Same Old, Same Old: New Book About Catholic Abuse Scandals Misstates Facts, Lauds the Abuse Industry, and Polishes Well-Worn Stereotypes

No surpise here.

Would you really expect a book by a media figure to portay the church in an honest and open light?

P.S. The Catholic Church has had to deal with it's own sex abuse scandal forcibly?

No jail time for felonies

No compensation for the majority of victims.

No to little resposability taken for the injured and the coverup.

A coverup that includes SNAP; Doyle and Anderson.

Sex, lies, and bigotry.

Yet more garbage from the anti-Catholic bigots. Man, they are becoming desperate.

Incidentally, the Archdiocese of Sydney was recently contemplating suing over exactly this sort of tripe. Nobody should waste a cent or a second on this book, but if TMR can provide references to appropriate people, legal action should be considered. Church institutions and individuals should be going after the many liars, false accusers and libellers who have gotten a free ride for too long.

I managed to get a copy of this book and read it.

First of all, it’s not actually a ‘history’ in any formal sense. The author (hereinafter: MDA) has actually put together a combination of “true-crime” thriller and ‘personal interest stories’ and ‘history’; he’s going for something like a (made for TV-movie?) script where a few dedicated and hard-working and utterly heroic individuals piece together a strategy for going-against (what has to be) an evil and monstrous Organization and make some serious money and publicity creds in the process.

Nor is MDA going for the type of readers who might read a history to see what the author says, check his numerous references supporting his assertions, and make their own assessment. Despite his many assertions and claims of fact, there are no footnotes; instead there are a few general “Selected Chapter Notes” at the back of the book, attached only to general topics but not to any of the myriad specific claims and assertions.

And his sources – upon which he bases his material – include the major ‘heroic’ players themselves (Jeff Anderson, still-Father Doyle, Richard Sipe, and assorted others with interests in how things are spun). In addition to all of the usual suspects among media, “activists”, authors, and ‘experts’ and ‘scholars’ who have made it big in and through this ‘movement’.

So this book is not going to be a reading experience for persons interested in the whole picture. It is based on the personal interviews and reflections and spins of one very interested side of a complex event. This is reading for people who want their own views reinforced in print; many of whom will not be overly familiar with history or historical thinking in the first place, and merely entertain the illusion that if it’s in print then it must be true … especially if it says what I want to hear anyway.

To read this book in order to get a comprehensive grasp of the fundamentals involved in this Catholic Abuse Matter is going to be like reading old Soviet histories to get a comprehensive grasp of Russian and world history in that era: heroic cadres battling the inevitably evil and monstrous forces seeking to stifle the goodness and marvelousness of the Cause. It is dedicated “To the courageous”, in case you need to be aimed in the right direction before you even get to the text.

He will focus on a few “heroic” and “courageous” battlers and a few (and aged) cases of (what to my mind were) genuinely deranged and deformed individuals who carried on for a while an ordained ministry as priests.

He tries – but cannot sustain – the linguistic gambit of referring to the lawyers as “plaintiff’s attorneys”, a euphemism for the more conventional ‘tort attorneys’, the lawyers that make their money bringing lawsuits. It does sound more heroic and courageous, though.

But that isn’t to say that there aren’t some useful and revealing bits.

I am struck by the fact that, as MDA so vividly relates, so many of the principals – Anderson, Doyle, Sipe, many other attorneys involved – were/are alcoholics. (And no, I am not going to sit still for any claim that they were fine until they had to try to deal with the hierarchy and were then driven to the bottle.) This fact is certainly not dispositive of any of their actions (although you wonder about the validity of their recollections of their role and activities); but it does make you wonder about a movement that seemed to be led by so many persons with that particular problem (and about the effect of the almost-classic characterological problems that so very often manifest in conjunction with that particular problem). Of course, since they all eventually wind up embracing the tenets of Alcoholic Anonymous (a worthy organization, in my view), then perhaps MDA was simply and shrewdly trying to ‘humanize’ them while simultaneously dealing with problems that not even a potted history such as this could dare to ignore.

I was specifically intrigued by the fact that – having lost his ecclesiastical position as adviser in Washington – still-Father Doyle then got ecclesiastical approval to be a military chaplain (where his alcohol abuse also got him into trouble) yet he also continued to “help” and then to “advise” Anderson and other such attorneys. Was he paid for it as a ‘consultant’ or ‘expert’? He appeared in trials or submitted expert opinions. Was he being paid to do so at the same time he was collecting a salary from the government ostensibly for the (rather demanding) task of providing Catholic sacramental and general counseling ministry to service-members?  MDA certainly doesn’t pursue this thought but it’s right there in his material.

The time-lines are revealing. It turns out, for example, that Jeff Anderson had hit upon the legal strategy of suing the Bishops as early as 1990; he realized then – and refined it as time went on – that if you could go after the Church rather than poor individual priests, then you opened the door to huge cash settlements.

This is presented by MDA as a brilliant invention that Anderson came up with. But actually, the legal maxim of Respondeat Superior (tr: let the superior respond) has always been well-established in tort law. (Neatly, while MDA goes to great lengths – no doubt with Anderson’s ‘recollections’ to guide him – to discuss this brilliant invention, he never once mentions the actual, long-standing maxim itself … leading the unsuspecting reader to imagine that Anderson actually did invent it.)

The maxim basically sets up this legal possibility: if a person under employment of an organization commits a tort, then it is possible that not only the person but the organization itself can be sued.

As the interpretation of this maxim has devolved in the past decades, this may actually also mean that if an employee commits a tort by perpetrating an action that is itself clearly and formally prohibited by the organization, the organization itself may still be sued. And – as Anderson worked to refine his overall strategy – this meant also that if it could be demonstrated that the target-organization committed “fraud” or “reckless negligence” then you could go for punitive damages as well as actual damages. A legal reality that would dovetail nicely with various authors’ and interests’ insistence upon a ‘culture of rape’ or a ‘culture of concealment and cover-up’.

Of course, in theory you still have to create a clear line of causality between the tort and the actual damages claimed – presuming that you have established that the tort was committed in the first place. But MDA allows Anderson to reveal another bit of legal strategy that lay readers may not realize: in the “dirty business” (as one judge puts it) of settlement, or of trials, it’s not just the actual law as written – it’s also what you think you can get your jury to believe or feel. (Thus, as I have always said, the vital value of the general public Stampede that works to taint the public before they ever come to jury pools.)

But this raised for me the question: if Jeff Anderson had figured out the sue-the-bishops strategy as early as 1990, then what was all the brouhaha about the Boston Globe’s putatively path-breaking campaign that kicked-off in January of 2002?

And here MDA reveals some interesting material indeed. As he relates on pages 244-257, there had been a serious fall-off in the Abusenik cause after the very-public revelation of the very-public false-accusations against Cardinal Bernardin in the mid-1990s. It seemed like the tide of public interest was starting to recede.

Then, in the summer of 2001 some interesting things synergized up in Boston:

The previously cautious Boston Globe came under the leadership of a new guy, Martin Baron. He needed to make a splash and establish himself.

By amazing coincidence in that same summer of 2001, a “confidential source” suddenly appeared at the Globe’s special Spotlight Team’s door with a pile of old newspaper clippings, old court cases and affidavits and assorted court documents and such; this “confidential source” claimed to be a victim of a “pedophile priest” and he had been collecting this (curiously spot-on and highly focused) legal documentation. The source assured the Team that the 1992 Fr. Porter case (in southeast Massachusetts) was just the tip of the iceberg in the Boston Archdiocese. This source then handed over apparently the entire records of the Dallas trial of Fr. Rudy Kos (a genuinely deformed individual, if everything about him is to be believed).

This was all rendered especially acute at the offices of the Globe because in March of 2001 the upstart newspaper The Boston Phoenix had run a large article on the then-current Fr. Geoghan case, which gave strong indications that the man was possessed of genuine pedophilic inclinations with a long history of complaints.

In the eyes of the new editor, Martin Baron, the city’s paper-of-record had to take the gloves off and get sassy.

Richard Sipe was paid to come to town and advise the Spotlight Team (Generally, to the effect that a) priests were imbued in Church doctrine with an aura of supernatural authority and perfection that they didn’t deserve and that b) the Church was hopelessly enmeshed in a growth-stunting and maturity-deranging clerical culture that attracted many many variously deformed and problem-beset men to the priesthood, such that when they inevitably acted-out sexually they had to be protected because there were so many of them – thus creating a culture of secrecy about sex that simply functioned as a toxic feedback-loop). The good Catholic Team members were shocked into action. (The very action that their new editor wanted to see, by amazing coincidence.)

Following Anderson’s established methods, they realized that if you publicized one case you could then discover – or also, I would say, invite – further claims and their ‘victims’. The Internet was starting to be a useful source of material (not to say ‘information’) as well.

They discovered that there were other priests with such complaints against them, which had in some cases been handled by quiet cash settlements by the diocese involved while the priests were sent to some form of psychological facility.

The Team decided that its fresh focus would not be on priestly sexual abuse but rather on the “institutional cover-up” (although that characterization itself is a rather ill-defined and infinitely expandable term).

Almost immediately, in that summer of 2001, another staffer discovered that Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston had admitted that he had been advised of the complaints against Fr. Geoghan as early as 1984.

Almost simultaneously, the Team came into contact with a Boston tort-attorney (later to make a major mark and a major bundle on the Abuse Matter lawsuits) who (in best Anderson strategic form, coincidentally) was more than happy to share his stuff with them. Anderson had early learned that the best way to get things going for you was to enlist the media (always hungry for good and simple dramatic story-lines); you get a free three-fer: i) publicity along the lines of the spin you want; ii) the enticement of more clients who are either looking for ‘justice’ for their allegations and claims or a big payout or – wonderfully – both; and iii) all of those seekers would have your phone number for calls.

“All through the summer and fall of 2001” a member of the Team “conducted a kind of courtship” of this Boston tort-attorney (as if the recipient of all this attention was unwilling, shy, uncertain and bashful), frequently telephoning and even “visiting his offices” (where the Team member did not get a chance to look at client-files?).

But – alas – the tort attorney was under confidentiality strictures so all the files and good stuff could not be perused. But the tort-attorney was creative and resourceful: he would include material from restricted cases in fourteen case-files that were not restricted, and would be open to review at the Clerk of Court’s Office. Neat. But, the tort-attorney solemnly advised, the Team member would have to go to the Clerk’s Office himself and access them.

Somehow, this didn’t work out (perhaps some clerk at the Clerk’s Office realized the scam) and the fourteen files did not have the sought-after material when the Team member went to look at them. And not even the tort-attorney was going to risk “angering a judge” (and breaking the law and/or Bar regulations) by simply turning over restricted files to the media. So the Globe’s attorney filed a lawsuit to access the material. Ultimately, it was ordered that the files be opened in January, 2002.

But this didn’t solve the Globe’s problems nor meet its own objectives and purposes. Because once the files were opened legally, they would be open to everybody and anybody, and the possibility existed that some other news organization would get to them and scoop the issue-needy Globe.

The tort-attorney – ever creative and resourceful in so good a cause – came up with a convoluted plan: he would file new lawsuits and deposit copies of the soon-to-be-but-not-yet legally accessible materials on the first Friday of January, 2002, at 4PM, and the Team could be standing by at the Clerk’s Office – say at 4:15 so it wouldn’t be too obvious – and get everything they wanted. The Team made its move at 4:20.

They got caught, and had to have the Globe’s legal office fax a judge the Order to open the files in January 2002, but once they did that the on-call judge gave them the OK. But then the copy-machine operator was closing up shop to meet her daughter and they had to somehow convince her to stick around for a frantic copying session. And so she stayed late (and not on overtime … more marvelousness).

Thus the Globe – according to MDA – got its Sunday edition out with the breaking news. (I am a little confused here as to the timeline. I recall a Wednesday, January 2, 2002 Boston Herald front-page article breaking the news (the Herald is the Globe’s rival paper) but that would mean, if MDA is accurate here, that the Sunday edition Globe revelation would have to have been for Sunday, January 6, 2002 – or else the Sunday edition of December 30, 2001 (which would have violated the court order stipulating January, 2002 accessibility of the documents). I’m still trying to work that out.

Anyhoo, I go through all this just to show what sort of stuff went on. History can be fascinating, even when its writers don’t quite want it to go where it can so often lead. But – as the Marxists say – if the Cause is good, then anything done in the name of the Cause is automatically good.

There is much else of interest in this book, although not – I think – in the way MDA had hoped.

Determined to maintain to the last his spin that the Abuse Matter is dispositively indicative of a decline in the Church worldwide, in his final chapter and his “Postscript” he not only rehearses a revealing number of ancillary charges as to the Church’s undemocratic governance and its putative disrespect of feminists and gays, but also tries to sharpen the desired picture by claiming (in a book published in 2013) that in the Western (now non-believing and secular) world, things have been getting totally and wonderfully better in all respects … including physically and economically.

And that thus he wants us to see that the decline of the Church and ‘religion’ has – putatively – resulted (like the icebergs melting) in a huge flowering of democracy and abundance in the West and around the world that the West influences. To assert this in light of current events and recent history in the West is beyond ludicrous. And to assert – as he does – that in the US the non-religious North is so much better advanced than the religious South is impossible to seriously credit.

What’s my own take on the Abuse Matter? That various Dioceses did ordain some relative few who were truly and egregiously unsuitable – and then the Bishops found themselves in the difficult position of risking credibility and ‘scandal’ by overtly dealing with them. This purely organizational dynamic was also fueled by a tendency to see the priests’ actions as personal failures and sin, and much less so as crimes. (At one point MDA will refer to “collusion” between police and Bishops, although he doesn’t follow up with the thought of how the police failed in their responsibilities.)

The Vatican bureaucracy – under the aegis of Popes who had so often seen Nazi and Communist efforts to undermine the Church by making sexual allegations against the clergy and religious – did not respond forcefully enough to such cases as came to their attention, partly as a result of organizational dynamics but also because of the adherence to long-established canonical legal protections for accused clergy concerning any sort of canonical legal-level accusations and allegations.

In the American context, vexed by currents within the Church and outside of the Church – all of which were pushing toward a secular and ‘liberated’ individualism masking an ever-engorging statist dependence on government to the exclusion of genuine social community and genuine individualism – the hierarchy was indeed hobbled and in its way somewhat deranged.

The hierarchy still operated on the pre-1960s model of the Ordinary as the ecclesiastical equivalent of the old Democratic ‘machine-boss’ or – in an equally unhelpful updating – as CEOs. In terms of spiritual depth and vitality the clergy and the hierarchy had become a bit too much like the old Roman ‘city cohorts’, the parade troops who could keep order in the cities but were not equipped or trained to be ‘the legions’, taking the field in vigorous and robust operations.

And after 1965 so much of the potential vitality of the Church for reform was dissipated in a confusing and sweetly lethal mélange of goo-goo happy-faceism and a Gramscian inspired ‘liberation theology’ activism that worked not to bear witness against the kingdom of this world, but rather to capture the kingdom of this world for various good-intentions that yet remained this-worldly.

Toss in Sipe’s idea that as numerous straight males left the clergy to get married after 1965, leaving many non-straights in the clergy – and the sexual-liberation ethos of both heterosexuality and (after 1969’s Stonewall) homosexuality – and you have a tremendously challenging set of elements that required the robust attention of the hierarchy if they were to retain the Church’s ancient vitality and genuine spiritual and cultural Gifts.

The specifics of the American context – and I note here that most of the beyond-US dreamsites of MDA and the Abuseniks are Western-influenced countries – made the hierarchy particularly vulnerable when assorted political and cultural forces coalesced here to emphasize the victimist world-view and the role of sexual abuse. In regard to that development, it is what it is and we shall continue to see what consequences issue from this significant change. They will not be uniformly good nor will they be only the ones intended by the forces and interests that set them in motion.

But MDA gives the game away by the fact that all of those genuinely egregious cases he has chosen were in the past. Persons who wish to Keep The Ball Rolling must either a) accept that the 2004 reforms have had good effect (MDA tries to stifle this by claiming that the 2nd John Jay Report was funded purely by the Bishops and therefore unreliable, but there was Justice-Department funding for it as well; nor does he offer evidence of increased abuse-allegations); or b) insist that the Church as presently constituted is utterly incapable of reform (and consequently must profoundly ‘reform’ or change along the lines demanded by various interests in the West, within and outside of the Church).

MDA clearly tries here to anchor the Catholic Abuse Matter in as large and convenient an ideological readership ‘demographic’ as possible. Thus the Catholic Abuse Matter is tied into numerous of those other interests and agendas, often tenuously connecting them or inferring some sort of vital and inevitable connection between the Matter and the various other bits.

But I don’t see it and he certainly hasn’t provided serious evidence or coherent theorizing of it. Instead, this is a potted narrative designed to appeal to the hopes and certainties of a congeries of groups, consisting of assertions about the accuracy and credibility of which no reader can be certain and upon which no serious reader can dare rely.

For Catholics and others genuinely concerned about the Church and the Abuse Matter, I would say that this book is not at all a desirable destination, but rather a small and queasy oasis – with water of questionable purity – on the Church’s long journey and ministry.

It's safer in numbers