Correspondence Sex abuse & baby boomers
MAYES, DAVID & GREVING, THOMAS B. & PRUSAK, BERNARD G. & Baumann, Paul & Steinfels, Peter
CORROSPONDENCE Prove it Peter Steinfels's "The Church's Sex-Abuse Crisis" (April 19) is interesting, but he repeatedly makes use of the assertion that "what we are not seeing is a new post-1993...
...As for Bill Clinton, he grew up in a broken home in a Southern town and won a scholarship to America's premier Jesuit University...
...Alas...
...3. Abuse is always a problem, although it may have been more of a problem due to the climate of the 1960s and 1970s, but it has been significantly reduced by the bishops' new psychological understanding, their screening of seminarians, their combing of records for past abusers, and their changed ways of responding to allegations, all of which belatedly began between 1985 and the early 1990s...
...However, I tend to agree with Joe Klein's view in The Natural that our generation (I'm a boomer, too) had the good fortune of not having to face the hardships or the sacrifices of those who survived the Great Depression and fought in World War II...
...The only Iowa priest mentioned in a recent AP survey was George Mc-Fadden, who was "summarily retired" in 1991 after being accused of molesting an altar boy a decade earlier...
...He did not take advantage of this legal exemption...
...But the AP confirms what my wearying reading of many stories indicated: the "wave" of revelations overwhelmingly reports earlier abuse...
...not every boomer was pampered and indulged...
...It distracted him from implementing his political intelligence...
...THOMAS B. GREVING Alexandria, Va...
...But I have another reason for thinking that the senator was interpreting Johnson rather than Clinton...
...Whereas Johnson by McCarthy was a looming presence, Clinton was gone before he was there...
...As I wrote in my column, my recollection is that Eugene McCarthy did impersonations of both Lyndon Johnson and Bill Clinton...
...PETER STEINFELS Pampered...
...Two of these men were Catholic and told loved ones of their moral ambivalence about participating in an unjust war...
...As a Commonweal editorial intern in those days, I had the misfortune to serve as the subject of McCarthy's demonstration...
...But they served anyway...
...He needs to reexamine the history of the time before making such a sweeping indictment...
...PAUL BAUMANNn...
...He never provides any substantiation for this statement...
...Shakedown Unless Senator Eugene McCarthy visited Commonweal's old Dutch Street offices more than once and performed the same shtick on two occasions, I am afraid that Paul Baumann may have his facts mixed up [May 3...
...2. Abuse was a product of postconciliar dissent on sexual teachings and 1960s permissiveness, and it was halted by Pope John Paul II's strictures on seminaries...
...Alas...
...there have been...
...DAVID MA YES Hinton, Iowa The author replies: According to the Associated Press, the Reverend Don A. Rooney, the Cleveland priest who killed himself, had been accused of molesting a girl in 1980...
...I think that the preponderance of evidence points to the last explanation...
...As the oldest child in the family, Clinton was eligible for a hardship clause that released him from military service...
...In other words, we don't know the size of the "wave...
...There are alternative explanations of this fact...
...My oldest brother served an extended tour of duty in Vietnam and three friends of our family lost sons in Vietnam...
...As a student, several years before my stint at Commonweal, I shook Clinton's hand in an Oxford bookstore...
...Mayes's letter is a good example of the difficulty we are all having in absorbing these reports...
...There was a priest who committed suicide recently in Cleveland, Ohio, just before he was to be questioned about abuse charges...
...CORROSPONDENCE Prove it Peter Steinfels's "The Church's Sex-Abuse Crisis" (April 19) is interesting, but he repeatedly makes use of the assertion that "what we are not seeing is a new post-1993 wave of sexual abusers...
...Baumann's naive aplomb about an "entire generation" being pampered does not resonate with my experience...
...As far as Clinton's draft status goes, I find it hard to believe that he failed to take advantage of a possible legal exemption...
...Given the traumatizing effect McCarthy's impersonation of Johnson had on Bernard Prasak, it is not surprising he can't remember the more benign impersonation of Clinton...
...I agree with Steinfels: the facts need to come out...
...BERNARD G. PRUSAK Boston, Mass...
...There was a recent report of a priest who was moved from a parish near mine about seven years ago for alleged sexual abuse...
...PAUL BAUMANN...
...1. Abuse has continued at the same rate but we won't know about it for a dozen years or so...
...My recollection may be less than perfect since, in any event, the experience was traumatic...
...The author replies: Thomas Greving is quite right...
...As a forty-nine-year-old male, I resent that statement...
...To the best of my recollection McCarthy was demonstrating Lyndon Johnson's handshake...
...Paul Baumann writes in his May 3 column, "Primary Boomer," that "like an entire generation, Clinton remained pampered, untested, and indulged...
...Alas...
...According to Baumann, McCarthy "mischievously demonstrated Clinton's patented handshake, in which the notoriously touchy-feely politician looked you in the eye, grasped your hand with both of his, and then slid one hand up your arm above the elbow until he had you locked in his embrace...
...Though I voted for Clinton twice, I was disturbed and saddened by his personal behavior in office...
...I cannot prove it...
...Admittedly, these are just two examples, but one expects there must be more...
...I certainly didn't say that there have been no cases of sexual abuse by priests since 1993...
Vol. 129 • June 2002 • No. 11
