The moment after suffering

...But even this is not enough...

...What is needed, however, is more than a sophisticated detection system...

...God's people in the United States need a series of sunlit days, if for no other reason than to prepare for what the poet and mystic says will be "long forest stretches of wide inhabited darkness to be crossed, with pain and hunger, fear of unnamed creatures, an imminent certainty of being lost...

...Her words will also be its omega...

...It is, however, a good that is not good enough...

...To illustrate: Of the more than 500 priests and brothers who have been evaluated at Saint Luke's over a ten-year period, 44 have been diagnosed as pedophiles, I85asephebophiles, 142 as compulsives, and 165 as persons with unintegrated sexuality...

...their empathy for the victims...

...It is seldom reported that postabuse investigations have rarely yielded real surprises...

...Typically, solid recovery augments ministerial effectiveness...

...The second half is given over to warnings to the clergy in attendance delivered by beleagurered diocesan attorneys...

...Yes: We do have a strong data base, so that the information is at hand...

...If bishops and seminary authorities choose to accept a candidate with a history of depression, for example, then they must also accept the psychic and financial cost of maintaining that person in the clerical system...

...Because of the burden of clergy sexual abuse, now is an opportune moment to translate treatment experience into screening standards...

...A needed reform that has already been put into place in most seminaries is the institution of effective programs on human sexuality...

...Other findings confirm that the characterological sources of child sexual abuse are diverse in clinically distinctive ways...

...it isn't always used, or used wisely...

...There are many aspects of the clerical culture that need attention...

...If absence of any risk of failure were a prerequisite of priestly assignment, no assignments would be possible...

...They spoke of their pain...

...This too is a form of denial...

...On the other hand, the "marker" that bundles the variety of therapeutic strategies into an effective whole is an environment of trust and safety...

...But, since each diocese or religious order has limited resources for helping candidates to resolve developmental issues, the discovery of any developmental deficit should be matched with the capacity of the diocese, religious community, or seminary to provide supportive counseling and a safe environment...

...What is more reasonable is to make assignment decisions with extreme care and prudence, using appropriate disclosure to enhance the safety of everyone involved...

...About a third of those who have been treated as ephcbophiles were men who entered the seminary at an early age or with minimal life experience and were ordained with the psychosexual maturity of a thirteen-year-old...

...What can be done within existing structures to send a message of understanding and hope that would encourage those paralyzed by fear of their sexual secrets to reach out for the help that is available...

...Were acceptance procedures porous everywhere...

...The media reported the brothers' course of action accurately...

...Under this pressure it becomes easier to tolerate high-risk seminarians or to import candidates from other cultures with the compounding difficulty of cultural adaptation...

...But those realities cannot justify a dictum that says: No risk will be tolerated...

...She sensitized them to the dynamics of sexual abuse and developed a coherent, loving, pastoral response to the various publics the brothers encountered in their day-to-day lives...

...The sexual fantasy of a pedophile is determined by the physical characteristics of a prepubescent...

...the sex object of a molester of whatever orientation is a child...

...Common sense and intuition alone will not provide an adequate basis for making the needed changes...

...Goals must include the welfare of the applicant as well as the safety of children and the good name of 15 the church...

...the church is replacing only six priests for each ten it loses...

...A complicating factor in all this is the pressure created by the shrinking pool of applicants...

...The brothers chose to reflect on gospel values before reacting...

...A composite image drawn from the media would portray all molesters as monsters baked in a single mold...

...Most complaints arc coming from persons in their thirties and forties who are dealing in therapy with the residual effects of abuse...

...their concern for those in their community who had violated a sacred trust...

...The differences are clear...

...Most pedophiles and ephebophiles (terms briefly explained below) appear quite normal on the instruments frequently used in psychological screening, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory [MMPI] and the Millan Clinical Multiaxial Inventory [MCMI...

...No: There seems to be little political will among church leaders to establish minimum national criteria for admission to seminaries...

...Truth-telling in a safe place collapses years of habituated secrecy nested in abusive sexual practices...

...Also helpful is the institution of pastoral internships, which makes it more likely that suspect behavior characteristic of sexual abusers will be noted during the formation process prior to ordination...

...Are there good models of confrontation with that demon for church leaders to ponder...

...With rare exceptions, the priest-patient being treated in residential programs for the sexually dysfunctional is a creature of the past...

...We have not the certitudes of cure but only the probabilities of control through recovery, which is sustained one day at a time...

...of their findings, it is next to useless to say simply that the clergy have a problem with child sexual abuse...

...Overextended work days, she helped the brothers" leaders to clarify their basic values and to articulate their position on celibacy...

...Experience-based reforms arc needed in many areas: in seminary admissions procedures, in seminary programs on human sexuality, in mentoring and further education of the newly and not so newly ordained, in methods (other than denial) of dealing with scandal when it erupts...

...Questions and answers are focused on the "them" who are in treatment programs, isolated in long-term supervision, or laicized...

...If the process is designed only to finger the unworthy, then it is one-sided and potentially abusive...

...Hardly...

...Are there other means of minimizing risk at other points in time...

...The current trend involves placing them in group homes, usually in rural settings with a variety of supportive services but without an active ministry...

...Jessica Powers was the alpha to this article...

...Ironically, even as church authorities become more sensitive to the suffering of victims of clergy abuse, the abusers are becoming more demonized...

...My answers, as of the moment: Much relatively new and valuable knowledge is indeed available...

...They engaged a woman consultant, expert in communications and policy developoment and not intimidated by eccicsial power...

...The number of Catholics in North America continues to increase while ordinations decrease...

...Hindsight, with its peculiar clarity, asks why abusers were not detected earlier in their parish assignments...

...The sex object of a homosexual as such is an adult...

...At a minimum, the church in the United States needs a test for seminary applicants similar in nature to the LS ATs...

...There are those, for example, who blame the whole problem on a shabby screening system and poor monitoring in the seminaries...

...Mental health practitioners in search of testing procedures that will identify potential abusers believe that the most significant missing piece in screening seminary applicants is the taking of an adequate sexual history...

...A full-time independent psychologist was engaged and given sufficient resources to empower all victims to select options salutary to their healing...

...Take the small example found in the now obligatory clergy conferences on the sexual abuse of minors being held across the United States...

...In structuring the process, an atmosphere of secrecy must be avoided, and candidates must not find that the consequences of sharing personal information are punitive...

...Researchers who have studied the populations extensively are unanimous about the complexity and heterogeneity of the groups known as "child molesters...

...So much revealed in so few discouraging words...

...Saint Luke Institute has conducted the largest study of sexually disordered or dysfunctional clergy to date...

...This practice is being driven by fear of further litigation and by the unchallenged public perception that priest molesters are always predatory pedophiles...

...The assessment of risk in such assignments involves weighing a number of factors...

...Thus, the data and analyses generated by the study provide church authorities with a vocabulary and a diagnostic precision that may help clarify understandings of clergy sexual problems...

...For those in need of help, one senses that the overriding inhibition is based on their observation that being identified as in need means being excluded from active ministry...

...Perhaps accepting that minimum will lead to a similar national standard for spiritual and emotional acceptability...

...They are to be blamed in some instances for sensationalized and/or simplistic coverage and for failure to follow through on the topic beyond the revelations of shocking conduct by priests and of denial and evasion by church authorities...

...A thirty-year-old priest with the emotional life of a person half his age or younger may encounter situations that are perilous indeed...

...While the workshops achieve some positive outcomes (accurate information is always a blessing), the day concludes with little if any discussion of the real world of celibacy...

...At Saint Luke Institute we have discovered that one "marker" common to abusers is hatred of self...

...If society and the church insist on incarcerating or otherwise exiling the abuser, the possibility of effective recovery cedes to the anodyne of vengeance...

...Not discussed are the everyday practices that contribute to the keeping of deadly secrets, the small, subtle ways in which fear of power has encouraged silence about what goes on in 16...

...The cognitive distortion of the pedophile and the unremitting pressure experienced by the compulsive present more complicated treatment challenges with greater risk of recidivism...

...In the face 14...

...After ordination, the sexual crises of those who had always been potential abusers came into play in the less structured and minimally supervised parish setting...

...Such moments after suffering, Jessica Powers believes, should allow us to feast on a rich, succulent wisdom...

...Even in the presence of such encouraging signs, there is, of course, a need to honor certain realities...

...Should all rectors and faculties be indicted for malpractice...

...Their policies and procedures were clearly rooted in Christian values...

...What it shows is that the current spotlight on seminary and screening reform is too narrowly focused...

...Today, most applicants for priesthood are older men with considerable life experience...

...If anything has been revealed in the decade of treating priest abuses, it is that the self-hatred undergirding abusive behavior yields to a firm demand to reveal the worst about oneself, and to a discovery that rejection does not follow upon that revelation...

...A few seminaries have created environments where candidates are encouraged to work with the truth that is who they are, in contrast with past regimes when sexual struggles were masked beneath the pleasing behaviors of "the good seminarian...

...When the brothers were fully prepared, they spoke clearly and precisely, in a manner and tone that identified them as a church institution...

...Research-based answers are not currently available...

...It is painful to hear some of those who hear these warnings reveal how they have simply decided never to touch a child, not even through the gesture of forgiveness in the sacrament of reconciliation...

...Are we using it...

...But there was no particular wisdom there: practically all seminaries had produced their share...

...Yet insight was suppressed or judgment was withheld because few could fuse in their minds the reality they experienced—of a good celebrant, or an excellent teacher, or a dependable parish organizer—with the horror of child abuse...

...One finding confirms previous research that sexual abuse of children by clergy is not related to sexual orientation but to the choice of a vulnerable, nonthreatening child as a sexual partner...

...Without in any way minimizing the consequences of the abusive acts that took place, the reality of the event was often sexual acting out among emotional age-mates...

...These distinctions have prognostic relevance...

...Favorable indications include these factors: At the height of his disease, the priest involved sought older victims, showed little overt aggression, had a small number of victims, and now has better neuropsychological function: is conflicted about behavior, shows remorse and victim empathy during treatment, enjoys improved peer relationships, and is active in constructing support for his ongoing recovery...

...One such critic, a church liability insurer, sought for patterns by identifying seminaries where disproportionate numbers of abusers had been educated...

...They deserve great credit for breaking stories that were hard to credit in the first place, distasteful to many readers and viewers, risky because hard to document, strongly resisted by church authorities...

...THE MOMENT AFTER SUFFERING LESSONS FROM THE PEDOPHILIA SCANDAL CANICE CONNORS ¥he poet and mystic Jessica Powers writes: "Time's cupped hand holds no place so lenient, so calm, as this, the moment after suffering...

...The withdrawal of unfounded charges against Cardinal Joseph Bernardin provided a period of respite from intense—sometimes perfervid—media scrutiny...

...rectories that makes living a healthy celibate life more difficult than it needs to be...

...That is, after compiling and analyzing data for a decade, have we defined a priest-offender profile that would be helpful in screening seminary applicants...

...Her lines hold relevance for us after our ten years of suffering through the priest pedophilia scandal so well described by John Dreese in these pages |"A Priest Looks at Priest Pedophilia," April 22...

...Ephcbophiles find adolescents sexually interesting because they experience these not-quitc-children, not-quite-adults as emotional agemates...

...Widespread misinformation about the problem, ignorance of its nature, undifferentiated anger against those responsible— all these are understandable, but they are poor guides for policy...

...the public responded with respect...

...Those discerned to be "compulsives" experience sexual drive as beyond the pale of free will...

...There are no standardized testing procedures such as exist for entrance to schools of medicine or law...

...Thus a new policy issue: What to do with unassignable clergy...

...As poet she tells us that after the suffering there will be something "...like a sunlit clearing after densest wood...

...Can priests in recovery be returned to ministry without endangering children...

...The documented record of a decade of follow-up research on priests who have achieved sexual sobriety in the Saint Luke program indicates a solid "Yes," supplemented by a cautious "If...

...Typically, one half of the effort is a recitation of the scope of the problem with some discussion of the dynamics of pedophilia and ephebophilia...

...We may well be reflecting on what is now tragic history...

...In just such a place as I've described, one deacon, only a few weeks from ordination to the priesthood, declared that he had never experienced a more caring and effective formation staff...

...There is a contagious quality to solid recovery that should not be overlooked...

...What then often occurs is the emergence of a self-loving person who for the first time is not using religious practice and identity to escape or to hide but sees them as opportunities to provide truthful witness and caring service...

...namely, smooth, hairless skin and small genitalia...

...He had discarded patterns of denial, had grown in self-confidence—and now faced the prospect of being assigned to a parish where he could not afford to continue his newly acquired openness...

...Most often—despite the secrecy guarded by abusers, as well as by their victims—confreres, colleagues, and congregants felt uneasy with the abusers' preoccupation with minors...

...But perhaps it should not surprise us that many abusers got into and through the seminary system...

...When the number of seminarians becomes more important than the quality of the men accepted, the future of the priesthood is put at risk...

...The Christian Brothers of Melbourne, Australia, faced allegations similar to those many bishops have faced in this country...

...The problem is that even as the staffs of treatment centers have become more confident in their treatment protocols and more savvy in their recommendations of continuing care for patients, the bishops are becoming more reluctant to reassign priest molesters to ministry after treatment...

...Yes and no...

...Persons with unintegrated sexuality have simply avoided or postponed incorporating sexual identity and drive into their conscious selves...

...But is such wisdom available...

...There are factors that seem to reinforce this perception...

...The church must act as church...

...Even within the same regional seminary it is still possible that some candidates may have entered through a tightly defined process with articulated standards, while others are accepted by dioceses or religious communities with only a cursory review...

...The reality is otherwise...

...Have the publicity surrounding sexual abuse and the progress made in understanding its causes driven away the demon of denial...

...for them, sexual expression is both a power strategy to gain the unattainable and a medication for the pain of their isolation...

...Abusers love, but their love is self-entangled...

...The media have played more than one role in bringing about the present state of understanding and misunderstanding...