TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/092490/0924610.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 5.8 KB | 127 lines

                                                                                RELIGION, Page 79

What to Do When Priests Stray


How the Catholic Church deals with sexual misconduct when more
and more priests are breaking their vow of celibacy


    The tales would rattle even the sturdiest confessional.
First came the story of seven Roman Catholic priests who were
charged in the mid-'80s with sexually abusing young boys in
Louisiana. Then there was this year's scandal at New York
City's Covenant House, culminating in a commissioned report
stating that Father Bruce Ritter, founder of the renowned
shelter for runaways, had a pattern of improper sexual conduct
with youths going back to 1970. Last month came the news that
Atlanta's Archbishop Eugene Marino and one of his priests had
resigned because both men had been intimate with the same
27-year-old female parishioner.

    These are among the most notorious examples of what some
experts say is a more pervasive problem. Roman Catholic
clergymen today are violating their church's strictures on sex.
Based on interviews conducted over the past 25 years with 1,000
priests and 500 other men and women, many of them the sexual
partners of clerics, Baltimore psychotherapist A.W. Richard
Sipe, a former Benedictine monk, estimates that half the 53,000
Roman Catholic priests in the U.S. are breaking their vow of
celibacy. According to Sipe, whose findings are being published
this month in A Secret World: Sexuality and the Search for
Celibacy (Brunner-Mazel; $29.95), about 28% of all priests are
engaged in relationships, many of them enduring, with women.
An additional 10% to 13% indulge in intimacies with adult men,
and 6% pursue adolescents or children, usually boys.

    Church officials say Sipe's figures are much too high,
arguing that his findings are skewed because half the priests
in his study were already in therapy. Most priests successfully
channel their sexual feelings into love for their
congregations, they contend. "This can provide a type of
fulfillment, just as married men and women achieve
fulfillment," says Father Peter Dora of the Atlanta archdiocese.
But officials acknowledge that the Catholic hierarchy is
increasingly concerned about sexually straying priests.

    Why are so many clerics betraying their vows? For one thing,
some psychologists believe, those who are drawn to the
priesthood today are more likely to be psychologically
immature, homosexual or unsure of their sexuality. Forty years
ago, a religious life was seen as both a higher calling and a
route to advancement. But the pool of candidates for the
priesthood has been steadily shrinking, especially since the
advent of the sexual revolution in the '60s. Since 1965, the
number of seminarians has dropped from 49,000 to 6,200.
Moreover, seminary instructors have focused on spiritual
training and have ignored normal human sexual development; the
role of celibacy and how to achieve it have been routinely
neglected.

    Until recently, the church responded to clerical
transgressions by sweeping them under the altar. Erring priests
were simply shuttled from parish to parish; victims, out of
embarrassment or reverence for the priesthood, often conspired
in that silence. Now the church is beginning to confront the
problem, partly under the pressure of burgeoning lawsuits filed
by victims of priestly misconduct. Court judgments against the
clergy already run to about $300 million.

    The U.S. hierarchy is urging, and sometimes forcing, wayward
priests to seek therapy from private doctors, secular clinics
or half a dozen church-affiliated centers. Two of the most
respected are the 42-year-old Servants of the Paraclete center,
tucked into the remote mountains of New Mexico, and the
five-year-old program at St. Luke Institute in Suitland, Md.

    The treatment of pedophiliac priests focuses on stopping
abusive behavior and curbing their attraction to children. But
in cases where priests engage in sex with adults -- female or
male -- the goal is more subtle. "If the only problem is that
he fell in love, this is not the place for him," says Father
John Loftus, a psychologist who runs Southdown, a treatment
center in Aurora, Ont. "There's nothing psychiatrically
abnormal about that." Where a cleric often needs help, says
Loftus, is in his "professing one thing and living another."
Some priests deny they have a conflict; others are tortured by
guilt. For some, sexual activity may be a signal of other
problems, such as burnout, depression or loneliness.

    Therapists employ a variety of techniques, ranging from
individual and group psychotherapy to physical exercise, to
drug treatments intended to smother the sex drive of
pedophiliac priests through "chemical castration." In addition,
clergymen receive spiritual counseling to help them examine
their commitment to their faith. Statistics are sketchy, but
98% of the priests who go through Paraclete's program return
to active ministry. And of 200 priests treated at St. Luke,
says the Rev. Curtis Bryant, a psychologist who directs
inpatient services, "none has relapsed as far as we know."
Priests who resume their religious duties are usually placed
in new parishes (which are aware of their history), are closely
supervised and participate in ongoing support groups.

    The church says it is making efforts to include sexual
education in seminaries and to choose would-be priests more
carefully. Many critics of church policy, though, believe the
ultimate solution lies in making celibacy an option rather than
a requirement. While agreeing that a pure life is possible,
they argue that it is more likely to be achieved when celibacy
is a choice, not a demand.


By Anastasia Toufexis. Reported by Julie Johnson/Washington and
Joyce Leviton/Atlanta.