The Role of Social Factors in the Sexual Misconduct of Roman Catholic Clergy: A Second Look at the John Jay Data

Research to date has accounted for the recent sexual scandal in the Roman Catholic Church primarily with attributions to the personal psychopathology of the individual offenders. This article reviews a portion of the data from the John Jay Study (2004) and a Supplementary Report (2006) that documents the sexual involvement of Roman Catholic clergy from 202 dioceses and 221 religious orders. Summary data dispel common misconceptions of psychopathology in priests. A majority of the incidents took place between 1960–1979 by priests who were ordained in their late 20s and committed their first offense in their mid-30s. These patterns suggest the need for a more complex conceptualization that accounts for the influence of Roman Catholic clerical socialization from 1950 to 1969 and the contemporaneous shifts in American culture.