Never Forget … or Forgive: The Ongoing Catholic Church Sexual Abuse Scandal
The sexual abuse scandal surrounding Jeffrey Epstein is especially outrageous inasmuch as he used his political connections (and money) to escape prosecution for so many years. But if it’s outrageous when money and power enable impunity for horrible crimes, shouldn’t it be even more outrageous when the pretense of moral authority enables someone to commit even worse crimes? I ask because an ongoing sexual abuse scandal with a more significant number of victims has been swept under the rug through the assumed holiness of its perpetrator.
Outrage over sexual abuse is, I submit, wildly out of proportion to its proper target.
I’m speaking, of course, of sexual abuse committed inside the institutions of the Catholic Church. The media silence about this atrocity, in the face of the Epstein story and the recent election of a new Pope, cuts across American political loyalties and reveals as much about the corrupt moral thinking of the left as it does about that of the right. Outrage over sexual abuse is, I submit, wildly out of proportion to its proper target.
The Vast Scale and Ongoing Impact of Abuse in the Catholic Church
Before it becomes completely memory holed, let’s review the extent of the appalling sex crimes perpetrated by ministers of the Catholic Church.
Between 1950 and 2002, in the United States alone Catholic priests were responsible for at least 10,000 cases of sexual abuse (as reported by the Church itself). Some estimates are as high as 100,000. By the Church’s own admission, 22 percent of the victims were younger than eleven. We know of 48 suicides among the reported victims, and there were likely more among the unreported.
This vast scandal is ongoing. Lawsuits and other investigations are currently pending in New Mexico, California, Illinois, and Utah. In Louisiana and New York, major settlement agreements with victims have only recently been made. Worldwide, the Vatican continues to deal with 800 new abuse claims every year.
About four percent of Catholic priests and deacons—over 4,300 of them!—were known to have been involved in the scandal. And it wasn’t just the Catholic Church. There is substantial evidence of similar widespread abuse in other American Christian churches, although it hasn’t been as well-investigated. Cover-ups have emerged in the Southern Baptist convention in 2019 and the Mormon church as recently as 2023.
The Church chose to hide these crimes—and continues to encourage us to forget them—because, I submit, it wants to maintain a false moral authority from which it draws its spiritual strength.
What makes the Catholic cover-up unique, however, is that the Church is an international organization with state sovereignty via the Vatican. Its cover-up of sex crimes amounts to a proven version of the international criminal conspiracy that QAnon conspiracists have imagined to be perpetrated by their political enemies in “the deep state.” This very real conspiracy involved not only commands from the Vatican to keep it secret (dating back at least as far as 1962), regular shuffling of priests accused of abuse from parish to parish, a secret network of “treatment” centers to keep it a secret, and even a plan to buy a Caribbean Island where the most criminal priests could be hidden from society.
Scandalously, 1,700 priests and other clergy accused of molesting children still walk free. Just before his death, Pope Francis ordered that their names not be publicized. The Church chose to hide these crimes—and continues to encourage us to forget them—because, I submit, it wants to maintain a false moral authority from which it draws its spiritual strength. Leaders of the Church must know that the abuse scandal shattered any illusion of genuine authority. The evidence of this is strewn across the lives of Catholics whose trust was destroyed by their victimization.
Consider the story of Ed Morris, who at age 14 sought out a priest for consolation after the death of his brother. After getting to know the priest—Father Terrence Pinkowski—Morris would eventually go to him for confession. After confessing “impure” thoughts, Pinkowski invoked his authority to molest Morris by explaining it was penance for Morris’s sin of pride. When Morris finally realized the twisted nature of this rationalization, he tried for a time to become a priest himself, but was too demoralized to be at peace with it. “I feel like I had an illicit affair with the devil,” he said, [emphasis added] as reported by Frank Bruni and Elinor Burkett in their revealing 2002 book A Gospel of Shame: Children, Sexual Abuse, and the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church was the devil who enabled Pinkowski and a league of other abusers.
The comparable lack of outrage for the ongoing Catholic cover-up in comparison with Jeffrey Epstein reveals a massive and contemptible double standard. And what fuels the double standard is a deference generated by a devious source of moral authority—a moral dogma whose authority has been further undermined by the very actions of the Church.
Nothing Excuses the Double Standard
For many who promote it, the Epstein scandal is nothing more than a temporary weapon in the American tribalistic political battle. Many of them don’t care a wit about sexual abuse. They use abused victims as totems to generate outrage and score points against their political opponents.
There are conservative Catholics who are willing to acknowledge the crimes and cover-ups, but they are often eager to blame the crisis on the infiltration of modern “liberal” ideas into the Church. This excuse conveniently evades the fact that the abuse goes back long before the 1960s sexual revolution. Modern reports date back to the 1940s, and there’s credible historical evidence that clerical sexual abuse goes back at least as far as the 1st century. It’s only in the last thirty years that victims have had the courage to come forward.
The comparable lack of outrage for the ongoing Catholic cover-up in comparison with Jeffrey Epstein reveals a massive and contemptible double standard.
When religious Americans cast about looking for abusers to round up, it’s easy to think they are just eager to find an outlet for their outrage that doesn’t hit too close to home. But even secular Americans have been reluctant to point to the double standard about Epstein and the Church, and in recent years have maintained relative silence about the Catholic scandal. While many publicly crusaded to expose Harvey Weinstein and other prominent individuals, cries of “me too” were conspicuously missing during the recent papal conclave to replace Pope Francis. This was especially evident from the fawning reception by the liberal press of the succession of Robert Prevost to the papacy in May.
The media covered the drama around the Papal conclave as though it were Oscar night or the NFL draft, speculating who would win the great honor. Never mind that, to one degree or another, it is likely that all of the candidate cardinals were involved in covering-up or looking the other way in the face of damning evidence of sex crimes.
Of the ten or so opinion columns in The New York Times between May 8th and May 25th about Robert Prevost’s election as Pope Leo XIV, not a single one mentioned the Church sexual abuse scandal or Prevost’s plans to deal with it. Instead the columnists bloviated about his being the first American pope, his humble origins, how his experience in Peru would make him sympathetic to the plight of immigrants, how his ethnic background would help him be sympathetic to the poor, how he would encourage consensus between clerics and their congregations, how he might encourage cooperation between warring liberal and conservative factions of the Church, how he would invoke the supernatural to understand artificial intelligence, how he’s the second English-speaking Pope, and that he likes to play Wordle!
Only one letter to the editor published by the Times, written by a sexual abuse survivor, dared broach the subject of the Church’s abuse crisis—by calling out one of the Times’ columns for not mentioning it. Perhaps sensing their omission, Times reporters did publish a non-opinion piece—more than a month later—reporting their investigations into Prevost’s history of failure to confront the Church abuse crisis in his time as a Bishop in Peru. And even this story did not reference his active involvement in sheltering abusers in his time running the Augustinian order in Chicago—by allowing them to live near elementary schools. The Times’ penance was too late and too little.
Common to much of the Times’ praise for Pope Leo XIV is a sense that he shares “progressive” egalitarian economic values. They’re apparently willing to forgive the cover-up of the real and devastating sexual exploitation of helpless children because doing so gives them a political ally.
Toeing this line echoes the decades-old Church rationalization for downplaying the scandal: the notion that all of us, even priests, are sinners who deserve forgiveness.
The one major op-ed that touched briefly on the abuse scandal was The Washington Post’s staff editorial, which recommended “transparency on this issue … as the church seeks to regain trust from wayward parishioners,” as if to concede that regaining their trust could be a worthy end. This betrays an unwillingness to see the Church as morally responsible for this barbaric scandal. Relatedly, the Times’ report on Prevost’s history closes with a quote from an ex-priest citing Pope Leo’s inexperience, not any malice, to explain his failure to confront abuse in Peru: “The pope is another human being,” he said. “He’s not God.”
Toeing this line echoes the decades-old Church rationalization for downplaying the scandal: the notion that all of us, even priests, are sinners who deserve forgiveness. This betrays a respect that even secular thinkers retain for religious institutions and values. But it is not a respectable value—in this case especially, it’s an irrationally destructive dogma that enables evil. It is in fact one of the very dogmas that in many ways allowed the Church to cover up the crimes of rapists in the first place. As such it doesn’t deserve any special respect, and only deserves condemnation.
The Religious Dogma that Fueled the Abuse Crisis
We can see the role of the forgiveness dogma in the first major revelation of the Church scandal in the late 1990s in Boston. It was invoked by Cardinal Bernard Law, the archbishop of Boston whose cover-up of abusive priests eventually led to his resignation in 2002. He invoked it when the news first broke. As reported by the investigative staff of The Boston Globe in their 2002 account, Betrayal: The Crisis in the Catholic Church, Law said: “The forgiving love of God gives me the courage to beg forgiveness of those who have suffered because of what I did.”
The dogma wasn’t just invoked to excuse Church authorities for their crimes after the fact. It was often what rationalized the protection of rapacious priests in the first place. Father John Geoghan, one of the first to be investigated in Boston, was a serial child rapist who may have abused as many as 150 young boys, as far back as the early 1960s. For decades, other ministers and parents repeatedly informed Church authorities of his behavior and were repeatedly rebuffed as Geoghan was moved from parish to parish. At times he was removed from his appointments and “treated” for his problem, but the cycle would repeat. Why?
The story of Margaret Gallant’s letter to Archbishop of Boston Humberto Medeiros suggests an answer. When her sister told her that Geoghan was molesting her seven young boys, she wrote the Archbishop in 1982 demanding that the priest be removed. Medeiros rebuffed her, explicitly citing the dogma (as recorded in The Boston Globe’s Betrayal):
While I am and must be very sensitive to a very delicate situation and one that has caused great scandal, I must at the same time invoke the mercy of God and share in that mercy in the knowledge that God forgives sins and that sinners indeed can be forgiven. … Please be assured that I am speaking to the priest in order to find the most Christian way to deal with the problem with him and at the same time remove any source of scandal for the sake of the faithful.
This rationalization for keeping quiet about the abusers was repeated time and time again. The organization that secretly tried to “treat” many of the abusers—the Congregation of the Servants of the Paraclete—was a major proponent. One of the directors of the group told a reporter in 1987 about their approach (quoted in Bruni and Burkett’s A Gospel of Shame): “What we do here is forgive. … But I think ultimately that forgiveness is what leads to healing.” How did they know when a priest was “healed”? “We just get an intuition that they’re going to work out.” Their intuition offered little guidance, but it did blind them to their status as accessories to the priests’ crimes. Graduates of their program, like the notorious Father James Porter, who abused over 100 children, went on to commit more such crimes after leaving treatment.
The dogma of forgiveness was so rampant in the Church that even the victims of abuse were disarmed by it in their own minds. One boy who confronted his abuser, Father Joseph Birmingham (who abused another 50 boys), perversely asked his abuser to forgive him, the victim (as reported in Betrayal): “I’ve come here to ask you to forgive me for the hatred and resentment that I have felt toward you for the last twenty-five years.” He explained that the Bible “tells me to love my enemies and to pray for those who would persecute me.”
The Christian dogma that all sinners can be forgiven and that mercy for sinners is virtuous is fundamentally at odds with the rational virtue of justice.
There is and can be such a thing as earned forgiveness. Someone who commits a moral infraction might be justly forgiven when he realizes that it was wrong, understands why, makes a concerted effort to make amends to those who were harmed, resolves never to do it again, and exercises the continuous, strenuous effort needed to maintain that understanding and commitment. But most who demand forgiveness are looking for an easy way to soothe their conscience without having to do that work. Part of what it takes to deserve forgiveness is to realize that it cannot be demanded.
The Christian dogma that all sinners can be forgiven and that mercy for sinners is virtuous is fundamentally at odds with the rational virtue of justice. Like all forms of injustice, it wickedly incentivizes criminals like James Porter who revel in the belief that if they simply confess their crimes to another priest, they can be magically forgiven.
A telling symbol of what permitted both the Church and the secular world to forgive priests for their abuse is the recent emergence of multiple allegations of sexual abuse against Abbé Pierre, long regarded as a saint of altruism in France for his work on behalf of the poor and homeless. The Vatican knew of the allegations as far back as the 1950s but never bothered to investigate or sanction him for it. Just as the Church then forgave Pierre on the grounds of his charitable work, the press today forgives the pontiffs for their support for “social justice.”
Deny the Church the Spiritual Power it Craves
In recent years a crop of Catholics—including many converts, such as Vice President J.D. Vance—have risen to prominence in American politics. For the first time in decades, more people are joining the Catholic Church in the United States than leaving it. A recent The Free Press article, “How Catholicism Got Cool,” declared: “Young Americans and people around the world are flocking to the Catholic Church.” The article sought to explain why.
To maintain this power, the Church needed to cover up its own sex scandal to preserve the pretense of its moral authority.
Here is one explanation. If the recent secular reception of Pope Leo is any indication, Catholicism has succeeded in being seen as cool because the Church has successfully memory-holed its atrocious child abuse crisis. But the public should not let them get away with it. Neither Epstein nor his associates, nor any celebrities exposed in the Me Too era ever claimed to be moral authorities about sex. But the Church, of course, has arrogated itself this authority for millennia. It desperately needs this authority to maintain spiritual power over the lives of millions of Catholics.
In 1968, just four years after Pope John XXIII issued the 1962 decree ordering that the priestly scandal be kept secret, his successor Pope Paul VI issued an influential encyclical, Humanae Vitae. It reiterated and amplified the Catholic doctrine that sex be limited to married couples and for the sake of reproduction. It condemned birth control, abortion, and any sex for pleasure. This message has held sway over billions for centuries now—who practice it miserably or cheat on it guiltily.
To maintain this power, the church needed to cover up its own sex scandal to preserve the pretense of its moral authority. They did it by logically invoking key elements of their own moral doctrine. That should show us what was wrong with their pretense and with the doctrines themselves. No “higher cause” could excuse this, and our outrage should not fade away just because new Popes in shiny new vestments are elected. Religious institutions should not be exempt from moral condemnation, especially not by secular commentators who’ve uncritically swallowed the detritus of religious dogma.
Addendum from the Editors of Skeptic
A larger question arises from this comparison of Epstein and the Catholic Church, namely: Why do we pay more attention to sex abuse by the rich and famous and ignore—or quickly and quietly forget—the crimes when they occur in large institutions? Case in point: sex abuse by public school teachers. Say what? Yes, the U.S. Department of Education reports that between 1991 and 2000 there were ~290,000 abuse cases in public schools, mostly male perpetrators (85–89 percent and female victims (72 percent). A 2023 CBS Reports documentary, Pledge of Silence: Sex Abuse and Cover-Up in America’s Schools, features Dr. Charol Shakeshaft, the Virginia Commonwealth University education professor who has been studying public educator sexual misconduct in K–12 schools for decades, explains:
This abuse is happening in just about any kind of district you can think of—rural districts, urban, suburban, high-income, low-income, middle-income. First, the teacher grooms the students and grooms the environment, and so the grooming process [for abusers] is: Get people to trust you and trust that what you say about yourself—i.e., “I’m a good person”—is accurate, and so people then don’t suspect.
On average, CBS reported, these abusers pass through three school districts and can abuse as many as 73 children in their lifetimes. Shakeshaft’s 2024 book, Organizational Betrayal: How Schools Enable Sexual Misconduct and How to Stop It, documents in more detail this largely neglected sex abuse scandal (and what to do about it).
While comparisons between sex abuse cases between Catholic priests and public school teachers are confounded by different study methodologies, time periods, definitions, and reporting difficulties, available studies consistently indicated that it appears public school teachers offend at higher rates than Catholic priests when adjusted for opportunity (access to children) and per capita (teachers outnumber priests ~3.5 million U.S. public school educators vs. ~37,000 active U.S. Catholic priests).
Both cohorts are likely underreported in their sex abuse rates, and while the raw numbers and percentages of sex abuse victims may be debated, the larger point here is to ask where is the moral outrage and media coverage for the massively larger sex crimes going on in large institutions like the Catholic Church and public schools compared to that of the crimes of the rich and famous Jeffrey Epstein (and whoever is in the Epstein files)?