Why didn’t Protestants didn’t try to score anti-Catholic points during the Sexual Abuse Scandal?

Last updated on: August 5, 2016 at 2:30 pm by Dave Griffey

Why didn’t Protestants didn’t try to score anti-Catholic points during the Sexual Abuse Scandal? 2016-08-05T14:30:29-04:00 Dave Griffey

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Easy. We knew it happened in our churches, too. The problem with the Catholic abuse scandal that set it apart from almost all other scandals was the appearance of a vast network of systemic cover up and intimidation. Except for a few well documented cases, most abuse revelations didn’t seem so widely hidden. In our cases, the scandals were dealt with on a local level, often quickly, discreetly, and without involving outside authorities. That is how it was usually handled in most organizations. In some denominations there might be more bureaucratic wrangling. But on the whole, there wasn’t a great number of incarcerations accompanying these accusations, unless it was a particularly egregious case.

Take a church I served at in Florida in the early 90s as an example. I was an associate minister. We had several associates and part time ministers helping the pastor. The congregation decided that the youth group needed a minister. So we hired one. All seemed to be going well at first, until reports started trickling in that something was seriously wrong. Youngsters were being hit on by the youth leader. Several girls came forward and said that the youth minster had made sexual advances. After inquiries and talking to the minister in question, it was decided the charges were valid. No police were called, however. Instead, we asked the youth leader if she could leave. That’s right, she. Breaking from the media template, she was a spunky, energetic young woman hired on to lead our growing youth ministry. And it wasn’t the young boys she was hitting on. Certainly not the image we conjure when we think of the abuse scandal.

But that was how we did it. That’s how schools did it back in the day. And it wasn’t some fluke. I ministered in several states through the years, and at no point was I in a district where something like this didn’t happen. Then again, I wasn’t in a school district where it didn’t happen, or in a town where at least one doctor or another wasn’t similarly accused. The point is, when the news of the scandal erupted across the international press, most Protestant leaders I knew kept quiet because we knew the problem was in no way confined to the Catholic Church. That was ridiculous to think. The massive, coordinated cover up that appeared to accompany the scandal was likely the result of the Church’s own institutional structure.

None of this is to downplay what happened in our churches, the Catholic Church, or in multiple organizations and professions outside of any church. The article just a reminded me why, in my experience, most Protestant leaders were reluctant to grab the Catholic abuse scandal and run with it. We preferred to focus on the overall problem of sex abuse in our sex saturated culture, which is probably the smart alternative.

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