out of the frying pan ...

By Diogenes ( articles ) | Mar 08, 2004

The experts weigh in:

"Men ordained around 1970 were at higher risk for abuse since they were ordained during the tumultuous years of Vatican II and were coping like everyone else with the wackiness of the 1970s," said Thomas Plante, a professor of psychology at Santa Clara University in California.

A few amateur observations:

• I realize that it's partly academic and actuarial jargon, but isn't it about time to drop the cant whereby a class of perpetrators is "at risk" for the crime it perpetrates? There's plenty of danger around because of out-of-control sexuality, but the perps create it, for God's sake.
• Every Catholic alive at the time was affected by the tumult precipitated by Vatican II. Yet there's no evidence that journeyman Catholic millwrights raped their apprentices or that field-grade Catholic officers hit on male recruits in disproportionate numbers.
• Doesn't it make more sense to say that Class of 1970 was not coping like everyone else?
• Just what did the "wackiness of the 1970s" consist in? Very high on the list -- at least in the formation of priests and religious -- was the replacement of traditional asceticism with the latest findings of academic psychology. So what's the game plan for fixing the catastrophe spawned by the wackiness? (Hint: it's not traditional asceticism.)