The clergy sexual abuse scandals in the Roman Catholic Church became a global crisis of faith that shocked the whole world. The revelations led the way for the exposure of many other sexual scandals in other denominations, schools, youth organizations, and even Hollywood. Many questions linger even now, forty years after it began, but the truth is finally coming out.
Most disturbing are persistent suspicions concerning the complex and often corrupt role of the Vatican, which is the center of the Roman Catholic Church. Sons of Perdition reveals how the papacy and the bishops managed a world-wide cover-up for centuries, largely through the Inquisition. It documents how the crisis only came about as a direct result of the Second Vatican Council, which unlocked the doors while handcuffing the doorkeepers of the Inquisition.
Amazingly, one man who played a vital part in this liberal revolution would also put the lid back in place. Joseph Ratzinger bore unsuspected personal responsibility not only for the scandals happening, but their ending as well. For by the time he became head of the Inquisition (by then known as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, or CDF) under Pope John Paul II, he had turned from an idealistic leftist into a rigid conservative. Even before he became pope himself, the late Pope Benedict XVI had put the Holy Office back in charge as if the crisis had never happened. Yet resistance to accountability and transparency in high places continues. This is why Pope Francis frequently struggles — as many popes have — with making the hierarchy responsible.
My name is Jay Nelson, a survivor of clergy abuse as well as a former cleric. The important yet unsuspected role of Benedict in this is just one of the startling answers I found in my quest to understand what had happened. To my amazement, I found many of them right in my own backyard – in the “Land of Enchantment,” New Mexico.
As expert and well-known victim advocate Tom Doyle put it, “New Mexico was the epicenter of the first major epidemics of Catholic clergy sexual abuse and hierarchical cover-ups.”
In this ancient, religious, but impoverished land, the Roman Catholic Church found an ideal dumping ground for the monsters in their midst. Here, where the Conquistadors once imposed the faith with fire and steel on reluctant natives, where bigamists, Jews, and even witches fled to hide from the Spanish Inquisition, the Catholic Church embarked on a bold experiment.
Across the mountains from where the atom bomb was born, another secret project began in 1947. There, in a small town called Jemez Springs, a religious order called the Servants of the Paraclete began to quietly take in and minister to fallen priests. These were men suffering from alcoholism and worse problems, including sexual deviancy. There were rapists and accused murderers who sought refuge. From there, these damaged shepherds were sent back out into ministry without warnings, guidance, or supervision, all too often to continue preying across the state, the country, and even the world.
It’s an incredible story, but it could not have happened without direction from Rome. Deciphering the codes in Church documents from the Middle Ages to Vatican II, Sons of Perdition shows how the cover-up started even before the discovery of America, and will continue into the future.
Sons of Perdition also tells the story how the clergy abuse crisis first blossomed in New Mexico from the view of an first-hand eye witness and participant. It details how the Church’s strategy was tested early on here to limit disclosure by avoiding trials, and how that successful technique has been used elsewhere.
Fr. Doyle also wrote: “The author thoroughly combed through a tangled array of data from divergent sources and pieced together this sordid story. Those who want to close their eyes to this sorry chapter in Catholic history will be shocked but Jay Nelson comes up with the facts and not more myth.”
This is, as Doyle said, “a chapter of Catholic history that must be told.” The sobering and thoughtful conclusions for the future of the Church, drawn from recent developments, shows why there is good reason to doubt that it can ever truly change.
Sons of Perdition presents a challenge to believers, former members, and public citizens that anyone concerned with the fate of Roman Catholic Church or the safety of its most vulnerable members must consider.
Available from Amazon in paperback or in an updated form on Kindle.
Sons of Perdition: New Mexico in the Secret History of the Catholic Sex Scandals, first edition.
231 pages, including footnotes, bibliography, index, and map. ISBN 978-1-4392-3482-2
Table of Contents:
- Preface: By Way of an Apology
- An Ecclesiastical Chart of New Mexico
- Chapter I: A Church Exposed
- Chapter II: From Chastity to Celibacy
- Chapter III: Sex and the Single Priest
- Chapter IV: Solicitation and the Confessional
- Chapter V: The Edict of Faith
- Chapter VI: Harsh Measures
- Chapter VII: Crime and Punishment
- Chapter VIII: Revolution at the Council
- Chapter IX: A Refuge in the Outlands
- Chapter X: Ministers to the Fallen
- Chapter XI: The Operation of Error
- Chapter XII: Thunder in the Desert
- Chapter XIII: Doom Comes for the Archbishop
- Chapter XIV: After the Fall
- Chapter XV: The Money Game
- Chapter XVI: Dark Shadows
- Chapter XVII: Sin, Secrecy, and the Vatican
- Chapter XVIII: Beyond the Purple Curtain
- Conclusion: The Return of the Inquisition
- Timeline
- Bibliography
- Notes
- Index