1 1 Catholic Clergy Sexual Abuse Meets the Civil Law by Thomas P ...

eligious elite claim a disproportionate share in secular power. 308 The violent Bolshevik
reaction to the Russian Orthodox Church and the post revolutionary attitude toward
organized religion in Russia serve as classic examples of extreme anti-clericalism. 309
Throughout the history of the Catholic Church in the West, there have been
recurring periods of anti-clericalism in reaction to the excessive influence of clerics in
many areas of secular life, as well as to the abuses that came with such influence and
control. At times, anti-clerical sentiment reached such a high level of intensity that it
resulted in violent reaction to the clergy, as well as anti-clerical legislation against
churches, priests, and bishops. 310 Such legislation often included severe restrictions on
the power, property rights, and privileges of the clergy, and, in Mexico, even the
prohibition of wearing clerical garb in public. 311
The United States experienced a wave of anti-clericalism in the second half of the
Nineteenth century. The effects of this wave diminished with the turn of the century, and
it was nearly buried in American society by the advent of World War II. By contrast, the
institutional Church and its clergy enjoyed an unparalleled degree of respect, privilege,
and power in the years immediately prior to the Vatican council, and for several years
thereafter. 312 Within the past two decades, however, public revelations about clergy
sexual abuse and other abuses of power have seriously challenged the secure image of the
clerical state. 313
308
See S. J. Bennett, Idol Temples and Crafty Priests: The Origins of Enlightenment Anticlericalism,
18-19 (St. Martin’s Press, Inc. 1999).
309
See Religious Policy in the Soviet Union (Sabrina Petra Ramet ed., 1992).
310
See e.g., New Catholic Encyclopedia, supra note 296, at vol. IX 778-80, 783.
311
Id. at 783.
312
See Kennedy, supra note 91, at 45-52.
313
Donald Cozzens, Sacred Silence: Denial and the Crisis in the Church 5 (2002). “In a number of
ways it [the present sex abuse revelations] is unlike previous sex scandals involving priests, religious and
bishops. For one thing, it is unmasking a systemic or structural 55 crisis that threatens the current lines of