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Special
Report Analysis Failed lives, lost faith and aching hearts
By RAYMOND A. SCHROTH
We priests are in some ways a sad group of men. Born into the
world to render service to mankind, there is no one more wretchedly alone than
the priest who does not measure up to his task.
The voice of Father X sitting alone in his Boston rectory before
his TV with his good night glass of scotch? Not quite.
It is Jesuit Fr. Sebastian Rodrigues, tragic hero of Shusaku
Endos 1966 novel Silence, on the edge of martyrdom in 17th-century
Japan. Rodrigues will fail -- deny his faith, publicly trample on a picture of
Christ and live on in shame. Yet, somehow he retains our respect: He had set
out to give his whole life for God. Martyrdom was something else.
During World War II and the Cold War, vocations to the priesthood
soared. The New York Jesuits built a multimillion-dollar seminary at Shrub Oak
with a sanctuary spacious enough for dozens of young theologians to lie
prostrate during a high point of the ordination liturgy. The Catholic priest
was a cultural icon. Go to the movies and there were Spencer Tracy, Bing
Crosby, Pat OBrien, Humphrey Bogart and Gregory Peck in Roman
collars.
Today vocations are down to a trickle, and half of those who join
will drop out within a few years. Shrub Oak is a drug rehab center for New York
youths. At the moment the best-known clergyman in America is a 66-year-old
recently defrocked Boston priest accused of feeling up over 130 children.
The statistics, now too familiar, are staggering. In Boston about
80 priests have been accused within the last 40 years. Nationally perhaps 1,000
cases have been settled out of court. A New Jersey lawyer who has handled 300
cases in 50 dioceses has recently received 100 more calls. The Boston
metropolitan area is one of the most Catholic in America and therefore
demographically the training ground for a high percentage of the nations
bishops. Five of those appointed in recent years to dioceses around the country
were part of the Boston cover-up culture that allowed Fr. John Geoghan to
shuttle from parish to parish, from victim to victim.
Who is responsible?
Who is responsible for this mess? The right-wing Wanderer
blames the churchs acquiescence to the sexual revolution; the National
Review blames a gay network in ecclesiastical promotions. Andrew Sullivan,
a sexually active gay Catholic conservative, asks in the March 4 issue of
Time: How can the church that preaches the impermissibility of so
many forms of consensual adult sex, simultaneously tolerate, ignore or cover up
the sexual abuse of children by its own priests? Liberals say they would
reform the structures that breed this virus.
Over the last two weeks I selectively read through the 10,000
pages of legal documents that are before the Boston courts -- depositions,
letters, interrogatories and pictures of the perpetually grinning Geoghan with
children on his lap. Then I read The Boston Globe series and a summary
of scientific data (Nathaniel McConaghy, Paedophilia: a review of the
evidence, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 1998),
and interviewed two clergymen, one a Catholic priest, the other a Protestant,
who are in pedophilia recovery programs. And listened to others, young and old,
who have either witnessed or experienced the phenomenon.
As a future priest, John Geoghan seems to have been a mistake from
the beginning. As a seminarian he failed to show up for a summer camp, but he
had a monsignor uncle to intervene and make excuses for him -- John was
in a nervous and depressed state -- and the uncle deeply resented the
suggestion that he was favoring his nephew.
The rector of the seminary wrote that John evidenced very
pronounced immaturity, was a little feminine in speech and
approach, and was scholastically not very swift. Though passing
most courses, the future didnt look bright. His
good traits were his obedience and docility.
As late as March 29, 1997, Geoghan wrote to a diocesan official:
I have never engaged in intercourse and/or oral sex with anyone. I have
never been touched sexually by anyone. I would take a lie detector
test.
The next year he was defrocked.
Read a series of the interrogatories and depositions and
Geoghans modus operandi becomes disgustingly clear. Find a vulnerable
family. A father has died. A divorced woman is taking care of four or seven
young children, including the children of an aunt. Members of families are
divorced or on drugs or in jail. In one family the children are accusing the
father of having murdered the mother. In another both the father and a son are
suicidal.
Failed lives
Typically, perhaps because suing for damages requires a
cause-effect relationship between the offense and todays pain, all those
accusing Geoghan trace their failed lives -- sexual dysfunction, low
self-image, homophobia, failed marriages, loss of their Catholic faith -- to
Father G.s fondling 30 years before. It was not that their memories were
repressed, they say. They had just put it out of their minds until
newspaper stories and lawsuits triggered their recollections.
Lisa Scott, a single mother who never married, reports that in
1975, when she was 5 and in a hospital, she awoke to find Father G. by her
bedside, smiling and exposing himself. It was the first time she had seen a
mans penis. As a result, she grew up too fast and lost her
religious faith.
John Greene says that because Father G. bought him ice cream and
later asked him to lick his penis. Green says he developed an insatiable
appetite for sex: He molested his sister and had sex play with his brother. He
cut classes at school, drank booze and did drugs, committed adultery and lost
his property. Among the financial losses caused by G., Greene listed the
enormous phone bill totaled from his indulgences in phone sex.
It does not minimize the horror of G.s crimes to report
that, according to McConaghys research, the origins and effects of these
sexual experiences remain obscure. Some victims are devastated; some are
not.
But Catholic Boston, like every city in the country, had its share
of big families with dead or absent fathers, and children dying for attention.
In a situation like this a kind priest might be welcomed.
This kind priest has a routine: drive the children out for ice
cream, hold them in his lap, get erections, masturbate them, have oral sex,
visit them as they go to bed to bless them, play with their
weenies, tell them to keep this a secret.
Blessing abuse
In the most insidious aspect of his strategy, if testimony is
true, he blesses his abuse -- has them recite Hail Marys during his fellatio
and tells them that this is the way God treated special kids.
A psychiatrist at Southdown, a Canadian clinic, said Geoghan uses
his constant smile to placate others, he defines himself through his work, and,
the doctor observed in a Nov. 26, 1996, letter, that Geoghans tactic is
to gravitate to a chameleon like position in which he assumes whatever
role is necessary in order to gain acceptance, in order to find a place
as a man and father figure to fatherless boys.
Meanwhile, in the documents, another side of the argument peeps
through.
The March 4 Newsweek prominently features the accusations
of Anthony Muzzi Jr., 47. In the documents, the girlfriend of the patriarch of
the extended Muzzi family testifies that one of the boys lies all the time,
that he had continually denied that Father G. had abused him, that another son
said he was going to find a doctor to help him recover his memory of abuse, so
he could get some of the money, and that the sister was pressured into saying
she was abused so she could get some of the money, then withdrew her
complaint.
Yet the sisters compliant is in the files: Father G. brushed
up against her in the family swimming pool, and, at her mothers wake, got
her into the funeral parlor confessional and touched her breasts.
An unsigned 1998 typed document in the files accuses the Muzzis of
dealing in stolen property -- cable boxes, computers, insurance scams -- and
says their suit against St. Pauls Parish is a phony case.
Another witness gratuitously assumes that Geoghan is alcoholic,
because, she surmises, all priests have that problem.
The most compelling document is the much-quoted letter from
Margaret Gallant, who wrote to Cardinal Humberto Madeiros in August 1982. After
their complaints, Geoghan is still in a parish. Seven in her family have been
violated, she says: We cannot undo that, but we are obligated to protect
others from their abuse to the Mystical Body of Christ.
Her heart aches for the priest and she prays for him, but, she
writes, Father Damien the leper went after a child molester and beat him
up. His cause [for being declared a saint] was held up because of it. I am
praying to him to bring this cause to Jesus Christ.
Search for fulfillment
To fulfill himself as both a good priest and a human being, it has
been my experience that the priest needs five things: a prayer life that both
nourishes faith and enables him to find God in other persons; meaningful work
where he can see the lives of others improve at least to some degree because of
his effort; intimate friends -- men and women, older and younger -- whom he
loves and who love him; a religious superior who is intelligent, caring and
just; and a personal spirituality guided by self-knowledge and self-sacrificing
love that frees him from both ambition and fear.
Lacking any of these gifts, the temptation is to put other things,
many of which are self-destructive, in their place -- alcohol, physical
comfort, power, or vulnerable persons he can manipulate for furtive and
fleeting self-satisfaction.
But the present clerical culture -- with its hierarchical power
structure; its secrecy and corporate cover-up mentality; its reward system
based on financial skills and rigid theological orthodoxy; with the often
lonely, individualistic rectory lifestyle -- can be an obstacle course rather
than a clear path toward spiritual maturity.
Our great novelists have taught us to accept, even admire, flawed
clerics -- Bernanos country priest with his wine-soaked stomach cancer,
J.F. Powers pride-stained Father Urban, Graham Greenes whisky
sipping Father Pro-like Mexican martyr.
But no artist has successfully illuminated the dark corner of the
pedophiles heart. Surely some can write; they would serve the church, and
perhaps themselves, by telling their stories. Until then, what do we do?
- Dont kill the messenger. Thank the press. Im told
on good authority that Cardinal John Cody, archbishop of Chicago from 1965 to
1982, learned of a pedophile ring of priests in a neighboring state who were
passing their victims from one to another. The press got wind of it, and Cody
used his clout to kill the story. How much better for the church if it had
faced the scandal years ago.
- Get used to the idea of there being fewer priests. Accept that
there will be fewer seminarians. Inevitably many will be older and sexually
experienced, but a more sophisticated confrontation with sexual issues can
instill a spirituality that allows intimacy, but not genital activity, and
nourishes a love appropriate to each stage of a mans development. True,
no screening program is foolproof, but we have to trust the Spirit to do
her/his work and in time send the right candidates -- including women, married
persons and former priests.
- Rethink the pastoral application of the theology of the
sacraments that separates the effect of the ritual from the worthiness of the
minister. Of course the Eucharist received from the hands of Greenes
priest, who has sired a daughter, is valid. That does not justify ordaining and
retaining in service men whose lives are scandals just so someone can
deliver Mass.
- Listen carefully to the victims and act promptly and
sensitively on their complaints. In the Globe articles and in the 10,000
pages of documents, the anger of good Catholics who were brushed off with pious
pap and false assurances rises like smoke from the pages. The church and its
lawyers tried to keep the lid on the scandal. Once it blew off, the victims
went for all they could get, using the media and public prejudices to force
settlements. We cant help wondering if the atmosphere would be different
if the church had reacted as a shepherd to the victims as well as to its
priests.
- Report criminal pedophiles to the police. But many accusations
can be false. Elements within the church can be guilty of McCarthyism, to rid
themselves of a priest they dislike for other reasons. Each diocese and
religious order should appoint a tribunal to guarantee due process and protect
the reputation of someone who may be falsely accused.
- On Cardinal Law: Perhaps his best friends could suggest to him
that resignation can be an act of honor rather than an admission of defeat.
Many men in his career path see promotion and power as a sign that the
church approves of them. That may be true. But there is not a word
in the gospels that encourages shepherds to hold on to power. To be remembered
as a true shepherd and teacher, he might hand the power to someone else and
continue a life of service in some other way.
Living soberly
Films like The Lost Weekend and The Man with the
Golden Arm helped us understand alcoholism and drug addiction as
illnesses. Recent controversial films like Happiness and
L.I.E. have not given us any clear answers on pedophilia, but at
least they have put the problem on art house screens.
The churchs challenge is to understand in what sense
pedophilia is an addiction -- like and unlike alcoholism and drugs -- that
sometimes can and sometimes cannot be managed. Every case is unique, but
therapy and something like a 12-step program can sometimes, as participants
say, teach them to live soberly. Sobriety is not a cure, but a
change in life. One clergyman who told me that the fictional father in
Happiness, who abuses his sons friends, belongs in jail,
participates in a 15-year-old organization, SLAA (Sex and Love Addicts
Anonymous) and has successfully returned to his ministry.
Just as a church that preaches chastity and sexual integrity must
do everything to guarantee that its ministers practice those virtues, it must
live out its belief in forgiveness and redemption as well.
Jesuit Fr. Raymond A. Schroth is the Jesuit community professor
of humanities at St. Peters College in Jersey City, N.J.
National Catholic Reporter, March 15,
2002
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