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Apostasy Caused the Sexual Abuse Scandal

(This article previously was published in OnePeterFive.)

The horrifying news from France last fall that some 3,000 priests sexually abused 330,000 children over 70 years points to another scandal within the Church: too many priests who have little fear of God and scant regard for core Catholic teachings.

The perpetrators’ behavior is not typical of those who believe in the Catholic doctrines of hell, purgatory, and justice. Many of them may not believe in God at all (or may not have believed, in the case of the deceased). Other deviant priests and bishops likely adopted the New Age concept of God being some kind of impersonal life-force. Still others no doubt consider God as being all love and mercy and no justice, in which everyone goes to heaven regardless of what wrongs they do.

The sexual abuse scandal is part and parcel of the corruption of Catholic seminaries that took place in the 1970s and especially 1980s as described in Michael S. Rose’s Goodbye! Good Men. He focuses on American seminaries, but undoubtedly the same thing was happening in France and elsewhere in the world.

The good men he refers to were orthodox-minded seminarians who only wanted to embrace and deepen their knowledge of age-old Catholic concepts. Shockingly and ironically, in many cases they were dismissed from seminaries, or were forced to keep their orthodoxy under wraps. They were considered “rigid and uncharitable homophobes.”

While not the case at all seminaries, in many of them homosexual activity and pornography flourished – and official Church teachings as laid out in the Catechism of the Catholic Church were scorned by many professors, seminary deans, and vocations directors. In fact, it could be argued that those places were positively anti-Catholic.

At one seminary, “’a large number of students had been convinced by some liberal teachers that sexual promiscuity with the same sex was not a violation of celibacy,’ an outrageous distortion of Catholic teaching.”

As Rose tells it, it wasn’t uncommon throughout seminaries that non-marital sex was considered fine, homosexual acts normal, and contraception morally acceptable. Celibacy was discouraged. Other anti-Catholic viewpoints among professors included: the Bible isn’t to be taken seriously, all religions are equal in the eyes of God, the Pope isn’t infallible, the Real Presence is a myth, Jesus isn’t divine, and his miracles were fabrications. One formation program even pushed Gnostic and New Age practices such as crystals, tarot cards, and Ouija boards.

Seminarians lost their faith, as did priests of that era, many of whom abandoned their vocations. Many faithless men continued in the priesthood. In an interview with LifeSite’s Jonathan Van Maren, Magdalen College of the Liberal Arts professor and Crisis contributing editor Anthony Esolen spoke of priests who lost almost all of their faith and who are in a state of apostasy. “And they’re still priests – that’s the job they were trained for, they don’t know how to do anything else. And they infest the churches.”

Without faith in God, especially in a God of justice, people are more prone to doing bad things. With scant regard for the teachings of the Gospels or for the moral precepts of the Catholic faith, some priests may have been in a constant state of mortal sin (absent confession) either from engaging in illicit practices themselves or by signaling to others that it’s fine to do so.

“The notion that God is watching you even when others are not is probably the most powerful civilizing force in all of human history,” writes author and commentator Jonah Goldberg. In the Catholic tradition, not only God is watching your every move, but so are angels and devils, the latter all-too eager to testify against you on your judgement day. But a sexually abusing priest of weak faith is devoid of any perception that God or any other supernatural entity is watching him. Or he has a New Age notion of God. Or he thinks God is only love and mercy and that there’s no hell. In accordance with authentic Catholic teachings, God is certainly full of love and mercy but He’s a God of justice as well.

To test whether people change their behavior if they think supernatural entities are watching them, some years ago while at the University of Arkansas, professor Jesse Bering and colleagues conducted an experiment in which they had undergraduates take a test on which it was easy to cheat. A portion of them were told the ghost of a (fictitious) dead graduate student recently had been seen in the testing room. Sure enough, that group as a whole cheated a lot less than the control group.

Pedophile priests, many of whom scorn authentic Catholic teaching, likely think no one is watching them whether natural or supernatural entities. By contrast, those who fully believe in Catholic doctrines think God always is watching. “God knows what you did. God is going to punish you for it. And that’s an incredibly powerful deterrent,” the University of Edinburgh’s Dominic Johnson told National Public Radio. “Everywhere you look around the world, you find examples of people altering their behavior because of concerns for supernatural consequences of their actions. They don’t do things that they consider bad because they think they’ll be punished for it.”

The type of God one believes in can make a big difference as well. While it isn’t popular these days to paint God as being judgmental and punitive, that perception of God elicits better behavior. In another experiment, Azim Shariff and Ara Norenzayan of the universities of Oregon and British Columbia, respectively, administered a math test to several dozen undergraduate test subjects, who afterward were asked about their views of God. Atheists and agnostics cheated significantly more than those who considered God to be punishing and justice-minded. As for believers in an exclusively loving and forgiving God? They cheated as much as the atheists and agnostics. “How much you believe in God matters less than what kind of God you believe in,” wrote the researchers.

Lacking a belief in God and/or a belief in authentic Catholic doctrines of a loving, merciful, and justice-minded God, there’s much less incentive to stay on the straight and narrow. It’s what led to the priestly sexual abuse scandal in France, the U.S., and elsewhere.

Fortunately, today the seminaries by and large are in much better shape. The vast majority of the sexual abuse took place in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s in the U.S. and France – although from reading today’s news, one wouldn’t realize that since media outlets wish to push the narrative that the situation is still as bad as ever. And thank God that compared with older generations of priests, the younger generation of priests tend to be more religiously orthodox. They’re more cognizant that God is keeping close tabs on them. That’s a strong deterrent against sexual immorality and abuse.

Godly Guardrails Keep Kids on the Academic Track

(This article previously was published on the Institute for Family Studies website.)

It is commonly thought that devoutly religious people are less educated. If that were the case in decades past, it is not so anymore, and certainly not among the younger generation. Very religious youth are more likely to get better grades than non- and moderately-religious youth, and they graduate from college to a greater extent. Those are the findings of Tulane University professor Ilana M. Horwitz in her book God, Grades, and Graduation: Religion’s Surprising Impact on Academic Success (Oxford University Press, 2022).

Religion is usually associated with improving one’s prospects in the afterlife. But literally thousands of studies in recent decades confirm how powerful religion can be in improving prospects in this life, mainly in the areas of mental and physical health. God, Grades, and Graduation is a valuable addition to the literature, adroitly explaining how religion can improve educational outcomes. A dry read it is not: Horwitz supplements her extensive findings with scores of personal stories of adolescents. In fact, I found myself reading excerpts from those stories to my own teens, in the hope of inspiring them.

Horwitz focuses on Christian students, mainly because in the Christian-majority United States, they constitute the vast majority of study subjects. And she has no Christian axe to grind; currently Assistant Professor and the Fields-Rayant Chair in Contemporary Jewish Life at Tulane, she is “fairly agnostic about God.” She comes from an academic background of studying educational outcomes based on race, class, and gender. But about a decade ago while a graduate student at Stanford, she could not help but notice how many of her neighbors centered their lives around church and faith, and wondered if that shaped their children’s educational trajectory. She searched for studies on this but came up empty. So she started doing studies of her own.

Drawing from sources that include the National Study of Youth and Religion, the National Student Clearinghouse, and more than 200 interviews, among her findings is that devoutly religious high school students are about 10 percent more likely to earn A’s than other students, “which is statistically quite substantial,” she notes. They are about 40 percent more likely to earn a bachelor’s degree. And they are not few in number; Horwitz estimates that about one in four students in American schools are “abiders” as she calls them – i.e. religiously devout, who orient their everyday lives around their faith.

The grades and graduation rates of abiders versus nonabiders (i.e., non- or moderately religious adolescents) vary depending on race, gender, and socioeconomic status. The gap is particularly pronounced among working- and middle-class white males, who are prone to engage in risky behaviors that derail them from academic achievement. But for a subset, “godly guardrails” keep them on track, she explains.

John was a case in point. Among kids like him whose parents are high-school graduates, only about 15 percent end up getting a college degree. Too many things knock such kids off the road to higher education, such as school suspensions, substance abuse, and a home environment where literacy and learning are not prioritized. But John was religiously devout. His grades weren’t the best, but he did not drink, use drugs, party, or even use profanity. He obeyed his parents and teachers and exercised self-discipline—qualities that helped him go on to higher education.

These days, the ideals of public schools and of religious institutions may seem worlds apart, but one thing they have in common is an emphasis on maintaining social order. A “hidden curriculum” in school is the “three Rs”—rules, routines, and regulations. A central principle of Christianity, writes Horwitz, is a commitment to authority, as well as delaying gratification and following norms and rules. Such habits are highly valued in the public school system. Devoutly religious persons tend to score higher on conscientiousness, which entails being self-disciplined and organized. Cooperation and agreeableness–connoting being considerate, kind, and sympathetic–are factors that tend to boost religious students’ school success as well. These personality traits translate into refraining from skipping class or school, taking more advanced courses, completing homework and curricula, having more academically-oriented friends, and having fewer behavioral problems.

There is something of a paradox in her findings: abiders who come from upper-middle-class and affluent families, especially females, tend to choose less-selective colleges even though they could get into more selective ones. The result can be lower lifetime earnings. Why do they “undermatch”? Reasons given in interviews include a desire to: stay local to be closer to family; attend conservative Christian colleges to stay closer to their faith; live at home rather than on campus in order to avoid an intense party scene; and to avoid spending too much time with people who have different morals. These students are not necessarily eager to climb social class ladders, preferring a God and family-centered life, observes Horwitz.

They may take a financial hit. But attesting to the adage that money does not buy happiness, it is their overall wellness that counts. “The pattern was clear,” writes the author. “Abiders are significantly less likely to experience emotional, cognitive, or physical despair. They feel less anxious, healthier, and more optimistic about life. Without a doubt, their deep relationship with God helps them overcome several challenges they bump up against. Abiders are simply more resilient. This is driven by their involvement in a religious social community but also their steadfast belief in God.”

In her concluding chapter is a call to action: admissions counselors of selective colleges and universities should seek out religiously devout applicants, not only to boost and maintain the number of top-quality students but also to promote intellectual diversity. There should be an “openness by college admissions counselors to view religious and ideological diversity as valuable when admitting applicants.”

That recommendation is a breath of fresh air in a world where devout Christians on campus often feel they are under siege. Unfortunately, powerful factors are working against increased ideological diversity, not only coming from professors and administrators who are disproportionately atheist, agnostic, or even outright anti-Christian, but also from prospective religious students themselves, many of whom are highly reluctant to step into such an environment. So in addition to Horwitz’s recommendation to make greater efforts to attract abiders, selective colleges and universities should make similar efforts to recruit religiously devout faculty and administrators—and not just Muslims but also Christians and Orthodox Jews.

Speaking of Muslims and Orthodox Jews, Horwitz does not address the extent to which adolescents of those faiths improve their grades and graduation rates, perhaps because survey data is lacking. She does indicate that unlike certain abiders, Jewish adolescents are eager to attend selective colleges, but here she does not differentiate between Orthodox and non-Orthodox.

In any event, it is quite ironic that religious belief and practice are declining while the research on its mental and physical health benefits keeps piling up. With Horwitz’s book, add educational benefits to the mix. By raising a child to be a good worshipper, parents are likely to enjoy the added benefit of raising a good student.