Divining the priestly mind

[Times art: Rossie Newson]

When a man feels called to the Catholic priesthood, intensive psychological screening begins. It has been the Church's defense against pedophilia for decades. But has it been enough?

By SHARON TUBBS, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published March 19, 2002

The application process begins with a mandatory autobiography. You write 10 to 12 typed pages about your parents and siblings, memorable experiences, school activities, accomplishments, failures, your relationship with God and whatever else you believe has made you who you are today.

Then comes the interview with a psychologist and a series of standardized tests designed to reveal things the doctor might miss.

At the end of what could be a 10-hour day, you have completed an important step in your application to be a priest in the Roman Catholic Diocese of St. Petersburg.

In recent weeks, the American church has been in turmoil over news that priests across the country sexually abused children and the church paid off the victims and let the abusers continue in the ministry.

In Boston, Cardinal Bernard Law announced a zero-tolerance policy against priests guilty of sexually abusing children. This, amid a sex abuse scandal that will cost his diocese $15- to $30-million to settle with victims molested by priests under his watch.

In Palm Beach County, Bishop Anthony J. O'Connell resigned after it was disclosed he had sexually abused a teenager 25 years ago. O'Connell, who had replaced another Palm Beach bishop accused of sexual misconduct, said his case involved only "touches." O'Connell acknowledged he was involved in a "similar situation" with another young man around the same time.

As church leaders struggle through the crisis, a question arises: What are they doing to keep abusers from becoming priests?

Though every diocese has its own screening process, psychological tests are used consistently. The Diocese of St. Petersburg -- which serves 372,000 worshipers in five counties -- orders candidates to take tests of intelligence and personality, one of them 500 questions long. During interviews, a psychologist asks about their sexual histories in hopes of uncovering anything that might lead to misconduct.

In Chicago, "The main focus is to have men who are psychologically and emotionally prepared for celibate life," said Jim Dwyer, a spokesman for the archdiocese there.

In Dallas, where in 1997 a jury ordered the diocese to pay $119.6-million to 11 former altar boys molested by a priest (the diocese later settled with the victims for $31.6-million), applicants write essays and sit down with psychologists two or three times over several months.

Church officials insist the screening works well. They say many of the abuse cases arising now happened decades ago, before the weeding-out procedures were put in place.

But some clergy and medical experts say attempts to root out potential abusers go only so far. At issue, they say, are systemic problems within the Catholic church, including its hush-hush attitude toward sexuality and a seminary culture that often attracts emotionally immature men.

"Were you ever molested as a child?"

A psychologist under contract with the church asks that question, or one like it, to every applicant for the priesthood in the Diocese of St. Petersburg.

Experts have said victims of abuse are more likely than others to become abusers, so the diocese takes an intense interest in candidates' sexual backgrounds.

"If the answer is yes, that means we have to look at the situation much more carefully," said the Rev. Len Plazewski, director of vocations. "If the answer is no, I think the likelihood that someone is going to go out there and start abusing children is so remote."

Plazewski said that in the four years he has worked in vocations, no candidate has said he was sexually abused as a child.

Not all dioceses are so specific in the questions they ask. The Diocese of Dallas, for example, asks doctors to glean candidates' sexual histories, but not specifically whether they were molested.

But in Plazewski's view, it's important to be direct. It's his duty to talk with 100 to 200 men interested in the priesthood each year, process their applications and sit on a board that decides whom the diocese will sponsor at seminary.

Plazewski's work is vital to the church, especially now. The number of Catholic priests has declined about 23 percent since 1965, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University. In recent years, some dioceses, including St. Petersburg, have created snazzy ad campaigns to present the priesthood as an enjoyable and rewarding occupation.

Plazewski, 36, who was an associate pastor at Corpus Christi in Temple Terrace for five years, has been at the center of the local effort. He goes to high schools and parishes to talk with youngsters. Before testing or meeting with psychologists, candidates must come to him.

Some have described visions they see or music that plays continually in their heads. A number of times, Plazewski says, he has watched someone walk away and thought: "There's something not right there."

In those cases he made a quick note in the person's file: "Not a good candidate."

Less than 25 men a year go through the formal application process. The diocese sends about 10 candidates a year to study in seminary, an undergraduate and graduate education process that spans about eight years.

In the application stage, a psychologist reads the candidates' autobiographies and engages them in conversation.

"What kind of family did the person come from? Did this person come from a family of divorce?" Plazewski says. "All of this is going to affect how the person sees things."

Standardized tests help officials see what kind of person the candidate is, Plazewski says: the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, the California Personality Inventory, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and an IQ test.

In the Rorschach Inkblot Test, candidates look at amorphous shapes and tell what they look like to them. If someone sees blood and guts, Plazewski says, maybe they have issues that a priest should not.

In one test candidates must fill in the blanks to complete sentences: "My mother (blank)," "I have a good time (blank)," "God (blank)."

Catholic officials began using psychological tests for priest candidates in the early 1970s, as medical advances allowed for it. In the mid-1980s, sexual abuse cases among clergy became public, shocking the faithful.

Nationwide, Catholic officials began running criminal background checks of priests, seminary candidates and church volunteers. Dallas recently began running credit checks. And psychological screening grew more intense.

Over about five months, candidates in the St. Petersburg diocese also take physical examinations, submit character references and meet with the bishop and other members of a board of lay people and clergy. The board decides whom to send to seminary.

Plazewski said he has not turned anyone down because he suspected sexual misconduct specifically. But he has at times felt uneasy about candidates' interviews or test results and that was enough. Plazewski says his parents, brothers, sister, nieces and nephews are all members of the diocese, so he thinks of their welfare when doing his work. He won't let anyone through who might harm them, he says.

"We have discovered situations where we felt uncomfortable, where we said, no, this is too high-risk," Plazewski said. "If we make a decision, if we're going to err, we have to err on the side of caution."

He points out that Geoghan, the Boston priest accused of molesting 130 children, and O'Connell, the Palm Beach bishop who resigned, are both in their 60s. Plazewski doubts men with sexual abuse tendencies would get through psychological screening today.

Experts say there is no foolproof way to predict who will become a pedophile. Plazewski acknowledges this, but says, "With what we're doing, and have been doing, people can feel confident that their priests are good men and living our lives faithfully."

Some clergy and scholars believe the church's historical reluctance to discuss sexuality contributes to the problem for some priests.

The Rev. Donald Cozzens, a resident scholar at the Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research at St. John's University in Collegeville, Minn., speaks of "a climate of denial and minimization" in some parts of the church.

Sexual misconduct among priests is not solely a human weakness, says Cozzens, author of The Changing Face of the Priesthood. "I think it's connected with our clerical culture."

What strikes him and other clergy that he has spoken with is the "relative emotional immaturity, almost sexual immaturity, of a fair number of clergy," Cozzens said in a recent interview on the National Public Radio show Fresh Air. Because they are stunted emotionally, they are incapable of dealing with celibacy -- something that requires exceptional maturity, Cozzens said.

Priests sometimes get lonely, don't know how to deal with it and feel they can't talk about it, says Dr. Fred Berlin, founder of a sexual disorders clinic at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He advises the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops on sexual misconduct issues.

Karen McClintock is a psychology resident at Southern Oregon University and author of Sexual Shame: An Urgent Call to Healing. "If you're part of an organization where you cannot talk about sexual urges, where you cannot have sexual urges, then you will end up with people of all sexual orientations who cannot express their sexuality in a healthy manner."

McClintock says priests need to feel free to talk in confidence about sexual desires. Many priest abusers were also victims, she said. But they feel shame in talking about their past abuse and their current urges to abuse children, whether they act on them or not, she said.

Talking through emotions and learning to deal with them could have prevented some priests from becoming abusers, she believes. "If those men could have said to someone, "I'm having a sexual feeling about someone . . .' "

Some seminaries appear to be heeding the experts. The Rev. Joseph Waters served as vice rector for St. John Vianney Seminary in Boynton Beach from 1996 to 2000. The Diocese of St. Petersburg sends many of its candidates there.

Waters says the seminary fosters an open atmosphere where sexuality is a common and important discussion.

Students are assigned spiritual directors with whom they can discuss feelings and desires, he said. There are workshops dedicated to the topic.

Sexual feelings are expected, even in priests, Waters said. "There's no way to avoid sexual desire if you're a human being."

At seminary, some students said they had been molested as children by relatives, said Waters, who is now pastor of Corpus Christi parish in Temple Terrace. Those students were treated with special care and sent to outside psychologists for additional therapy.

"That needs to be dealt with before becoming a priest," Waters said.

Cozzens, however, says today's sexuality workshops and spiritual directors aren't enough.

"My feeling is, even those programs, as good as they are, are counterbalanced by a climate that works against that kind of healthy, open exchange of human experience."

Some critics contend that the church perpetuates the problem of sexual misconduct with children by keeping it secret. Allowing priests and bishops who abuse children to avoid criminal prosecution and move to other parishes makes the problem cyclical, they say. The priests continue to abuse children, who then grow up to abuse others.

"It's tolerated within the priesthood," says Sheldon Stevens, a Rockledge attorney who says he has represented dozens of victims in the dioceses that oversee the Orlando, Venice, West Palm Beach, Miami and Tampa Bay areas. During the tenure of St. Petersburg Bishop Robert N. Lynch, two priests who engaged in sexual misconduct were relieved of their duties. Geoghan, the defrocked Boston area priest, is serving a 9- to 10-year prison sentence for groping a 10-year-old boy and faces another criminal trial. Church officials were aware that he confessed while in psychological treatment to abusing at least a half dozen young boys. But rather than report him to authorities or ban him from ministry, they sent Geoghan to work at another parish when his treatment was completed.

"The preservation of the reputations of the people who are in the hierarchy of the church is more important than addressing these issues in an open way," Stevens said.

Richard J. Santagati, president of Merrimack College, a Catholic school in North Andover, Mass., believes the church simply took on more than it could handle by dealing with sex abuse cases internally. The evidence is that bishops sent pedophiles off to counseling, thinking that the perpetrators could return cured and ready to pastor again.

"To assume that counseling was going to change it showed a lack of knowledge," Santagati said. "It's not the church, but the hierarchy of the church that failed."

For years, the Catholic church has contended that sexual abuse in the priesthood reflects a microcosm of society. Officials point to case studies that have said many pedophiles are married men, suggesting celibacy has nothing to do with it. And, although there has been plenty of conjecture, experts and scholars acknowledge that there is no scientific data comparing the number of priests who are pedophiles with the number of pedophiles in the general population.

Blaming the Catholic church for the sexual misconduct of some priests is like blaming the institution of marriage for people who commit adultery, said Waters, the Corpus Christi pastor.

"We're trying to create good healthy individuals and giving them the tools to live good celibate lives," Plazewski says. "And it is certainly doable."

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