Red Deer Advocate
Published: April 09, 2010 10:37 AM
By The Canadian Press
Margaret Smith, above, treats priests with troubles such as depression and alcoholism and those who have sexually abused children.
by THE CANADIAN PRESS
AURORA, Ont. – The pastoral setting of Southdown Institute is where troubled clergy go when faith is no longer enough.
They arrive battling depression, burnout, addiction or “sexual disorders” — some of which resulted in child abuse. The institute’s psychologists have been treating them for more than 40 years.
In Canada, it’s the only institute of its kind.
The non-profit facility sits on 40 hectares of rolling farmland about 50 kilometres north of Toronto. It opened in 1965, with the support of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, as a place to help alcoholic priests. Few outside the church know it exists.
Some might expect its services to be in high demand, as sex abuse scandals sweep the Roman Catholic Church in Europe, following similar crises in Canada and the United States. Instead, half of its 44 beds are empty.
The huge drop in the number of Canadian and American priests over the years is partly to blame. The recession also made it harder for dioceses to afford the treatment costs. But institute psychologists say it’s equally clear that the number of priests who molest children has fallen.
“That wave has passed somewhat,” says Sam Mikail, the institute’s clinical director, referring to the number of pedophile clergy sent to Southdown after serial abuse at Newfoundland’s Mount Cashel orphanage became public in the late 1980s.
“The frequency of the abuses appears to be limited to a specific time period,” says Margaret Leland Smith, data analyst for a 2006 study by New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice, which surveyed sex abuse allegations in 335 Catholic dioceses and religious communities in the United States. “That isn’t to say that there are no abuses today, but that a vast majority of the people who were abused were abused from 1965 to 1980.”
Smith, a criminologist, was at Southdown last week to consult on the second phase of the study — partly financed by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops — on the “causes and context” of the abuse.
She has already hit a stumbling block that suggests the church’s troubles are far from over.
“Getting people who were in place to talk about what they did and didn’t do has been a significant challenge for us,” Smith says, referring to interviews her study group is conducting with bishops who led dioceses when abuse scandals erupted.
It is those actions — or inactions — that is fuelling the current public outrage. There is evidence from several countries that bishops turned a blind eye to sex abuse allegations by moving priests to other parishes. And few bishops seem willing to acknowledge their responsibility.
Most allegations were made after 1993, when sex abuse by priests became a hot media topic.
Smith partly explains the high concentration of incidents between the 1960s and 1980s with the sexual revolution. A psychological study of priests in the early 1970s found many preoccupied with sex. Not coincidentally, the number who left the ministry to marry hit a peak in the late 1970s.
“Among those who didn’t leave, many made unwise choices about exploring their sexuality,” Smith says.
This cohort of priests was particularly unequipped to deal with changing social mores. They were part of a big influx of young men entering seminaries before 1960, many coming from ghettoized Catholic communities.
Seminaries at the time offered little education on how to live a celibate life while developing intimate, non-sexual and supportive friendships. Some even banned student priests from walking with the same person more than once a month.
Mikail notes that until 20 years ago, boys were entering what was known as the “minor seminary” system — a high school geared to religious instruction. “You had to essentially make a lifelong decision about celibacy at age 13 or 14, before there was any opportunity for sexual exploration or discovery,” says Mikail, a psychologist at Southdown since 1996.
“Some of the confusion we see in these older (priests) really stems out of that developmental history. They never really had the opportunity to discover who it is that they are. And if they had some sexual experimentation it has typically been with other men or other boys who were in the seminary with them.
“So they make the assumption that they must be homosexual because they’ve only had contact with men. Or, they’re not sure because they’ve had some contact with men but they feel attracted to women. The confusion is not surprising. Now, that (seminary) system doesn’t exist any more, but you still have a whole bunch of people who went through that formation experience,” Mikail adds.
In short, while studies may suggest high child abuse levels are history, trouble caused by the church’s stunted relationship with sexuality is far from over.
Southdown’s clinical staff of 25 now treats the full spectrum of mental health problems, except for psychotic disorders. Most of its clients — men and women — are Catholic. But the institute is independent of the Catholic Church.
Over the years, between 40 and 60 per cent of the religious people it has treated have suffered mood disorders, like depression; some 40 per cent have suffered addiction, anxiety disorder or personality disorder; and five to seven per cent have struggled with “sexual disorders.”
Sister Miriam Ukeritis, Southdown’s chief executive officer, refuses to say whether there are currently priests accused of molestation being treated, citing privacy issues. Privacy concerns also mean she declines a request to fully tour Southdown and its grounds.
For the facility’s patients, burnout is a common problem. Southdown staff note it’s not unusual for a pastor to be responsible for multiple parishes, often driving 800 kilometres on weekends to conduct religious services. (One report cited the number of priests in Canada dropping from about 21,000 in the 1960s to less than 10,000 in 2000.)
The stresses of the job add to anxieties felt by those troubled by sexuality. Of the minority that ends up at Southdown for sexual issues, most are struggling with homosexuality. The next-largest group has had affairs with adult parishioners — what psychologists call “boundary violations.” A smaller number has sexually abused — or is attracted to — children.
Hard-core pedophiles are a minority. Most are instead immature men who abuse their power as priests.
“You’ve got a 45-year-old guy who is intellectually 45 but in terms of sexual and emotional development is 16,” Dodgson says, adding that some were abused themselves as children.
The program for child molesters includes individual and group therapy sessions, and work with a spiritual counsellor, who helps put priestly troubles in a Gospel context. Treatment can be particularly difficult when a priest escapes conviction due to lack of evidence, but suspicions are strong enough to have him referred. Denial becomes an obstacle.
There’s pressure from within the church to blame the sex abuse scandals on homosexual priests, and to screen out gay applicants to seminaries.
Some studies estimate the number of gay Catholic clergy at 40 per cent. Yet church teachings still consider homosexuality a disorder.