AURORA—The pastoral setting of Southdown Institute is where troubled clergy go when faith is no longer enough.

They arrive battling depression, burnout, addiction or “sexual disorders” — some of which resulted in child abuse. The institute’s psychologists have been treating them for more than 40 years.

In Canada, it’s the only institute of its kind.

The non-profit facility sits on 100 acres of rolling farmland about 50 kilometres north of Toronto. It opened in 1965, with the support of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, as a place to help alcoholic priests. Few outside the church know it exists.

Some might expect its services to be in high demand, as sex abuse scandals sweep the Roman Catholic Church in Europe, following similar crises in Canada and the United States. Instead, half of its 44 beds are empty.

The huge drop in the number of Canadian and American priests over the years is partly to blame. The recession also made it harder for dioceses to afford the treatment costs. But institute psychologists say it’s equally clear that the number of priests who molest children has fallen dramatically.

“That wave has past, for the most part,” says Sam Mikail, the institute’s clinical director, referring to the number of pedophile clergy sent to Southdown after serial abuse at Newfoundland’s Mount Cashel orphanage became public in the late 1980s.

Indeed, while current media coverage might give the impression of increasing sex abuse in the Catholic Church, Southdown’s experience — and results of a major U.S. study — indicates it’s largely over.

“It’s a historical phenomenon,” says Margaret Leland Smith, data analyst for a 2006 study by New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice, which surveyed sex abuse allegations in 335 Catholic dioceses and religious communities in the United States.

“The frequency of the abuses appears to be limited to a specific time period,” she adds. “That isn’t to say that there are no abuses today, but that a vast majority of the people who were abused were abused from 1965 to 1980.”

Smith, a criminologist, was at Southdown this week to consult on the second phase of the study —- partly financed by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops — on the “causes and context” of the abuse.

She has already hit a stumbling block that suggests the Church’s troubles are far from over.

“Getting people who were in place to talk about what they did and didn’t do has been a significant challenge for us,” Smith says, referring to interviews her study group is conducting with bishops who led dioceses when abuse scandals erupted.

It is those actions — or inactions — that is fuelling the current public outrage. There is evidence from several countries that bishops turned a blind eye to sex abuse allegations by moving priests to other parishes. And few bishops seem willing to acknowledge their responsibility.

This refusal to come clean has overshadowed evidence of a sharp drop in alleged cases of sex abuse occurring within the past 20 years.

Smith’s initial study, in which dioceses were mailed a survey package to be filled out, found that 4,392 priests in the U.S. were alleged to have abused minors between 1950 and 2002. That was 4 per cent of all priests active during that period.

Most (56 per cent) abused one victim. About 3 per cent of priests — 149 of them — attracted more than 10 allegations of abuse, accounting for 27 per cent of all allegations.

Alleged incidents peaked in the 1970s and 1980s, with highs of some 400 cases annually. Then they dropped sharply to about 30 in 1995 and more or less remained at that level.

Most allegations were made after 1993, when sex abuse by priests became a hot media topic. The coverage remains intense, yet reports of recent abuse remain low. And Smith believes they will stay that way.

There is no comparable Canadian study, but Southdown officials say the U.S. results jibe with what they’re seeing.

Smith partly explains the high concentration of incidents between the 1960s and 1980s with the sexual revolution. A psychological study of priests in the early 1970s found many preoccupied with sex. Not coincidentally, the number who left ministry to marry hit a peak in the late 1970s.

“Among those who didn’t leave, many made unwise choices about exploring their sexuality,” Smith says.

This cohort of priests was particularly unequipped to deal with changing social mores. They were part of a big influx of young men entering seminaries before 1960, many coming from ghettoized Catholic communities.

Seminaries at the time offered little education on how to live a celibate life while developing intimate, non-sexual and supportive friendships. Some even banned student priests from walking with the same person more than once a month.

Mikail notes that until 20 years ago, boys were entering what was known as the “minor seminary” system — a high school geared to religious instruction. “You had to essentially make a lifelong decision about celibacy at age 13 or 14, before there was any opportunity for sexual exploration or discovery,” says Mikail, a psychologist at Southdown since 1996.

“Some of the confusion we see in these older (priests) really stems out of that developmental history. They never really had the opportunity to discover who it is that they are. And if they had some sexual experimentation it has typically been with other men or other boys who were in the seminary with them.

“So they make the assumption that they must be homosexual because they’ve only had contact with men. Or, they’re not sure, because they’ve had some contact with men but they feel attracted to women. The confusion is not surprising. Now, that (seminary) system doesn’t exist any more, but you still have a whole bunch of people who went through that formation experience,” Mikail adds.

In short, while studies may suggest high child abuse levels are history, trouble caused by the Church’s stunted relationship with sexuality is far from over.

Southdown’s clinical staff of 25 now treats the full spectrum of mental health problems, except for psychotic disorders. Most of its clients — men and women —- are Catholic. But the institute is independent of the Catholic Church.

Over the years, between 40 and 60 per cent of the religious people it has treated have suffered mood disorders, like depression; some 40 per cent have suffered addiction, anxiety disorder or personality disorder; and 5 to 7 per cent have struggled with “sexual disorders.”

Sister Miriam Ukeritis, Southdown’s chief executive officer, refuses to say whether there are currently priests accused of molestation being treated, citing privacy issues. Privacy concerns also mean she declines a Star request to fully tour Southdown and its grounds.

For the facility’s patients, burnout is a common problem. Southdown staff note it’s not unusual for a pastor to be responsible for multiple parishes, often driving 800 kilometres on weekends to conduct religious services. (One report cited the number of priests in Canada dropping from about 21,000 in the 1960s to less than 10,000 in 2000.)

Once, new priests spent years being mentored as parish assistants. Now, they’re handed responsibility for parishes sooner.

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“They don’t have the opportunity to develop the set of skills and qualities that help them cope with the stresses,” says Ukeritis.

Priestly work rarely stops. “If you’re the lone pastor in the parish and somebody dies at two in the morning and the family needs you, you get up and you go,” Mikail says.

Making friends is difficult because few look beyond the white collar. Good priests also feel the sex abuse scandals have tainted all clergy in public eyes.

“It makes it more difficult to function naturally around children and people of various ages,” says Philip Dodgson, Southdown’s co-director of assessment. “How friendly and warm can you be to people if they’re observing your behaviour? And that becomes stressful.”

The stress can manifest itself in burnout, substance abuse, eating disorders or gambling. A crisis of spirituality commonly follows.

“For many, it’s a challenge to their image of God: ‘If God is the one who loves and cares for me, how could this happen?’” Ukeritis says.

The stresses of the job add to anxieties felt by those troubled by sexuality. Of the minority that ends up at Southdown for sexual issues, most are struggling with homosexuality. The next-largest group has had affairs with adult parishioners — what psychologists call “boundary violations.” The smallest number has sexually abused — or is attracted to — children.

Hardcore pedophiles are a minority in the last group. Most are instead immature men who abuse their power as priests.

“You’ve got a 45-year-old guy who is intellectually 45 but in terms of sexual and emotional development is 16,” Dodgson says, adding that some were abused themselves as children.

When a child molester is referred, Southdown insists the diocese alert civil authorities, if it hasn’t already done so. Abuse revealed in treatment is reported to the diocese.

The program includes individual and group therapy sessions, and work with a spiritual counselor, who helps put priestly troubles in a Gospel context. Treatment can be particularly difficult when a priest escapes conviction due to lack of evidence, but suspicions are strong enough to have him referred. Denial becomes an obstacle.

After treatment, there is an 18-month follow-up plan that includes support and supervision. It typically recommends that abusive priests be banned from public ministry.

Psychologists are concerned, however, by the growing tendency in the Church to defrock child-molesting priests. In the U.S., it’s known as the “one strike, you’re out rule.”

“He’s put back in the community, he’s 50, he has no means of supporting himself and no one is watching him,” Dodgson says.

There’s also pressure from within the Church to blame the sex abuse scandals on homosexual priests, and to screen out gay applicants to seminaries.

Some studies estimate the number of gay Catholic clergy at 40 per cent. Yet Church teachings still consider homosexuality a disorder.

“Going back decades, in a world where being homosexual was seen as sick or at the very least suspect, the celibate requirement in the church provided a safe home and a respectable occupation for someone who was not interested in a traditional marriage,” Ukeritis says.

In the non-religious world, studies indicate that the majority of sexually abused children are female, and that men who molest boys are primarily heterosexual.

“It appears that in general, homosexual men may be less likely to molest than heterosexual men,” writes William Marshall, a Queen’s University psychologist invited by the Vatican in 2003 to present research on sexual abuse of children.

He calls for better screening of student priests — to determine who needs special support — and better education about sexuality in general, and celibacy in particular. Training should include discussions about abuse of power, dealing with emotional loneliness and forging intimate, non-sexual relationships.

Southdown psychologists say the Church has come a long way with “human formation” programs in seminaries. But more is needed. The wellbeing of priests and parishioners — and the Church’s moral authority — is at stake.