them. Bishops and priests lied under oath when the law finally got around to prosecuting the perpetrators. Some priests even had boys conduct sexual acts upon them during Mass. In at least one unspeakably evil instance, a consecrated Host was used in the commission of the abuse, which led Podles to posit that this scandal rose above the level of criminal and embraced the Satanic.

Even though only a small percentage of priests actually abused children, a much larger percentage of clergy were complicit in the crimes through passive acceptance. Podles mentions myriad cases of pastors, seminary directors and other people in positions of power knowing about these crimes and sometimes actually witnessing them, and still doing nothing. An incredible_two-thirds_of U.S. bishops transferred known abusers to different parishes and dioceses. Oftentimes, the criminals were not only transferred, but knowingly put into positions of power over boys, such as Boy Scout leader, youth group minister or choir director. With the exception of humble Father Fitzgerald, who agitated for a hard line on predator priests as far back as the 1950s, there wasn't a single figure in the Church who had enough courage or basic humanity to do anything about it. The various Popes, especially John Paul II, did nothing. Most of the bishops were more concerned about the careers and reputations of the abusers, and transferred them all around the country, like a plague virus. Priests looked the other way. Podles even relates how the laity, in some cases, became angry at the victim for speaking out and "ruining a good man's life". No one really expressed any true remorse or anger, when the appropriate response would have been for these bishops and priests to be hung by their sinning members from the steeples of their own churches.

Since I was really only aware that an undefined "abuse" took place, this book was a real eye-opener for me, in terms of what actually happened and the extent of the corruption. The real questions now are why it happened and what is to be done. Pope Benedict XVI was elected partly because of his dedication to root out "filth" in the priesthood. Under his papacy, the Vatican has barred men with homosexual tendencies from ordination and instituted accountability safeguards and diocesan transparency. It is debatable whether that is enough.

As to why it happened, Podles explains the existence of this pederast cabal by indicting a vast array of culprits, some more plausible than others, including "Irish alcoholism and clericalism", the 20th century elevation of psychology over theology, the "ethos of pre-Vatican II Catholicism", post Vatican II dissent and sexual liberation, the repression of anger, the feminization of Western Christianity, and the theological errors of nominalism and legalism, among others.

Podles- in an unusual position for an orthodox Catholic- attributes much of the blame to pre-Vatican II Catholicism. He claims that this kind of crime has plagued the Church for hundreds of years. He says that the error of nominalism (the idea that an action is wrong because God said so, not because it's inherently bad) has tainted the Church for many centuries and infected the Catholic conscience with legalism. He blames sacramental Confession for inculcating a guilt-free forgiveness without regard to the harm to others our sins cause. I find those claims bizarre, and have a hard time believing that Podles put them forth for any reason but provocation, or to demonstrate his wide reading.

To claim that morally exacting pre-Vatican II Catholicism (especially when it came to sexual matters) could possibly have had anything to do with inculcating a mentality of perversion is simply ludicrous. Even in the morally ambiguous post-Vatican II Church, there could have been no possible doubt among the faithful that having sex with a child was a horrible sin that merited being thrown into the sea with a millstone around one's neck.

His only evidence for generational clerical abuse is an Italian scandal from the 1600s. He ignores the fact that every Catholic is catechized that true repentance, and thus forgiveness, requires restitution towards the person harmed. And the idea that a person who does a right action based on God's Word is morally crippled in comparison to a person who philosophically reasons out his ethics is a concept that is strange, to say the least. Podles goes too far with his speculations. His theological fine points may sound insightful on the page, but when Catholic life is studied as it is lived in reality, his arguments seem like nothing more than sophistry. These crimes happened because the teachings of the Church were ignored, not obeyed.

This disaster was caused by a combination of factors: first, the institutional solidarity that is present in any large organization thwarted justice. Second, the consensus of the psychological authorities was in favor of rehabilitation, not exposure. Third, as in any hierarchical group, managers (bishops) were chosen who were diplomatic and didn't rock the boat. Fourth, Podles' well-documented feminization of the Church produced weak, effeminate prelates and priests who were scared to death of confrontation. Fifth, the zeitgeist of the mid 20th century favored rebellion, and that obviously affected the men who came to lead the American Church. Their toleration of theological dissent extended to moral disobedience as well. Sixth, ordination standards became subject to the tolerance of the age and allowed men with obvious emotional problems or homosexual tendencies into the priesthood. And seventh, once a homosexual got into a position of power in a parish or seminary, he only attracted more homosexuals into the priesthood, where they promoted each other's careers and covered up for each other's crimes.

From top to bottom, the church failed the victims and deserves to be mercilessly castigated and punished. This book serves that purpose, but Podles goes too far in my opinion and seems to attack the spiritual Church, its Magisterium and aspects of its Gospel, even though he says he is a loyal Catholic. Nevertheless, it's a valuable work I highly recommend, with the exception of the author's theorizing.

This is a tremendous and tough read. Leon Podles book is a challenging book to read because he has courageously broke through many psychological barriers. He not only describes the crimes but points out the flaws in human behavior that perpetuated them. In the end he gave constructive information. I have purchased five copies for friends and relatives. Interestingly, I found most could not bring themselves to read it! Why?

While I do not agree with some of Mr. Podles' strong convictions (e.g., that homosexuality is a disorder), I must give his authorship five stars for this book's extraordinary merits, both as a work of rigorous research and analysis, and as a courageous act of speaking truth to power. Mr. Podle's searching and thorough examination of complex contributing causes to the sexual abuse epidemic is brilliantly illuminating. He holds all guilty parties accountable -- clergy, laity, and a range of non-Christian cultural influences and ideologies -- for this colossal moral catastrophe. He also demystifies the institution of the Catholic church in ways that answered my life-long puzzling questions (e.g., why is there so much emphasis on obedience to arcane rules and authority figures, rather than on personally grappling with spiritual and moral development, and trying to understand and follow the teachings of Jesus Christ?). What I found most helpful of all was Mr. Podle's comments on anger (echoing Thomas Aquinas) -- that to truly reject evil, our emotional response to it should include passionate and forceful anger, and that the lack of this angry response allows evil to prevail. The book left me thinking about the separation of wheat from the chaff among Catholics, who should all be fighting, with whole hearts and souls for redemption from this diabolical and collectively supported evil. There should be full public apology and restitution to all the victims, regardless of the cost. Will that happen? Not likely, yet I hope so. I hope those heroes who have already stood their ground against the evil of sexual predation -- Mr. Podles, Fr. Gerald Fitzgerald, Fr. Thomas Doyle and many others -- are joined by increasing numbers, a critical mass, that can push forward with speaking truth to power until the whole truth can set us all free.

To date, this is the most comprehensive, graphic and brutally honest book on the subject of clerical sexual abuse within the Catholic Church. Leon Podles has done his homework, and although his examples are revolting to read, he has omitted descriptions of the worst cases.

Podles gets inside the network that allows abuse to flourish and then protects the abusers.

Pedophilia is not exclusive to the Catholic Church. People in other religious denominations, school districts, health care organizations, etc., have victimized minors. Most organizations, secular and religious, are keen to weed out sexual predators. In a practical sense, no entity is fiscally strong enough to withstand the continual loss of billions of dollars in lawsuits. But from a moral standpoint, few associations would want to continue any kind of relationship with such scum.

The Catholic Church has handled this a little differently. In case after case, the abuse victim, and often his or her family, approached the pastor or bishop in good faith, assuming that the abuser would be properly dealt with and removed from ministry. Instead, the victims were accused of lying, warned to remain silent, threatened and discredited. The higher authorities were in fact notified of the accusations, which then resulted in shuttling the abusive priests from parish to parish (or promoted to a higher, "safer" position), in order to stay one step ahead of accountability.

Amazingly, this strategy worked for years. Civil authorities, such as police officers, were often useless: they were advised by their superiors to leave the complaints alone, and that the Church would deal with this from within. The network in place successfully handled accusations in a way that preserved the reputation of the abuser, the diocese, and the church at large. The acts of abuse and the subsequent alienation of the victims are heartbreaking to consider.

The abusers' biggest allies, next to the bishops, were the parishioners who refused to believe that Father X could possibly ever have an impure thought involving a child, much less act on it. In fact, contrary to the wholesome Bing Crosby stereotype so eagerly embraced, many of these priests were hosting sleepovers at the rectory, swimming in the nude with pre-teens, enjoying being "serviced" while at the altar,and participating in groups like NAMBLA, the North American Man-Boy Love Association ("There's no greater joy/than a tight little boy"). It's nauseating. But it's also well-documented.

Some members of the clergy did try to advocate for the victims. There were priests who tried to bring their colleagues to justice, but for many of these men, speaking out was career suicide.

Why did church authorities insist on secrecy for so long? (I personally do not discount the possibility of demonic influence.) It was obvious that eventually the lid would be blown off and that the damage would be seismic, as it has been. Dioceses have gone bankrupt, which of course has bled money away from social service programs; many churches now insist that adults who have any contact with children receive training in how to recognize abuse. (I attended these VIRTUS sessions when I was a Cub Scout den mother/Sunday school teacher. The point of the training seemed to be part of a "pass the buck" agenda: "Here's the information, now if YOU miss the signs of abuse YOU are responsible.") Who knows how many families still suffer the after-effects of these crimes?

And yet there are devout Catholics who to this day insist that none of the accusers were telling the truth...despite overwhelming evidence available to the public. I'm in the Chicago Archdiocese, which maintains a list of priests against whom charges have been proven, and it is chilling to read. One of my former colleagues, the late Father Victor Stewart, abused a string of boys (some of them siblings, and some as young as eight) for years. (He also served as pastor of St. Ailbe's Parish, at which THREE abusive priests served: Stewart, Daniel McCormack, and John Calicott. St. Ailbe's was apparently a happenin' place for men with a taste for little kids.) At no time did I ever suspect that Stewart was capable of such evil; I even met one of his foster sons--who later came forward as a victim.

It sickens me to recall attending Stewart's Masses, and receiving the Host from hands that had only recently been fondling children. But that experience, too, is a legacy from our bishops.

The Church will recover from this; aspiring seminarians are probably under more scrutiny now than ever. Kids don't have to endure the advances of adults, or fear coming forward. Parents, like me, don't have to discourage our sons from serving Mass or exploring a possible vocation.

Podles's book is part of that recovery. We're must confront Evil in order to prevail against it. Podles has provided one of the weapons in that fight.

Podles is a must read for all Catholics, especially those with children. He lays out a long history of child sexual abuse with careful footnoting. Opinions and conclusions are clearly discernible from fact and data.