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June 10, 2002 8:45 a.m. Elephant Debated Mary Eberstadt’s new piece on the priest scandal.

atholic blogger, Amy Welborn, has responded to Mary Eberstadt's vitally important new article on the role of homosexuality in the priesthood scandal, "The Elephant in the Sacristy," and Welborn's response has been seconded by Instapundit. No doubt, this is only the beginning of a long-running controversy over Eberstadt's extraordinary article (Go read it at once!). Let me dive into the debate by commenting on Welborn's remarks.

The most important thing to note about Welborn's response is that she says she "mostly agrees" with Eberstadt. Given the many critically important points in the "Elephant" piece — the centrality of homosexuality to the scandal, the media coverup of that fact, the role of child abuse as a causal factor in priestly abuse, the untenability of the pedophile/ephebophile distinction — that fundamental agreement is worth emphasizing.

Now what about Welborn's criticisms? First, Welborn argues, in contrast to Eberstadt, that celibacy really does make a difference. Take away mandatory celibacy, says Welborn, and "the pool of candidates" would change, pushing the identity of the priesthood in a different "direction." Welborn is euphemizing a bit here with this talk of "different direction," since it's obvious that what she means is that an end to celibacy would diminish the proportion of homosexuals in the priesthood. Whether or not the abolition of celibacy would have that effect, the critical point here is that Welborn concedes that the cause of the current crisis is the high proportion of homosexuals in the priesthood.

Furthermore, in her remarks on Eberstadt, Welborn also effectively affirms the Michael Rose thesis from Goodbye Good Men. That is, Welborn notes that the high proportion of homosexuals in the priesthood does in fact tend to drive heterosexuals away from the priesthood.

Welborn's second point is that, contrary to Eberstadt's claims, there is in fact a culture of secrecy in the priesthood, and that this larger culture of secrecy has in fact contributed to the coverup. It's not just a question of gay bishops protecting gay priests, says Welborn; "it's about a stunning variety of dysfunctionals protecting fellow dysfunctionals."

But Eberstadt never denies the existence of a wider culture of secrecy in the Church. In fact, she affirms it. Eberstadt merely points out the fundamental role of homosexuality as the prime mover of the crimes themselves. Also, Welborn seems to pose the alternatives as homosexual bishops covering for gay priests versus heterosexual bishops hesitating to punish abusers out of fear that their own sexual or financial sins might come out. No doubt, all of that goes on, but there's a third possibility as well: heterosexual bishops covering up for homosexual bishops, not out of a fear of personal blackmail, but simply out of fear that the disproportionate place of homosexuality in the priesthood and the widespread disregard of celibacy vows (by homosexuals in particular) will become public. I know that a number of very well-informed Catholics have expressed shock to me since the publication of my own piece on the priest scandal that the proportion of homosexual priests is so high, and the disregard of celibacy so blatant, widespread, and ideologically based. The fact is, the painful truths about homosexuality and the Church that we now take for granted in our debates were successfully hushed up for years. Covering up those facts, deeply damaging as they are to the prestige and self-understanding of the Church, was the most important reason for the bishops' silence. So even the wider culture of clerical secrecy can have a lot to do with homosexuality per se.

Finally, Welborn seizes on some statistics in the Eberstadt piece that show a high proportion of pedophiles in the now infamous St. John's Seminary in Boston in the late 1950's and early 1960's. Welborn's point is that so many pedophile accusations prior to the Vatican II reforms proves that the culture of the Sixties cannot be blamed for the scandal.

Yet Welborn fails to note that Eberstadt's statistics (originally given by two Boston Herald reporters) show a near doubling of the percentage of pedophilia accusations at St. John's from 1960 to 1968. This massive increase confirms the idea that the cultural changes of the Sixties were driving the scandal. Although Eberstadt herself doesn't emphasize these issues of cultural history, they need some unpacking. For example, it's a mistake to think that "the Sixties" began only in, say, 1965, or even 1968. Historians of the Sixties have long emphasized that there were many anticipatory developments, from the introduction of Playboy and stars like Marilyn Monroe in the Fifties, to the Beat Generation of the same era. The reforms of Vatican II didn't materialize out of nothing. They followed on cultural changes that had already been registered at liberal seminaries in liberal towns like St. John's in Boston. So a higher percentage of pedophile accusations than is normal in the population at large in a liberal Boston seminary in the early Sixties, followed by a near doubling in just eight years, is entirely consistent with the notion that the developing culture of the Sixties has been driving this scandal.

In short, the Eberstadt thesis is upheld. But don't take my word for it. Go and read this extraordinary article yourself.

— Stanley Kurtz is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.