Talk:Catholic Church sexual abuse cases/Archive 7

Settlements and bankruptcies in Catholic sex abuse cases

 * -- Moved here from my Tlk Page

The information about how much money was involved seemed a tad too explicit, in my opinion, to be included in the main article. I felt that it was an important aspect of the abuse scandals, but that it would be better explained in a separate entry, because it deals primarily with financial issues, instead of actual abuse by clergymen and the protection they obtained from many of their fellow bishops. ADM (talk) 01:49, 1 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Well, for the most part, I am against identifying specific individuals either as abusers or as victims. The one exception that I have is when the abusers have a nationwide notoriety such as Geoghan or Shanley.   I definitely agree that the amount that any one individual was paid does not belong in this article (or in Wikipedia for that matter). --Richard (talk) 03:04, 1 August 2009 (UTC)


 * The article cited above just gives general information about settlements and bankruptcies, and doesn't get into the details about specific abusers and their victims. I agree that it's usually wrong to name victims, unless the victim was some kind of local celebrity. Regarding abusers, I agree that they should only be named if they were publicly mentioned in national or local media a certain number of times, and that Wikipedia shouldn't be doing any original research on the matter. ADM (talk) 03:47, 1 August 2009 (UTC)


 * --Will (talk) 14:42, 11 September 2009 (UTC)


 * The prepared chart of payouts repeatedly leaves out the settlement paid by the Jesuits in Sacramento to Will Green for $100,000, as reported in the earlier extensive Wikipedia article before ADM or someone's editing, and by the Sacramento Bee. In addition the case brought to light the "first" known case of ritual abuse of altar boys by two twin brother priests.  I have tried to amend the chart to reflect this, unsuccessfully. Please assist.Willjgreen (talk) 21:48, 11 September 2009 (UTC)


 * I vote against deletion of the abuser's names. This was a very sore point in the Irish abuse cases resolution. It made it very difficult for other agencies to do further investigation of the overall problem, according to the victims. And the victims weren't all that concerned about going public with their names.
 * Also, retaining the numbers is VERY useful for understanding the scope of the problem. I had never seen a compendium of this info before.
 * --StudiousReader (talk) 04:36, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

Supreme Court of Canada ruling on liability of the Church
Xandar deleted the text regarding the 2003 Supreme Court ruling. There are a number of problems with that text (e.g. the quoted text from the ruling seems harsh) including the fact that it seems to be redundant with the 2009 ruling. I haven't seen any explanation on why the Canadian Supreme Court felt it necessary to issue two rulings. In the U.S., the 2003 ruling would have been used by lower courts as a precedent. Perhaps the Canadian judicial system works differently from the U.S. system. In any event, additional research may help us compose text that mentions both rulings and the distinction between them, if any. --Richard (talk) 15:10, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I didn't check canadian case yet, is it a major scandal, if not maybe you should first add it to abuse by country article. I hide some countries, until we decide which countries are leading ones in the scandal cases. Kasaalan (talk) 20:03, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Settlements and bankruptcies in Catholic sex abuse cases nominated for deletion
I have nominated Settlements and bankruptcies in Catholic sex abuse cases for deletion. Please express your opinion here. --Richard (talk) 06:55, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Allegations, allegations, allegations
May I ask a number of editors to rationally avoid this word in this text? That the crimes were committed - there is more than enough of evidence. Those defending the Roman Catholic Church shall express their opinion in exclusively Roman Catholic Church publications and sites.--141.156.151.15 (talk) 00:59, 9 August 2009 (UTC)


 * It will be avoided when it doesn't apply. The truth of the matter is that a lot more of the cases ARE mere allegations than most people think.  Also remember that it can still be alleged when speaking of it in the past tense.  I'll glance through the article again and see if there's any places where it obviously doesn't apply, but I somewhat doubt it.Farsight001 (talk) 01:54, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Also - remember that just because something is called an allegation doesn't mean it didn't really happen.Farsight001 (talk) 01:56, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree with Farsight001. It's a crime when someone is convicted.  Until then, it's an allegation.  If a jury finds in favor of a plaintiff in a civil suit, the defendant is not guilty of a crime but a tort.  If a civil case is settled out of court, there is no proof of a crime and often not even of a tort. --Richard (talk) 05:32, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Richard, in the context of individual cases, then of course it's only an allegation until someone has been convicted, but in the wider context of Catholic sex abuse cases, 141.156.151.15 has a point when he complains about overuse of the word 'allegation'.


 * IMO, the opening paragraph of this article does come across as being overly defensive, because of the term's overuse. "The allegations covered events alleged to have occurred over a period ranging from the middle to late 20th century" is a case in point; The title of this article is not Allegations of Catholic sex abuse - and whilst some, perhaps many, individual cases remain allegations, there is no doubt that real cases of sex abuse have occourred and it's not encyclopaedic to continually refer to them as 'allegations'. Obscurasky (talk) 22:03, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Recent radical deletions by ADM
So... ADM has executed another series of radical deletions which were reverted by 67.241.38.23. I was trigger happy and undid 67.241.38.23's reversion without fully understanding what was being reverted.

ADM had eviscerated this article. Upon reviewing his edits, I realize that he is on the right track. The article is way too long and does need to be cut down but ADM's style is to just move text to another article without leaving behind an accurate summary of the text that was moved.

I don't agree with the creation of all these subsidiary articles but I'm not motivated to challenge them with an AFD either. What I think we need to do is to review the article more carefully and use summary st yle to summarize the text before deleting it.

--Richard (talk) 05:08, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

OK... I've trimmed the article back to 80kb. Remember that the 50kb suggested limit is exclusive of footnotes and other bottom material. Also, there is a lot of text in the article that is commented out, adding to the byte count although these should be excluded from the byte count since they aren't part of the currently displayed text.

--Richard (talk) 06:07, 10 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Again I will have to review all the complicated edits, why didn't you just create another main article for "Debate over the causes of the sexual abuse" to trim the article in the first place, if the length is an issue. Kasaalan (talk) 00:31, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm deleting the half-section on clerical celibacy & childhood sexual abuse
There is still much that is close to irrelevant & poorly sourced (ie., one self-interested non-authoritative blog link.) I'm specifically referring to the section on the alleged relationship between clerical celibacy & childhood sexual abuse. Neither people attached to the bishop's annual conference, the SNAP leadership, lawyers filing the suits, nor any mainstream sexuality researchers have suggested such a link. No one with a serious stake or expertise in the issue regards it as relevant. It is a red herring.

I'm not Catholic, & think that the bishops have made an absolute mess of the situation, but the alleged linking of clerical celibacy & CSA smacks of cheap, anti-intellectual, anti-Catholic prejudice. There are other very valid reasons that many American Catholics don't support a celibate priesthood, but this one is not relevant.

-- Sturunner (talk) 18:39, 10 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I've no desire to embarrass, but this link is suggested by Henry Charles Lea in the reference I just inserted, beginning in 398 a.d., on p. 535 of his established and academically accepted work. The linkage is demonstrated throughout the entire book. His book makes interesting reading on this subject. You can download it for free. (BTW: Marriageable ages in all centuries before the 20th were commonly 12 yrs or younger. See Romeo and Juliet. Examples abound. So the indiscretions in Lea's book involved victims (aka virgins) of that age and maturity.) So if you've deleted it already, maybe you should consider putting it back. --StudiousReader (talk) 04:07, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Ummm...you may want something even more direct. Consider the controversial HBO documentary "Celibacy" that relates a saying among monks in the early Saint Catherine's Monastery that "With wine and boys around, monks have no need of the devil to tempt them.". This is admittedly historical. But many similar points are mentioned in that documentary. Actually, I could send you some quotes from that documentary with sexologists shown researching and insisting on precisely this linkage...that attempting celibacy tends to make one so starved as to go into a state of near delirium. I'll watch this video again for PRECISELY the narrowly defined linkage you desire. --StudiousReader (talk) 12:24, 10 September 2009 (UTC)


 * My H C Lea reference (the entire book) contradicts so many Vatican statements and tentative issues in this entire writeup that I'm beginning to think SEVERAL of his quotes need to go at the BEGINNING of this article. This really didn't just start happening! This problem has been around since the 4th century. And MANY people have known about it, inside and outside the Vatican, throughout history. Lea's complete library of original sources are available at the Univ of Pennsylvania. He is a near perfect "second source".
 * Also, 6% of priests in America get involved with minors. (from a PhD on CSA) from the HBO video.

--StudiousReader (talk) 12:59, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Global Extent
The heading  'Global extent'  seems to be in the wrong place. Is it meant to be listed under  'Response of the Church' , or should it be a separate category? Obscurasky (talk) 17:47, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I have now moved the section 'Global extent' as it seems pretty obvious that it's been inserted into the 'Response of the Church' section in error. If I'm wrong, I'm sure someone will move it back again. Obscurasky (talk) 12:19, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Other headings in the wrong place
There seem to be several other headings in the wrong place; perhaps the remenants of previous editing?
 * There's quite substantial overlap in headings 1 and 2. I propose 2 be absorbed into 1.
 * In section 4, I propose that Relations between the Vatican and American Catholics should be absorbed into the subsection above it Initial response of the Vatican.
 * The subheading Prevalence of the problem, also in section 4 should be moved to section 3.
 * The subheading Response of the Vatican in section 5 should be moved up to section 4
 * There's also a table at the bottom of the article, which looks as if it was left over from a previous edit. It also appears in the article Settlements and bankruptcies in Catholic sex abuse cases, where it has since been updated. I propose it be deleted from this article, although I think a section on settlements should be retained - essentially to link to the above article. Obscurasky (talk) 13:02, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

POV passage
Certain people are insisting on reposting several paragraphs of strongly POV prose and Original Research and synthesis in the Crimen Soliciatonem section. Please leave this out. This article is not the place for personal POV rants and Original research. The material does not meet with WP requirements on balance, OR, or sourcing.  Xan  dar  15:48, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I disagree completely. HC Lea is a perfect "second source" that is commonly assigned in university classes in social history in the modern day. I (and probably others) will challenge this to highest authorities. The only POV assertions are yours. --StudiousReader (talk) 21:53, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Lea is also commonly cited in the Encyclopedia Britannica...and many other places. --StudiousReader (talk) 22:02, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
 * No. The new section is unbalanced in length, unreferenced and Original research and synthesis.
 * It starts of with the strongly POV and polemic sentence "The defensive response of the Vatican, though, is contradicted by the following elements." This sentence alone breaks at least five key Wikipedia rules, by being POV, editorialising to the reader, by being unreferenced, presenting opinion as fact, and introducing a WP:Synthesis put together by the writer. This isn't a site for polemic rants.
 * This objection can be completely satisfied by a minor rewording. --StudiousReader (talk) 01:32, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
 * The two bullet point are again entirely unreferenced, being clearly Original research of a highly dubious nature on the part of the Wikipedia editor who posted it. It consists solely of his own opinion of what certain Vatican documents say and imply. This again is completely unacceptable under core Wikipedia policies.
 * This objection should be fixed with a simple "citation requested". --StudiousReader (talk) 01:32, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
 * The piece by Victorian writer Lea, is about another issue entirely and has again been added to the article as a form of original synthesis, to make an unreferenced personal argument aboout celibacy and abuse, that is not referenced from reliable sources or otherwise.
 * The fact Lea is from the Victorian era is, of course, completely irrelevant.
 * If you don't like ellipses, then suggest more of his book be inserted. Volume and exhaustive quantity is not reason to dismiss history. --StudiousReader (talk) 01:32, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
 * The whole of this addition has to go.  Xan  dar   22:47, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
 * No again. The HC Lea summary is about abuse of the confessional, as stated therein. These are the exact words "abuse of the confessional" that the Holy See used to describe Crimen Sollicitationis, its purpose and content, in its own defense given to the BBC after their documentary.
 * The only "original synthesis" that exists is the ellipses used to keep the citation short. The citation CAN be lengthened. Please read Lea's text. --StudiousReader (talk) 23:15, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
 * The first sentence is a statement of opinion and editorialising, pure and simple. It is unsupportable
 * The bullet points remain entirely Original Research
 * Did you read the policies on Original research and synthesis? The use of Lea is a clear case of Original synthesis unless a reliable source very clearly makes the same argument. There is no justification for the continued existence of the whole passage.  Xan  dar   00:14, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Blatant Censorship From Sturunner
I demand an explanation for the removal of things that RCism itself described as relevant in its defense to the BBC. The REMARKABLE idea that abuse of the confessional (the stated purpose of Crimen Sollicitationis) is a new idea or phenomenon, requires a stunning degree of ignorance. Crimen Sollicitationis was the most recent of a LONG line of similar documents. And Henry Charles Lea is commonly assigned as required reading in many university women's studies courses. The only people inclined to remove Lea from relevance are his RC critics. And the Oxford movement is famous for quiet placement of RC agents in positions of authority.

BTW: The ONLY reason that the history of strictly-defined child sex abuse ONLY goes back 120 years or so is because young marriage was forbidden ONLY 120 years ago as part of the 19th C child labor laws. Thanks to Sturunner, we can't consider that issue.

And WHY was their not even DISCUSSION of the above rewording suggestions to improve editorial policy. Instead, we see HATCHET censorship.

I DEMAND editorial review from Sturunner's superiors. This is outrageous. It is closed-minded. It is anti-education. --StudiousReader (talk) 17:08, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
 * One final note...the VERY FIRST SENTENCE of this article is wrong as PROVEN by today's newspaper "Experts: Bishops covered up priests' child abuse", see the line

"This is the second major government-ordered report this year exploring how and why Irish authorities permitted widespread abuse of boys and girls at the hands of the Catholic Church throughout most of the 20th century, the gravest scandal in the history of independent Ireland."

Again, we can't consider these facts because of Sturunner's HATCHET censorship. This topic should be removed from his overbearing control. --StudiousReader (talk) 17:44, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

A final question: Is there a collusive relationship between Xandar and Sturunner designed to circumvent even-handed crowd-sourcing??? --StudiousReader (talk) 18:00, 26 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I think "StudiousReader"s rants about "Catholic agents" being infiltrated into the Oxford Movement reveals the extreme POV this contributor is coming from. I do not know Sturunner. But this article is meant to be ECYCLOPEDIC - in other words it is based on encyclopedic facts and reliable sources. It is not a place for original research, synthesis, and emotional rants based on the more lurid media coverage.  Xan  dar   00:08, 28 November 2009 (UTC)


 * You have clearly read very little about the Oxford Movement...except perhaps the heavily sanitized versions like what China sees of "Tank Man".
 * Your argument is totally asinine as Lea says EXACTLY what I summarized (actually worse). Your predication on the mere fact I didn't quote ALL THREE PAGES is proof you have NO interest in encyclopedic fact. Read the ******* TEXT. Aside: I can't believe the stubborn resistance to fact here without it being totally religious.
 * This is NOT over. --StudiousReader (talk) 03:30, 28 November 2009 (UTC)


 * BTW: The fact you "don't know Sturunner" is what's been called (since the Nixon era in the US) a "non-denial denial".
 * The question, let me make it plain, is this: Have you been coordinating and corresponding with Sturunner on this or other articles to make subtle changes to articles likely to be more favorable to RCism? Reference here the Vatican modifications of related articles as discovered by Wikipedia...or did you not read that either....so it presumably doesn't exist either. This reveals the extreme POV of Wikipedia, no doubt. --StudiousReader (talk) 04:04, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Not guilty, milord. The simple fact is that your additions simply breach basic Wikipedia policy on numerous levels - as previously described. It doesn't matter how EXACTLY you quote Lea. By placing him in juxtaposition with your opinions on Crimen sol. in order to back them up, you are committing Original Synthesis - which is verboten. Before you can post that here, you need to find a reputably published third party who makes the exact same link.  Xan  dar   23:53, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Hi StudiousReader. You referred to "crowd-sourcing" and I wonder what you meant. Here on Wikipedia, I think it means we can add content that is reliably sourced, and we should remove content that (after a good faith search) can't be reliably sourced, or where the sources have been assembled together in a way that violates our neutral point of view, original research and/or synthesis policies. In effect, the crowd can only move the encyclopedia in a direction that reliable third party sources have already discussed, i.e. no-one can say anything new on Wikipedia. Basically we are librarians rather than authors or polemicists. Are you OK with our way of working? - Pointillist (talk) 00:30, 30 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Hello Pointillist.


 * I have nothing against removal of my own opinions. In fact, I truly invite that. I just don't see how a direct quote from an established scholarly source can be either POV or original research. As stated, this source is commonly cited in the modern day. Nothing stated is taken out of context. I am currently removing the ellipses since that seems to constitute "synthesis". Further, I offered suggestions for how the wording could be improved and could more completely meet policy requirements. (Why were those ignored?)


 * And I'll read those definitions carefully to make certain I've violated no policy. Is there a particular segment in those policy statements on which I should focus?


 * Also, I have no evidence and no one has stated they made a "good faith search" to ascertain the reliability of my citations. You are the first to offer neutrally constructive criticism. Thank you.


 * Are you authorized to arbitrate disputes?
 * Perhaps I can understand. Is it accepted and assumed that priestly sexual abuse is something that's taken place only in the past 50-60 years, by definition? If so, then any citation to the contrary, regardless of repute, would necessarily be a "new idea" or a new "synthesis" and implicitly original. Is this the collective understanding? --StudiousReader (talk) 01:44, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Oh, not at all. All you need is a reliable source – ideally something by one reputable historian that has been cited by other historians – that directly addresses the specific point (e.g. "sexual abuse by priests is known to have taken place in the ??th century[citation]"). If the source contains a synthesis and/or weighing of evidence, the article should reflect that (e.g. "M.Y. Boffin argues[citation] that sexual abuse by priests sometimes occurred in the ??th century"), and if another reliable source disagrees, the article should mention that, too, ("but U.R. Egghead disputes this[citation]"). It is all about playing fairly with sources. However strongly an editor may feel about a subject, the Wikipedia way to write about it is to be scupulously even-handed. At least, that's what I think: if this advice is incorrect no doubt someone will point it out. - Pointillist (talk) 14:55, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Thank you, again Pointillist!
 * All I really wanted to add is that several researchers have suggested this behavior has occurred earlier in RC history. For this reason its hard to set a starting date for RC sexual abuse...citing Lea and another source, probably the HBO documentary on celibacy...also recent AssocPress article.
 * What scares me is that it seems this should go near the defining beginning of the article. I'm guessing that will be parsed ever-so-carefully in an article as sensitive as this. --StudiousReader (talk) 16:21, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Total Confusion
Sturunner reverted something in the midst of discussion. I THOUGHT Sturunner was a higher authorized editor. Is this true?

Who here actually has deciding authority? Xandar claims things with which I firmly disagree.

Henry Charles Lea is an ideal and highly respected source both in modern universities and in the Encyclopedia Britannica.

I therfore reverted Sturunners deletion. --StudiousReader (talk) 06:55, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

We also need to revert Pmanderson's(?) edits because those were good salient points that merely required citations and gentle rewording. --StudiousReader (talk) 07:10, 28 November 2009 (UTC)


 * No one's censoring you, SR. As was already explained to you, your posts violate several policies, including, but not limited to, WP:OR, WP:SYNTH, and WP:RS.  What they mean is that some of the information that's been added is the result of your personal interpretation of a source, the result of you doing research and coming to your own conclusions, or you providing sources for information that is unacceptable to wikipedia.  If you want your info added, that's fine - PROVIDED you abide by policy.  So far you are not and have not even remotely tried to.  It's not about your opinion or Xandar's opinion or Pmanderson's opinion, or Sturunner's opinion.  It's about policy here.Farsight001 (talk) 02:56, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks for trying to explain this. I'll try again...following your suggestions on my talk page...to follow a more neutral stance. I welcome your (and everyone else's) suggestions for how to do this.
 * It does seem right and honest to suggest the beginning point of these abuse cases has a very difficult-to-define starting point...and to cite those who have observed this even in the distant past. --StudiousReader (talk) 07:51, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Ongoing Need to Undo Xandar's Roman Catholic Damage Control / Mitigation
Xandar! Heel!!

The idea that the Roman Catholic sex abuse cases have somehow come to an end is utterly laughable. There are new cases every week. I read of a new one yet again today. And it is asinine to demand bibliographic references for on every pair of words in this article. So I undid your unbelievable edit.

One of these days, I intend to examine your entire history of edits. I'll probably need to undo 90% of them.

Desist! --StudiousReader (talk) 02:35, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
 * StudiousReader, you might try to hold back on going after individual users. While some of Xandar's edits seem to be filled with bias, your edits have also often had a lot of bias. I encourage you to review anyone's edits but try to keep the idea of neutrality in mind. In controversial sections try and provide a source for each sentence or core idea.Ergzay (talk) 02:57, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Studious reader. You have restored the word "ongoing", without agreement, to the sentence "The Catholic sex abuse cases are an ongoing series of scandals and accusations that erupted at the end of the twentieth century." The word "ongoing" here adds nothing to the sentence but an element of inaccuracy, editorialising and POV, which seems to be reflected in your rather hysterical personal attack on me. The vast majority of the "scandals and accusations" not only refer to matters that took place before the 21st century, the majority refer to events that took place decades before. The number of new scandals and accusations relevant to events taking place post 2001 is minute. Therefore the word "ongoing" is POV and inaccurate. Yes. there will always, in anorganisation with 1,000,000 priests and religious, be occasional incidents of abuse (as there are in most other organisations), but "ongoing" major scandals erupting. Where? The word "ongoing" needs to be removed as misleading and an attempt at editorialising.  Xan  dar   23:54, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Xandar, I was actually the one who restored "ongoing." I rephrased it in an effort to make it more neutral, but that seems to have been to no avail. I added a tag to the sentence in the hope that someone could supply evidence for or against it, as I mentioned in the edit summary which apparently didn't get read. I could be wrong here Xandar, but ongoing should stay for a very simple reason. They have been ongoing all this time and the reason there was an "eruption" was simply because they were being hidden and covered up, by accident or not. Is this article about catholic sex abuse cases that happened in the past before a certain time only? If not, then where should information on new events go, if not here? If they go here, then it's certainly "ongoing."Ergzay (talk) 14:22, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
 * It may not have been seen in part because I typoed it and only did {fact} instead, sorry about that. Ergzay (talk) 14:33, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
 * You could add "ongoing" to every article or subject on which there are likely to be new developments by those criteria... The "ongoing" Obama presidency... The "ongoing" Iraq prisoner scandal... The "ongoing" Gaza invasion... etc. In this case "ongoing" is unnecessarily adding a word which is superfluous, editorial and could be misleading. The closer to original sentence: "The Catholic sex abuse cases are a series of scandals and accusations that erupted at the end of the twentieth century.", gives the right factual balance. The word "are" suggests the event is current in many aspects, and the word "erupted" tells the reader the time when the scandal came to major public attention. The word "ongoing" adds nothing. However it does give a slant to the sentence, by providing the largely false implication that abuse events are currently continuing at scandal proportions. This is not so, since the main revelations took place several years ago, and most of the actual events revealed happened decades into the last century. As far as I can see there have been no recent revelations of scandalous levels of abuse relating to the present. "Ongoing" is a specific word that implies new major incidents regularly arising, rather than simply chewing over past events.  Xan  dar   00:12, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Latest revision I edit contains all crucial data about cases before WP:FORK splits. Anyone like to revise history may do so. Kasaalan (talk) 15:31, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Why the church payed billions of dollars for "occasional incidents" that it overlooked-ignored for a century, instead spending the money on preventing cases and to the poor like it supposed to do. Kasaalan (talk) 19:27, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Question for Obscurasky
Why do you consider the table of lawsuits against the various diocese's to obsolete? Do you mean out of date? Perhaps we can update it. What was its original source? --StudiousReader (talk) 15:29, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I propossed the change a couple of months ago; in the Other headings in the wrong place section, above. No one's objected to it, but equally, no one's updated the table either - so my assumption is that it's obsolete in this article.Obscurasky (talk) 17:13, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks for going by the book on this. My apologies for not seeing your proposal sooner.
 * However, I don't think historical fact can become obsolete. I propose we put it back with a note that additional entries may need to be made. Simple removal suggests the wrongest case...that it never happened. I would think we all want to avoid that. --StudiousReader (talk) 07:09, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm sure you're right about historical facts, but in this instance, 'obsolete' should be taken to mean 'no longer relevant to this particular article'. Apart from the fact that it's out of date, problems with the table include;
 * It appears at the end of the article, not under any specific heading.
 * It only covers the USA
 * It's too detailed for this page
 * It's inclussion would be a duplication of the Settlements and bankruptcies in Catholic sex abuse cases page.
 * Personally, I think it would be better to have a Settlements section in this article, which includes a link to the table, rather than the table itself. However, if you still feel it should be included here, I suggest you cut and paste the up-to-date copy, instead of reverting my change.Obscurasky (talk) 09:18, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Regardless of whether the table is "obsolete" or not, I would prefer to delete it because as Obscurasky points out it is too detailed for this page. The reason the table in this article duplicates the one in Settlements and bankruptcies in Catholic sex abuse cases is because that article was created specifically to provide a home for the table so that the information in it would be preserved in Wikipedia although not present in this summary-level article. However, when I tried to remove the table from this article, another editor insisted that it must stay and nobody else offered an opinion so it remained here despite the duplication. I support removing the table now. --Richard S (talk) 09:37, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Ok, cool, I agree. Duplication is a bad thing. Sorry for all the bother. --StudiousReader (talk) 10:40, 15 December 2009 (UTC)


 * WP:POVFORK is what it is. Moving table is better for WP:LAYOUT, yet for article it became WP:FORK unless it leaves a proper WP:SUMMARY of the subarticle. As a solution the table in main page might be simpler, and may contain only top 10 big cases. Kasaalan (talk) 15:27, 27 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I oppose any reintroduction of the table to this article because it is excessive detail for a summary article. A prose summary of the total number of cases and total amounts awarded for the top 5 countries and/or top 5 dioceses might be useful but the details of individual cases are not appropriate for this article.  The details of individual cases belong in the articles about the scandal in specific dioceses. --Richard S (talk) 18:01, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
 * As I said, you were the one who began creating FORKS, then claiming tables aren't good for main article. Kasaalan (talk) 12:29, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Also there is no concept of duplication in wikipedia only a WP:SUMMARY guideline which strictly directs to leave a proper summary for all major contents of the created WP:FORK so it won't become WP:POVFORK. Kasaalan (talk) 19:16, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Edit wars
Possibly an edit war is going on one way or another. However lots of info like to be deleted since Latest revision I edit Somehow I will check all revisions when I find time. If anybody WP:CENSOR by deleting or WP:POVFORK instead proper WP:SUMMARY, I will try restoring the info. Kasaalan (talk) 15:27, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
 * AFAICT, there has been no recent edit warring. Other editors have a different perspective of how this article should be written.  Since almost 5 months have passed since you last edited this article, I would urge you to discuss any proposed additions or deletions which effectively revert the edits of other editors in the intervening period.  There are many articles on this subject at different levels of detail (some at the country level, some at the diocese level).  Not all the detail needs to be presented in this top-level summary-style article. Please do not set yourself up as the final arbiter of what is "proper summary style".  Other editors apparently have a different opinion on this question.  Please seek consensus on this page before reintroducing material that has been deleted.  --Richard S (talk) 18:13, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Richard you were the one who tried to trim most of the articles, began creating POVFORKS to move info from main article when it is not necessary, then trying AFDs to get rid of the info in the first place [earlier]. So you are possibly the last editor in the talk page to state opinion on consensus. Because of your mixed up and extensive time-wasting editing style I already lost couples of hours of editing time with reviewing your edits. I count on the page history, I review then edit, then discuss about it. Kasaalan (talk) 12:27, 28 December 2009 (UTC)


 * 1) Reasons of the Catholic church sexual abuse cases created, all info restored and synced with current edits. The title of the article may change.
 * 2) Some other restores
 * 3) A summary table for suitcases is required
 * 4) Rest is nice edits and grouping, good work.

Reviewing rest of the article. Kasaalan (talk) 13:02, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Not much serious trim has been happened between revisions, unlike the earlier trim attempts, I restored the ones that deleted. So instead removing hide the parts when you claim non-WP:RS so I can find WP:RS for the quotes. But a serious reorganizing is required. Kasaalan (talk) 14:43, 28 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Shouldn't that read 'Reasons for the Catholic Church sex abuse cases' ?


 * There's so much written about this subject on Wikipedia that I can see no point in this article (Catholic sex abuse cases) trying to cover any particular aspect of it in great detail. What's needed is an article where interested readers can orientate themselves in this complex topic and find links to all the relevant information on pages that cover specific aspects in detail. What do others think? Obscurasky (talk) 13:36, 28 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Grumble... I accept the need for a separate article to get the detailed discussion of the "reasons" out of this article but I hate the title of the new article. However, since I don't have a good alternative to propose at the moment, I will just express my concern and ask if anyone has ideas for a better title. --Richard S (talk) 00:55, 30 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Reasons for is better yes, actually it should be "debate over the reasons for the catholic church sexual abuse cases" but it might be a little too long. Kasaalan (talk) 14:13, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Response of the Church
The Response of the Church section is in a real muddle. The lead to that section talks about the response being on 3 levels; in which case it would make sense if the following subsections followed that order - but there's also a lot of over-lap with other areas of the article and stuff that doesn't really come under that heading there too. Would someone like to look at it? Obscurasky (talk) 12:58, 28 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I will try grouping it into vatican and other responses, yet it is really confusing. Kasaalan (talk) 14:11, 28 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I restored deleted parts, regrouped vatican responses review regrouping, created Reasons of the Catholic church sexual abuse cases for details you may summarize section more, for quotes claiming non-WP:RS just hide or tag instead delete until I find new source. Kasaalan (talk) 12:40, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Title of this article
Obscurasky, I would also prefer Catholic sexual abuse scandal as the title. However, when I proposed this some months ago, other editors insisted that "scandal" was POV and that "cases" was NPOV. To me, "cases" means "legal lawsuits" and "criminal prosecutions". It seems to me that the topic is broader than that and that "scandal" most aptly describes the overall phenomenon from media coverage to academic analyses to corrective action imposed by the USCCB and the Vatican. If you feel strongly about the title change, you can try proposing the change via a Requested moves. I will support you but I am not sure that there is a consensus for such a move. --Richard S (talk) 03:12, 31 December 2009 (UTC) Ummm... when I reviewed the archive for this Talk Page, I discovered that I had misremembered what actually happened. Contrary to my assertion above, there wasn't a specific Requested Move to change the title of this article. Instead, I attempted to create a new article called Catholic sexual abuse scandals which would serve as the summary-level article.

My original proposal envisioned that this article (called at the time Catholic sex abuse scandals) would discuss the details of individual cases.

At the time of my proposal, I created many of the articles with titles of the form [[

Sexual abuse scandal in Country X]] and Sexual abuse scandal in the archdiocese of X. These articles were created to provide a place where we could cover the details of the scandal in specific countries and archdioceses. Kasaalan did not object to the creation of these detailed articles but he did object to my removal of the details from this summary-level article.

Kasaalan reverted many of my edits, merging and redirecting my new article Catholic sex abuse scandals back to this article Catholic sex abuse cases. This is the last revision of that article before it was merged and redirected back here by Kasaalan. This is the actual redirect. Since no one supported my proposed organizational scheme, I let Kasaalan's redirect stand.

Here are some links to relevant discussion...

The word "scandal"

My proposal to split the article

Trimming the length of this article

--Richard S (talk) 17:01, 31 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I will propose a name change, but I'll wait until the page settles down first. Obscurasky (talk) 00:54, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Global extent
The Global extent section is very weak and, despite the title, almost exclusively relates to the USA. It needs rewriting. Obscurasky (talk) 21:03, 28 December 2009 (UTC)


 * The article is mostly about US, Ireland and Vatican, but we may tag it as expand if everyone agrees. Kasaalan (talk) 14:54, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
 * The article understandably focuses on those countries which have been most affected, but the section Global extent clearly refers to.... well exactly what it says Obscurasky (talk) 02:05, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Unorthodox outline style
Kasaalan apparently prefers having a rich outline style with multiple levels of subsection headings. This is unorthodox style for Wikipedia articles and is more suitable for a technical report than an encyclopedia article. Being a techie myself, I understand his desire to use section headings to identify what a paragraph or group of paragraphs is about. However, this makes it more difficult to read as a piece of encyclopedia-style prose. I would propose removing all section heading below level 3 (e.g. 3.1.2). Even three levels is really not that desirable (I prefer only two levels) but three levels have been used on some Wikipedia articles so it is hard to argue against that number of levels. --Richard S (talk) 17:48, 29 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Instead using 3 levels, I eliminated most of the 3rd level headings in the article, which are extra bold and irritating, by using ;, which makes no entry in contents section and does not create any edit button. Only 3rd level headings left after my edit is, 5.6.3, which were present before I edit. If you like to remove 3rd level editing, you may omit "5 Sex abuse cases by country" top level heading, we require headings for US, which is very detailed since it is the leading country for cases.
 * We may also put Ireland and US to top, and move rest of the countries under "Sex abuse cases in other countries" which will solve the issue.
 * Removing headings is the worst and most POV "solution" that will lead readers cannot understand anything from the article. Kasaalan (talk) 18:35, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Excessive detail
I continue to believe that we should not get into the details of specific cases in this article. This is a summary-level article and we should not get into details of even the most prominent cases (of which there are at least tens that have received significant coverage in the media).

Kasaalan has restored the following text:


 * For example, John Geoghan was shifted from one parish to another although Cardinal Bernard Law had been informed of Geoghan's sexual misconduct on a number of occasions. In December 1984, auxiliary Bishop John M. D’Arcy wrote to Cardinal Law complaining about the reassignment of Geoghan to another Boston-area parish because of his “history of homosexual involvement with young boys."    In 1987, after at least 23 years of child molesting by Joseph Birmingham during which time he was shuffled to various parishes, the mother of an altar boy at St. Anns wrote to Law asking if Birmingham had a history of molesting children. Cardinal Law wrote back:

"I contacted Father Birmingham. ... He assured me there is absolutely no factual basis to your concern regarding your son and him. From my knowledge of Father Birmingham and my relationship with him, I feel he would tell me the truth and I believe he is speaking the truth in this matter."

I believe that we should not mention Geoghan or Bernard Law here but, if we do, I don't think we need to provide the details the correspondence between D'ARcy and Law and the correspondence between the mother of the altar boy and Law. This is just excessive detail. Wikipedia is not paper. The details of Geoghan's case and others can be provided via Wikilink. If we really must have an illustrative example, we could provide a summary and then provide the details in a subsidiary article.

--Richard S (talk) 17:54, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree. Getting into specific cases can be very POV, especially when poor or incomplete sources are used, or certain information is given, but not other relevant matter. Therefore you either have to have a very long, balanced section on one individual case, or nothing. I have removed the poorly sourced and badly detailed Father Birmingham information.  Xan  dar   01:10, 30 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree with your removal of the text about Father Birmingham but I don't think it goes far enough. I would propose that the text read something like "One of the most notorious cases involved John Geoghan who was shifted from one parish to another despite concerns about his sexual misconduct having been communicated to Cardinal Law." (was Law a cardinal at the time?) --Richard S (talk) 07:44, 30 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I even expanded cases about Pope's awareness of the issue by National Catholic Reporter providing original texts of the letters http://ncronline.org/news/accountability/bishops-were-warned-abusive-priests. Kasaalan (talk) 12:35, 30 December 2009 (UTC)


 * But we all agree in 1 case which is the article gets confusing, but it will take serious time for a nice summary and correcting layout issues, creating too many sub articles also lead confusion. I will focus on subarticles first then summarizing main article then. Kasaalan (talk) 15:44, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

I began a number of summary and order work. Kasaalan (talk) 22:10, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

"Similar to this practice"
The current article text puts the following paragraph immediately after the discussion of Geoghan/D'Arcy/Law:


 * Similar to this practice, some have pointed out that public school administrators engaged in a likewise manner when dealing with accused teachers, as did the Boy Scouts of America.

The problem is that, by restoring the discussion of Geoghan/D'Arcy/Law, we now make it sound as if U.S. schools and the BSA engaged in practices similar to the Geoghan case. I don't think this is quite true. A major difference is that U.S. schools and the BSA are decentralized. The case at the start of the Washington Post article appears to be that of a teacher that moved from school district to school district. (fired from first job, worked in two different states, possibly in multiple school district). School districts are very much independent local entities with only a state Board of Education governing them. The local school districts hire teachers based on their credentials and only the state BoE can revoke a teacher's credentials. This is very different from the Catholic Church. The BSA is different in that there is more of a hierarchical structure (troop, district, council). The district and the council are local and regional entities rather than statewide. While the vast majority of Boy Scout leaders are volunteers, the district and council can (and now do) keep track of complaints against volunteers, making it harder for them to move from troop to troop. However, district and council do not "assign" Boy Scout leaders the way that Catholic bishops assigned parish priests.

I am not trying to argue for or against the presentation of the school and BSA comparison in this article. What I am saying is that we cannot juxtapose the details of the Geoghan case immediately prior to the school and BSA paragraph because the school and BSA cases are not at all "similar to this practice" or "likewise manner" to the Geoghan case.

We have gone from a general discussion of bishops moving priests to the specifics of the Geoghan case and then back to the general discussion of school districts and the Boy Scouts. In the process, we have made an incorrect assertion (that school districts and the BSA behaved similar to Cardinal Law).

--Richard S (talk) 18:12, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't see the significant difference. The practice was so well known in US schools at least until the late 1990s. that the practice of moving abusive teachers to new schools was given a name within the educational establishment; "taking out the trash". In fact the transfers were made without the CCs practice of registering the accused for psychiatric treatment and counselling.  Xan  dar   01:13, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Ratio of payments
Source: http://ncronline.org/files/images/04032009p11phb.jpg http://ncronline.org/news/accountability/bishops-were-warned-abusive-priests we may use the ratios. Kasaalan (talk) 12:33, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Becoming a bit clearer
The article states that it cases started to be published in 1983 and remained on the fringes of media attention... which is true. Apparently it did not remain on the fringes of archepiscopal attention, however. 1983 is the exact year when the John Jay college just reported in a deleted blurb in the article, that the church started to probate priests more often and less often tried to return them to pastoral work. Shame the referenced blurb (in major media references) was censored. It also showed that the John Jay study, having been published, is nonetheless, ongoing research. Two significant pieces of information. Student7 (talk) 00:41, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Changes by Kasaalan
Kasaalan has made a large number of undiscussed changes to the page, several of which are addressed by Richard above. I have reverted a small number which seem to be serious cases of inaccurate information, editorialising, or imbalance. These include the addition of "worldwide" scandal, or "many" countries to the first line. Corrected to the more factual "a number of" countries. In addition a large section was added on letters written by a Father Fitzgerald in 1962 with lengthy quotes of comments he is alleged to have made at the time. I have again removed this because it contains editorialising, and seems to have been inserted to make a point that this constituted prior knowledge by the US Bishops and the Vatican, when the incident is non-notable in the concept of this wider article, and actually represents nothing that would constitute what is claimed for it.  Xan  dar  01:36, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
 *  Worldwide  was my addition. Whilst it's natural for the article to focus on America; the country where most cases have occurred, the scandal is international and I was trying to reflect this in the article's lead - there have been cases on all continents after all.  a number of countries  may be factually correct, but also gives the impression of downplaying the the global aspect of Catholic sexual abuse.Obscurasky (talk) 01:57, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Someone commented that the abuses seem to have had the highest frequency of occurrence in Anglophone countries (U.S., Ireland, Canada and Australia). I haven't seen this mentioned, discussed or analyzed by a reliable source but it does seem to be true.  Does anybody know of a reliable source who has studied the relative frequency of occurrence by country and offered a theory as to the variance?  I'm not sure if the disparate frequencies are due to frequency of occurrence or frequency of reporting. --Richard S (talk) 03:05, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Reports of abuse are rare outside the countries Richard has listed. Those who think abuse has something particularly to do with Catholicism are puzzled by this, and people have gone to other countries trying to find other major scandals. So far without success. This is why the " a number of countries" wording is more accurate than claiming the scandal is "worldwide", or in "many" countries, etc.  Xan  dar   00:23, 1 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Biggest sexual abuse court and payment cases happened in US, Ireland etc. But scandals happened in many countries, so limiting cases to US or Ireland is not neutral. Kasaalan (talk) 10:36, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Sources for Fitzgerald section

 * Bishop-accountability
 * Database of Priests Accused of Sexual Abuse
 * http://www.bishop-accountability.org/priestdb/PriestDBbylastName-G.html
 * http://www.bishop-accountability.org/priestdb/PriestDBbylastName-M.html
 * http://www.bishop-accountability.org/news3/1997_04_22_SantaFeNewMexican_FuneralNotices_Irving_Klister_2.htm
 * AD HOC COMMITTEE ON SEXUAL ABUSE OBJECTIVE NO. 2 REPORT ON EVALUATION AND TREATMENT CENTERS
 * Johns Hopkins page 3
 * The Institute of Living page 4
 * The New Life Center page 7
 * St. Luke Institute page 12
 * Servants of the Paraclete (St. Michael's Community) page 14
 * Servants of the Paraclete (The Albuquerque Villa) page 16
 * Program in Human Sexuality - Department of Family Practice & Community Health Medical School University of Minnesota P- 20
 * Southdown page 22
 * Villa St. John Vianney Hospital page 28
 * Our Lady of Peace Hospital - Peace Ministry Centre page 30
 * John Doe 1, et al. vs Archdiocese of Milwaukee, et al. 6/05/08 - 6/06/08 DEPOSITION               OF ARCHBISHOP EMERITUS REMBERT G. WEAKLAND, O.S.B.
 * Q That's all right. Do you recall sending other offenders to the Servants of Paraclete facility at Jemez Springs in New Mexico?
 * A We sent one man there, yes.
 * Q Who?
 * A Jerry Lanser.


 * Books
 * http://books.google.com/books?id=gCLIcVP1H00C&lpg=PA1&pg=PT37#v=onepage&q=&f=false page section 1 page 12


 * News
 * Deposition of Cardinal Bernard Law February 3, 2003, Offices of Greenberg Traurig, Boston
 * And then it reviews No. 4, it says: "He was ordained for Boston. He left the Archdiocese early on to go on lend lease and was eventually incardinated into another diocese. In 1985 there were allegations of sexual abuse with minors. The accuser brought to the police large selection of pornographic material which he had removed from the priest's residence. The priest went to the Servants of Paraclete in Missouri for five months where he was treated for alcoholism."
 * "[...] I wish to God that that had been the case earlier. It wasn't. At this point, I'm sure that those who looked at this case felt that what had been done at the Servants of the Paraclete, with the kind of a covenant arrangement that had been set up, would be an appropriate way to proceed."
 * Top Marianist Discusses Sexual Assault Lawsuits By Patrick Malone The Pueblo Chieftain February 18, 2006
 * During an interview Friday in the lobby of Antlers Hilton in Colorado Springs, Glodek acknowledged that the Marianist administration became aware of the experiments while Mueller was teaching in St. Louis, but had not learned of any sexual allegations until the lawsuits were filed. Glodek said leaders of the Marianist order were concerned in the early 1980s to learn about Mueller's proclivity for conducting these "experiments" with students and telling the children to keep them secret. As a result, the order sent Mueller to a treatment center for priests in Jemez Springs, N.M., run by the Servants of Paraclete.


 * "I think (Marianist leaders) said to (Mueller), 'You may not teach anymore,' " Glodek said. "You may not be around young people because of these trust experiments because they are not professional or good. (Past leaders of the order) obviously thought this was a bizarre and wrong behavior for a teacher."


 * Mueller was sent to Jemez Springs in 1983 for treatment of "a serious psychological problem," namely the trust experiments, Glodek said. Because the Marianist order was not aware of any sexual allegations related to the experiments, no treatment in that regard was administered.


 * "Before the first people filed lawsuits, we had no information that there was any sexual activity associated with these trust experiments," Glodek said. "Did we know that there were these trust experiments, and was past leadership concerned it was wrong? Yes. That's why (Mueller) was sent to treatment in 1983. It's the sexual component that was new information."


 * Jemez Springs counseled priests for problems ranging from substance abuse to sexual abuse of children.


 * Glodek admits that the approach at Jemez Springs of treating pedophilia was flawed based on what is known today.


 * "In general, if a person went there for psychological counseling, I think they were very successful in helping with mental disorders," said Glodek. "If a person was sent there for sexual abuse, I think because of when they were founded, they did not realize the depth of the incurability of pedophilia."


 * And in the case of Mueller, Glodek said even psychological counseling failed.


 * "In Mr. Mueller's case, he went there for psychological counseling," Glodek said. "They said it worked. He was sent back (to a school in St. Louis), and several months later he was at it again with his experiments. So in his case, it did not work."


 * Marianist records show Mueller was treated at Jemez Springs twice - from December 1983 to August 1984 and again from December 1985 to April 1986.

"Sheehan has said the number was high partly because priests came to New Mexico for treatment at the Servants of Paraclete in Jemez Springs and were placed in parishes. That center no longer treats pedophile priests." "Nienaber, a priest since 1934, could not be reached; he is accused of abuse by 17 of the 19 would-be plaintiffs who moved to enter the case Monday. He was charged in Fayette County in 1993 with 39 counts related to child molestation and pleaded guilty to 10 felonies. As part of his plea bargain, he was dispatched to serve 10 years at a place in Missouri called the Servants of Paraclete, a Roman Catholic organization that treats pedophile priests, according to the complaint. He remains there to this day." The women also said Hubbard told them Douglas was being sent to the now defunct Servants of Paraclete treatment facility for pedophilia in Mexico, and that he would never again be allowed around children. "He went away under the false pretense of a health issue, but he was actually sent to a treatment facility and was supposed to never be placed back with children when he returned," said Brace, 48. "Now, we find out he's in ministry part-time in Delaware, and that raised our concerns about children there." "Mr. Molony said Chleboski may be eligible for parole in Virginia in four years and eligible for parole in Maryland in about three years. Catholic officials have said Chleboski may then receive psychological treatment at Servants of Paraclete in New Mexico, Mr. Battle said. The facility is a counseling and treatment center for Catholic priests who suffer from sexual disorders." "Cross said the late Bishop Joseph Vath sent him in 1985 to take a course at the Servants of Paraclete, a sexual treatment center in New Mexico. A transient had accused Cross of sexually accosting him. Cross denied that allegation also."
 * Priest on Leave Pending Sexual Abuse Allegations The Associated Press, carried in Albuquerque Journal [Albuquerque NM] March 21, 2005
 * 19 Want to Join Suit Vs. Diocese By Louise Taylor Lexington Herald Leader (Kentucky) April 23, 2003
 * Hubbard Accused of Cover-up by Robert Cristo The Record [Albany NY] March 18, 2004
 * Pederast Priest Sentenced to 8 Years By Arlo Wagner Washington Times October 9, 1991
 * Bishop Suspends Priest Several Men Allege Sexual Abuse in Decatur, Birmingham in 1960s By Greg Garrison Birmingham News (Alabama) May 10, 2002
 * http://www.ffrf.org/fttoday/1995/may95/betrayal.html AP news coverage collection of abuse by Freedom From Religion, secular or anti-religious organization
 * http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-10-10-priestabuse_x.htm
 * http://www.columbiatribune.com/comments/cr/73/21196/

Death of Father Gerald Death came to this Holy Servant of God on June 28th, 1969, while he was giving a retreat at Marlboro, Massachusetts. He was buried in Jemez on July 4th, with military honors, in Resurrection Cemetery of the Servants of the Paraclete. His little canyon retreat was now known throughout the world. In the Catholic Church, Jemez Springs had become a by-word for "healing." An era of upheaval was fast engulfing the nation, and in the decade following his passing, Father Gerald's spiritual sons would face new challenges and make dramatic changes.
 * Paraclete
 * http://www.theservants.org/servants.htm
 * http://www.theservants.org/story.htm
 * http://www.theservants.org/pdfs/2005-09.pdf main site
 * "Adult Human Sexual Interaction with Children," Jemez Springs Symposium, sponsored Brothers of Paraclete and Sandista Foundation, June 29-July 3, 1987.


 * Court cases
 * http://ks.findacase.com
 * http://www.ksb.uscourts.gov/
 * http://ecf.utd.uscourts.gov
 * http://ca10.washburnlaw.edu/

Fitzgerald

 * Richard Sipe
 * http://www.richardsipe.com/
 * http://www.richardsipe.com/2009-09/Father.Gerald.Fitzgerald.pdf
 * http://www.richardsipe.com/Click_and_Learn/pdf/2009-08-10-Code_Words.pdf
 * http://www.richardsipe.com/Dialogue/Dialogue-14-2007-09-27.html
 * http://www.richardsipe.com/reports/sipe_report_2005.htm
 * http://www.richardsipe.com/Comments/2005-11-01-Recidivism-1.html
 * http://www.richardsipe.com/Doyle/Jane_Doe_vs_OMI_of_Texas2008.pdf
 * http://www.richardsipe.com/patrick_wall/book%20index.pdf
 * http://www.richardsipe.com/2009-09/2009-09-Are_American_Bishops_Gay.pdf

I will provide sources for Paraclete and Fitzgerald. Kasaalan (talk) 17:11, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Claims of prior knowledge by the Church and actions taken
Content inserted/restored by Kasaalan (I believe), deleted by Xandar, restored by Sturunner, re-deleted by Farsight001. This edit war must STOP. Further edit-waring will lead to protection of the page and/or blocking of the users involved.

Please discuss the issue here instead of edit-warring over it.

--Richard S (talk) 17:28, 31 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Even Pope was stricly informed back in 1960s, no editor is elgible to remove such info since it would only be a WP:POV WP:CENSOR attempt. This isn't a debatable subject. We manly only summarize, but editors tried to remove section claiming not supported by the source, so I provided full blockquote as a strict reference. Kasaalan (talk) 17:45, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
 * No. The information as presented was
 * Presented in a POV, editorialising matter, with inferences and direct POV comment added, suggesting that this Father X's letters and reports in the early 1960s "proved" that the US bishops and Vatican knew all about priestly recidivism and other matters long before they claimed to know about it. With the additional strong inference that the Church was therefore both lying and willfully ignored the facts. That presentation is Original research, Original Synthesis, Editorialising and pushing a POV. All of which are forbidden on Wikipedia.
 * The source material was actually a minor article in a small journal, based on the opinions and letters of one individual. It is therefore not justified such space or even inclusion on grounds of notability and WP:Undue Weight.
 * The inclusion seems entirely based on an attempt to make a case against the Church based on 20:20 hindsight. This is an erroneous and POV tactic, since selectively quoted letters from one person do not prove or even supply convincing or notable evidence of ANYTHING. When one person writes something to a large organisation, receiving millions of items of correspondence, (even if 40 years later it is proven to have been largely right,) does not even begin to mean that that organisation acted against the facts, or the weight of advice and professional knowledge at the time, as the POV piece by Kasaalan implies. The individual's letters would not only have been seen by few people, but clearly ran against the weight of professional knowledge and practice at the time - and up until the 1990s. The attempt to quote them here as some sort of "proof" that the church acted wilfully is completely misguided and Original Synthesis. It's a bit like saying "Mr X wrote a letter to President Kennedy in 1962 saying intervention in Vietnam would be a disaster. Therefore subsequent Presidents clearly KNEW that intervention would be wrong and disastrous, andd were wrong to say they did not know this."
 * Unless major reliable sources make the claims Kasaalan makes, the material should not be included (and certainly not as any more than a minor by-line). Even in such a case, counter arguments would also have to be given as much weight. The section in its present form has to go.  Xan  dar   00:48, 1 January 2010 (UTC)


 * You are a WP:POV editor about Catholicism, possibly because of your religious beliefs
 * POV info removal of RS with blatant either lie or without actually reading the source at all
 * My edit: revert of POV info removal
 * Your blatant lies or ignorance: "The source material was actually a minor article [no it is not] in a small journal [no it is not], based on the opinions and letters of one individual [no it does not]. It is therefore not justified such space or even inclusion on grounds of notability and WP:Undue Weight. [no it does not]"
 * First of all lots of other WP:RS covered the article
 * Early Alarm for Church on Abusers in the Clergy by Laurie Goodstein in NY Times
 * Leader of Catholic order that once treated priests like Dallas' Rudolph Kos spoke out in the 1950s by Reese Dunklin in Dallas News
 * Associated Press coverage by Rachel Zoll as Catholic bishops warned in 1950s on child molesting priests in Daily News (New York) and as Letters: Catholic bishops warned in '50s of abusive priests in USAToday
 * kohm.org KOHM Radio lists of AP releases
 * Church warned of errant priests another AP press release in The Age
 * Paper: Bishops warned of abuse in 1950s Michael Paulson, who "shared in the Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of child abuse affairs in the archdiocese of Boston" quoting NCR article at Boston Globe.
 * CODE WORDS TO HIDE SEX ABUSE Revised edition of 9 July 2009 by author Richard Sipe
 * Neverthless
 * Not a small journal: "The National Catholic Reporter (NCR) is an independent newspaper published since October 1964 by lay and religious of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States. It is circulated in the United States as well as ninety-six other countries on six continents. The paper is not a member of SIGNIS, has no official church oversight and frequently dissents from official Church teaching."
 * Not a minor article by not a minor NCR editor "Tom Roberts is NCR editor at large." other articles of Tom Roberts
 * It doesn't based on "opinions" and "letters", it is based on actions, facts and letters of Fr. Fitzgerald who expressed his concerns to Pope in person
 * "Gerald Fitzgerald (priest) (October 29, 1894 South Framingham, Massachusetts - June 28, 1969) was an American Roman Catholic priest, who began his ministry as a priest in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston and later became a member of the Congregation of Holy Cross. He founded the The Congregation of the Servants of the Paraclete in Jemez Springs, New Mexico in 1947 for troubled priests."
 * " Fitzgerald warned American bishops in forceful letters dating back to 1952 that pedophiles should be removed from the priesthood because they could not be cured. Early Alarm for Church on Abusers in the Clergy In 1957 he wrote to the bishop of Manchester, New Hampshire: "We are amazed to find how often a man who would be behind bars if he were not a priest is entrusted with the cura animarum." Leader of Catholic order that once treated priests like Dallas' Rudolph Kos spoke out in the 1950s In 1962 he advised Vatican officials in person that pedophiles could not be cured and repeated it in person to Pope Paul VI.
 * Court case involved, judge used as evidence: Fitzgerald’s papers were unsealed by a judge in New Mexico in 2007 and were authenticated in depositions with Fitzgerald's successors, said Helen Zukin, a lawyer with Kiesel, Boucher & Larson, a firm in Los Angeles. Early Alarm for Church on Abusers in the Clergy by Laurie Goodstein in NY Times and Original Paraclete Document Scans by Kiesel Boucher Larson
 * Another blatant lie: he does not only wrote letters, he met Pope in person, told his troubles in person. He wrote letters to every bishop. Morever, he advised after Vatican asked him to do so. "In April 1962, Fitzgerald wrote a five-page response to a query from the Vatican's Congregation of the Holy Office about "the tremendous problem presented by the priest who through lack of priestly self-discipline has become a problem to Mother Church.""
 * Unless major WP:RS proves otherwise, the letter is evidence, sources are WP:RS you can't even insert any doubt over the letters.
 * Don't WP:POV push any further. Kasaalan (talk) 10:31, 1 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Kasaalan. You appear to be a WP:POV editor of a sectarian anti-Catholic viewpoint, who doesn't even bother to try to discuss major edits on the talk page before POV-pushing and edit-warring. It is up to people wanting to insert material to justify its inclusion based on notability, good sourcing, NPOV, due weight and balance. You have failed to do this. Just saying "minor event x happened" does not entitle you to write a lengthy POV piece at the top of the article, twisting the facts and misrepresenting the position to suit your own prejudices.
 * Your tactics of blatant uncivil abuse when your POV and OR edits are challenged will not work here, and you had better learn to take a better and more co-operative tone in future if you want to continue editing here. Your posts are full of little but personal abuse and original research, neither of which are relevant to Wp editing.
 * Whether various shyster lawyers have presented Fitzgerald's letters in an individual suit or not is neither here nor there. Nor is whether this guy met a past pope in person or whatever. The simple fact is the point you are trying to make with your post is invalid and blatant POV-pushing and editorialising. It does not matter what this guy wrote or said to various people forty years ago if it went against the standard expert advice of the time which it clearly did. His opinion was his opinion, and many way-out opinions are given to Churches governments and medical boards every day. You cannot single out one opinion from half a century ago and write an opinion piece saying that the Church is "guilty" (via 20:20 hindsight) for not following it.
 * The additional handful of newspaper articles you quote are merely repeating the Catholic Reporter story as recycled by AP, and you pointedly and crucially neglect to include the reported fact that Fitzgerald's opinions went against the medical and psychological advice of the time.
 * The title, the accompanying text, the editorialising and the POV spin on the piece you inserted are totally POV and original research and synthesis. I let the material stand temporarily, in the hope that rational discussion would ensue. But since you have made no attempt to discuss this unilateral insert rationally, and since it breaks so many Wikipedia rules and policies, I have removed it. Rational discussion from you, along with some understanding of WP rules and policies would be welcome.  Xan  dar   03:31, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I couldn't care less how your WP:POV opinion contradicts well documented evidence. I am not anti-catholic in any way, I respect religions, though I don't tolerate any abuse of religion. You cannot remove well sourced multiple-WP:RS referenced info however you like. The section is clearly WP:NPOV, and explains what happened by references. Gerald Fitzgerald (priest) expressed his views about child abuse in 1962, when Vatican Office asked his opinion, he wrote letters to every bishop, Pope, and talked with Pope himself over 40 years ago. So, claiming Church hasn't been warned is a blatant lie, proven by courts. The section only explains that, which anyone can't deny. "This doesn't proof anything" is your own WP:POV WP:OR WP:SYNTH but you don't bother finding any reference for such a claim or adding them yourself but to accuse me. You may add contradictory WP:RS references to balance section, if you can find any. Other than that try not to remove well documented info. If "Fitzgerald's opinions went against the medical and psychological advice of the time" you may add that line to balance section, I never object any addition to balance section, but as I said I won't let removal of well documented info and it doesn't change someone warned church over 40 years ago. Kasaalan (talk) 14:11, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I added defense of Church for Fitzgerald Case. I also noted Church sent their troubled priests for 20 years to the Fitzgerald's facility. Kasaalan (talk) 15:57, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Your latest re-write is a lot more balanced and better-worded, and has removed a lot of the editorialising of previous versions. I would still say it's a bit of a marginal episode, but we'll wait and see what other editors think.  Xan  dar   21:20, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I strictly object removal of info that is all, anyone may add balancing info if they feel any unbalancing issue. Actually if anyone find more references I even expand balancing views, since I respect the right of defense for any party. Also, though I object some of their removals, ADM and Richard achieved some great success in creating sub articles, so thanks for their efforts. I ruined article layout in some earlier edits as you said, but somehow they were necessary for future edits, so I fixed them myself. I moved US and Ireland to top, leave rest of the countries below. Also separated early history of scandal and later responses of church. Article balanced for layout to a great degree. Fitzgerald's warnings for 20 years are a historical case, so we should mention it in detail, also Fitzgerald's center was official or unofficial treatment center for such priests. The case is uncovered for 2 years by court order, since it was sealed earlier by request of church in court, so not everyone knows about it. Ignored cases cost church billions of dollars which they could spent on poor and hungry people. Vatican and churches haven't been managed well for so long, abuse cases, money laundering, wasting donations, mafia connections, politicization, lots of scandals which are totally against the spirit of Catholicism. I agree on media coverage or lawyers non good will to some degree, yet it is also apparent there is a widespread scandal for over a hundred years. So uncovering up these scandals will help both Catholics and non-Catholics in the long run. Kasaalan (talk) 13:04, 3 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Kasaalan is clearly a man with an agenda. This last post of his makes that clear. Unfortunately, agendas have no place in Wikipedia. I lean towards including the information about Fitzgerald as there does seem to be some relevance, Xandar's arguments to the contrary notwithstanding. However, I'm not sure that the discussion of Fitzgerald deserves as much space as it has currently been given. Allocation of space should be based on giving due weight to each topic and that decision should be based on how much weight the media and the academic community give to a topic. If Fitzgerald has been only covered by one article (no matter how many times that article has been republished in multiple newspapers), then it seems to me that it is generally considered to be not that significant. It doesn't matter whether we think it is important or if it will be "good for the Catholic Church". What matters is that we consider what the "world at large" as represented by reliable sources thinks is important. --Richard S (talk) 16:42, 3 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Richard my "agenda" is very clear and publicly open in my page. For example I edit racism articles, I edit sexual abuse articles, I edit war related articles, I edit scandal cover up articles, and when I do, I won't do it selectively I do it for all parties of any religion, race, country, military, politician. So basically, massacres, rape, sexual abuse, racism are top priority about Politics, History and Social sciences. I edit many other culture or environment related articles but they are not related to this issue.
 * Also even if Fitzgerald is "insane" and Paraclete facility is "unscientific", Church was thinking the same way back then and sent priests to the facility for more than 20 years. Kasaalan (talk) 17:11, 3 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Bully for you. It is still an agenda and does not belong at Wikipedia, no matter how noble it is.  Wikipedia is not a place to crusade for anti-racism, anti-bigotry, anti-whatever.  Please leave your agenda at the door. --Richard S (talk) 17:36, 3 January 2010 (UTC)
 * No it is not. It is called area of expertise or interest, unlike "a crusade of cover up" which is an actual WP:POV agenda. I wouldn't edit an area I have no knowledge. Crusade is an approach related to fanatic religious doctrine, which I have never felt and more likely related to your own religious beliefs. Kasaalan (talk) 17:39, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

This has got far too extensive, and with the new section on Fitzgerald added today under "early attempts...", has definitely become WP:UNDUE WEIGHT. The original section was too lengthy in my opinion. Having another section is repetitive and over-stresses what major reliable sources consider at best a minor aspect. The additional sources supplied by Kasaalan do not alter this, being mostly relatively minor publications or mentions. The major works and features on this topic do not give Fitzgerald anything like this importance.  Xan  dar  01:51, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Xandar, the "Early attempts" section was created by me. I grant you that, at the moment, the article spends too much space on Fitzgerald and the Servants of the Paraclete.  However, I am of the opinion that they should be presented in this article.  It is my intent to reduce the overall amount of space significantly over time.  However, I knew that Kasaalan would probably revert me if I started by deleting text so I figured I'd start by writing the new text first.  I didn't have time to write the whole new section so I made a very rough start with the idea that I would improve it over time.  I welcome comments from all editors (including you and Kasaalan) as I develop this new approach which I hope will satisfy both you and Kasaalan.


 * My concern is that current media attention is almost exclusively focused on blaming the Church hierarchy for ignoring Fitzgerald's warning that sexual abusers should not be returned to parish work that involved contact with minors. Of course, with 20/20 hindsight, we now see that he was right.  However, the fact is that there was a debate at the time over how best to deal with abusers.  Fitzgerald lost that debate.  It isn't the first time that history has proven the "voice in the wilderness" to be right.  We need to document that there was a debate and why Fitzgerald lost the debate.  Some may impute impure motives to the Church hierarchy.  Others (like myself) might see a desire on the part of the bishops to be "modern" and save the sexually abusive priest from his impure desires and his past sins.


 * We have to understand that some people viewed what the Servants of the Paraclete were doing as equivalent to running a "jail" to which "fallen priests" were sentenced without the benefit of due process such as a trial. Fitzgerald wanted to buy an island in the Caribbean.  Some might consider such a proposal to be the effective equivalent of a penal colony such as Devil's Island or Australia.  Laicization may not seem like such a bad idea but it effectively writes off a man's entire career and life's work as a penalty for sin.  This may seem like an obvious course of action to some but not all would agree.  I have to return to real life right now but I will provide a link to an article that presents that argument a little later on.


 * Even now, it's not clear that sexual abusers can't be cured. Can anyone cite a scientific study that "proves" that they can't be cured?  No... because you can't prove a negative.  It is simply the current judgment of society that we can't do so because we have failed to do so in the past.  We are using the perspective of the past two decades to judge the actions of bishops who were acting 3 to 5 decades ago.  They may have made mistakes but they may have been mistakes made in good faith.


 * --Richard S (talk) 03:34, 4 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Xandar, you should also take note of the fact that the USCCB seems to think it worthwhile to address the Fitzgerald controversy on its website here. I tried to write the "Early approaches to the treatment of sexual abusers" section incorporating not just the media's negative slant on the information about Fitzgerald and the Servants of the Paraclete but also some of the USCCB's slant.  Hopefully, the result is an NPOV treatment of the topic. --Richard S (talk) 06:42, 4 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I didn't review edits yet, but generally adding info is fine to balance section. The issue is, this is not a list based article, so we should give some solid info on the background of the case. Before making any summary attempt, we should first stabilize the sections. We may move some parts to the Fitzgerald's article, but again we should fully develop section with all aspects and NPOV first. Kasaalan (talk) 10:50, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
 * One of the main reasons section is longer, is because your earlier attempts of claiming non-Notability of the case. So I added more references supporting the section. Kasaalan (talk) 10:58, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
 * One of the most common ways a controversial article winds up being too long is when someone inserts a biased bit of text and someone else puts in another biased bit of text to "balance" it. The result becomes a running "ping pong" debate which, besides being poor writing style, makes for a very long and confusing treatment of the topic.  The solution is to abandon the point/counterpoint style and seek to treat the topic in a truly NPOV manner.  That is what I am attempting to do. A key concept here is that there is the original history (that priests were treated at facilities like Jemez Springs, that Fitzgerald thought that treatment of sexually abusive priests was futile and that they should be laicized and that Fitzgerald failed to convince others of his view) and then there is the subsequent history (that Fitzgerald's view was "rediscovered" in 2007).  I am trying to present these facts in chronological order.  Thus, IMO, it does not make sense to start with the NCR report of Fitzgerald's letters in 2007.  Instead, my approach presents the foundation of the Servants of the Paraclete and the evolution from spiritual ministry to medical/psychological treatment.  The discussion of the 2007 "rediscovery" of Fitzgerald's letters should come much later in the article. --Richard S (talk) 17:38, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes but do not forget I did not put any biased text, I used WP:RS media and scholar sources.
 * Also 2007 is just a discovery of history, which follows chronology. Besides do not trim Fitzgerald section before we make it stabilize. I cannot deal with all WP:FORKS simultaneously. Kasaalan (talk) 14:10, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Trashiness and sensationalism
Isn't there a way for you to make the page less thrashy and less sensational ? I tried to do that once but I wasn't really able to, having been reverted. I think much of the information could be put into Ecclesiastical response to Catholic sex abuse cases, which is really just one aspect within the whole series of abuse affairs. ADM (talk) 16:58, 4 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks for telling me about Ecclesiastical response to Catholic sex abuse cases. I didn't know that article existed.  As for the trashiness and senasationalism in Catholic sex abuse cases, I have been working on that.  However, one editor (User:Kasaalan) seems to think it is his personal mission to make sure that every last detail is presented on Wikipedia and we have only been able to convince him to move some of the details to subsidiary articles such as Catholic sexual abuse scandal in Australia.  In my opinion, Kasaalan is making the subsidiary articles even trashier and sensationalist but there are only so many battles that I can fight at once and, if such details are appropriate anywhere in Wikipedia, they are more appropriate in the detailed articles than here. --Richard S (talk) 17:11, 4 January 2010 (UTC)


 * It would help me if you would point out the specific instances of trashiness and sensationalism that you are referring to. I have in mind the details about Geoghan and Birmingham but perhaps you have other concerns as well. --Richard S (talk) 17:23, 4 January 2010 (UTC)


 * The part about Gerald Fitzgerald is too long, much of it should be transfered.


 * The Global overview section is okay, I would not change it.


 * Too much of the debate over the causes section overlaps with the article debate on the causes of clerical child abuse.


 * The part about media coverage should be less precise, because this is already covered in media coverage of Catholic sex abuse cases.


 * Too much of the Response of the Church section overalps with the article ecclesiastical response to Catholic sex abuse cases.


 * Much of the section about the sex abuse in the United States tends to duplicate information found in the Response from the Church section, since both paragraphs are refering to scandals that occured in American dioceses.


 * The part about Pope Benedict's statement duplicates information that was originally within the Response from the Church section.


 * The part about the Progressive discovery of the problem should be included in the Response from the Church section, since it doesn't talk about the abuse cases themselves, but only about high-level bureaucratic responses to these cases.


 * The section about the Ryan Report is too detailed, it duplicates some available information.


 * The part about the John Jay Report repeats a good deal of information found within the John Jay Report article.


 * ADM (talk) 17:37, 4 January 2010 (UTC)


 * ADM the issue is there are too many WP:FORKs of this article, mainly created by you, which may help the article. But they created early before actually balancing the article.
 * Reasons section needs a serious summary, try a serious summary if you can. Since we have all the section in its own article.
 * For the rest of the article, the summary style is important. Article currently is in good shape for details. But if we really going to summary, we should summarize and leave only major points. But again then the reader needs to read all separated articles to get a good view about the case. Separate sections gives readers the opportunity to ignore sections they don't need to read. Kasaalan (talk) 14:14, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Reorganization of article
Since Kasaalan had just recently reorganized the article, I had intended to avoid reorganizing the article in the interest of stability and avoiding edit-warring. However, as I worked on incorporating the topic of Gerald Fitzgerald into the article, I found it increasingly necessary to shift some sections around so I went ahead and did it.

Gerald Fitzgerald
The problem that I had with Kasaalan's treatment of the Fitzgerald letters is that it focused on the 2007 "rediscovery" of that correspondence and the attendant criticism of the US bishops for having ignored Fitzgerald's warnings. I am not opposed to presenting that bit of media feeding frenzy at the appropriate point in the narrative but it's a bit like focusing on the "smoking gun" of Watergate without first explaining what Watergate was.

The important thing that I took away from the Fitzgerald articles was the existence of the Servants of the Paraclete and the 23 centers that they operated for the treatment of sexually abusive priests. For some time, we have referred to the treatment of sexually abusive priests in our article but we never provided any details or sources regarding that treatment. Using "Fitzgerald" and "Servants of the Paraclete" as Google search terms, I have managed to unearth some details which I have added to this article, the article on Gerald Fitzgerald and to a newly created article Congregation of the Servants of the Paraclete.

The key point here is that I was able to add more meat to our presentation of how the Church dealt (or failed to deal) with the problem of sexually abusive priests in the 50s and 60s. The article states that Fitzgerald campaigned passionately for the laicization of such priests but it also attempts to explain why he was ignored.

Crimen sollicitationis
For quite some time, I have been uncomfortable with the way we present this controversy. To me, it has always stuck out like a sore thumb, not quite fitting in any of the sections.

I have come to see that part of the problem is the way that it is presented. Like the original treatment of the Fitzgerald letters, the Crimen sollicitationis was presented from the perspective of its "discovery" in 2003. To me, the real point is that the Crimen is part of a series of Holy Office actions that were intended to deal with the problem of sexually abusive priests. The criticism of the secrecy with which the Holy Office conducted its investigations and prosecutions is actually just a subsidiary topic. The point is that the Holy Office was conducting investigations and prosecutions long before the scandal broke. For this reason, I have put the treatment of the Crimen as part of a larger section titled "Vatican efforts to deal with the problem".

Thus, the new treatment of Crimen sollicitationis that I have drafted is similar to the treatment of Fitzgerald that I put together. The key idea is to present what happened as plain fact without interpretation and without the attendant media spin of "see what bad things the Church did". If there was subsequent controversy about secrecy or untruths, then let us present them but let us not make the discussion solely about the secrecy or untruth. Let us start by explaining what happened and then provide the analysis of whether what happened was good or bad.

Problem vs. scandal
Thanks to the material that I gathered regarding Fitzgerald and the Servants of the Paraclete, I am now seeing that there are really two parts to this story. There is the "problem of sexually abusive priests" and the "scandal regarding the Church's handling of the problem". The "problem of sexually abusive priests" has probably existed for hundreds of years, if not for a millenium or more. In the latter half of the 20th century, Fitzgerald and the Servants of the Paraclete came to represent the "treatment approach" for addressing the problem. Fitzgerald thought that such priests were not good candidates for his "spiritual treatment" approach but he was overruled by the "powers that be" who decided that medical and psychological treatment were appropriate means of rehabilitating such priests.

That the "medical and psychological treatment" approach was not effective began to become apparent in the 1980s as Catholic bishops began to discuss the problem more openly and lawsuits and prosecutions began to turn the problem into a public scandal. However, the scandal did not really break until 2002 when the Boston Globe articles focused national and eventually global attention on the problem.

The key point behind distinguishing between the "problem" and the "scandal" is to see that there has been a Church response to the problem since the 50s (both at the diocesan and the Vatican level). There is a somewhat different Church response to the scandal that broke in 2002. Mixing the "Church response to the problem" and the "Church response to the scandal" together risks confusing the reader with events that occurred over the course of half a century and which took on a different character after 2002 when the public scandal broke.

For these reasons, I would suggest that we use the word "problem" to refer to the problem of dealing with sexually abusive priests and "scandal" to refer to the lawsuits, prosecutions, media attention and public outrage that exploded after 2002. I think this well help the reader keep clear in his mind what we are talking about.

Presenting general discussion before more detailed sections
I moved the "Response of the Church to the scandal" section above the sections that present the scandal in the United States and Ireland. I wanted there to be a flow from the 50s into the current century and that flow was being interrupted by the sections providing specific details on the scandal in the U.S. and Ireland.

--Richard S (talk) 18:32, 5 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Richard, your additions may possibly be fine, but cannot really decide before making a full review of your edits.
 * Most of the online WP:RS references about Fitzgerald and Servants of Paraclete are already shared in above section if you like to use.
 * Also if you like to review cases in all perspectives, you should research about Richard Sipe article I created during my search about Fitzgerald. As a retired treatment professional of such priests during his 18 years of monk and priesthood, he made published research, and he criticizes Vatican's handling of the cases for time being. He made some research over celibacy issues, and have 6 books published.
 * By the way, move is no issue, since it can be reviewed. But while trying to summarize article, try hide text feature so it will be easier to review, and less likely to get reverted. It also makes easier to compare with WP:FORK articles. Kasaalan (talk) 20:39, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Overview - National drift
A side effect of all these edits seems to be that the page is drifting towards US national bias. As an example; Global extent became Global overview, then simply Overview. It's reasonable that this page should focus on the US, since that's where most cases have been reported, but the page Catholic sexual abuse scandal in the United States already exists. Please could editors bear in mind that this page is deals with the scandal on an international level. Obscurasky (talk) 10:33, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I understand your concern. I will comment that titling a section "Global overview" doesn't make it global.  I didn't change any of the content of that section, just the title.  My rationale was that having a section "global overview" suggested that there would be other overviews which were less global and more region or country specific.  Since there aren't any such additional "overview" sections, the word "global" seemed redundant.
 * IMO, the real issue is that 80% of the cases were in the U.S. and it seems that the concept of treating priests who were sexual predators originated in the U.S. So naturally, the overview (which also serves as a "Background" section) is U.S. centric.  What would help to counteract that would be for us to add text to the "Overview" section that summarizes the international aspect of the scandal (e.g. Ireland, Canada and Australia).  If we did that, we could probably get rid of the anemic country-by-country subsections in the "By country" section.  I do agree with ADM that the section that covers the scandal in the United States is largely a repeat of the main article text and so it would be good if we could dispense with the "By Country" section altogether and just merge the highlights into the "Overview" section.
 * --Richard S (talk) 16:53, 6 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Rereading the "Overview" section, I find that it is not really an "overview" of the scandal but rather a summary of the statistics from the John Jay report. This makes it really hard to add an international dimension to that section because there aren't many other countries for which similar statistics exist.  I am not sufficiently familiar with the two inquiries conducted in Ireland (the Ferns inquiry and the Murphy report) to know if we can compile similar statistics for Ireland.  Even if we could, that wouldn't make the "Overview" section a true overview of the international scandal.  I suggest that we may need to retitle that section to something more accurate and then write a true overview.  In fact, I was wondering why we need an "Overview" section at all when that is the purpose of the lead section.  See WP:LEAD. Also, consider the changes that I made to the section titled "Progressive public awareness of the problem". --Richard S (talk) 17:25, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Inclusion of specific cases
For some time now, I have campaigned against the inclusion of specific cases in this article. In general, I believe that most of the specific cases don't really belong on Wikipedia but, since that doesn't seem to be an opinion likely to prevail, I am satisfied to keep the specific cases in the subsidiary articles devoted to the scandal in specific countries and dioceses.

I raise this issue now because I have reintroduced the names of some specific priests who have been accused of sexual abuse and I wanted to explain my rationale in the hopes of establishing a guideline for doing so. There are certain clerics who were such high profile that they influenced the development of the scandal in Ireland. These include: Eamon Casey, Michael Cleary, Micheal Ledwith and Brendan Smyth. (NB: Casey and Cleary were accused of sexual misconduct rather than abuse of minors).

I have omitted most of the details of these cases and just included a very concise summary of what they were accused of. For the purposes of this article, the details are unimportant. What is important is that the media attention around their cases brought public awareness of the problem and forced the government and the Church to respond.

The details of the cases are available in the article on Catholic sexual abuse scandal in Ireland and in the specific articles on each person.

--Richard S (talk) 17:10, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Eliminating U.S. centric focus of the article
I have to confess that, until the last few days, I have been guilty of a very U.S.-centric understanding of this problem. That is to say, I always assumed that the scandal had emerged first in the United States and then spread to other countries as reports of abuse surfaced there as well. I also assumed that the scandal in other countries were just smaller versions of the scandal in the United States.

After my recent research for the Catholic sexual abuse scandal in Ireland article, I realize that this is not really true and that this article has been written (by myself and others) to give that erroneous impression.

First of all, the scandal in Ireland predates to some extent the scandal in the United States. The scandal about abuse in Church-run institutions emerged in the 1990s as did the scandal about Micheal Ledwith. Thus, by 2002, Ireland was already dealing with both of those issues. The fact that the U.S. has moved more rapidly to respond to the scandal while Ireland is still in the throes of coming to grips with it makes it seem as if the scandal in the U.S. predated the one in Ireland but this isn't true.

Secondly, the scope and nature of the scandal in Ireland is not a mirror copy of the one in the U.S. The scandal regarding physical and sexual abuse in Church-run institutions has no parallel in the U.S.  The national conference of Irish bishops does not seem to have acted as proactively or in unison the way the USCCB did. I'm not sure why this is true. Ireland is a smaller country and has fewer bishops. Is there a reliable source that has contrasted the responses by the Church in the two countries?

Because the Church operated these institutions on behalf of the government, the government has been more intimately involved in the scandal. By one estimate, the Church is only paying 10% of the cost of the scandal related to abuse in the institutions. In the U.S., it is the insurance companies which are sharing the cost. I haven't seen any data on what percentage has been borne by the insurance companies and what percentage by the Church.

With respect to parish priests committing sexual abuse of minors, I have seen no mention of Irish bishops sending sexually abusive priests for treatment. The Servants of the Paraclete operated a center in Gloucestershire, England but none in Ireland. Why not? This is pure speculation on my part but it would appear that Irish bishops did not use treatment centers in the way that U.S. bishops did. Can anyone find a reliable source who discusses this question?

Finally, it's not quite reasonable to completely divorce the scandal in the U.S. from the one in Ireland. Because the two scandals emerged at roughly the same time (1990s and early 2000s), the Vatican was really responding to both scandals simultaneously. Thus, it makes sense (although it is difficult to pull it off well) to discuss the two scandals and the response of the Church (diocesan, episcopal conference and Vatican) in one integrated narrative.

I have started doing this by adding information from Catholic sexual abuse scandal in Ireland into the main article text. It is my thought that, when this is done, we can get rid of the specific sections in this article about the United States and Ireland because those sections will be redundant with the main article text. I think this approach will address the concerns raised by Obscurasky and ADM.

This also explains why I have gotten rid of the "Sexual abuse cases in other countries" section. I integrated that into the main article text in anticipation of my plan to merge the sections on the U.S. and Ireland into the main article text. Once those sections disappear, the phrase "other countries" will make less sense.

I'd like to hear what other editors think of my reorganization of the article. I will be travelling until Tuesday of next week and so I may not be able to respond quickly to your comments. Please don't revert my reorganization unless you absolutely hate it. It would be good to build a consensus with Obscurasky and ADM for reversion as this reorganization is motivated by the issues that they raised.

--Richard S (talk) 17:35, 8 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Scandals are old, yet omitted for over a hundred years by Vatican. Ireland and USA are the 2 leading countries for the case. That is why I separated them from the rest and moved to top. After that separation the article become much more easier to read and understand. But I am not sure which country is the third. However the is a abuse in Europe article. So first we should take the cases, per continent. So I will create abuse in America, and abuse in Oceania articles, then divide countries accordingly. For Vatican's latest 20 or more years, you should read Richard Sipe as a retired monk and priest for 18 years, who also treated such priests for Vatican. I still don't have time to review your edits. Kasaalan (talk) 21:17, 8 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes, there is a the trio of Richard Sipe, Thomas Doyle and Patrick Wall. I think you'll find Xandar opposed to giving undue weight to what they say.  I am not opposed to presenting what they say but I think we need to be careful not to present what they say as gospel truth.  They clearly have an agenda (one that I would wager is not far from yours).


 * Also, it's important to differentiate between sexual abuse and sexual misconduct.


 * You are right that there have been scandals involving the sexual behavior of Catholic priests and religious for over a millenium. However, there is a phenomenon which started approximately half a century ago and is still playing out today.  Specifically, this phenomenon involves the abuse of minors which is probably why it has received far more attention than sexual misconduct (i.e. homosexual and heterosexual relations with adults).


 * There are relatively few cases outside the U.S., Ireland, Australia and Canada, and most of those are sexual misconduct rather than sexual abuse. While a heterosexual relation might be abusive, it is not necessarily so.  Relations with seminarians is not quite abuse of minors since most of them were probably over 18.


 * I oppose mingling the sexual misconduct and sexual abuse scandals as I feel they are two different kinds of phenomena although with some overlap (to wit, the way in which the Church has concealed both kinds of misbehavior). Sexual misconduct is considered a sin by the Church but is not necessarily considered immoral by secular standards and is not, in and of itself, a crime.  Sexual abuse is not only considered immoral by secular standards, it is a crime.


 * If you look at the responses of the Church (both the Vatican and the bishops), you will find them focused on the sexual abuse of minors and not much concerned with heterosexual relations between clerics/religious and women. The key word here is "abuse", not "misconduct".


 * If you can find material about sexual abuse outside the U.S., Ireland, Australia and Canada, we can work to include that information in this article. However, I would discourage trying to turn this article into a catalog of sexual misconduct as explained above.


 * --Richard S (talk) 22:16, 8 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I couldn't care less your personal opinions anyway as you are the one with a Catholic agenda like Xandar ["one that I would wager is not far from yours"] therefore POV in the first place. The main issue with your POV is you didn't read the cases for Fitzgerald before objecting, since you have a particular pre-determined stance, but as long as you read, you can find what I only did was adding arguments per sources. You may argue UNDUE, though before I developed the sections, there were merely some quotes about the case, which again tried to get deleted by AFD earlier by POV editors. Now that you did read, and cannot eliminate them since I made hours long research and provided more than enough RS, again there is a process of FORK article creation. If Richard Sipe is an ex-monk, ex-priest, and ex-psychology "expert" adviser of Vatican for such priests for 18 years, I present his opinions. As the lawyer said if Fitzgerald was not reliable [same goes for Sipe] why Vatican sent him troubled monks for 20 years. As I said if anyone provides any counter RS, I develop that side of the arguments too, which is obligatory for an NPOV editing style. It will take time of your more than 150 edits. You should have either developed FORKs or the main article first, instead parallel editing which makes comparisons even more troublesome for other editors, especially when you remove content. But I will do the necessary reviews when I find time one way or another. Kasaalan (talk) 16:52, 9 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I would appreciate it if you tried to differentiate my POV from Xandar's POV since they are quite different and Xandar's agenda is much more pro-Catholic than mine. If you had any familiarity with the interactions that I've had with Xandar over at Talk:Catholic Church, you would realize that any insinuation that Xandar and I share a pro-Catholic agenda is quite ludicrous.


 * I confess that I initially accepted Xandar's critique of the Fitzgerald material uncritically and thus initially wrote a response that suggested minimizing coverage of his campaign to laicize sexually abusive priests. I don't know if you noticed that, within minutes of writing that, I self-reverted my original comment with the edit comment "self-revert; I want to think about this a bit more".


 * Less snippiness and more collegiality would be appreciated.


 * I still think that your initial treatment of the Fitzgerald material gave undue weight to the 21st century assessment of him as "being right" and the bishops as "wrong". IMO, this is Monday morning quarterbacking with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight.  As Bishop Blase J. Cupich pointed out Fitzgerald was arguing from personal "emotional" conviction whereas medical and psychological professionals were arguing based on medical and psychological theory.  Fitzgerald was not a trained medical or psychological professional and had no theoretical basis for his recommendation.  It was just his "gut feeling" based on twenty years of working with sexually abusive priests.  In the 21st century, we have concluded that Fitzgerald was right and the medical/psychological professionals were wrong but it's a bit harsh for us to expect the bishops to have known that back then.


 * In my treatment of this material, I have tried to separate the historical facts of what happened in the 1950s and 1960s from the 21st century rediscovery of Fitzgerald's correspondence and the subsequent POV assessment by the media of the bishops' failure to accept his recommendations. I think that is the NPOV way to present this information.  Do you disagree?


 * --Richard S (talk) 02:47, 10 January 2010 (UTC)


 * What a great wiki spirit we have, apparently noone likes each other.
 * You may claim UNDUE, as I am an inclusionist and defend only if we add all aspects of a case we reach an NPOV article. However I had to insert details and much more references after my SUMMARY additions got deleted by Xandar as you can tell. So not only I did add material from Fitzgerald article, which tried to get deleted by AFD by some other POV editor, I also made an extensive research about him for the article and provided all the links to all editors in talk page, so they can help contributing the section also can state their concerns. After Xandar and you addressed your concerns, I actually bothered to read the sources in more detail, and addressed your concerns and objections in the section. I do care all reasonable doubt of any editor, whoever he is.
 * You may tell Fitzgerald was right after all that happened, however you may tell Church was wrong back then too. You cannot risk such a high number of children. Church have not been a leading institution on following science or psychology experts' opinions anyway.
 * You can tell my quotes were like you. Since I have no agenda but dealing with abuse or scandal cases, which are not church specific. When I edit articles about boy scout abuse cases or war rape, you cannot tell I have an agenda like it is illegal or a POV thing. So your comment on "my agenda" similar to Richard Sipe is only strong as "your agenda"s similarity to Xandar. Therefore your reply is not a proof against my comparison. Kasaalan (talk) 17:27, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Sex abuse case in other countries
An editor deleted this whole section. I've reinserted it. Teh problem certainly isn't confined to US and Ireland this section needs to be present to deal with documented cases in other nations and so it can be expanded in time.203.129.61.83 (talk) 03:58, 9 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I've deleted it again. First of all, as has been discussed previously on this Talk Page, this article is too long and needs to be trimmed, not expanded.  The plan is to turn this article into a summary-style article.  I have explained my vision for this article in the section titled "Eliminating U.S. centric focus of the article" above.
 * Secondly, the text in question was not deleted; it was moved to the "Global extent" section. --Richard S (talk) 08:51, 9 January 2010 (UTC)


 * The article's length about "details" of the abuse is mainly a concern of POV editors. While unnecessary and hypothetical sections like "debates of possible causes of sexual abuse" are top priority in summary attempts, they are still in the article. What Richard mainly doing is transferring info to FORKs from mainly article, since I revert POV info deletions in his year long attempts, to be able to justify his removals. The article is currently a mess, but I will wait Richard to finish and then review his edits before making any serious edit and I will keep his useful additions to the sections. Kasaalan (talk) 17:00, 9 January 2010 (UTC)


 * FORKs are not bad in and of themselves. That's what WP:SUMMARY is about.  POV forks are bad but that's not what's happening here.  Finally, it is not just me that is doing this.  Much of the recent moving of material to subsidiary articles has been done by User:ADM.  As for the reorganization, that is an attempt to address User:Obscurasky's comment about the article being too U.S.-centric.  I admit that this is not the only way or even the best way to accomplish this but it was the approach that occurred to me so I figured I'd try it and put it out for others to comment on. --Richard S (talk) 20:29, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Well it looks a mess and worse it looks as if someone has edited this article with the purpose of making the case that the problem is confined to the US and Ireland. Whatever the rationale for merging it is unacceptable for this editor to delete teh link to the Catholic sex abuse cases in Australia. I will continue reinserting that link whatever he/she does.203.129.61.83 (talk) 20:31, 9 January 2010 (UTC)


 * The rationale for "deleting the link to the Catholic sex abuse cases in Australia" is that the link was being presented in the wrong places. I don't have any problem with discussing sex abuse cases in Australia; it's just a matter of finding the right place in the article to discuss them. --Richard S (talk) 02:33, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
 * The US and after that, Ireland, have been the major centres, with Australia and then Canada subsidiary to these. I do think there is too much detail on Ireland at the moment. As for other areas, information is usually added in terms of some sort of a list, which is a)Misleading, and b) not compatible with the format of an article such as this.  Xan [[User talk:Xandar#top|'dar ']] 23:36, 9 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I didn't structure the article to "make the case that the problem is confined to the US and Ireland". However, since 80% of the priests involved appear to be in the US and most of the rest appear to be in Ireland, it only makes sense to focus primarily on the US and Ireland.  I would be more than willing to add more material about cases in other countries but, so far, the only material that I've seen is information about specific abusive priests and nothing about diocese-wide inquiries, nationwide surveys, governmental responses, etc.  To fail to draw the distinction between US/Ireland and the rest of the world runs the risk of synthesis by focusing on the similarities while glossing over the differences.  For that matter, I have not seen many reliable sources discussing treatment centers for priests outside the U.S., efforts of bishops to conceal clerical sexual abuse outside the US and Ireland, etc.  We should not lead the reader to assume that what happened in the U.S. and Ireland is what happened in the rest of the world.  It would be good to find some reliable sources that discuss how the scandal has played out in different countries (e.g. the Phillipines) and how the Church has responded to it.  Otherwise, just mentioning specific cases is SYNTH and OR


 * I think the Gobal extent section is now pretty good. The article is America/Ireland centric, which is fine; although I would say that some mention of 'other countries' is necessary in the lead as well. Obscurasky (talk) 23:56, 9 January 2010 (UTC)


 * OK, I've tried to do that. I understand that the article looks like a mess compared to the "neat and orderly" approach of having an overview followed by sections on each country.  Here's the problem with the old structure: the overview was U.S.-centric and repeated much of what was in the section titled "Sexual abuse scandal in the United States".  The other problem is that we really had information only about the U.S. and Ireland and no real "information" about the scandal in other countries.  All we had was a bunch of "data" about specific cases in other countries.  That's not "information"; it's just a catalog of cases which lead the user to assume that the scandal played out in the other countries the way it played out in the U.S. and Ireland.  Given that the scandal has played out differently in the U.S. from the way it played out in Ireland, it's not at all clear what the reader is supposed to assume happened in the other countries.


 * The only way to make the overview less U.S.-centric was to merge in information about the scandal in other countries. I've tried to do this although it's hard to do because there is so little information about the scandal in countries other than the U.S. and Ireland.  I'm not exactly sure why this is true but, based on the information that is in this article and in the subsidiary articles right now, it seems that there have been major inquiries into various dioceses in the U.S. and Ireland, a major inquiry into the Catholic-run institutions and Ireland and a nationwide survey of dioceses in the U.S. (the John Jay report).  There is also the ongoing investigation into the Legionaries of Christ which I have moved to a section which is now titled "Ongoing investigations".  The rest of the information seems to be mostly individual cases which are being dealt with on a case-by-case basis rather than as part of a larger investigation.  As explained above, this causes a problem because discussing individual cases leads to focusing on individual trees rather than seeing the whole forest.


 * --Richard S (talk) 02:33, 10 January 2010 (UTC

This article is supposed to be a summary of Catholic sex abuses cases in general. There are numerous articles dealing with cases in each country. It is illogical therefore that this article is mostly about the US and Ireland. They already have separate national articles. Pretending the problem is just there is a tactic to minimise the harm a celibate priesthood believing themselves morally superior has inflicted on children around the world. The tactics used here are similar to the defensive tactics that the Rock Choppers used everytime allegations were made: deny, evade, procrastinate, patronise.203.129.61.83 (talk) 06:17, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Fine... now prove it with citations to reliable sources. In the U.S., 6700 accusations against 4392 priests over a forty year period. Can you provide statistics on how many accusations have been lodged against how many priests in Ireland, Australia, Canada, New Zealand over the same period?  I've looked for the statistics via Google and I haven't found any.  I've done many Google searches on this topic and the most information available is about U.S. and Ireland.  I challenge you to find comparable information about Australia, New Zealand, Canada or any other country for that matter.  --Richard S (talk) 08:44, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Oh I see. You want me to prove the problem is global by use of academic articles. Why? Is that because media reports and judical cases are inadequate sources? No, its because you think academic articles are necessarily somewhat more scarce. Assume there are no academic articles. Does that prove the problem doesn't exist? This all sounds characteristically Jesuitical. Look at it this way. Jesus made quite clear how he loved little children (Mark 10:14). The fellow who claims he now speaks for Jesus on earth (Ratzinger) lives in the headquarters of the Roman Empire and wears clothes reminiscent more of the power of Rome that crucified Jesus than what Jesus himself wore. This fellow enforces a rule that priests MUST be celibate regardless of whether they wish to marry. This is a rule Jesus never made. He then places those priests in the midst of a culture where sex is advertised everywhere and in charge of children whom they sexually abuse because a proportion of them need a sexual outlet and nothing is permitted. Isn't this the opposite of what Christ would have done? The opposite of Christ-wait a minute, isn't there a name for that? Oh, what was it now?203.129.61.83 (talk) 10:58, 10 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I think you misunderstand what I was trying to say. My fault, that last comment of mine was a bit snippy.  It was late at night.


 * Yes, of course, it's clear that clerical sexual abuse is a global problem. However, I draw a distinction between the sexual abuse problem and the sexual abuse scandal.  (This is admittedly a bit of original research on my part but hear me out.)


 * To my mind, the scandal isn't about individual cases of clerical abuse although the sheer number of them is possibly a scandal. The scandal is partly about whether the frequency of occurrence is greater than in the general populace and whether it is greater than in other professions that have contact with children (e.g. teachers or non-Catholic religious leaders).  People might speculate whether there is something about Roman Catholic priests that makes them more inclined than these other groups to abuse children.  If such factors can be determined, something should be done to mitigate those factors.  Whether you agree with the Vatican or not, they determined that "deep-seated homosexual tendencies" should be a barrier to ordination.  (I personally disagree with the Vatican but that's not relevant here.)


 * The scandal is also about how the Church hierarchy dealt with (or failed to deal with) allegations of abuse. It's about bishops reassigning abusive priests to other parishes where they would continue to have contact with children.  It's about how 18 religious orders in Ireland operated state institutions where there was systemic physical and sexual abuse of children.


 * If you search on the Internet, there is very little information about the failure of bishops to deal with sexual abuse except in the U.S., Ireland, Australia and the Philippines (I just found last night a BBC news article that describes the apology and action of the National Conference of Bishops in the Philippines). This is what I mean by reliable sources.  A "reliable source" doesn't have to be an "academic journal article".  It can be a news article or a magazine article.


 * For the most part, the development of this article has followed what is reported in academic articles and the news media. That is how it should be.  If you can help find articles about the scandal in other countries, please do so.  Then we can expand the article to provide a more comprehensive picture of the global scandal.


 * Here's what I am having trouble figuring out. In the U.S., there were 4392 priests accused of sexual abuse of minors over the course of four decades.  In the Phillipines, there were 200 priests accused of sexual abuse of minors over two decades.  So, do the cases in the U.S. represent a "vast majority", a majority or just the single largest group?  I admit that I engaged in a bit of original research when I compared the 4392 figure for the U.S. against the 5000 figure estimated by the Vatican for total number of priests worldwide.  If there were 200 priests accused in the Phillipines alone, the 5000 figure put out by the Vatican might be a bit low.  But what is the correct figure?  Is it 6000 or 10,000?  I haven't seen any other reliable sources that provide a different number.

As for your polemic about celibacy, your anti-Catholic agenda is now clearer. Please leave it at the door. Consult our policy regarding NPOV and the appropriate use of Talk Pages.


 * --Richard S (talk) 17:05, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
 * The Philippines statement is NOT about 200 priests accused of sexual abuse of minors in two decades. The statement referred to "possible" sexual misconduct of ALL kinds in that period, including heterosexual affairs and homosexuality. Big difference.  Xan  dar   00:58, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Recent changes
I'm very unhappy with some of the recent changes that have been made to this article and the fact that they were all made without discussion or popular consent. Is it ok if we all adopt this edit-now, discuss-later, approach? There also seems to be multiple grammar errors. Obscurasky (talk) 15:50, 28 December 2009 (UTC)


 * The removals took place without debate months ago, without any WP:CONSENSUS or proper WP:SUMMARY with some WP:FORKs. I did not deleted any info, just restored some of the deleted info, so all info is in the article and you all can review it, unlike info removal. The article is getting into shape Kasaalan (talk) 19:13, 28 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Was the verbose opening sentence, which I have reworded, a restoration of a previous edit or a new edit by you? Obscurasky (talk) 20:03, 28 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Restore, I tried to merge it with previous states for details, your version is more accurate for details. Kasaalan (talk) 15:42, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Obscurasky, I am also unhappy with the recent changes that have been made to this article although the issues that I have may not be the same as the ones that you have. The problem is that Kasaalan has put so much work into reworking the article and you have also made significant edits so I am loath to do a blanket revert to the December 23 revision prior to the flurry of edits by you and Kasaalan. Reversion is also a step towards edit-warring which we should avoid.

I would suggest that everyone look at the diff between that revision and the current one and develop an opinion as to which revision is the best to go forward from.

Me personally, I'm OK to go forward from the current revision although I do have a few major issues with it. Some of these are longstanding differences of opinion between Kasaalan and myself as to what is appropriate for a summary-level article of this scope. Rather than re-delete text that Kasaalan has restored or otherwise undo his recent edits, I will raise the issues below and ask other editors to weigh in on the particular issue in question.

--Richard S (talk) 17:47, 29 December 2009 (UTC)


 * The extensive changes have not been discussed, and are not agreed consensus. Different problems will have to be looked at. Some of the added material is either too detailed or particular, or poorly referenced and opinionated. I too don't like the multiple tiny subheadings, which are not WP style.  Xan  dar   01:06, 30 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I added more WP:RS for some of claimed "poor sources". Just mark poor sources so I can find references. Multiple tiny subheadings also WP style, that is why they are exist, when we use level 4 subheadings the article become unreadable. You claim detail, but if you try to WP:POV remove Pope's awareness of the situation from the article, you don't sound too neutral to me. So either we will get rid of 2nd level Cases by Country title, or use equal of level 4 heading without [edit] button, which is ;, if you like I can remove by country level. Kasaalan (talk) 12:39, 30 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Hello Richard. I don't think our positions are so very far apart; I too would like to see this page exist as a summary-level article; acting as a broad overview of the subject and a 'point of entry' for those wishing to find out more about the issue.


 * Like you, I also feel there is too much detail in some areas of this article, particularly individual cases; and I would support your summarizing of the areas you have mentioned. As I already wrote, above, the Global extent section of this page is very poor and needs rewriting, and there are other errors on the page too. The 'Progressive awareness' section is poorly titled, and on that subject, I would also say that the whole page could do with renaming Catholic sexual abuse scandal too; as the current name implies this page is a list of all the individual cases involved in the scandal.Obscurasky (talk) 14:50, 30 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Shouldn't it be Catholic sexual abuse scandals since it involves many scandals of a long period in many countries. Kasaalan (talk) 14:52, 30 December 2009 (UTC)


 * No definately not, as that would again imply that the page is dealing with individual cases (scandals), instead of dealing with the subject as a whole. Obscurasky (talk) 22:47, 30 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Funny... I see it just the opposite way... to me, "cases" are individual cases while "scandal/scandals" are the public attention given to the cases and the failure of the bishops to respond adequately. --Richard S (talk) 07:12, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Legionaries of Christ
I agree with Xandar and Farsight001 that the list of bishops in charge of the investigation is excessive detail. It is already questionable to list the bishops but it's way overboard to list the number of houses and religious in each region. This would be fine if the article were about the Legion of Christ but it's too much detail for a summary article like this one. --Richard S (talk) 07:08, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Doyle, Sipe and Wall
OK, enough sniping at each other about POVs and agendas...

Let's get back to the issue at hand...

Here is a synopsis from Barnes & Noble of the Doyle/Sipe/Wall book

Sex, Priests, and Secret Codes: The Catholic Church's 2000-Year Paper Trail of Sexual Abuse

Sexual abuse of minors and vulnerable adults by Catholic clergy burst onto the American scene in 1984. Revelations about such abuse since then have confirmed that this tragedy is not limited to the U.S. Catholic Church, nor is it a new phenomenon that grew out of so-called secularizing trends of the late twentieth century. The Doyle-Sipe-Wall report clearly demonstrates a deep-seated problem that spans the Church's history. This collection of documents from official and unofficial sources begins its survey in 60 CE and concludes with the contemporary scandal. It reveals an institution that has tried to come to grips with this devastating internal problem from its earliest years. At times circumspect and at other times open and direct, Church leaders tried a variety of means to rein in the various violations of clerical celibacy. The sexual abuse crisis is not isolated from the questions of the celibate practice of all Catholic clergy and the moral questions that involve marriage and all human sexual behaviors. These are the main, yet unspoken, reasons why sexual abuse has been such an inflammatory and dangerous issue for the hierarchy. The Church abuse scandal of the contemporary era, rather than seen as a new challenge, is actually the catalyst for a complex process that is forcing the official Church to redefine its ideology of sexuality, its responsibility to its members and its role in society. The three distinguished authors have served as experts and consultants in over 1,000 cases of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic clergy, and have collectively spent over 70 years of official service within the church.

IMO, the question is whether we should accept everything this trio uncritically or whether we should consider it to be one POV, and a very anti-Catholic one at that. I'm sure that, if you read the book, their argument is based on documented historical fact (e.g. the Council of Elvira). However, the conclusions that they draw from these facts are a particularly anti-Catholic POV and thus not one that is "mainstream".

I think we should hesitate to present their argument as if it is "indisputable fact". Instead, I think we should present it as one interpretation of history and let the reader decide whether or not to believe it. In practice, this plays out as the difference between "The Catholic Church has tried to deal with sexual abuse of minors since 60CE" and "Sipe, Doyle and Wall argue that the Catholic Church has tried to deal with sexual abuse of minors since 60CE". The first locution states the assertion as fact whereas the second locution states it as the POV of Sipe, Doyle and Wall.

The important point here is that the Sipe, Doyle and Wall thesis seems to be a new one (else why make such a big point of it in the book?). Are there earlier books that make this case? If not, then this is not a mainstream POV but a relatively novel one. I haven't seen much mention of this thesis in other discussions of the sexual abuse scandal.

--Richard S (talk) 03:12, 10 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Since I wrote the above comment, I have found an article in "Pastoral Psychology" which predates Doyle, Sipe and Wall which makes essentially the same assertion and so I have introduced the topic into the article. I still have some doubts about this but I figure that one sure way to provoke discussion is to be bold and insert potentially controversial material.--Richard S (talk) 17:20, 10 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Richard you do state your opinions, which I generally support, however cannot understand how you claim your opinions are more NPOV than mine and accuse my edits about Fitzgerald, which I build from scratch per RS and not finished yet. And it is not possible for me to understand until I completely review your edits.
 * However possibly what we will do is wait for you to finalize the article. Then I will review your edits like other editors and finalize another version. And if the changes are quite dramatic, then we will reach some article versions to be reviewed by other 3rd party editors. Since only a few editors present for the article. Kasaalan (talk) 17:32, 10 January 2010 (UTC)


 * There have been several occasions when personal opinions have tended to be presented as facts. There is a big difference between the two. And a minor source with a clearly purient, sensationalising and non-scholarly title, such as "Sex, Priests, and Secret Codes", is the last sort of candidate for this.  Xan  dar   01:02, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeh, which is why I resisted inserting it when Doyle, Sipe and Wall were the only sources. They have a clear conflict of interest since they make their living advising victims of clerical sexual abuse.  But, what do you think of the article in Pastoral Psychology?  The author of that article may also have an agenda but at least it's in some sort of scholarly journal (it's not clear to me how scholarly it is; I don't know anything about the field in general or that journal in particular). --Richard S (talk) 06:25, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
 * First of all I only use quotes or paraphrases, and use Sipes argues that, Fitzgerald wrote that style. So I do not present non-factual things as facts.
 * Second Vatican or US Catholic Bishops has a higher degree of COI yet we present their defense or arguments, since it is NPOV to do so. We cannot clearly judge who has higher COI or agenda or else on "intention" level, we present both sides' arguments.
 * However you go around presenting an OR SYTNTHESIS of your pro-Vatican ideas, and claiming POV and COI and anti-Catholicism over writers and sex abuse experts who had been worked for Vatican and Church, yet not providing any example quote or reference for it. Fitzgerald was priest and Catholic, Sipe is still a Catholic as far as I know, like the rest of them Scholar Review by Timothy D. Lytton


 * "Bel Air, Maryland : There are certainly problems the Church needs to address, but there are many good things happening within the Church. Are you still afilliated with the Church? God bless, Rick
 * A.W. Richard Sipe: I am still affiliated with the Church, and hope the good will continue and increase."


 * Thomas P. Doyle was a priest


 * "Fr. Thomas Doyle, who worked for the pope’s representative in the United States in the early 1980s, was one of three drafters of a report given to the United States bishops in June 1985. That report was largely ignored (NCR, May 17). Since then, Doyle has been an outspoken critic of the bishops in their handling of the sex abuse crisis. He currently is an Air Force chaplain stationed in Europe."


 * Patrick J. Wall was again a priest


 * "Patrick J. Wall, a canon lawyer and world-renowned expert on the Catholic Clergy Abuse Crisis, has been a senior consultant at Manly & Stewart since 2002. A former Roman Catholic Priest and Benedictine Monk, Patrick has a bachelor's degree in philosophy and a master's of divinity degree from Saint John's University in Minnesota. In 2007, he received an LL.M in Canon Law from the Cardiff University School of Law in Wales."


 * If you can find any RS claiming same as your OR, we may add that comment, as Sipe might not be reliable, though that is no reason to remove their views from context. One way or another they have been accepted as experts at courts for 1000 times, therefore their views are important and should be presented. And unlike Vatican, writers publish scholar works based on references. If Pope or bishops or any other expert talk about the cases we include them too. I really don't understand where you try to get from here. Kasaalan (talk) 23:10, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Kasaalan, would you consider the claims of Sipe, Doyle and Wall regarding Catholic sexual abuse of minors being a problem that dates back to the Council of Elvira to be incontrovertible fact or an interpretation of history which is open to dispute? If it is the former, it should be easy to come up with independent sources (i.e. sources that do not quote the work of one of those three) who assert the same thing. If it is an interpretation of history, how long has that interpretation of history been extant? For example, can you find 19th century sources that make the same assertion? Since Sipe/Doyle/Wall claim that this problem has been around for nearly two millenia, then we should be able to find sources that make mention of this phenomenon for the last two millenia.

Consider this: the heterosexual misconduct of priests (having concubines, wives and illegitimate children) is part of Western lore and legend. If you assert "The Church has had to deal with cases of priests breaking their vows of celibacy for centuries", no one will bat an eye. However, if you assert "The Church has had to deal with cases of priests sexually abusing minors for centuries", many, if not most, people will raise an incredulous eyebrow. Whether it's true or not, it is an extraordinary claim and "extraordinary claims require extraordinary support".

There is also the question of "undue weight". Let's grant that Sipe, Doyle and Wall are reliable sources. That doesn't mean they are authoritative. Is their POV on this question the mainstream opinion or a minority one. Is it even perhaps a fringe position?

It is for these reasons that I hesitated to include their claim until I could find another source who made the same assertion. I did find one journal article in "Pastoral Psychology" by Paul Isley that makes essentially the same claim. That is what tipped the scale for me with regards to including the Sipe/Wall/Doyle POV. However, this is still fairly thin support for what could very well be a fringe or at least minority opinion. I'd like to see more support for this claim before stating it as fact and without any qualification.

--Richard S (talk) 00:41, 13 January 2010 (UTC)


 * The main issue is you cannot use sources selectively. If Sipe, Wall and Doyle makes an interpretation of history and points Council of Elvira similar to Paul Isley, you say: "Sipe/Wall/Doyle claims the sexual abuse of Church dated back to Council of Elvira, which is also argued by Isley". You cannot use references selectively, by your OR and your own views. You have no RS to omit Sipe Wall or Doyle by any way. Also sexual abuse of minors is not only limited to church or religions, it was frequently occurred during wars and invasions, so it is not an extraordinary claim by anyhow. Kasaalan (talk) 21:02, 13 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Instead arguing personal views, Sipe and Doyle provide references for their arguments. Kasaalan (talk) 22:11, 13 January 2010 (UTC)
 * All of this is simply a self-interested festival of speculation, inuendo and mud-slinging. It has no place whatsoever in this article. There is nothing solid here, most of it is totally irrelevant and non-factual.  Xan  dar   03:08, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Sexual abuse since the middle ages

 * The vast majority of the above is totally irrelevant and Original research to boot. There is nothing at all solid about clergy sexual abuse cases. Passing laws to stop something, doesn't mean you are doing it. As far as I know, child marriages, when they existed, were dynastic, and were generally consummated later.   Xan  dar   03:04, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
 * If you can actually read, it mentions canon law cases about child abuse, also the proposed punishment over such abuse for 12 years. Also Church's consent over 7 year old child marriage during middle ages is another issue. Kasaalan (talk) 11:32, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
 * The point is a) that most of this is completely unconnected with the subject of the current article ie. Catholic sex abuse cases and the modern crisis in certain countries. b) the material is highly tangential even to other related topics, since it is all built up of inference, smoke and mirrors.  Xan  dar   23:55, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Quotes
Summarized the contents below


 * 1) "Religion professor Mark Jordan: "The long chronicle that runs down from the Middle Ages shows that priests and monks have always been accused of abusing the minors entrusted to them."
 * 2) Michael Goodich, “Sodomy in Ecclesiastical Law and Theory,” in Journal of Homosexuality 1(1976), p. 427: “in the 13th century, the few references to homosexuality suggest that it was generally regarded as a clerical vice. Both the manuals of penance of the early Middle Ages and the conciliar and synodal legislation initiated in the 12th century placed greater emphasis upon the prevention and suppression of sodomy among the clergy."
 * 3) Father Thomas Doyle, a canonical lawyer who’s testified on behalf of plaintiffs in some 200 sex-abuse lawsuits, traces the existing law back to the Middle Ages, when Irish monks published penitential books for use while hearing confessions.[traces the history of clerical sexual violations from 7th and 8th century Penitential Books (hand-books containing descriptions of particular sins and recommended penances) through the middle ages to current church law.] Several of the tomes, according to Doyle, refer to sexual crimes committed by clerics against boys and girls . One widely used volume, known as the Penitential of Bede, advises clerics who sodomize children to repent their sins by subsisting on nothing more than bread and water for anywhere from three to 12 years ." [Several advise that clerics who abuse young boys and girls receive up to 12 years of penance: again abusing bishops receiving the harshest punishment.] The reason sexual abuse of minors is in these books," says Doyle, "is because it was a problem."
 * 4) The earliest written record of any church council is that of the provincial Council of Elvira (Spain, 309 [or 306]) throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Thirty-eight of the 82 [or 81] canons deal with sex and celibacy and "canons that made it very clear that some priests, at least, were having sex with minors, and having mistresses.". This first council listed a catalogue of sexual violations along with prescriptions for the offending cleric-- the heaviest penalties reserved for bishops. Up to 10 years of fasting and even excommunication (with no hope of forgiveness even at the point of death) were the severest, but not uncommon in cases of abuse of minor boys. 
 * 5) Saint Peter Damian, a reforming monk in the circle of Pope Gregory VII and who was declared a Doctor of the Church in 1823, wrote the Book of Gomorrah around 1015 --a scathing rebuke of sexually offending clergy. He is particularly hard on superiors who countenance offenders, recommending sinning priests be dismissed from the priesthood. He regards contemptuously priests who defile men or boys who come to them for confession or who use the sacrament to absolve their sexual partners. The author detailed the harm that offending clerics inflict on the church, and pleaded with the pope to clean house. However, " The pope [Pope Gregory VII] decided to exclude only those (clerics) who had offended repeatedly and over a long period of time. Although Peter Damian had paid significant attention to the impact of the offending clerics on their victims, the pope made no mention of this and focused only on the sinfulness of clerics and their need to repent." (*) That 11th century scenario sounds an excruciatingly familiar ring to those who have had to play any part in sorting out the current drama.
 * 6)  The Decretum Gratiani, published in 1140, includes specific references "to sexual violation of boys…and offers the opinion that clerics guilty of pederasty should suffer the same penalties as lay men, including the death penalty." (*) The Corpus Iuris Canonici published in 1234  contained all of Gratian's work besides the collection of laws enacted by a wide range of bishops. Those legislative pronouncements comprise the primary source of church law and accurately reflect the problems of the time.
 * 7) History of the Protestant Reformation and the Council of Trent(1545-1563) record the rampant corruption of bishops and priests. [...] Reform laws then dealt directly with sexually active clerics. Sexual abuse of minors was a major concern for the council bishops who were well aware that even some recent popes had minor protegees. Two of the council canons forbidding sexual contact with minors were the primary source for current canon law. Canon #1395 specifically names sexual contact with a minor by a cleric an ecclesiastical crime. Doyle summarizes the record: The historical development of legislation concerning clergy sexual abuse verifies that it has been a serious problem from the earliest years of the church. The documentation also shows that the official Church has repeatedly attempted to deal effectively with the problem. Church leaders, especially certain popes, had acknowledged the terrible impact of sexual abuse on children and on Church membership in general. What is remarkable about these attempts is that they were made openly and memorialized in official Church documents. Such official mention of sexual abuse is clearly an indicator of the existence of the problem. ''
 * 8) The first public discussion of priest sexual abuse of minors took place at a meeting sponsored by the National Association for Pastoral Renewal on the campus of Notre Dame University in 1967 and all U.S. Catholic bishops were invited.

How can you call the direct quote tangential. Kasaalan (talk) 11:17, 15 January 2010 (UTC)


 * All of the above lovingly-gathered "information" is tangential because it has nothing to do with the Sexual abuse cases/scandal covered by this article. As far as I see there is no evidence whatsoever of sex-abuse scandals in the period covered. The material is more an attempt at innuendo by trying falsely to associate sexual abuse with Catholicism historically. This is false because passing laws against offenses does not mean you are committing those offences. Since the Church is the most documented institution historically you cannot say "there are documents about the church, therefore the Church is where x happened distinctively," which is what is attempting to be done here. The whole topic is based on an strategem, often used by those seeking to impugn or spread innuendoes: That is, skipping a logical step. Step 1 (Proven) Catholics involved in Abuse cases. Step 2 (Unproven and skipped over) - Catholics are particularly linked with Abuse. Step 3 (Based on unproven Step 2) Try to cite Catholic links with abuse in the past, as if the connection and proof of Step 2 is solid and self-evident. The only link this material has with the article is Step 2, which is neither discussed or proven.

Sexual abuse scandal in Australia - forest vs. the trees
Last year, there was a debate mostly between myself and Kasaalan about what I call excessive detail with respect to naming specific abusers and specific abuse cases. Aside from the fact that this sort of prurient detail is considered "trashy and sensationalist", the real problem IMO is that it obscures the forest by focusing on the trees.

Here is a good example of what I'm talking about: in discussing Australia, we have mentioned cases and the Pope's apology but, up to now, we haven't given the reader any idea of what the "forest" looks like.

At last, I have found an article that describes the forest:

http://www.nationalcatholicreporter.org/dallas/allen2.htm

I plan to weave this description of the forest into this article in the next few days.

Please... let's stop focusing on individual trees (i.e. specific abusers and specific victims) and focus on the forest.

--Richard S (talk) 08:18, 13 January 2010 (UTC)


 * You are cutting the trees to "see the forest". Kasaalan (talk) 20:56, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Copyright problem
This article is currently undergoing review for copyright concerns. Contributors are welcome to resubmit text that has been removed so long as the content is written in original language. Text has been removed that was taken from this source. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 19:54, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
 * When you say "undergoing a review" - a 'review' by whome? Obscurasky (talk) 20:40, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Moonriddengirl is conducting the review. She is an admin who has taken on copyright policing as one of her primary activities on Wikipedia.  --Richard S (talk) 07:41, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I changed section a bit, I don't agree there is a copyright violation in the section. Kasaalan (talk) 20:54, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I have temporarily blanked and protected this article while we discuss this issue. This article and others are undergoing extensive evaluation as part of addressing Contributor copyright investigations/20100114. Kasaalan, the material that you restored was partially a quote, but also included the front material, ""In 2005-FEB, Dr. Kathleen McChesney of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said that the crisis is not yet over because thousands of victims across the country are still reporting the abuse." Wikipedia's copyright policies are clear. We cannot duplicate text from external sources unless it is clearly marked as a quotation and used in accordance with WP:NFC. I am attempting to minimize disruption and salvage as much material as I can here, even though policy permits restoring this to the last verifiably clean version. That would represent a substantial set-back to the development of this article. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 21:06, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
 * This is the last verifiably clean version. I can continue to work backwards in the hopes of removing piece by piece material that may have been copied into this article from other sources. If you would prefer, I can restore to that version and you can begin rebuilding from there. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 21:11, 14 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Try reviewing my revision before Richard's major additions and reconstruction. We made some in between improvements, but the article really messed up enough let alone the copyright we have major differences between 4-5 editors in the page. I was actually waiting Richard to finish, then review his edits, and if we cannot agree asking 3rd view opinion. However it became worse since he just copy pasted the sections. Kasaalan (talk) 23:08, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Tracking problems

 * Since I'm not working directly on the article pending further discussion, I'll note here that content from seems to have been copied into the article with this edit. For instance, the source says:

The content placed in the article said:

The material introducing the question from Csaba Ternyak has also been reproduced. Remnants from this article will need to be addressed if I resume working backwards. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 21:37, 14 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Material in this edit seems to have duplicated content from, copying content from the "Fact" columns of that page. (A couple of examples: "Half the priests were 35 years of age or younger at the time of the first instance of alleged abuse."; "Fewer than 7 percent of the priests were reported to have experienced physical, sexual or emotional abuse as children.") Will need to see what remains of this, either directly carrying it forward or unauthorized derivative based on. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 21:51, 14 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Some of the material in this edit is properly paraphrased, but some copies without attribution or follows too closely. There's nothing to indicate, for instance, that the following sentences are copied verbatim: "The most frequent context for abuse was a social event and many priests socialized with the families of victims. Abuses occurred in a variety of places with the most common being the residence of the priest." This content is much too closely paraphrased: "The John Jay report catalogued more than twenty types of sexual abuse ranging from verbal harassment to penile penetration. It said that most of the abusers engaged in multiple types of abuses." Other material in that contribution needs to be compared to the source. Any text still present in the article, or unauthorized derivatives based on this text, will need to be removed. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 22:04, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Some of the material in this edit paraphrases closely . Additional paraphrasing will be needed to separate any remnants of "contemporary bishops have responded that the hierarchy was unaware until recent years of the danger in shuffling priests from one parish to another and in concealing the priests' problems from those they served" from "the claims of contemporary bishops that the hierarchy was unaware until recent years of the danger in shuffling priests from one parish to another and in concealing the priests' problems from those they served." --Moonriddengirl (talk) 22:25, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Material added seems to have been copied from, beginning with the words, "the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the Roman Catholic Church is responsible (vicariously liable) for sexual abuse by it's Priests" and extended to the blockquote. It also seems to have brought over a small amount of unmarked content from : "In 1992, the Canadian Catholic bishops unveiled tough guidelines - calling for "responding fairly and openly" to all allegations, stressing the need to "respect" the jurisdiction of outside authorities, and recommending counselling and compassion for the victims." The source says, "The stories talk about the tough guidelines the Canadian Catholic bishops unveiled in 1992 - calling for "responding fairly and openly" to all allegations, stressing the need to "respect" the jurisdiction of outside authorities, and recommending counselling and compassion for the victims." Need to see what remains of this material, if anything. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 22:39, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
 * As it happens, the text in question is not in the latest version of the article. However, the section on Canada should be restored and so we need to make sure that the restored version avoids the copyvio problem identified by Moonriddengirl. --Richard S (talk) 08:13, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

How to deal with the copyright problems
Find a better solution without blanking the article. As I said use and another smaller tag for copyright claims. Whole article become unreadable, deal with the case quickly. Kasaalan (talk) 22:45, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
 * There's nothing quick about this. I have another 45 edits or so to review in this article, and I'm out of time. The only quick solution is to revert back to the version I linked above, which I am willing to do if contributors to this article prefer. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 22:49, 14 January 2010 (UTC)


 * So the case is worse. If it is he should learn some proper paraphrasing and quoting and fix the issues himself. Apparently Richard managed to put text without paraphrasing to 580 pages. Somehow he should learn paraphrasing and quoting then solve the copyright issues himself. Why do we constantly waste so much time with the page anyway. Kasaalan (talk) 22:52, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Latest version I edited prior to investigated copyright issues. By the way we mainly were waiting Richard to finish his major article reconstruction, so I didn't review his edits after, yet made some in between edits for improving some sections since we have major differences over the article structure. There is no way we go back to May 23 2009 version, which would waste efforts has been made since months. Kasaalan (talk) 23:03, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Now that we know there are copyright problems, Wikipedia has a mandate to remove the material as quickly as possible. Cleaning copyright problems is imperative, and as you see there are quite a few articles to go. There are basically three options here. I can restore to the last verifiably clean, which I've linked above. This is how these matters are usually handled. I can continue identifying problematic material so that interested contributors can rewrite the article without those issues in the temporary space (typical time allotted for this is seven days, during which the article remains blanked). Or I can locate and excise the problematic materials, restoring the article when I've done so and allowing contributors to rebuild from there. I realize that a few sentences by themselves may not seem like a severe copyright problem, but what we're dealing with here is a pastiche of material copied or too closely paraphrased from multiple copyrighted sources. It's unfortunate that there is collateral damage in situations like this, but it's really unavoidable. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 01:49, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Latest version I edited prior to investigated copyright issues is January 3. After January 3 version, I couldn't even track or review Richard's edits, since the major layout, structure, section and sentence changes over 150 edits of him. His addition were copy paste in a previous article I reviewed, but again there was no apparent copy paste in january 3 and most of the article should be free from apparent copy paste or such. Only issue with the article might be "Fitzgerald's warning of Pope, Vatican, Church since 1950s" section mainly consisted of quotes. And I can solve that part myself since I created the section back then and stopped editing after Richard began his 150 chain edits to wait him to finish editing. In Richard's later version that section might be tighter. But all this become really confusing. I will wait for the investigation to finish. Kasaalan (talk) 20:23, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

We should accept Moonriddengirl's proposal
Moonriddengirl has blanked and protected this page apparently due to a bit of edit warring from Kasaalan. (a very tiny bit but Moonriddengirl apparently had neither the time nor patience to deal with it)

First of all, I apologize for creating this mess. I will work to help fix the mess but it will take some time.

I think what we need to do is to accept Moonriddengirl's proposal (as an admin enforcing copyright policy, she holds all the cards so it is basically "an offer we can't refuse"). It is better to have some article at this title than just a blanked page with a copyvio notice. We should ask Moonriddengirl to restore May 23, 2009 version. Frankly, I think that page should be protected so that only admins can edit it. Then, we should work take a copy of this version and work on it offline to eliminate copyvios. I think Moonriddengirl is offering to help by identifying specific copyvio problems. She has already identified several of them in the section "Tracking problems" above. Once we've addressed these issues, we can then ask for the page protection to be lifted and paste the entire fixed version over the old May 23, 2009 version.

The point behind asking for the page to be protected is that, without the page protections, editors will edit forward from the May 23, 2009 version and their edits will be overwritten when we overlay it with the fixed version. We will then have to merge their edits into the fixed version or just wait for them to do it themselves. Either way is extra work.

--Richard S (talk) 06:47, 15 January 2010 (UTC)


 * The page is mainly blanked since you copy paste from internet in hundreds of pages instead proper editing and putting effort like other editors. I just corrected the issue about the section she pointed.
 * You should eliminate the copyright violations mostly by yourself since you added them yourself after January 3 2010 version last edited by me prior to your large copyright violating additions.
 * Also since your editing style is so confusing I couldn't even review your edits, and I was waiting for you to finish it before I make any judgment.
 * I don't accept May 23, 2009 version by any means since it doesn't include my and other editors' months worth edits, additions and improvements. You may accept it according to your editing style, since it doesn't contain any detail, but I don't since it will be a regressive revert. As far as I read and contributed January 3 2010 version is mainly clean for copyright issues prior to your massive copy pastes. At least quotes are clear and referenced. And 3 blockquotes are from letters and public reports, which in essense does not claim copyrights. Kasaalan (talk) 10:58, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm afraid you're wrong about that date. Every example I've listed so far predates it, as I believe do many of the unreviewed edits. For one specific problematic section, see . Also, unless material is explicitly licensed or is verifiably public domain, Wikipedia presumes it is copyrighted by policy. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:39, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure this is a direct result of edit warring, but I do think Richard S is right about accepting Moonriddengirl's proposal. Obscurasky (talk) 15:09, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Pending some kind of consensus, I've placed the older version of the article at Talk:Catholic sex abuse cases/Temp. I've already spent over three hours reviewing this article and will move to others in the list until something is decided. It may be quickest to update that temp and merge it in. Rather than searching for text matches, it might also be simpler to presumptively rewrite text supplied by Richard that is not directly quoted. That way, whether it was or was not a problem, it should be clear. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:48, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I have taken 3 different copyright classes at college, and 3 sentence quote from any kind of source is not a copyright violation, if it is clearly referenced and the source is long enough. We have 3 blockquotes, which are not long and does not violate copyrights. Also, by the mean of evidence at court cases, it is obligatory to report such quotes intact, since paraphrasing or summarizing might lead misunderstandings. For example blockquote from the letter of Fitzgerald, was sealed back then by request of church, and re-opened by court order in later years. So, removing the letter quotes claiming copyright might only lead Censorship. Furthermore, publicly released reports do not claim "copyrights", especially for 3 sentences, since it would be against the essense of "publicly open reports". So January 3 2010 version only have 3 blockquotes, and some unreferenced sentences in it. There is a chance it might have issues, but there shouldn't be any case we cannot solve.
 * May 23, 2009 version is worthless by every means, it might be the version Church-biased editors would like since it doesn't include any aspect of the abuse or example cases, and I cannot agree to revert 6 months back and dozens of hours worth editing time, simply because one other conflicting user messed the article after January 3 2010 version. I clearly decline to work over May 23, since it would just be a waste. If you will review one version review January 3. The massive additions violating copyright happened after January 3 2010 version, January 3 version might have its issues about detailing or such, but there is no massive copy paste in that article. Kasaalan (talk) 20:05, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Of course you might not have time since there are hundreds of pages, but can you try sending some 3rd party help to the page, from wiki projects or willing admins after the investigation is over. Kasaalan (talk)


 * The oldest investigation we have dates back to March; I don't think we want to leave it blanked that long. We can't restore it knowing it has copied text in it.


 * References are immaterial to copyright under the US law that governs Wikipedia; as USFL-102, 5/29 notes, "Acknowledging the source of the copyrighted material does not substitute for obtaining permission." US law also does not recognize inherent public domain status on something vaguely defined as "public reports"; although the US federal government does not claim copyright over its own work, it acknowledges the rights of other bodies to do so. Even Press Releases are non-free for Wikipedia's purposes (see the copyright FAQ) All material is presumed copyrighted unless it can be proven to be copyright free. We do not duplicate or closely paraphrase previously published material that is not public domain or licensed compatibly for reuse except in accordance with WP:NFC, which Wikipedia has adopted to be deliberately more narrow than the US fair use doctrine and which requires that all copied text be clearly marked and used with good cause.


 * In addition to the first several problems I disclosed, I have listed above five further edits that introduced text that was copied from or too closely followed on a copyrighted source, all of which were placed prior to January 2010. A number of the remaining unreviewed edits also predate January 2010, including two which by size alone seem to be very substantial. If you do not wish to rework from the earlier version, I would be happy when I have time (as I spent today working on another article pending consensus here) to resume cataloging the material I find for excision from the current version, following which contributors here may be rewrite it and reintroduce it at leisure. Excising it from the January 3 version serves no purpose, as material had already been placed into the article in contravention of copyright policy by then and there is no reason to arbitrarily choose that date.


 * CCI listings are public, and this one was particularly well publicized to other administrators. So far, there seems to be a shortage of volunteers. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 20:37, 15 January 2010 (UTC)


 * In case it will help, I have now publicized this at several relevant projects as well. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 21:02, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Reverting to January 3, 2010 is a lot better than all the way back to May 23, 2009. Thank you.

I expect that it should be feasible to fix the copyright issues between January 3 and January 13 and then move forward once that's done.

Moonriddengirl, if you have time to continue your review of the article for copyright issues, we could work on fixing all of them (regardless of whether they occurred before or after January 3).

--Richard S (talk) 00:40, 16 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Admin you are partly right about copyrights. Addressing the source does not give you right to copy or redistribute copyrighted material. However, by any academical, journalistic, scientific research or encyclopedic standard quoting 1-2-3 sentences from a book [generally hundreds of pages long] is never considered as "copyright redistribution or violation". Also for evidence over courts [letters in these case] are within the scope of "public information rights" similar to Right to know. You cannot claim copyright to forbid quoting from an evidence of an illegal act. Church tried to seal the evidence back then to prevent public awareness of the situation, yet another court unsealed the letters back in 2007, since it clearly shows church has been warned about the abuse cases. If we set any standard like editors cannot quote 1-3 sentences from newspapers, journals etc. he have to erase half of the articles in wikipedia for science, history or politics issues. Quoting as such is not a violate of copyrights, but generally NPOV and giving each party the right to defense in its own words. Kasaalan (talk) 11:21, 16 January 2010 (UTC)
 * The problem here is not with quoting; it's copying without quoting. (Some quotes were removed, but only when the text surrounding them infringed; the problem was not the quotes themselves.) This is forbidden by Wikipedia's own copyright policy (distinct from copyright law, though created to remain within it) and related policy & guideline on non-free content. (It's also not with 1, 2 or 3 sentences, but with the compound impact of many instances of 1, 2, or 3 sentences or even more.) Right to know is a distinct issue from copyright and does not relate to the public's right to copy information into a new document, including for commercial gain (please remember that Wikipedia's license explicitly permits commercial reuse). See, for example, Public domain. Fair use may be the doctrine you're thinking of; this is the legal doctrine in the United States that allows people to use copyrighted material even without permission. WP:NFC is the policy & guideline that Wikipedia has devised to ensure that non-free content remains well within fair use, given the challenges that our material is intended for reuse anywhere in the world and for any reason. NFC permits limited quotation with good reason. The problem is in copying without quoting or following so closely on the source text that you create a derivative work. The right to create derivative works is reserved to the copyright holder. When copyrighted content is introduced into an article, this can also cause problems later if the material is incrementally revised, because its tainted base makes it an "unauthorized derivative". If you have any questions about copyright, though, we should probably address them at my talk page, because this page seems to see enough action. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:46, 16 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes it is fair use and I currently began investigating copyright issues in my talk page. However, for my edits I never use a quote without quotation or reference. For such the article it accomplishes all 4 elements of the fair use. Also I remind you some documents were earlier of 1989 copyright laws. Some sections didn't yet reviewed by me so cannot tell about that sections. However again 1-2-3 quotes from letters or public research may not be considered as derivative work since it doesn't include main elements of the report. And we generally used close paraphrasing for legal or historical documents or over facts to keep their accuracy. "A derivative work pertaining to copyright law, is an expressive creation that includes major, copyright-protected elements of an original, previously created first work." On the other hand you may be right about wiki policies, which I didn't fully evaluate. Also even for commercial usage, fair use holds 4 main aspects, which we do not violate by quoting. Some sentences are tight paraphrases since the sentences are tight, and I am not a native english speaker so I am having a hard time not ruining the meaning of the sentence. We may solve the issues in the long run. Thanks for your efforts. Kasaalan (talk) 14:13, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Copyright cleanup
Since there is consensus from two to roll back but understandable reluctance from one to roll all the way back, I have rolled back to January 3rd, but removed all the identified copyright concerns which remained in the article. Interested contributors should find it easier to rebuild from this point than from the earlier version. Some material has been lost, but this is an unfortunate reality of copyright cleanup. Copyright violations authorizes the removal of all content by a contributor in these cases, but rather than fall back to that I have attempted instead to verify what content can be used. Contributors to the article are welcome to use the facts that were removed, but the text should not be restored as it was. For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or published material; such additions will be deleted. Contributors may use copyrighted publications as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences or phrases. Accordingly, the material may be rewritten, but only if it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously, and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. While we appreciate contributions, we must require all contributors to understand and comply with these policies. Thank you. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 22:37, 15 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Difference We can handle the removed text. For the parts removed, I will copy each re-paraphrased quote here, so after your review we can re-add material. Is that alright. Kasaalan (talk) 11:27, 16 January 2010 (UTC)
 * In response to both Richard above and Kasaalan here, you are welcome to rewrite the removed material and restore it and to incorporate material from edits subsequent to January 3rd. (As I explained in the note I just left you above, Kasaalan, the problem is not with the quotes.) Richard, this does not need my review. Contributors can take one of two approaches: they can check each subsequent edit for copyright concerns, or they can simply resort to the sources cited and rewrite the material completely. That eliminates the need to check. If you would like my review of the post January 3rd edits, I will give it, but can't prioritize it, since this material is no longer in publication, and there are many more articles to go. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:50, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Redirect
Paedophile priest redirects here. That does not make sense, since there are many more denominations and cultures where Paedophile priest can exist. I suggest creating a List of Paedophile priests and redirect Paedophile priest to it. Any comments? -- (User) Mb (Talk) 11:58, 16 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Priests generally accepted as catholic priest that is why such a misleading redirect is in place. I have edited a sexual abuse case in a Torah school Yeshiva Torah Temimah. Any religious or non-religious doctrine might conduct sexual abuse. If you create such a page, I may help too. But don't change redirect until we can develop such a page. Kasaalan (talk) 12:13, 16 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Pedophile priest really shouldn't redirect to anywhere. It's really quite a pejorative term, and being that the majority of priests guilty of sex abuse had sex with teenagers, they weren't really pedophiles in the first place.  Illegal activity?  Yes.  Pedophilia?  No.Farsight001 (talk) 12:15, 16 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Redirect might be NPOV or POV. The article includes both pedophilia [below 14 years old according to the article] and non-pedophilia cases[for 15-19 years old it is called Ephebophilia]. Yet it would be better if a top level abuse article which includes other religions would be much more NPOV an informative. Kasaalan (talk) 12:22, 16 January 2010 (UTC)
 * And why are you suggesting that pedophilia in this case should ONLY relate to abuse. In many cases there were no abuses, as it was a cultural norm at a time. In any case it is clear that it is a good idea to do a DA or a similar page on it. -- (User) Mb (Talk) 13:15, 16 January 2010 (UTC)
 * "Paedophile Priests" should redirect to a disambig page. A list could never be comprehensive or representative.  Xan  dar   00:27, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Restored last version of January 13, 2010
Upon reviewing what the January 3 version looked like, I came to regret my suggestion to accept Moonriddengirl's proposal to revert to that version because it was radically different from the January 13th version. I decided to start from the January 13th version and reread every section looking for and fixing possible copyright violations.

I think I have addressed most of them with the possible exception of a couple bits of text that have been there for a long time. I flagged those for review via comments in the text.

I also removed some of the copyright violations that were commented out in the article so that it wouldn't exist in the article page at all, commented out or otherwise. I had put them there to park them so that I could use them as notes for future expansion. Moonriddengirl advises that this is not acceptable practice so I removed them.

This diff shows the edits that I made to the January 13th version to remove the copyright issues.

--Richard S (talk) 00:17, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

This diff shows two additional edits that I made to remove copyright issues.

--Richard S (talk) 01:01, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

More or less done with reorg
I am going to review the copyright issues to make sure they've been addressed but I think we're in pretty good shape on that front.

Kasaalan stated that "we were waiting for Richard to finish his re-org". Actually, I had more or less finished it. Certainly, it can be fleshed out with more information about countries other than the U.S. and Ireland but the basic structure is pretty much in place now.

The question now is whether other editors like this new article structure better than the previous one which had a very U.S.-centric overview that claimed to be a "Global Overview" but wasn't. That so-called "Global Overview" was followed by sections on specific countries such as the U.S. and Ireland followed by a sort of catch-all for "Other countries". The problem is that we had lots of information about the U.S. and Ireland, much less about Canada and Australia and almost nothing about other countries except for information about specific priests and bishops.

My proposed approach, embodied in the current revision of the article, attempts to integrate all the various narratives into a single global narrative. As a result, the narrative jumps around from country to country but the organizational principle is approximate chronological order rather than splitting stuff up by countries. As ADM pointed out, we already have articles on the scandals in each country so there is no need to repeat that information here.

I grant that my proposed structure has problems with it. It's not perfect. It's an attempt to address issues that were raised by Obscurasky and ADM. The question is whether it is an improvement on what we had before. Should we use this as the starting point for future work or should we revert to an earlier version? If so, which one?

--Richard S (talk) 00:57, 17 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I tend to find the current format rather repetitive and confusing with x's awareness of the crisis, y's awareness of the crisis, z's awareness of the crisis... X's response to the crisis, y's response to the crisis, z's response to the crisis, etc. etc. I'm not sure this is the best arrangement.  Xan  dar   02:17, 18 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I understand that the current format is not perfect. I recognized the issues that you raised when I was reorganizing the article.  However, I think the current format is preferable to the previous one where we had a U.S.-centric overview that claimed to be "global" (but wasn't) followed by a section on the U.S. which repeated much of the material in the overview.  My proposed format attempts to present the various developments in different countries in roughly chronological order while still providing section headings that inform the reader who is doing what and where.  I'm open to proposals for other formats.  My proposal was responding to issues raised by Obscurasky and ADM.  Do you have ideas for other ways to address their concerns? --Richard S (talk) 01:16, 1 February 2010 (UTC)