Pedophiles and Priests: Anatomy of a Contemporary Crisis

by Philip Jenkins

This volume takes a close, dispassionate look at the entire history of the issue of sexual abuse among the clergy, and especially among the Roman Catholic clergy. From the first rumblings to today's headlines, Philip Jenkins has written a fascinating, exhaustive, and, above all, even-handed account that not only puts this particular crisis in perspective, but offers an eye-opening look at the way in which an issue takes hold of the popular imagination. Jenkins reassures us about our local clergy, but also delivers a disturbing message about how vulnerable we are to the news media. Meticulously documented and dispassionately argued, this volume marks a watershed in the discussion of an issue of enormous current interest, one that will not disappear from the headlines any time soon.

Genres: Christianity, Religion

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

John Philip Jenkins was born in Wales in 1952. He was educated at Clare College, in the University of Cambridge, where he took a prestigious “Double First” degree—that is, Double First Class Honors. In 1978, he obtained his doctorate in history, also from Cambridge. Since 1980, he has taught at Penn State University, and currently holds the rank of Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of the Humanities. He is also a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Baylor University's Institute for Studies of Religion.

Though his original training was in early modern British history, he has since moved to studying a wide range of contemporary topics and issues, especially in the realm of religion.

Jenkins is a well-known commentator on religion, past and present. He has published 24 books, including The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South and God's Continent: Christianity, Islam and Europe's Religious Crisis (Oxford University Press). His latest books, published by HarperOne, are The Lost History of Christianity and Jesus Wars (2010).

His book The Next Christendom in particular won a number of honors. USA Today named it one of the top religion books of 2002; and Christianity Today described The Next Christendom as a “contemporary classic.” An essay based on this book appeared as a cover story in the Atlantic Monthly in October 2002, and this article was much reprinted in North America and around the world, appearing in German, Swiss, and Italian magazines.

His other books have also been consistently well received. Writing in Foreign Affairs in 2003, Sir Lawrence Freedman said Jenkins's Images of Terror was “a brilliant, uncomfortable book, its impact heightened by clear, restrained writing and a stunning range of examples.”

Jenkins has spoken frequently on these diverse themes. Since 2002, he has delivered approximately eighty public lectures just on the theme of global Christianity, and has given numerous presentations on other topics. He has published articles and op-ed pieces in many media outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, New Republic, Foreign Policy, First Things, and Christian Century. In the European media, his work has appeared in the Guardian, Rheinischer Merkur, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Welt am Sonntag, and the Kommersant (Moscow). He is often quoted in news stories on religious issues, including global Christianity, as well as on the subject of conflicts within the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion, and controversies concerning cults and new religious movements. The Economist has called him “one of America's best scholars of religion.”

Over the last decade, Jenkins has participated in several hundred interviews with the mass media, newspapers, radio, and television. He has been interviewed on Fox's The Beltway Boys, and has appeared on a number of CNN documentaries and news specials covering a variety of topics, including the sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church, as well as serial murder and aspects of violent crime. The 2003 television documentary Battle for Souls (Discovery Times Channel) was largely inspired by his work on global Christianity. He also appeared on the History Channel special, Time Machine: 70s Fever (2009).

Jenkins is much heard on talk radio, including multiple appearances on NPR's All Things Considered, and on various BBC and RTE programs. In North America, he has been a guest on the widely syndicated radio programs of Diane Rehm, Michael Medved, and James Kennedy; he has appeared on NPR’s Fresh Air, as well as the nationally broadcast Canadian shows Tapestry and Ideas. His media appearances include newspapers and radio stations in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Australia, Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Brazil, as well as in many different regions of the United States.

Because of its relevance to policy issues, Jenkins's work has attracted the attention of gove

Reviews

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought this book was going to be about priests who molested children, but instead, it is about the way the public looks at the priest sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church. I felt that the author made excuses for the Catholic Church, claiming that there responses to the victims were justifiable and that any other institution would have acted the same way. These excuses were intended to make the Catholic Church seem less guilty than it is. The author also minimizes the impact of abuse on children and emphasizes that many of the children were older such as in their teens. The author does not seem to consider abuse of children in their teens to be all that serious. Maybe I'm being too harsh, but I felt that this author was clearly biased and was trying to make the Catholic Church out to be a victim.

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

A THOUGHT-PROVOKING ANALYSIS OF A CONTROVERSIAL ISSUE

Philip Jenkins (born 1952) teaches history and religious studies at Penn State University and Baylor University; he has written many other books such as 'Hidden Gospels: How the Search for Jesus Lost Its Way,' 'The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity,' 'Laying Down the Sword: Why We Can't Ignore the Bible's Violent Verses,' etc.

He wrote in the first chapter of this 1996 book, "Occasional investigations and scandals are inevitable, and a handful of genuine instances of clergy sex abuse can be found in any decade of this century. What has been different about the past decade has been the high volume of reported cases and the enormous public attention that these have attracted. Because it is unlikely that pedophile behavior itself has increased as dramatically, the question must be asked why public perceptions have changed so radically. Why should so many cases have come to light during the 1980s rather than in an earlier historical epoch, and why should they have formed the basis of a 'pedophile crisis'? Why, similarly, should public attention have come to focus so decisively on the Catholic aspects of the problem? What explains the distinctive construction of the clergy-abuse problem in the past decade?" (Pg. 12-13)

He points out, "Partially, the apparently high number of cases involving Catholic clergy is an inevitable consequence of the very size of that denomination... the number of Catholic CLERGY is larger than the total membership of many denominations in this country... there will be many more scandals involving Catholic priests than Episcopal or Presbyterian clergy, precisely because this group is more numerous to begin with. In fact, the difference is even larger ... because so many of the scandals involve events that occurred many years ago, in the 1960s and 1970s... Because the Catholic priesthood had a particularly high rate of turnover during the 1970s, this gives a very large population in which potentially troubled individuals might be found..." (Pg. 8-9)

He notes, "Andrew Greeley explicitly compared the church's closed structure to that of the Mafia, with the difference that that Mafia did enforce internal sanctions against deviants: 'Even the Outfit... has sanctions. The priesthood doesn't.' Comparing the Church to the Mafia implies size and malevolence, but also (probably unwittingly) evokes alien and conspiratorial qualities of the sort long alleged against Catholicism." (Pg. 56)

He later adds, "In 1992 Greeley reacted to charges that the abuse danger had been exaggerated by declaring that the Chicago statistics proved that nationwide 'an estimate of one out of ten priests as sexual abusers might be too high and an estimate of one out of twenty might be too low.' The statement, however, is based on what appears to be a miscalculation... Abuse was confirmed in the cases of about one-sixtieth ... of the corps of Chicago priests rather than the suggested 5 to 10 percent, evidence of how even a writer of such competence and integrity can fall into error." (Pg. 81-82)

He observes, "By the mid-1980s little prophetic skill was needed to realize that church institutions were shortly to encounter serious legal difficulties with molestation suits, especially because traditional internal defenses were withering. In earlier years canon law provided excommunication for any Catholic who sought redress against a priest or religious in a secular court... Because most victims of abuse by priests came from Catholic families, this was a valuable deterrent for potential litigants as long as excommunication remained a viable weapon, which it had long ceased to be by 1980." (Pg. 128)

He comments about the justification for refusing to return a guilty priest to service, "this behavior differs from theft in that it is now commonly believed to reflect a compulsive or addictive personality disorder, which cannot be cured or deterred by even the most determined act of will on the part of the offender. The near-universal acceptance of this compulsive model suggests the continuing expansion of medical and deterministic interpretations of wrongdoing and the consequent reduction of revision of the concept of individual sinfulness, especially in matters of sexuality. Sin necessarily implies free will; psychological and therapeutic models are deterministic in their analysis of how character and behavior are formed by family, upbringing, and social development." (Pg. 162-163)

This book was written prior to the "BIG" crisis which came to light in 2002, but Jenkins' thoughts still have application in many or most situations. It is a very useful corrective/supplement to the many more lurid analyses which came out after 2002.