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BOOK
Review
Sex, Priests,
and Secret Codes : The Catholic Church's 2,000-Year
Paper Trail of Sexual Abuse by Thomas Doyle,
Richard Sipe and Patrick Wall
Reviewed by Robert Nunz, VOTF Los Alamos, NM
From several points of view Sex, Priests and Secret
Codes by Thomas Doyle, Richard Sipe and Patrick Wall
is must reading for every serious VOTF member. Not
only does it present vital historical background and
documentation on sex abuse history in the Church, it
also forcefully shows the horrific psychological impact
of that abuse on victims. The authors initially stress
that sex abuse in the church in general and of children
in particular is nothing new. Through the ages laws
and decrees, in localities first and later in Canon
law, tried to lay out sanctions for such behavior;
at the same time, rigid secrecy was imposed in order
to protect the image of the Church.
The lid began to come off in the early 1980s with
revelations by Jason Berry and others of the multiple
transgressions of Fr. Gilbert Gauthe in Louisiana.
Fr. Doyle, working for the Apostolic Delegate, and
others worked steadily to produce a comprehensive approach
to deal with these offenses. They would then present
the plan to the American hierarchy. The extensive and
carefully researched product of those efforts became “The
Doyle, Peterson Mouton Report of May, 1985” and
is presented in full in the book. Though Doyle and
others thought the report would be widely read and
accepted and implemented by the hierarchy, the report
and its authors were shunted aside with the excuse
they were trying to develop a business for themselves.
Bishops instead turned to therapists they selected
- to this day there are arguments over who controlled
whom in that process.
Of particular note is the concluding chronology that
includes an exchange of correspondence between Fr.
Doyle and then NCCB President Archbishop Pilarczyk
in the early 1990s(!); the Archbishop seeks to assure
Doyle that the bishops "never tried to hide the
problem or walk away from the problem." The authors
take up a number of pertinent questions that continue
to affect us; the existence of secret privileged files
deserving protection from legal scrutiny; the power
of the clergy and the profound impact it has on victims
(as opposed to the view espoused by Nussbaum in the
recent America article) is explored; and the complexity
of Church property ownership. The authors believe that leadership continues to play
a "shell game" with Catholics by using highly
paid consultants and attorneys to minimize problems
and effect damage control rather than applying forthright
confrontation of the problem.
The sense of betrayal felt by Catholics can easily
lead to anger and loss of faith, but the
authors counter that we need to keep focused and build
a new model of dialogue for the Church in the 21st
century. They emphasize that the dialogue, to be successful,
must
bring a sense of equality between laity and hierarchy
as partners and that the discussion must include issues
of sexuality.
It should be noted that the authors indicate they
are not attacking the notion of mandatory celibacy.
Yet required celibacy does pervade much of the text
precisely because, as Sipe and others elsewhere have
argued, more than half the clergy are not true to their
vows. Despite the deeply sensitive nature of the book’s
subject, the conclusions drawn by the authors are generally
mild and positive. What remains to be seen is if their
recommendations will be taken seriously not only by
our hierarchy but by ourselves and our fellow Catholics
in the pews.
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