Catholic Church Investigation Says Hippies Made Catholic Priests Sexually Abuse Children
Laurie Goodstein reports on the release of an inquiry by American bishops into sex abuse scandals:
A five-year study commissioned by the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops to provide a definitive answer to what caused the priest sexual-abuse crisis has concluded that neither the all-male celibate priesthood nor homosexuality are to blame. Instead, the report says, the abuse occurred because priests who were poorly prepared and monitored, and were under stress, landed in the midst of the social and sexual turmoil of the 1960s and 1970s. Known incidents of sexual abuse of minors by priests rose sharply during those decades, the report found, and the problem grew worse when the church’s hierarchy responded by showing more care for the perpetrators than the victims.
This hippie-blaming strategy seems unlikely to persuade anyone.
