Hello all, Nate's Mission are working really hard to continue Nate's fight, and goals, that what happened to Him doesn't happen to another child or adult. To that end they could use our financial support to continue their efforts and all of our wishes for a church free of abuse and it's cover up. Please donate if you can through the link below, any amount helps, large or small. Thank You
See below the letter and analysis Nate's Mission drafted last year to petition the Catholic Church to permanently enact canonical law that has a zero tolerance policy for abuse or it's cover up....
Nate’s Mission: Proposed Zero Tolerance Law and Analysis
Sarah Pearson
Nate’s Mission
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
James Egan
The Archangel Foundation
Chicago, Illinois
Peter Isely
Nate’s Mission
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
POSITION:
A universal law of the Catholic Church prohibiting sexual violence and its concealment that mandates the removal, including laicization of clergy, of all Church agents found guilty of these acts is the single most significant step Church leaders can take to address the persistence of these acts within the Church and ensure there is Zero Tolerance for them. Such a law and the canonical process it entails permanently removes those responsible for the system that enables the ongoing sexual abuse of children and adults, offers current victims a means for justice under Church law, and demonstrates the firm commitment to a post-abuse Church. It is a legal means to identify and remove those parts of the Church’s organization that facilitate and conceal sexual violence. Our proposed law challenges assumptions that have failed to understand and address abuse in the Catholic Church and commits agents of the Church to abide by an occupational code in keeping with the public trust necessitated by their ministries.
Our position demonstrates the history and scale of this problem, offers our understanding of the organizational structure and culture that contributes to it, and proposes a universal law as a means to ensure that all abuse is addressed and prevented within the Church.
Our analysis emphasizes the following points:
● No rule, canon, or law in the history of the Catholic Church has prevented the the Church
from creating the longest-lasting and most widespread campaign of sexual violence in the world.
● Clergy sexual abuse is a unique form of sexual violence, manufactured by the Catholic
Church and reproduced and intergenerationally transmitted through centuries of Church history.
● Even in countries with laws that prohibit and punish sexual violence, clergy sexual abuse
and its institutional concealment have managed to persist and continue into the present
time.
● Because clergy sexual abuse is internally generated, the solution to the problem must
also be internally generated in the form of a binding and universal prohibition against
sexual violence.
● A Zero Tolerance law for the Catholic Church must eliminate any reference to the sixth
commandment, instead prohibiting the commission of a sexual act against another
person’s will.
● All people have criminal and civil rights, but not the right to practice an occupation. A
person’s license and title should be revoked when they violate the occupational code.
● Because the priesthood is a “guardian occupation” that operates within the public space
and requires public trust, a cleric who violates public trust must be ejected from the
occupation, or they compromise the work of the entire occupation on behalf of the public
good.
● When an occupation fails to eject a person who has egregiously violated the
occupational code, the entire occupation is responsible because it cannot be trusted to
regulate its members.
● Our Zero Tolerance law provides a proper occupational code that leaves no room for
abuse and its institutional concealment with no statute of limitations.
THE SCALE OF ABUSE AND THE URGENCY OF A ZERO TOLERANCE LAW
For close to four decades, reports of sexual abuse by clerics and its institutional concealment by
the Catholic hierarchy have been the subject of headlines around the world. From Canada, the
United States, Chile, Ireland, and Australasia to Poland, the Congo, Spain, Argentina, the
Philippines, and the Pacific, a global torrent of scandals, court cases, and state investigations
continue to expand our understanding of the scope and magnitude of the Catholic clergy abuse
catastrophe. Sexual abuse by priests, religious, and lay agents of the Church has been reported
across all varieties of dioceses, religious orders, and ecclessial communities.
The laws of any given society can give us insight into the priorities and values of that society.
When abusive clerics and the institutions that enabled them are prosecuted, it demonstrates
that the behavior will not be tolerated. When state governments adopt more stringent child
protection laws, they signal they are serious about preventing the recurrence of abuse.
There is a long history of monastic rules, canons, and laws dating back to the fourth century
1
pertaining to the sex lives of Catholic clerics. Through millenia, these laws, the punishments
1 Doyle, Thomas P., Richard A.W. Sipe, and Patrick J. Wall. Sex, Priests, and Secret Codes: The Catholic
Church's 2000-Year Paper Trail of Sexual Abuse. Los Angeles, CA: Volt Press, 2006.
they commanded, and the enforcement of them varied widely. What they tell us is that the
Catholic Church has aimed to take measures, some quite extreme, to enforce clerical celibacy.
These rules pertained to sexual contact between clerics and men, women, concubines, clerical
wives, animals, and children, generally with the harshest punishments assigned to the acts that
had held the greatest potential for scandal.
2 But none of these laws have prevented the
catastrophe that exists today: the most widespread and longest-lasting campaign of sexual
violence in the world.
Despite insistence by the hierarchy, including the Pope who has stated that he is responsible for
instituting a “zero tolerance” approach
3
, it is clear that not only do abuse, cover-up, and
institutional backlash against affected persons continue, the abusive culture that provides the
basis for these crimes continues to be intergenerationally reproduced and transmitted by the
Catholic hierarchy.
WHY DOES SEXUAL VIOLENCE PERSIST IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH?
In spite of continuous public exposure on this issue, there is still limited understanding of the
conditions that have led to the alarmingly high percentage of clerics who have sexually abused
children. Common sense might argue that the best course of action for the Vatican to avoid
further scandal and move beyond the issue would be to turn documents and evidence over to
state governments and justice officials, own up to its role in allowing the catastrophe to continue,
pay reparations to survivors, and institute more stringent globally binding prevention measures.
But for the most part, the Church has not done this. And contrary to what one might expect, the
result of this choice has not been a political weakening of the institution, but rather an
exponential growth in Catholic power and influence, especially among the right-wing.
Although the hierarchy has characterized clergy sexual abuse largely as a problem of the past,
making great efforts to highlight the reforms and represent the Catholic church in its present
form as “safe,” recent polling in the United States, for example, demonstrates that a large
percentage of the laity does not accept this claim. A 2021 poll by the Center for Applied
Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University found that 59% of Catholics
report paying “a great deal” or “quite a bit” of attention to the issue of clergy sexual abuse of
3 Kottasová, Ivana. “Pope Declares ‘Zero Tolerance’ for Catholic Church Abuse, Saying He Takes
Personal Responsibility for Ending It.” CNN, Cable News Network, 5 Sept. 2022,
edition.cnn.com/2022/09/04/europe/pope-francis-interview-ukraine-abuse-intl/index.html. Accessed 31
May 2024.
minors.
4 A Pew Research poll from 2019 found that 69% of Catholics believe that recent reports
of sexual abuse “reflect ongoing problems that are still happening.”
Despite the hierarchy’s continuous attempts to minimize any narrative that suggests that the
problems that have led to widespread sexual abuse have not been resolved, the actions they
have taken in response to public revelations of abuse seem to indicate that the threat posed by
survivor activism, statewide investigations, criminal and civil lawsuits, and investigative
journalism is critical and ongoing. Across the world, dioceses are employing armies of lobbyists,
consultants, and attorneys to obstruct statewide investigations into clergy abuse and stop the
passage of legislation that would make the institution more vulnerable to civil penalties for its
role in facilitating the abuse. The intensity and ferocity of this coordinated campaign suggest
that there is something integral to the Church’s functioning - some precious and irreplaceable
“thing” - that they seem to believe would be lost if its full truth were exposed to the public.
Although civil lawsuits, whistleblower documents, and survivors’ testimonies have expanded the
public understanding of what this “thing” is, the full extent of it, the most complete picture, the
truth in its stark and obscene form, is still somewhat of a mystery. What is unique about the
Catholic Church that it has produced and reproduced a clerical environment that has enabled
systematic sexual violence across centuries of its documented existence? How have vast
human rights abuses targeting children around the world been permitted to continue unimpeded
in societies governed by laws that mandate punishment for these crimes? And why is it that
after 40 years of public exposure, it seems as though the answers to these questions are, at
best, incomplete?
THE LIBERAL-CONSERVATIVE BINARY: A FALSE LINE OF DIVISION
Since the introduction of the abuse catastrophe into the mainstream media, two dominant
positions have emerged across political-theological ideologies that attempt to account for this
unresolved mystery. The conservative position sees modernization and the rejection of
traditional sexual norms in secular culture as the cause for the breaking of clerical celibacy in
the form of child sexual abuse. For instance, Cardinal Raymond Burke articulated this position
in his response to the Pennsylvania Grand Jury report and revelations of abuse allegations
made against Cardinal Theodore McCarrick:
“‘I believe that there needs to be an open recognition that we have a very grave problem of a
homosexual culture in the Church, especially among the clergy and the hierarchy, that needs to
be addressed honestly and efficaciously…I think it has been considerably aggravated by the
4 Pew Research Center. Americans See Catholic Clergy Sex Abuse as an Ongoing Problem. June 11,
2019.
-problem/.
anti-life culture in which we live, namely the contraceptive culture that separates the sexual act
from the conjugal union.'”
5
This position that blames the sexual revolution and the Second Vatican Council for a dissolution
of traditional sexual norms, leading to an explosion of abuse in the decades that followed,
ignores sixteen centuries of documented evidence of efforts by church leadership to conceal
sexual abuse of children from the public. While knowledge of sexual violation of children by
Catholic clerics was not a part of the global public consciousness prior to the Second Vatican
Council, records demonstrate a continuity of awareness by the hierarchy of the risk that clerical
pederasty posed to the political and social power of the Church.
Significantly, this right-wing Catholic position equates homosexuality with pedophilia. The
position, rooted in ancient Roman thinking,
6 has seen a recent violent resurgence in far-right
social movements that have labeled LGBTQ+ people as “groomers” who pose a danger to
children through their very existence. The conflation of homosexuality and pedophilia has been
repeatedly refuted by medical and scientific experts.
7 This position only contributes to
heightened stigma around gay men while ignoring every non-male victim of clergy abuse. The
right-wing position is a defense of clerical identity which, on paper, is male, heterosexual, and
celibate.
Conversely, the liberal Catholic sees the resistance to modernization and the repression of
healthy sexual desire as the cause for widespread sexual abuse of children among the clergy.
The liberal Catholic position is that in order to curb the abuse crisis, the Church must institute
reforms surrounding exclusion from the priesthood on the basis of gender and sexuality,
specifically, diversifying the clergy by allowing married men and women to be ordained. There
are implicit assumptions within this position, namely that married Catholic men are straight men,
and that straight men are less likely to abuse children. This is, in fact, not so far removed from
the conservative position.
The second assumption is that there is a non-abusive quality attached to the female gender,
and that by inducting women into the clergy, the abusive qualities of male clergy can be
moderated. While women less frequently participate in the direct acts of sexual abuse, women
have historically played important roles in grooming and trafficking victims, as well as covering
7 Herek, Gregory M. “Facts About Homosexuality and Child Molestation,” 2018.
https://lgbpsychology.org/html/facts_molestation.html
up abuse. There is also a significant percentage of female religious that have sexually abused
both children and adults.
Much of the public conversation surrounding the clergy abuse crisis focuses on the tension on
each side of a false line of division. Despite the ideological positioning, there has been no
discernable difference between liberal and conservative Catholic bishops in the hierarchical
management of the abuse crisis. This is demonstrated by millions of pages of documents and
evidence that have been made public through litigation and court-ordered public release across
decades of survivor activism around the world. These lines of division have not altered the basic
dynamic. There is no evidence that the stated ideological and theological position of any bishop
has had any impact on the frequency of abuse or managerial patterns and practices of
transferring abusive clergy and concealing their crimes from the community. The root of the
abuse and its repetition must be sought outside of this false line of division. The cause must be
internal to the clerical system and shared across members of the clergy from a range of
ideological, theological, and political positions.
There must then instead be something unique within the Catholic clerical structure that accounts
for a high percentage of its clerics, relative to other similar occupations, committing acts of
sexual abuse against children. The answer must be sought within two different conceptual
levels. One is the written law of the Catholic Church which entails its priestly codes and
ordinances surrounding ordination, the role of the priest in Catholic governance, and the
exercise of Church-based power. The other, while indirectly linked to the first, is more difficult to
discern, as it has to do with a group formation that is organized around the breaking of the
written law. One need not break the law to consent to the group formation, however, one must
allow the clerical management of the broken law to operate unimpeded so that it becomes part
of the regular functioning of the system. Clerical pedophilia is not a phenomenon that occurs as
the result of an external perversion of the Catholic hierarchy,
8 but rather, a distinct form of sexual
violence that is produced, manufactured, and reproduced within the clerical system.
This is evidenced by history of abuses that were committed and concealed through the
collaboration of bishops and other Church leaders who permitted abusers to remain in active
ministry. The history of abuse in the Church reveals organized attempts by networks of Church
officials to perpetuate, ignore, or conceal abuse. While these affiliations persist in the Catholic
hierarchy, sexual violence will continue to be reproduced within the clerical system.
Therefore, the solution must come from inside the clerical system, and the first step must be to
establish as the center of the priestly code, an absolute prohibition of sexual violence by clergy
and its institutional concealment by the hierarchy.
8
It is not that some individuals with a predilection for sexual abuse gravitate towards the priesthood, but
that there is something about the training, education and culture of the priesthood itself that creates this
particular type of offender. The John Jay Report cites that 57% of clerical offenders surveyed were over
the age of 35 at the first instance of alleged abuse, a significant difference from the patterns of pedophiles
in the general population. See John Jay College of Criminal Justice, The Nature and Scope of Sexual
Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests and Deacons in the United States 1950-2002.
There are various centuries-old, deeply held assumptions generated by the clerical system that
must be challenged and eliminated in the construction of the new law. Here we discuss them:
THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT
Under current canon law, the only way to classify an act of sexual violence against another
person, committed by a member of the clergy, is as a violation of the sixth commandment
9
,
which reads, “You shall not commit adultery.” Several assumptions are implicit in this
classification.
When an act of abuse is only identified by law as sexual activity outside of marriage, it implies
that the act is consented to by the victim as a co-participant in the act. It does not recognize that
a cleric can commit a sexual act against the will of another person. It does not account for the
inherent institutional political and social power granted to the cleric.
As Ashwini Tambe argues “Coercion…should be defined by more than just whether someone
says yes or no. It hinges on whether one has power over that other person such that they might
interpret a request as force - or even as a threat. If [they face] negative consequences for
saying no to a sexual advance, then that sexual advance is coercive.”
10
The victim is classified as a sinner under canon law. In the same way that adultery is a violation
against the institution of marriage, a sexual act by a cleric is a violation against the institution of
the priesthood. As long as there is no language that recognizes sexual violence as a crime
against the affected person(s), victims of sexual violence by clergy do not exist in canon law.
Our Zero Tolerance law eliminates any reference to the sixth commandment, instead focusing
on the act of abuse against a victim.
OCCUPATIONAL CODE
When a cleric commits an act of sexual violence, they violates three different types of governing
laws/codes. The first and second, criminal and civil codes, are secular laws that vary based on
the state in which the act was committed. The third is an occupational code that pertains to
Catholic clerics. That is canon law. Under the first two types of codes, the cleric is a citizen of a
particular state. Under the third code, the cleric is a member of an occupation. Outside of
Vatican State territory, an offending cleric is subject to the criminal and civil laws of the state.
However, the Catholic Church is responsible for regulating its occupational code for priests. An
occupational code does not grant a person any particular “right” in a criminal or civil manner,
however, it authorizes a person to practice their occupation within the ethical code of that
10 Tambe, Ashwini. 2018. “Reckoning with the Silences of #MeToo.” Feminist Studies 44, no. 1:197-203.
occupation and to present themselves as a member in good standing of that occupation. In
other words, occupationally, ordination to the priesthood, grants a person an occupational title
and license.
All persons have civil and criminal rights. Not all people have the right to practice a particular
occupation. If it has been determined that an individual has violated the occupational code, their
license and title can be revoked.
In all societies, occupations are classified under two different types depending on their
functioning. The first has traditionally been designated as a “guardian” occupation; the second is
a commercial occupation.
11 Both occupations are needed for the functioning of a society, but
their functions require two different sets of ethical principles. Guardian occupations include
members of law enforcement, government officials, judges, doctors, and teachers; commercial
occupations include business, marketing, and any other occupation whose purpose is for profit
or trade.
Guardian occupations operate within the public space, require public trust, and, in most cases,
take a public oath,
12 where commercial occupations are privately driven. When a member of a
guardian occupation violates the public trust in an egregious matter, such as the commission of
sexual violence through the use of their occupation, they must be ejected from that occupation,
or it compromises the work of the entire occupation on behalf of society.
This is why when it is discovered that a member of the guardian occupation has violated the
public trust, without being ejected from that occupation, the entire occupation is responsible
because the occupation cannot be trusted to regulate its members.
13 This is why there must be
Zero Tolerance for any form of abuse or its institutional concealment among the clergy. Our Zero
Tolerance law provides a proper occupational code that recognizes there must be no room for
abuse or cover-up in the priesthood, with no statute of limitations.
Catholic bishops and the Pope are responsible for regulating the occupation of the priesthood,
therefore, if they have failed to do so by knowingly allowing a cleric who has committed an act of
sexual abuse to remain in public ministry, they must also be removed from the occupation.
Our Zero Tolerance law expands on existing canonical prohibitions against abuse and its
concealment, in particular by insisting that removal from the occupation (in the case of ordained
ministers, laicization) is a necessary consequence for those found guilty. It does not suffice to
simply sequester offenders by removing them from public ministry. Sexual violence or its
13 Jacobs, Jane. Dark Age Ahead. Random House, 2004.
concealment violates the occupational code in such a permanent way that the agent must no
longer be permitted to operate within the Church in any capacity at all. They should no longer
benefit from being housed or materially assisted by the Church, living in ecclessial communities,
or associated with any of the positions, titles, honorifics, and status that accompany their
occupation.
Following the current form of canon law, some offenders have been disciplined in an incomplete
manner which is not in keeping with Zero Tolerance. They have been housed in Church living
facilities or communities; they have continued to keep their title as ordained ministers or
religious brothers and sisters; they have continued to be financially supported by the Church, or
have continued their association with other clergy or religious. The removal from public ministry
on behalf of the Church but not from the occupation itself and its benefits is a half-measure that
does disservice to all parties and complicates all efforts to ensure abuse no longer occurs.
As the current canonical laws stand, laicization is the maximum penalty for clergy who abuse.
Our Zero Tolerance law standardizes this as the mandated penalty not only for abusers but
those who illicitly concealed them. In both instances, there is a serious breach of the
occupational code required for ordained ministers that cannot be repaired and necessitates their
dismissal from the clerical state.
UNIVERSALITY
Zero Tolerance is the articulation within Church law and practice of the universal prohibition
against sexual violence or harm. As a universal law it applies to everyone. It supersedes all
particulars or differences between people, cultures, nations. Regardless of the criminal or civil
codes in the country in which the abuse is committed, as an occupational code, Zero Tolerance
mandates that the abuser and the persons responsible for concealing and enabling their crimes
must be removed permanently from the occupation.
In 2002, Pope John Paul II said “There is no place in the priesthood and religious life for those
who would harm the young.”
14 Yet since that time, the Catholic Church has still to make
dismissal from the priesthood the universal penalty for the abuse of children. The fact remains
that there is a place in the priesthood and religious life for those who would harm the young,
even those found guilty by civil and canonical courts.
Individual bishops’ conferences, dioceses, and religious communities have their own policies or
rules of life which have a range of approaches to abuse and its concealment, in addition to
current Vatican policies. In the United States, the Dallas Charter for the Protection of Children
and Young People committed to removing from ministry any clergy found guilty after even a
single instance of abuse. But currently, only the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith has the
14
“Address of His Holiness John Paul II to the Cardinals of the United States.” 23 Apr. 2002, Vatican City,
Vatican City.
jurisdiction for the permanent dismissal from the clerical state. This further emphasizes the need
for a law that is universally binding.
Our law ensures that Zero Tolerance is not merely an aspiration, or adequate when existing
policies fail to remove those who enacted and concealed abuse.
A Zero Tolerance law is a negative prohibition that enforces a limit or restraint on Catholic clergy
not to commit, enable, or encourage sexual violence. But the function of this law is not simply
negative. It is also positive. It will uphold and enforce, for the first time in Catholic Church
history, the positive conditions to remake the Catholic priesthood into a trusted public occupation
working on behalf of the common good.
Freedom is usually understood in negative terms as freedom from limits or constraints,
oppressive norms, and restrictive or prejudicial laws. But limits and constraints are also what
allow humanity to exercise freedom for innovation, social equality, and political change. The
negative limits imposed by Zero Tolerance on the priesthood, inclusive of the hierarchy and the
Pope, is a universal affirmation by the Church to the positive principles and practices of sexual
justice for its survivors and an abuse-free Catholic ministry for its clergy.