The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 86 - It's Not Just The Catholic Church

00:00:00.000 I must admit that there is a tendency among some Catholics to shy away from discussing the abuse

00:00:08.400 scandals. And I think this reluctance, well, it could have two causes. Number one, it's a horrible

00:00:15.640 and painful thing, so it's easier not to talk about it. And that feeling doesn't justify ignoring

00:00:21.600 the situation, but of course it is an understandable feeling. But number two, I think many Catholics

00:00:26.880 know that the outrage against the church, though deserved, objectively speaking, is in many cases

00:00:34.260 disingenuous. You know, they know that a lot of people simply hate the Catholic church and they

00:00:40.200 hate Catholics and they're eager to jump on any opportunity to criticize it. And they also know 1.00

00:00:47.100 that if they themselves as Catholics publicly criticize the church for the sex scandal, a lot

00:00:53.480 of other people will join them in the criticism, but the criticism will quickly morph into an

00:00:59.580 assault on the church in general and on Catholics in general. I've experienced that myself this week.

00:01:05.320 I can't tell you how many times as I've been talking about the scandals, I've had people say,

00:01:08.960 I agree. Catholics are Satanists. And I'm like, no, that's not what I'm saying. That's not what I 0.98

00:01:14.720 said at all. I know you don't agree. And so there's a lot of that. I think a lot of Catholics are like, 0.55

00:01:19.340 I don't want to end up as part of that conversation. And there's also a double standard

00:01:26.160 that many of the people who are so worried about sex abuse in the Catholic church are not worried

00:01:32.340 about it anywhere else, even in their own institutions. So it seems like there are people

00:01:38.220 who are super focused. They're so concerned about sex abuse in the Catholic church, even though they're

00:01:43.200 not Catholic themselves, they don't send their kids to the Catholic church. They're so worried about

00:01:47.140 that. But in the institutions where they send their kid to public school or they go to a different

00:01:52.080 church, they're not focused on it there. They don't care about that. It's only in the Catholic 0.97

00:01:55.600 church. And so I think a lot of Catholics, they see that and then they say, you know what, even though

00:02:00.660 the abuse is horrible, I don't want to talk about it publicly for that reason. Now, I very much

00:02:05.800 sympathize with that inclination, but I also feel that it's our obligation all the same to discuss

00:02:14.360 the scandals and to publicly voice our outrage and disgust. And so that's what I've tried to do

00:02:20.580 this week. No matter the double standards, no matter the hypocrisies, no matter the anti-Catholic

00:02:25.620 bigotries, all that exists, but still the fact remains that these terrible things have happened,

00:02:31.200 are still happening, most likely. And so they must be exposed and condemned by not just people from 1.00

00:02:39.500 without, but by people from within. When you get to the point where it's only people from without

00:02:44.360 criticizing, then you've got a big problem. I think in life, you just need to do the right thing

00:02:49.700 personally and say the right things and not worry about how other people are going to react to it or

00:02:55.860 how they might use it and twist it to their own benefit. You just do the right thing and let the chips

00:03:00.920 fall where they may. I think that's the only way to approach life. Still, I do feel the need

00:03:06.840 to, after I, you know, I've been focused on this issue a lot this week, been talking about it. I've

00:03:11.880 obviously made my feelings perfectly clear. But I do feel the need to expand this conversation

00:03:18.880 beyond the Catholic Church for a moment. Because although I expected this reaction, I have still

00:03:24.960 been very disturbed by much of what I'm hearing and reading from non-Catholics. Much of the email I 1.00

00:03:31.600 received, I've received from non-Catholics, especially non-Catholic Christians, I would say 1.00

00:03:37.020 that easily the majority of the emails and messages from that latter group have been extraordinarily

00:03:43.100 prideful and almost gloating in tone. I cannot tell you how many times I've read this week words to

00:03:50.500 the effect of, I'm so happy that doesn't happen in my church. Now, most people aren't saying it exactly

00:03:57.160 like that, although a few people have told me exactly that verbatim. But most people don't

00:04:02.600 say it like that exactly. But that's the general message of, oh, that's a Catholic problem. I'm so 1.00

00:04:08.660 glad. That's why I'm not Catholic. So I don't have that Catholic problem. I've been informed by many

00:04:15.660 people that the Catholic Church's abuse problem is unique. And other churches, better churches,

00:04:21.300 don't have these issues. I've been told that if somebody wants to escape the religious sex abuse

00:04:26.340 problem, all they need to do is escape the Catholic Church. That's what I've been told. Oh, 0.84

00:04:30.620 you don't say just leave the Catholic Church and that's the problem solved because that doesn't

00:04:34.360 happen anywhere else. Flee into the arms of other churches where these things simply don't occur

00:04:40.460 because we've got it figured out. It doesn't happen here with us. It only happens over there with those

00:04:45.960 guys. Secular people have displayed a similar attitude. Of course, the media in Hollywood is always 0.77

00:04:52.960 eager to spike the football anytime the Catholic Church lands in hot water. They're always eager

00:04:58.780 to jump on that. They're very excited about it. And they will usually do so as insultingly and

00:05:05.440 degradingly as possible. Trevor Noah, for instance, said yesterday on The Daily Show that the Catholic

00:05:11.420 Church is now nothing but a, quote, molesting club with opening prayer, which is obviously a slam not just on

00:05:19.440 the bishops and priests responsible. It's a slam on all Catholics, saying that all Catholics are part of

00:05:26.100 a molesting club. Now, I find this especially ironic coming from someone in the Hollywood media world 0.90

00:05:32.700 where child rape and sex abuse are extremely and now infamously common. I might even call Noah's 0.64

00:05:41.000 industry a molesting club with green screens. Can I say that? It's interesting to me that Trevor

00:05:47.060 Noah has never described Hollywood and the media in those terms, has he? No, he saves that level of

00:05:54.520 disgust for the institutions that he is not himself a part of. As for the other Christians who have 0.98

00:06:01.840 been doing the Pharisee routine of, thank you, Lord, that I am not like them, I should tell you that 1.00

00:06:08.740 your churches are not immune to this. Far from it. Sex abuse is a very serious problem in the

00:06:15.820 evangelical world and across all Protestant churches. A report that was published a few years ago from

00:06:22.680 three of the companies that insure most of the Protestant churches in the country revealed that

00:06:27.140 they handle around 260 abuse claims every year in Protestant churches. Now, if that average holds

00:06:34.440 year to year, that means the abuse problems in terms of sheer numbers is actually worse in Protestant

00:06:40.840 churches than it is in the Catholic Church. That was actually the opinion of a Liberty University law

00:06:46.620 professor, and I think it's the grandson of Billy Graham, who said recently that he thinks Protestant

00:06:53.040 churches are worse than Catholics, at least when it comes to responding to abuse claims. 1.00

00:06:58.420 So, at the very least, what I'll say is, and the last thing I want to do is get into a competition 0.96

00:07:04.880 of, you're worse. No, you're worse at sex abuse. There simply is, what I'll say is, the point I'm 0.99

00:07:12.080 trying to make, there simply is no evidence and no reason to think that the abuse situation is better

00:07:18.980 in Protestant churches than in Catholic. There's no reason to think that. No evidence, none. I have

00:07:28.460 heard from some people that this is less of a problem in Protestant churches because those churches

00:07:33.180 don't have a global mechanism by which to cover up these crimes, and that's true. But that doesn't

00:07:40.040 mean they don't have a mechanism. Even if the mechanism just consists of just one pastor who rules

00:07:46.540 over the church by himself and is accountable to no one, and so is, in effect, a sort of little pope

00:07:52.060 unto himself in his church, well, that's a mechanism. There are many cases of that. A pastor, he's

00:08:00.320 accountable to no one in his church. He abuses someone. Well, okay. Then the mechanism to cover it

00:08:05.680 up is pretty simple because he's the only guy in charge. Or maybe the mechanism is a church board or

00:08:12.120 whatever. The point is, abusers will find a way to exploit the circumstances, no matter the

00:08:19.440 circumstances. As an abuser, there are certain advantages that you can exploit in the Catholic 1.00

00:08:25.060 church environment. There are certain advantages that you can exploit in the Protestant church

00:08:29.120 environment. It changes either way. So we know it's a big problem in media and Hollywood. It's a big

00:08:38.820 problem in the churches, Catholic and Protestant. It's a big problem in the sports world. Think of

00:08:44.260 Penn State. Think of women's gymnastics. It's a problem in the medical profession. There was a 1.00

00:08:49.460 recent report that was published that found thousands of cases of physician sex abuse across

00:08:56.760 America. The worst child molester in history was a pediatrician in Delaware. He molested hundreds of

00:09:04.620 children for years before he was caught. And then what about public schools? Our school systems are

00:09:10.520 crawling with sex predators. There was a study commissioned by the Department of Education

00:09:15.400 which found that one in ten public school students are targets of sexual misconduct by teachers. That

00:09:22.340 works out to over four million victims. And out of that number, three million have experienced actual

00:09:30.720 sexual assault. So that's another million. You've got four million. A million of that could be sexual

00:09:37.080 harassment or some other form. And then three million, according to this report, is actual sexual

00:09:43.680 assault by teachers against students. The epidemic in our schools statistically is 100 times worse than it is

00:09:52.180 in the Catholic church, though it's probably gotten about 100 times less media attention. And that's just

00:09:59.440 abuse by teachers against students. And then you have abuse by students against other students, which is a

00:10:05.120 problem unto itself. Recently, the AP found 17,000 cases of student-on-student abuse in a four-year

00:10:14.780 period. So you've got one in ten students who are victims of sexual misconduct by teachers, 17,000 cases of

00:10:23.140 student-on-student abuse. Just to put this in perspective, the situation in Pennsylvania, which is a

00:10:29.760 horrible situation, and I've been railing against it all week. But in that case, you have, I believe it's

00:10:37.020 1,000 victims, something like 300 priests accused over five or six decades, which is still terrible and

00:10:47.320 awful and in demonic and every word. And you run out of adjectives to describe it because it's so

00:10:54.960 terrible. But even that does not represent the kind of volume. It doesn't come anywhere near the

00:11:02.960 kind of volume that you have in the public schools. So why aren't we having a national conversation about

00:11:08.740 that? Why aren't we having a national conversation about the crisis in our schools? Why isn't anyone

00:11:12.220 talking about it? I mean, I've talked about it many times. Nobody cares. That's the incredible

00:11:17.400 thing to me about this issue. People care so much more about the Catholic Church situation.

00:11:22.240 Meanwhile, most people who care about it, they don't even go to Catholic. Their kids are not,

00:11:26.020 you know, their kids are not threatened by priests. If you send your kid to public school,

00:11:31.560 you should care about this. It is extremely common. One in 10 students, I think that qualifies as

00:11:37.760 extremely common. I think it does. 17,000 cases. I think that qualifies as a huge problem.

00:11:45.240 If you send your kid to public school, how could you not be focused on this? How could you be more

00:11:49.200 focused on the Catholic Church when you're sending your kid into this environment for six hours a day,

00:11:55.100 five days a week, nine months a year for 13 years? Do you understand the statistical probability that he

00:12:02.920 will be at a minimum sexually harassed by a teacher? The probability is substantial. Let's put it that

00:12:12.240 way. So why are we talking about that? And why isn't Trevor Noah describing the public school system

00:12:17.480 as a, quote, molesting club with textbooks? So media, Hollywood, Catholic Church, Protestant Church,

00:12:24.400 sports, medicine, public schools, I bring all this up not to minimize the problem in the Catholic 1.00

00:12:29.720 Church, but to do the opposite. The point I'm trying to establish is that the problem is much

00:12:35.160 bigger than the church. I wish it was just confined to the Catholic Church or to some other institution.

00:12:44.540 I wish most of all, I could look at Hollywood and say, oh yeah, it just happens in Hollywood.

00:12:49.020 You know, because my kids are never going to be in Hollywood. I'm never going to go to Hollywood.

00:12:52.080 And it's easy for me to say, oh yeah, those debauched perverts in Hollywood. And there are a lot of 0.98

00:12:58.200 debauched perverts in Hollywood. But I wish I could say, oh yeah, it's all happening there. 0.97

00:13:02.660 But I can't. The problem is much bigger than that. And if you're sitting off and thinking, whoa, I'm

00:13:08.380 so glad I don't have to worry about it because I'm not Catholic. Well, if you're thinking that you're a

00:13:14.580 fool. If you send your kid to public school, if he plays sports, if he goes to the doctor, 0.99

00:13:20.500 if he's in a youth group at church, you know how often you hear about youth pastors

00:13:26.480 molesting their 14 and 15 year old kids that are in their charge? You know how common that is?

00:13:36.660 So if you send your kid into any of those environments, there is a real possibility of

00:13:41.180 abuse. This is a disease that infects the culture and every institution is vulnerable to it. Every

00:13:49.440 institution, nobody is exempt. The problem not only exists everywhere, it is really bad everywhere.

00:13:58.800 These other institutions that I've mentioned, it's not like there have been a few cases there. It's

00:14:03.400 there have been a ton of cases in all of those institutions. Until we start to see the problem

00:14:09.500 in these terms and still we until we stop acting like this is a danger confined to places where we don't

00:14:16.880 go and we don't send our children, until we face the full reality, nothing will get better.

00:14:25.100 That's the point I'm trying to make. That is, it doesn't, that provides no excuses whatsoever

00:14:31.440 for any of these particular institutions or anyone in those institutions. Not at all. And the people

00:14:37.760 who are, you know, if you're in a Protestant church, you need to be focused especially on what's

00:14:41.520 going on in Protestant churches. If you're in the Catholic church, you're going to be focused

00:14:44.040 especially on that. If you, if you are in Hollywood, then you got to be focused especially

00:14:47.760 on that. People in these institutions have to be looking within themselves in their own ranks first

00:14:53.280 and then look without because it's so easy to, it's so easy. I could sit here all day railing

00:14:58.400 against Hollywood and, uh, and they deserve to be railed against. And it doesn't, and of course we

00:15:02.640 should talk about it. I'm not saying we should never discuss it. You know, I'm not saying if you're,

00:15:06.020 if you're not in Hollywood, you know, it means you should never talk about it, but it's, it's easy to do.

00:15:10.220 It's so easy. You know, you risk nothing. It doesn't make you at all uncomfortable because

00:15:14.180 it's all about them. It's the other it's over there. It's not me. And so, yeah, we got to do

00:15:19.800 some of that because we all have to be holding each other accountable. But if we're only doing

00:15:25.500 that, if we're only looking without and we're never looking within, then we are only contributing

00:15:30.580 to the overall cultural problem. Because that's a big part of the reason why, um, these, these 0.99

00:15:40.680 situations get so bad within these institutions, because the people in the institution do not want

00:15:46.140 to look within themselves and they're always looking out there. Now you may ask, why is this

00:15:51.100 problem so prevalent? Now that we've established that it's not so easy as saying, oh yeah, it's a

00:15:57.020 Catholic problem or, oh, it's a Protestant problem or, oh, it's a Hollywood problem. Now that we've 0.57

00:16:00.760 established that and we see how prevalent it is, it creates a whole new, um, you know, it creates a

00:16:08.320 whole new mystery of a very disturbing one where we say, how, how, how, how is this so common in our

00:16:15.900 culture? How, how is this going on everywhere? Well, we know that at root as Christians, we know, um,

00:16:26.420 that this goes back to the fall of man. We are a fallen species. And so these sins have always existed

00:16:33.400 ever since the fall of man, and they always will. Um, but we can ask ourselves, have they always been

00:16:42.180 this common? Has it always been the case that every institution in American culture is riddled

00:16:50.040 with abuse, molestation, rape, et cetera? Has that always been the case? I guess there's no way to

00:16:58.000 know for sure. We can't, it's hard. You can't really look back into, into the past and quantify

00:17:03.800 these sorts of problems. Um, especially by the nature of the problem means people doing it are not

00:17:11.440 going to exactly be keeping records of what they did. So it's hard to know exactly, but it certainly

00:17:16.700 seems like it's worse now. Uh, I would like to think that anyway, I'd hate to think that it's

00:17:21.440 just always been this way forever, that it's always been this bad forever, because if that's the case,

00:17:26.160 then you really think, well, it's, it'll never get better. There's an, it's like, there's no problem.

00:17:29.960 There's no point in even, in even trying to make it better because apparently it can never be better.

00:17:34.580 Um, but I don't think that's the case. I do think it appears to be worse now than in the past.

00:17:40.040 And I think that it is. And I think that goes back to, um, a general moral breakdown in our

00:17:47.540 culture and a kind of moral indifference, a breakdown of empathy, which has led to this

00:17:54.700 moral indifference. And when, when you have, when you've got, um, a breakdown in the kind of moral

00:18:00.600 code, and then you have perversion, debauchery, hedonism that becomes more prevalent. And at the same

00:18:06.220 time, people are becoming desensitized and indifferent and less able to see and recognize

00:18:14.080 the dignity in their fellow man. And often these things happen at the same time, but as they happen

00:18:20.060 and as they get worse, I think, of course, you're going to see more of this. And when you read about

00:18:26.540 these horrible cases in any of these institutions, we're talking specifically about the Catholic 1.00

00:18:31.120 church, you read about some of these things that these priests were doing. You see, um, not only

00:18:36.660 that are these depraved perverts, but also they just have no, they just simply do not recognize 0.99

00:18:45.540 the humanity of anyone other than themselves. And so they can look at children and see nothing but 0.98

00:18:53.480 objects to be used for their pleasure. Um, and I think we see that more and more in our culture

00:19:01.240 where we, we look at each other, even, even people who aren't child molesters. I still think there is

00:19:08.520 this tendency among a lot of people to see other people as just objects as not as human beings, but

00:19:17.020 as objects to be used, to be exploited, to be tossed to the side, whatever. And all of that,

00:19:24.700 I think leads us here. And if there is going to be any improvement that we all have to look

00:19:30.060 immediately around ourselves within our own ranks and start there and then work out from there.

00:19:37.720 Thanks for watching everybody. Thanks for listening. Godspeed.

The Matt Walsh Show - August 17, 2018

Ep. 86 - It's Not Just The Catholic Church

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