With the death of CNSnews.com, Bill Donohue had to shift from the Media Research Center’s favorite dishonest Catholic to Newsmax’s favorite dishonest Catholic. He ranted in an April 17 column:
I have known Sean Hannity for years, and he is a good guy. But I cannot allow our friendship to get in the way of my job.
He made comments on his April 16 Fox News show about the clergy sexual abuse scandal that are dead wrong. Apparently, he also offended Catholics on his radio show this week.
Sean started out by saying he was raised Catholic, went to Catholic schools and attended a seminary high school.
He said he broke away from the Catholic Church because of the clergy sexual abuse scandal. That is his business. But it is my business to correct the record when misstatements of fact abound about this subject.
Sean said, “I left the Catholic Church in large part because of institutionalized corruption. And it was at the parish level to the bishop level, cardinals, all the way to Rome.
“And you know, the very top scandals, terrible behavior, frankly, went not only unchecked, but they never fully corrected it or dealt with it.
“And others at the Vatican have totally lost sight of the true meaning of the bible and its teachings.”
His sweeping statements do not hold up under scrutiny.
Get ready for more dishonesty from Donohue:
There was a scandal in the Catholic Church, but its heyday ended approximately a half-century ago. Most of the offenses took place between the mid-1960s and the mid-1980s.
How widespread was it at its height?
The Washington Post published a survey in 2002 showing that less than 1.5% of the estimated 60,000 or more men who served in the Catholic clergy were accused of the sexual abuse of minors.
A New York Times survey reported that 1.8% of all priests ordained between 1950 and 2001 were accused of sexually abusing minors.
The John Jay College of Criminal Justice issued a study in 2004 that found that in the period 1950-2002, 4% of the Catholic clergy were accused of sexually molesting minors.
It also found that 149 priests, or 3.5% , who had more than ten allegations of abuse were responsible for 26% of all the allegations.
One can, and probably should, argue that this number was several percentage points higher than it should have been. Donohue continued:
A more egregious error is assuming that nothing has changed.
Data from the last year that we have reliable information on, July 1, 2023 to June 30, 2024, show that of the 48,176 members of the clergy, exactly two had a substantiated accusation made against him during this period.
This means that a whopping 0.004% of priests had a substantiated case of sexual abuse made against them by a minor.
Unfortunately, in any institution where adults regularly interact with minors, sexual misconduct is a problem.
But there is no institution in American society today, religious or secular, that has less of a problem with the sexual abuse of minors than the Catholic Church.
To imply otherwise is irresponsible.
Why is it “irresponsible” to accurately point out that the Catholic Church had a bureaucracy that was devoted to protecting priests and ignoring accusations against them? Donohue doesn’t explain. Instead, he played the gay-panic card:
We know that 81% of the victims were male, and that 78% were postpubescent, meaning that the lion’s share of the abuse was committed by gay men (3.8% were pedophiles).
Of course, don’t expect the media to report these facts, including Fox News, which is part of the cover-up.
I wrote a book on this subject in 2021, “The Truth About Clergy Sexual Abuse: Clarifying the Facts and the Causes.”
As we’ve pointed out — and as Donohue surely knows — the John Jay report found no connection between homosexual identity and an increased likelihood of sexual abuse and argued that the idea of sexual identity should be separated from the problem of sexual abuse, since one does not have to have a homosexual identity to commit homosexual acts. This tells us what happened was a crime of opportunity rather than orientation. We suspect Donohue didn’t cover this in his book.
Donohue concluded by asserting: “If Sean wants to debate me, he can give me a call. He has my work and home numbers.” Interesting that Hannity reportedly has Donohue on speed dial — but given Donohue’s history of dishonesty on the issue, it’s unlikely this was acted upon.