Thursday, June 25, 2009

Magic decade

Skim this chart to help make sense of this story.
Posted by Rich Leonardi at Thursday, June 25, 2009

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Unrelated but surprising news: Michael Jackson is reported to have died in LA. The LA Times said the time of death was shortly after 3pm.

Thursday, June 25, 2009 5:25:00 PM EST
Anonymous said...

Chart helps understand how he made it in - one word explains how it was ignored, perpetuated and protected - Pilarczyk.

Thursday, June 25, 2009 5:30:00 PM EST
Fr. Rob Jack said...

I would call it tragic rather than magic.

Thursday, June 25, 2009 10:15:00 PM EST
Art Deco said...

Anonymous,

If the situation in the Archdiocese of Cinncinatti has been similar to that of the average diocese, the incidence of abuse would have been highest around about 1979 and the most problematic cohort of priests ordained around 1970. Here in the Diocese of Syracuse, the median lapse of time between an alleged act and a complaint to the chancery was about 25 years. Perhaps it was lower prior to 2001, or lower in the Archdiocese of Cinncinatti. If Cinncinatti is about normal, the systemic problem has been on the wane for 30 years. Abp. Pilarczyk was appointed in 1982; it is hard to see how he can be held responsible for the generation of a foul clerical subculture that was likely in place 'ere he ever set foot there (no matter how badly he investigated and adjudicated individual complaints). You could look to his predecessors, I suppose, but the geographic uniformity of the problem and its presence in Ireland and Britain and South Africa suggests something terribly wrong with formation in English-speaking countries generally, from about 1925 onward.

Friday, June 26, 2009 4:34:00 PM EST
Anonymous said...

Art Deco:

(no matter how badly he investigated and adjudicated individual complaints)

That you would relegate the handling of an allegation of abuse of a child to a parenthetical is revealing. Moreover, the suggestion that the Chancery in Cincinnati has cover due to discernment patterns in South Africa and Ireland is specious and offensive.

Acquaint yourself with some rudimentary facts: Pilarczyk was ordained a priest in our Archdiocese in 1959, became an auxiliary bishop in 1974 and archbishop in 1982. On November 20, 2003 he pleaded no contest to five misdemeanor counts of failure to report cases of sex abuse by clergy to authorities. This plea was undertaken to prevent the filing of criminal charges.

Today, six years later, I can not take my five year old son to the Cathedral on fear that one of his buddies convicted post 2003 of meeting undercover police officers in Interstate restrooms is on the altar. This man has learned nothing and is personally responsible for tens of thousands in Cincinnati (including members of my family) leaving the Church.

I know that Pilarczyk is a flawed man and the Church is much bigger than him. For others to know that and return to the Church, sychophantic posts such as yours need to cease.

- Anon 5:30 PM

Friday, June 26, 2009 10:12:00 PM EST
Art Deco said...

Anonymous,

It remains an aspect of cause and effect that causes temporally precede effects. The diocese within whose boundaries I live adopted a policy in 1980 of taking accused priests out of circulation. There is not a single case of a serial offender (e.g. Maurice Grammond) being shuffled from one parish to another; three cases have been identified of priests with a solitary accusation against them were put back in parishes or schools after intervals of 4-8 years in administrative jobs (all three were removed in 2002). Yet, the accusation rate against the Syracuse clergy is quite high, nearly twice the national average. This is not because the chancery was systemically negligent in handling accusations. This is because patterns of recruitment and formation between about 1925 and 1985 produced a clerical culture infected with this sort of gangrene. About two-thirds of the accused priests were ordained by one man, Bp. Walter Foery. It is doubtful Bp. Foery had any idea that he had a systemic problem with his parish clergy. About 95% of the accusations against priests were forwarded to the diocese only after 1979. Bp. Foery retired in 1970. About 85% of the accusations against priests have been investigated and adjudicated by Bps. Moynihan and O'Keeffe. The only priest ordained by either of these men known to have an accusation filed against him is Fr. John W. Broderick. Fr. Broderick was tried in Montgomery County Court; he was acquitted on all felony charges and all the misdemeanor charges were withdrawn or vacated.

It would be an idle exercise to rail against Bp. Moynihan or Bp. O'Keeffe for their disciplinary practices. Their practices did not create the problem, and there is scant reason to believe it exacerbated the problem. We need to understand what created the problem, which has been pervasive throughout the English-speaking world; we need also to understand why particular dioceses (e.g. Grand Island) were spared the problem. Disciplinary practices may be an explanation in certain dioceses, but the long lag times between events and accusations and the concentration of accusations during a time frame (1983 to the present) which post-dates three-quarters of the events in question strongly suggest that this vector is just not very important as a force in generating or maintaining the problem.

Today, six years later, I can not take my five year old son to the Cathedral on fear that one of his buddies convicted post 2003 of meeting undercover police officers in Interstate restrooms is on the altar.

If you know the names, you can generally avoid the Masses they offer.

Saturday, June 27, 2009 2:50:00 PM EST
NC Sue said...

On a somewhat related topic...

I've been rather disgusted by the media's coverage of ALL things religious. They focus so much on the sensational. Someone whose only exposre to faith is the media could be forgiven for believing that religion is evil. So I posted something here:http://acts17verse28.blogspot.com/2009/06/news-flash.html offering some resources to counterbalance the negative reporting we see in the popular press. Do you have other sources you'd add to the list?

Sunday, June 28, 2009 8:37:00 AM EST
Anonymous said...

Art Deco:

Extrapolating from a collage of anecdotes regarding one matter (Syracuse) to another (Cincinnati) remains a hallmark of junk science. The situation in Cincinnati is not some type of Bermuda Triangle calling out for your exculpatory hypothesis. Pilarczyk appeared and pled at the Hamilton County Courthouse for a reason; his failure to report allegations of child abuse to authorities. Stop purposely confusing the abusers with those who covered up. Pilarczyk covered up and that is a matter of public record.

This obsession you have for white washing the Chancery in Syracuse (and apparently now Cincinnati) is strange. Odder still is your theory (of first and poor impression) that culpability in a leadership position can only attach if you had control of the intake process for line staff. I take it a Chief of Police is only responsible if they ran the academy, a General is only responsible if they ran the boot camp, a CEO only responsible if they conduct on campus interview, a….

It would be helpful if the Cathedral in Cincinnati alerted locals and travelers when Registered Sex Offenders were saying Mass. I assure you that does not happen. Perhaps it may with the much anticipated departure of your friend Pilarczyk. Until such time tens of thousands in Cincinnati will be standing down from Mass.

- Anon 5:30 PM

Sunday, June 28, 2009 9:47:00 PM EST
Art Deco said...

Extrapolating from a collage of anecdotes regarding one matter (Syracuse) to another (Cincinnati) remains a hallmark of junk science.

Actually, I was referring to descriptive statistics on the total population of accused priests in the Diocese of Syracuse and (more implicitly) to the descriptive statistics for the whole country provided by the National Review Board, to which our moderator links (which paint a picture fairly similar to what occurred in Syracuse.

Odder still is your theory (of first and poor impression) that culpability in a leadership position can only attach if you had control of the intake process for line staff. I take it a Chief of Police is only responsible if they ran the academy, a General is only responsible if they ran the boot camp, a CEO only responsible if they conduct on campus interview, a….

Again, the history of the Church in this country in recent decades can be divided into three periods. During the period prior to 1980, there were very few accusations against priests but (we can surmise from complaints filed in subsequent years, to which the John Jay Report makes reference) comparatively many instances of abuse; the period after 1990, during which many complaints were filed about abuses which took place in previous decades but during which few documented cases of abuse took place; and the interstitial period (1980-90), where there appears to have been both ongoing molestation and a good deal of information being forwarded to the chancery. It was only during this interstitial period that how the chancery was adjudicating cases of abuse was going to much affect the frequency of abuse. One asks questions about formation (and Abp. Pilarczyk does have some explaining to do, as he was a seminary professor) and recruitment because the discretionary decisions which affected the frequency of the problem (prior to 1980) were in this realm, not in the realm of how cases we adjudicated and what penalties were applied. (And questions about formation and recruitment are salient for all periods in any case).

Monday, June 29, 2009 6:33:00 AM EST

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