An earlier post on clergy sexual misconduct (read it here<\/a>) generated a number of very good comments.\u00a0 These comments also reveal fundamental misunderstandings about the nature of social scientific research.\u00a0 Many of those who did offer an opinion conflated the empirical, social scientific research on homosexuality and clergy sexual misconduct with the moral analysis of these issues.\u00a0 Methodologically people have confused correlation and causation.\u00a0 While there is a correlation between homosexuality and sexual misconduct among Catholic clergy–that is the two variables occur together–we cannot say on empirical grounds that the former caused the latter.\u00a0 (You can read more about the difference between correlation and causation here.<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Understanding methodology is important if we are to understand the what the research does, and does not, tell us about the problem of clergy sexual misconduct.\u00a0 So assuming a right understanding of the research, how should the Orthodox Church respond to the growing awareness of the harm caused by clergy sexual misconduct?\u00a0 I\u2019m not interested here in canonical discipline or the policing of misconduct.\u00a0 Policing\u00a0 is important but is largely reactive and rarely sufficient to undo the harm that has been done.\u00a0 So my concern here is to help readers understand clergy sexual misconduct and offer some strategies to lower its likelihood.\u00a0 In what follows, I’ll first sketch out a brief overview of the research into the problem and then\u00a0 offer some practical, if hard and no doubt unpopular, suggestions.At this point in my career I have responded to something like 20 cases of sexual misconduct committed by clergy from a variety of Christian traditions.\u00a0 I have also studied not only the John Jay report on sexual misconduct in the Catholic Church but research projects that have examined the characteristics of pedophiles, bullies and those who engage in various types of physical and sexual abuse of others.<\/p>\n

While the majority of reported cases of sexual misconduct committed by Catholic clergy involved sexual contact between priests and\u00a0 post-pubescent males, we have no research to tell us whether this has been a consistent pattern historically either in the US or worldwide.\u00a0 Based on my conversations with Catholics in the US as well as from the Caribbean, Latin America, India and Africa, I suspect that the recent American experience is not the norm and that most misconduct is heterosexual in nature.\u00a0 But this is based on only anecdotal evidence.<\/p>\n

A more substantial difficulty with the conclusion that the crisis in the Catholic Church is rooted in homosexuality is the confusion between the moral evaluation<\/strong> of homosexuality and its use as a predictor<\/strong> of sexual misconduct.\u00a0 I am unaware of any studies that track homosexual seminarians and clergy over time to determine whether they have engaged in acts of sexual misconduct and, if they have, how this compares to rates of heterosexual clergy.\u00a0\u00a0 Again, yes, the majority of those identified offenders are homosexual BUT we cannot conclude that sexual orientation is a cause of the misconduct anymore than we can assume celibacy is a cause.\u00a0 To assume either is to do so in the absence of rigorous empirical evidence and is an example of confirmation basis<\/a> (i.e., only paying attention to evidence that supports (in this case) one’s own moral position).<\/p>\n

This moral bias is also evident in much of the psychological literature on homosexuality, albeit from the other side of the question.\u00a0 For example, a recent article in the APA journal, American Psychologist argues that there is no difference between same-same and opposite sex relationships with regard to fidelity and psycho-social development of\u00a0 children raised by same-sex rather than opposite sex parents.\u00a0 Without getting involved in the methodological assumptions the authors make, if we take their conclusion at face value this means that homosexuality as such has no predictive value to help us understand and explain human behavior in the areas studied.\u00a0\u00a0 Therefore we must look to another, non-empirical, standard to determine public policy.<\/p>\n

Returning to the sexual misconduct of clergy, there are no test, or series of tests, that predict the likelihood that a man (or woman) will exploit a professional or pastoral relationship for their own sexual satisfaction.\u00a0 Even if we were to have a battery of such tests, they would tell us nothing about the individual’s<\/strong> chances of offending.\u00a0 It may be, for example, that over a third of reported child molestation is committed by homosexuals but this doesn’t tell me whether this man who self-identifies as a homosexual will harm a child.<\/p>\n

As I said above, I been involved in 20 or so cases of clergy sexual misconduct.\u00a0 Mostly I have provided pastoral care to victims, though I have been involved pastoral with some perpetrators (and before anyone asks, these\u00a0 were Protestant and Catholic clergy).\u00a0 I’ve also worked with victims and perpetrators of other forms of sexual violence.\u00a0 My pastoral experience leads me to conclude that clergy sexual misconduct, like all abuse, is a crime of intimate violence.\u00a0 In other words, what is violated is personal trust.<\/p>\n

The most effective perpetrators of intimate violence are those who can inspire and manipulate trust.\u00a0 This is why the popular kids in high school who are bullies are more likely to get away with bullying.\u00a0 And as I said above, sexual orientation and marital status do not predict the ability to abuse trust.\u00a0 Whatever may be the theological merits of excluding homosexuals from holy orders and\/or the restoration of a married episcopate these questions have no bearing on the prevention of sexual misconduct by clergy.<\/p>\n

What these solutions do offer, I would argue, is a false sense of security and the (self-) satisfaction of having “done something” to address the matter. \u00a0 Based on the empirical literature, the most likely outcome of excluding homosexuals from holy orders and raising married men to the episcopate is simply to create new opportunities for misconduct.<\/p>\n

So what then might we do to help clergy avoid falling into misconduct?<\/p>\n

To return to what I have said earlier, sexual misconduct is mostly a response to the demands of ministry.\u00a0 Assuming this is the case, this means we need to focus more on personal and spiritual formation in seminaries.\u00a0 This should include personal and group conversations about sexuality.\u00a0 We would also do well to address questions of personal finance and how people relate to food and alcohol.\u00a0 Based on what the Catholic Church is doing this means adding at least a year of seminary education.<\/p>\n

In additon to criminal background checks and psychological testing for potential seminarians we should also add drug testing and credit reports for candidates for seminary and again before ordination.<\/p>\n

Going a bit further, I would suggest we end the practice of ordaining neophytes (even those who have served as Protestant clergy) and anyone who has not attended seminary.<\/p>\n

But changes in the seminaries and who we admit to them are not sufficient.<\/p>\n

Parishes need to function in a healthy manner.\u00a0 This means not only ending\u00a0 the monasticization of parishes that we see in some jurisdictions but also the end of the lay trustee mentality that is widespread especially in our older, more established communities.\u00a0 Each in their own way lend themselves to fostering bullying behavior and rewarding habitual violations of trust that increase the likelihood of sexual acting out.<\/p>\n

Ideally this re-formation of parishes would be done by education but we cannot limit ourselves simply to this.\u00a0 We must also consider transferring\u00a0 or suspending clergy, removing council members, dissolving parish councils or closing the parish when necessary.<\/p>\n

And we must also have clearly delineated expectations for who can serve as lay leaders both in the parish and in the diocese.\u00a0 As a start, I would recommend that we draw our lay leaders from those who are weekly recipients of Holy Communion, who participate quarterly in confession, and who have a history of regular and increasing financial stewardship and volunteer service to the parish (say, 1-3 years) in which one wishes to serve as a council member.\u00a0 Just to offer a general guideline, I think 3-5 years of meeting these standards in one parish would be appropriate for diocesan service and\/or seminary.\u00a0 Needless to say, if you’ve never sponsored an adult for baptism or chrismation you ought not to serve on parish council or attend seminary much less be ordained; we are a missionary Church and those who do not demonstrate a missionary spirit are not suited for leadership.<\/p>\n

Finally,\u00a0 priests will need better administrative support, continuing education, more and better time off and in many cases salaries commensurate with the psychological, emotional, spiritual and social demands that are made on them.<\/p>\n

Yes, this is expensive and I can hear the arguments already.\u00a0 But I would argue that this is by far cheaper than the monetary, to say nothing of the emotional and spiritual costs, of clergy sexual misconduct.\u00a0 It is not that we cannot afford to take these steps; we cannot afford not to take them.<\/p>\n

In Christ,<\/p>\n

+Fr Gregory<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How should the Orthodox Church respond to the growing awareness of the harm caused by clergy sexual misconduct? I’m not asking here about policing misconduct but rather how are we to understand misconduct and what, if anything, can we do to lower its likelihood? In what follows, in this post I sketch out a brief overview of the research into the problem and offer some practical, if hard, suggestions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1784],"tags":[1325,11,296],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6499"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6499"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6503,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6499\/revisions\/6503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}