Gerald has sifted through the latest reports from the USCCBureaucracy on the scope and extent of the Scandal and come up with some facts and figures that he’s put together. The John Jay and National Review Board reports focused on some new questions this year, including the time frame when cases took place, the incidence of new cases, and the differences between single-time abusers v. multiple abusers. There’s not too much surprising there, although it’s fun to watch them all avoid making the obvious conclusions.
The vast majority of victims were post-pubscent males, although the rate was even higher for perverts who had multiple victims. In other words, multiple abusers tended to go after boys, not girls. The other unsurprising information is that most abuse cases occurred before the pontificate of John Paul II and that there was a sharp downturn in new cases after his election. I think it would be a stretch to say his election was responsible for that, but may instead reflect more general changes in attitudes and a simple recognition that a big problem was getting out of hand. The real tail-off of abuse was after 1995.
What do we do with this information?
Of course, the natural question is: So what? What does the USCCBureaucracy intend to do with all this information? Is the current NRB audit process of the Charter and Essential Norms implementation a solution? Maybe we need to look at what the reports don’t say:
A search of the bishops’ last reportreveals 45 instances of the word “training.” Forty-six of the word “process.” Five of the word “moral.” Three of the word “sin.” Zero of the word “commandments.” Zero of the word “Gospel.” Two of the name of Jesus Christ. Zero of the word “confession.” Zero of “tradition” or “traditional.” Two for “virtue,” but they are actually the same mention, so that counts for one.
Those with a back ground in Quality Assurance know that allusions to “training” as a response to “Corrective and Preventative Actions” is really lame.
We need real corrective and preventative action.
Too bad Scott Adams isn’t Catholic, he could really go to town on this stuff. “Dogbert joins the NRB.” I could just see it now.