About

The Roman Catholic Church is one of the oldest and most revered institutions in the whole world. It is the “original” branch of Christianity, founded by Jesus and his followers around 50 AD. The Catholic Church is headquartered in Vatican City, which is located inside Rome, and is led by the Pope. It is the largest branch of Christianity by far with an estimated 1.25 billion followers spread out amongst almost all the world’s countries. The church has played a prominent role in shaping the moral code of most western countries, and many other countries throughout the world. Despite their long time standing as a pillar of morality, the church has been accused of many very immoral things throughout it’s history, including the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, and most recently, widespread molestation and sexual abuse of children by members of the church and the subsequent cover up of this practice by the church. Although it is unknown how far back this problem goes, sexual abuse of children by members of clergy (including priests, deacons and bishops) first started receiving significant media coverage in the 1980s, mainly by media outlets in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Ireland. The most cases of sexual abuse were reported in the United States. Just in the United States alone, there is an estimated 4,392 priests and deacons who have been accused of sexual abuse, most occurring between 1965 and 1980. Although the practice itself is disgusting and horrifying, the Church’s widespread cover-up and acceptance of it is arguably worse. Through multiple investigations, it has been discovered that the priests and deacons accused of sexual abuse are rarely punished and that often the bishops just moved them to a different area after they were accused. It was also discovered that Bishops very rarely, if ever, reported these crimes to the police. In America, it ultimately took til 2002, when the Boston Globe newspaper published it’s groundbreaking investigative report on molestation by church officials and the cover up of it by high ranking bishops and other church officials in the Boston area. Although the issue got some press before this, these articles exposed the controversy to the American public and made the issue a national headline. Since then, multiple priests and deacons who were named in the articles were arrested in Boston, and the church has changed it’s policies regarding sexual abuse, now requiring them to be dealt with by the upper leadership in the Vatican, and not just local leadership. Cases of molestation have dropped since then, but many argue that the church still continues their practice of moving offenders to different parishes after accusations and not reporting instances of molestation to the police. Certain members of the church and defenders of it have cited bias in these investigations, as they claim similar practices occur in other institutions such as the Boy Scouts of America and the US Public School System, and that the rates of sexual predators amongst members of Catholic Clergy is pretty consistent with rates amongst all adult American men.

Being raised a Catholic, this topic hit especially close to home for me. I had a slight understanding of this situation, but since I was very young when this first got extensive media attention, I did not really know the full extent of the situation til I saw the movie Spotlight, which is about the Boston Globe investigation of molestation in Boston. That movie piqued my interest in the subject, because it just seemed so improbable that the Church that I grew up with, and the Church that ultimately shaped me into the person I am today, was capable of such great evil. Although I believe that the relatively small percent of priests committing these heinous crimes do not necessarily reflect the attitudes of the whole church, the cover-ups by higher ranking members do raise some questions about the church’s overall morality. It was this, among other reasons, that caused my family to disassociate from the Catholic church, and after seeing the movie and researching more into the topic, I would never allow my future family to be associated with the church, as any organization associated with crimes such as these has to be evil.