It has just been announced that 17 names have been added to the current list of pedophile Catholic priests in the Twin Cities. That means…
The names bring to 55 the number of priests deemed to have substantiated claims of child sexual abuse within the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.
Jebus. That’s the approximate size of my very largest class here at UMM, so I can look out at an auditorium and visualize the number. That’s a lot of people! And they were all sent out to Minneapolis/St Paul. Now I’m wondering whether we were a dumping ground, or worse…we were a representative diocese.
number of Catholic dioceses in Usa 47, 47 X 55 = 2585
I’d be quite interested in the percentage. How many priests are there total?
While the percentage might be of intellectual interest, even one pedophile priest is one too many, if you are trying to be arbiter of morality.
Well, obviously. And while any amount of pedophile priests is horrifying, no amount would be high enough to surprise me.
@ #2 Pieter Droogendijk
I don’t know how many priests they employ in total, but their wikipedia page says the Archdiocese contains 222 parish churches. That’s roughly one child-abusing pedophile priest for every four churches. Astonishing, truly astonishing, that anyone attends Mass or gives any money to this organization anymore.
@1 — Naw, there are more like 200 dioceses in the country, and many, such as NY, Boston, Chicago, LA, Miami, Philly, San Diego, etc., must DWARF the size of the Twin Cities diocese. I’d quintuple your estimate of statistically likely pedophiles, and if the averages they were using a decade ago are still considered apt, you’d be looking at 15-20 victims per, meaning potentially 150,000 rape victims. I saw estimates of a half million globally some time back, and given that more and more revelations keep emerging, that’s probably low. We really oughtta go after these scum from the top down, with RICO statutes.
So the reason why no DA anywhere has gone after them with a RICO charge is that it would make them unelectable for another term or what? Cops don’t gather the evidence for presentation to the DA because they know it will make them look bad? Mayors are pressuring the DAs to not lose them Catholic voting blocks?
It would seem the RCC has done a better job of corrupting the system than the other kinds of organised criminals.
How dare they name names when they haven’t all been prosecuted and convicted yet? Amiright?
@ #5 Sven
That… that’s good enough. Thanks.
Also: holy shit.
Don’t forget that 55 is the number of substantiated cases according to the archdiocese. They moved 3 of these from their unsubstantiated list. How many more names are on that list?
The number of predators that managed to silence their victims before appearing on the unsubstantiated list must be at least as large again, IMO.
@7 Except for Republican legislators and their plutocrat bosses.
Expect a big protest by Catholics on the footpath outside the church next Sunday.
(Or will they go inside and give money to the preacher instead?)
Pieter Droogendijk@2
According to wikipedia it’s a little over 400,000. Given the numbers involved just in the Minneapolis/St Paul Archdiocese that works out to a scary fuckton of pedophile priests worldwide.
Shame, shame on you, PZ, for smearing a fine organization with your claims of sexual improprieties that have not been established by a court of law. You should be shunned by the atheist/skeptic community for your crude and slanderous ways.
/nugent
Here is a map of the dioceses in Minnesota. It contains a list of 228 “accused catholic clerics, nuns, staff”— http://mnsnap201.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/228-1800.png
It is somewhat dated, and does not include the 17 names recently released. It was constructed by Robert Schwiderski. Bob is of the self-help organization SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAPnetwork.org), and National Survivor Advocates Coalition (NSAC).
@gmcard: Ah, but it’s okay when he’s talking about Them and not Us, y’see.
And lest we forget, this is just the RCC. There are thousands of priests, preachers, profits, rabbis, mullahs, gurus, shamans, and any number of other types. Many of them are in positions where they have access and opportunity to abuse children and adult followers. They are not immune to the same power dynamic as Romand Catholic priest.
Three priests on that list were cycled through the White Bear Lake parish, and were on my personal childhood scary people to avoid in the neighborhood list. One of them still lives a life of comfort and ease, sheltered by the church, even though he molested at least four boys and destroyed their entire lives. For many years, the church kept an enormous turn of the century hunting lodge just south of St Paul as a private place to send pedophile priests from all over the country for penance. After penance was served, they would be rehabilitated with probationary terms in the local parishes where they continued on raping children. So yes, they were dumped here for treatment, and then usually assigned to a rural parish in the midwest.
Not so surprising when you remember the lengths the church goes to in order to close ranks and hide the problem, and people’s willingness to believe the lie so as to maintain their smug self-assurance.
Catholic apologists never tire of reminding us that most priests are good and decent people. Strictly speaking, I believe that is true. However, the data from Minnesota make it hideously clear that the wicked minority is absurdly large. What’s more, it calls into question the “good” priests, some of whom were certainly looking the other way when their brethren were committing their transgressions. Especially culpable is the hierarchy, the bishops and archbishops who shuffled the molesters around to avoid exposure and scandal. At the very least, priests who fell under suspicion should have been reassigned to cloisters where they had no access to children and could be kept under close supervision. Instead, they got reassigned to new parishes with new prey. The scandal never ends.
As I’m pretty sure I’ve said on here before I suspect there’s always been a share of victim blaming going on in these cases. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the hierarchy moved these guys around believing the abused kids seduced the priests, and if they were removed from the temptation of those specific kids they’d sin no more.
I checked to see if there was a diocesan directory on their website. Most dioceses publish one annually with stats about active clergy, retired clergy, etc. However when I searched this statement is what I found:
Seems to me if these delays in publishing are due to priests abusing children it is entirely within their control! I also saw on their website that they had a “mass of healing, reconciliation and hope” tonight. This is the typical empty gesture they offer their victims and an attempt to keep wealthy donors in the fold. I hope the courts take away some substantial assets from this criminal organization.
Has that nice new pope said anything nice about this yet, to make it all better?
I’m hoping dumping ground… not that that’s a particularly good option, but at least it’s better than the other. If this one diocese is representative… can it be that positions of power, respect and authority like those found in churches are inherently attractive to the kinds of people who would do that, or do we have a huge problem in general society? It’s obviously nonsense that religion makes you a better person, but surely it can’t be true that it makes you a worse one to this extent?
Moggie, #23
No, but you might get to go to heaven. And if you’re gay, maybe you’re sort of okay.
Re your last sentence, Athywren, why can’t it? Religion teaches a sense of hierarchy and entitlement. Good preconditions to create a fertile environment for evil.
From what I can gather. the dirty little secret of nearly every denomination is that their priesthood/ministry tends to attract kid fuckers. That’s not surprising. If you’re a pedophile, then the priesthood gives you both access to and authority over your intended victims. So, that comes as no surprise. It doesn’t excuse it or mitigate it but I can at least understand why.
The real thing that pisses me off about the whole Catholic Church pedophilia scandal is how many people in authority knew about it, how long they knew about it and how they either did nothing about it or ACTIVELY HELPED these scumbags. Transferring them to new parishes, threatening victims and victims families and generally acting as a kid fucker support network rather than doing what they should have fucking done and coming down on these guys with the full fury and wrath of the god that they pretend to believe in.
Bastards.
erichoug @ 27:
They were good at filling the pews (i.e. bringing in tithes) dontcha know.
And it’s time for some Tim Minchin to cleanse the proverbial pallet.
Repeated for emphasis.
If it were a ‘vanilla’ case of sexual predators using a job involving children to get close to victims, I wouldn’t be as enraged. Even if you take all the safety measures, any job that like that has a non-zero risk of being used that way. You do what you can to prevent it and prosecute the molesters and rapists who manage to slip through the cracks. It’s terrible that it happens, but since no system is perfect, I can’t really be angry at an organization that takes that responsibility seriously, but still falls victim to bad luck or a particularly cunning rapist.
The worst scandal isn’t the rape and molestations themselves, but the fact that they’re being covered up, minimized, and aided after the fact by the organization’s leaders. They are more interested in protecting their sexual predators and the organization’s short-term public image than protecting the children under their care. It’s worse because it enables and possibly even encourages future rape and molestation. It creates a safe environment for rapists to prey on the vulnerable. They won’t even stop to think about those long term consequences. That is the bulk of my outrage.
Keep in mind as well that some percentage — I have no idea what — are serial child rapists, abusing again and again and again and again, in part due to the actions and inactions of others elsewhere in the cult. So while it may be “only” c.55 rapists, it is also Very Probably a lot more children and/or multiple rapes of some of the children.
On the cuddly fraud in the palace in Rome: As far as I know, he has not repudiated the cult’s rejection of the UN’s findings.
Because it is simply the best representation of how I feel:
Tim Minchin – Pope Song
WARNING: NSFW and likely offensive to devout Catholics.
In Protestant churches clergy are hired and fired by local governing boards. In the Catholic Church, clergy are hired and fired by bishops. A Catholic priest who abuses children can stay out of trouble if the local bishop protects him, and we now know many bishops do. But if a Protestant clergyman abuses children he will absolutely be fired, and since no new church board will hire him without a good reference from his last place, it means he will spend the rest of his life selling insurance or something.
Also, the Catholic requirement of priestly celibacy probably means that the priesthood attracts a disproportionate number of sexually screwed-up men for whom marriage holds no appeal anyway. This factor does not exist among Protestants.
So it is totally likely that the number of Catholic priest pedophiles is drastically higher than in other religions.
By the way: fuck Protestants. I’m not defending them. Just pointing out that differences in culture and organization make a big difference on this issue.