A group of French academics claims that a report accusing the Catholic Church in France of “systemic” clerical sex abuse is being used to launch an attack on the Church and her doctrine. The scholars dispute the report’s credibility and conclusions and say it is filled with “hostility” towards the Church.
In October 2021, the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church (CIASE) released its much-anticipated report on sex abuse within the Catholic Church in France, claiming that there were 216,000 children abused by clergy—rising to an “estimated” 330,000 such children abused by clergy and Catholic laity—between 1950 and 2020.
With such an incredibly high figure of alleged victims, the mainstream media immediately launched a campaign of strong condemnation of the Catholic Church, hinting darkly at a widespread subculture of sex abuse within the Church and repeating the figure of 200,000 victims to drive home the point.
“It was the Church – not rogue individuals – that was responsible,” wrote the BBC. “More than 200,000 children sexually abused by French Catholic clergy, damning report finds,” declared CNN. “French clergy sexually abused more than 200,000 children over the past 70 years,” said Reuters. Jeanne Smits, a veteran French Catholic journalist, noted how even “Libération—infamous for having published stories favorable to sexual acts between adults and children in the 1970’s—chose a blaring title for its first page: ‘Pedocriminality: the Church is unforgivable.”
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With these headlines, commentaries and accusatory reports, which persistently referred to hundreds of thousands of abused children, the Church was immediately portrayed as being full of evil men, who appeared to have only the abuse of children in their sights rather than anything remotely related to faith or religion.
True Figures of the Abuse Report
All too ready to vilify the Church, the Commission’s report and the subsequent media articles glossed over an aspect which would have otherwise hindered their intended attack on the Church—namely, the Truth.
For CIASE’s report did not actually find 216,000 victims of abuse, nor even 330,000, but in its own words found “an estimate…of 216,000,” and an “estimated number of…330,000” when including clergy and lay alleged abusers.
The actual number of victims of sex abuse found by the report was an alleged total of 171 children.
This revelation came only in February 2022, once the media campaign had already done its work. CIASE was forced to respond to a 15-page critique signed by eight members of the prestigious Académie Catholique de France, who condemned the Commission’s abuse report for its method, content, results and recommendations.
CIASE had already noted that it interviewed only 174 alleged victims during its research. Its findings revealed 171 alleged victims; 118 were “victims of clerics and religious.” During the three-year investigation, the report’s authors only interviewed eleven clergymen who had “perpetrated acts of sexual assault.”
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The report then used these numbers to extrapolate its national “estimate.” The eight Academy signatories condemned this method, claiming that due to the “low starting figure and the inevitable biases of the survey, it is not possible to extrapolate to the scale of the French adult population.”
They further noted that the CIASE report’s figures, which were “put forward and thrown to the media and public opinion, would not stand up to a more in-depth investigation.”
The CIASE even admitted that “we cannot ensure that there is no significant bias affecting these estimates.”
The Academy observed that the entire CIASE report was the result of an “anonymous online questionnaire,” which by nature lends itself to false testimonies. It denounced the report for its much-touted figure of 330,000 alleged victims, eventually concluding that “scientific rigor did not govern its work.”
Highlighting the report’s anti-Catholic Attack
This challenge from the Academy came as a dissenting voice against the anti-Catholic mainstream narrative and the damning report.
Certainly, the heinous crime of sexual abuse, especially when committed by clergy, must be eradicated, the Academy signatories note. Any criticism of the Commission’s report does not deny true instances of abuse beyond the 171 alleged cases recorded by the CIASE reported.
However, aside from addressing the “flawed” science used to announce a total of 330,000 alleged victims, the Academy highlighted how the report was being used as a weapon to bring down the Church, not as a means to solve the issue of child abuse.
“The disproportionate evaluation of this scourge [sex abuse] feeds the discourse on its ‘systemic’ character and makes the bed for proposals to bring down the Church-institution,” wrote the Academy.
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Indeed, Jeanne Smits suggested that an anti-Catholic agenda was underpinning the entire abuse report from beginning to end. “This seems to be the point of the report…to consider the Catholic Church of France guilty as an institution, as an entity,” she wrote.
“And on the grounds of that guilt, to require (or to force) the Church to change her mode of governance, her hierarchical organization, and even to break the seal of confession when a penitent accuses him or herself of having sexually abused a minor,” Smits added.
‘Ruinous’ Proposals Would Undermine the Church
The abuse report was purportedly commissioned in response to instances of abuse. However, its content appears to be something very different. The use of “flawed” science, exaggerated estimates of victims, combined with an effective media campaign targeting the Church, appears to have the destruction of the Church as the desired goal, not the remedy of sex abuse.
Indeed, some of the CIASE report’s 45 “recommendations” read as if taken from a modernist blueprint on subverting Catholic doctrine. One striking recommendation is an attack on the inviolable seal of Confession in instances of child sexual abuse, which the Commission defended as “compatible with the obligation of divine natural law to protect the life and the dignity of the person.”
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The Commission is not a theological body qualified to teach the Church about the Divine Law, Church structures or other matters. Nevertheless, it recommends:
- Questioning clerical celibacy and calling for married priests—as outlined in Pope Francis’ Amazon Synod.
- Proposing a change in focus in Catholic moral theology away from God.
- Suggesting altering the sixth commandment and the Church’s teaching on it.
- Calling into question the “hierarchical constitution of the Catholic Church” while advocating for “a far greater presence of laypersons in general, and women in particular” in the Church’s governance.
- Advocating for changes in Canon Law
- Curiously advocating “synodality” and attacking “clericalism,” both of which are key phrases in Pope Francis’ vocabulary.
Hence, what started as a report on the evil of sex abuse was swiftly into an attack on the Church’s credibility, structures and nature.
As the eight members of the Academy noted, “the spirit that presides over the analysis of the causes and the formulation of the recommendations seems a priori ideological.” The eight Academicians even described the Commission’s tone as “mingled with hostility” and warned the recommendations would be “ruinous” for the Church.
The recommendations are not merely incidental results of a report full of “flawed and contradictory methodology and serious deficiencies in theological, philosophical and legal fields.” They reflect the intended outcome of promoting a thoroughly anti-Catholic society. As the Bride of Christ and the Guardian of Truth, the Church is perfect, although Her members are not. Those opposed to Catholic doctrine thus appear to take delight in condemning the entire Church for the sins of a few and thereby promote a revolutionary society that rejects God.
Indeed, if the goal is to attack Truth, the Church and Her teachings, the biased report’s conclusions are not unexpected.
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