The elusive truth about those sex scandals

Have you seen "Weigel about the huge ( ____ ) in the John Jay Report" (WDTPRS, May 24, 2011), where Fr. Z asks: "Did you see the analysis by George Weigel about the John Jay Study? I am just getting to it. Weigel makes good points for National Review Online."

Here are the opening two paragraphs with enumerations inserted:

The American narrative of the Catholic Church’s struggles with the clerical sexual abuse of the young has been dominated by several tropes firmly set in journalistic concrete:

1. that this was and is a “pedophilia” crisis;
2. that the sexual abuse of the young is an ongoing danger in the Church;
3. that the Catholic Church was and remains a uniquely dangerous environment for young people;
4. that a high percentage of priests were abusers;
5. that abusive behavior is more likely from celibates, such that a change in the Church’s discipline of priestly celibacy would be important in protecting the young;
6. that the Church’s bishops were, as a rule, willfully negligent in handling reports of abuse;
7. that the Church really hasn’t learned any lessons from the revelations that began in the Long Lent of 2002.

But according to an independent, $1.8 million study conducted by New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice, commissioned by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and released on May 18, every one of these tropes is false.

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