What Catholics Should Do When Allegations of Abuse Are Made Against a Priest: Educational Resources

What's happening in Philadelphia is raising questions for Catholics in many places right now about how to deal with allegations that their parish priest or some other priest they esteem has engaged in sexual misconduct with minors.  For Catholics and others dealing with these questions, I'd like to point today to several resources that provide helpful information.

As Jeremy Roebuck reported recently at Philly.com, because the Philadelphia archdiocese chose to remove priests credibly accused of abuse from parish ministry overnight following the grand jury report, and has refused to release any information about those removed from ministry, many parishioners are left with serious unanswered questions.  What happened?  Why did Fr. X. vanish overnight?  Who's making what accusations against him?

Roebuck reports that at St. Luke the Evangelist church in Glenside, Pennsylvania, where Msgr. Michael Flood was removed from ministry, a group seeking information has even held a parish meeting to pool information.  This group is led by a parishioner, William W. Matthews III, who believes in Flood's innocence.  At the meeting Matthews and his group hosted, Kathleen Reilly, the attorney working with a legal team hired by the archdiocese to defend Flood, attacked the credibility of Flood's accuser.

And so what do Catholics do when their parish priest or some other priest they know or perhaps admire is accused of sexual abuse of youth and removed from ministry?  The website of the group Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP) has a valuable outline of 21 steps Catholics should consider taking, as they respond to allegations about a priest they know.

Many of these recommendations are common-sense suggestions: don't leap to conclusions, keep an open mind, pray for everyone involved, let yourself feel what you feel.  Several call on Catholics to educate themselves about sexual abuse of minors (it's more common than many people realize), and about what being abused when one is a child does to one's self-esteem as an adult (many survivors of abuse struggle with depression, feelings of worthlessness, suicidal thoughts, substance abuse, etc.).  

As the SNAP guidelines note, the choice of some victims of childhood sexual abuse to shield their identity when they finally choose to come forward with their stories needs to be respected, and parishioners should not try to force the victim to become public.  They should also use the period following the removal of a priest from ministry to invite others, including family members, to disclose abuse they may have suffered as children, and, if they have or receive information bearing on the case of the priest currently being accused, should contact criminal authorities.

Catholics dealing with allegations of sexual abuse made about a priest they know or esteem can also, SNAP suggests, turn the pain they feel at hearing such allegations into action: they can choose to assist children who have suffered abuse and/or start educational initiatives in their parishes about sexual molestation of minors. SNAP also encourages parishioners dealing with allegations about a priest they know to ask their pastor to bring in therapists or experts in the field of childhood abuse to lead educational sessions in parishes.

As Zoe Ryan notes in National Catholic Reporter this week, the Philadelphia situation is also re-opening discussion of the phrase "credibly accused."  Though this term is widely used in media accounts about the abuse crisis in the Catholic church, it has no standardized meaning, and is used differently in varying contexts.  

Where some priests' groups are proposing that the term is so vague that it is meaningless and that innocent priests are being removed from ministry on the basis of insubstantial allegations, the Philadelphia grand jury faults the Philadelphia archdiocese for setting the bar for credible abuse so high that priests who appear almost certainly to have abused minors were permitted to remain in ministry.  Ryan notes that Fr. James Connell of the Milwaukee archdiocese, a canon lawyer and member of the diocesan review board, believes that, under the leadership of the current Milwaukee archbishop Jerome Listecki, who came to Milwaukee from La Cross, the diocese of La Crosse used a definition of credible abuse that amounts to "moral certitude" in handling allegations of clerical abuse of minors.

In Connell's view, this understanding of credible abuse has left abusive priests in ministry and placed youths at risk.  SNAP officials agree.  SNAP president Barbara Blaine maintains that the possibility of harm to children should weigh more heavily than anything else in situations where allegations are made against a priest, and he should be removed immediately from ministry when such allegations are made, and an investigation to determine his guilt or innocence should then be held.

As David Clohessy, SNAP's national director, also notes, given how power is allocated within the structures of the Catholic church--top-down, with all power in the hands of the clerical elite that governs the church--those making allegations of abuse are almost routinely subject to harassment by Catholic officials.  The inequitable distribution of power within Catholic governing structures facilitates abuse, Clohessy maintains, since the absolute power in the hands of those at the top of the governance pyramid positively invites abuse--and this explains why Catholic leaders have been almost entirely resistant to addressing the situation of clerical abuse of minors.

I recommend Zoe Ryan's analysis of the current discussion of the term "credibly accused" as another valuable educational resource for Catholics dealing with allegations of abuse against their pastor or other priests they know. 

Thomas Reese on "Huge" Exodus of American Catholics, and My Conclusion: Catholic Church as Mean Machine

Another follow-up:

I blogged on the weekend about the record number of German Catholics who officially resigned from the Catholic church in 2010.  As I've noted in many previous postings, there's a parallel development in American Catholicism, where a Pew report in the spring of 2008 found that one in three adults in the U.S. who were raised Catholic have now left the Catholic church, and one in ten American adults is a former Catholic.

Jesuit Thomas Reese has just published an analysis of this "hidden exodus" of American Catholics in National Catholic Reporter.  And here's what Reese means in calling the exodus "hidden":

Any other institution that lost one-third of its members would want to know why. But the U.S. bishops have never devoted any time at their national meetings to discussing the exodus. Nor have they spent a dime trying to find out why it is happening.

The U.S. Catholic bishops have been eerily silent about the mass exodus of Catholics that is occurring on their watch, under their pastoral leadership--though the image of the good shepherd to which their pastoral office points is one intent on seeking every sheep who strays, to bring every straying sheep back to the fold. 

Reese notes that the data the bishops refuse to collect in order to understand why people are leaving have to be supplied by secular groups like Pew, who are finding that those who have walked away can be grouped, roughly speaking, into two large camps: those who are now unchurched, unaffiliated with any church; and those who have become Protestant.  Quite a bit of evidence suggests that a majority of those in the latter group have joined evangelical Protestant churches.

I'll leave it to readers who are interested in this topic to follow Reese's analysis and to read his recommendations about how the bishops might address the massive hemorrhaging of American Catholics--if they chose to care at all about what's taking place, that is.  I'm drawn, in particular, to his observation that what people are seeking from the church is authentic spirituality, liturgy that touches the heart, and viable Catholic exegesis of the scriptures in a culture inundated with simplistic soundbyte biblical interpretation of a fundamentalist bent.

Spirituality, heart, the Word of God: instead, the Catholic church in the U.S. (and globally) now strikes me, as an alienated Catholic shoved far to the margins, as increasingly a mean machine intent on doing harm to people, and, in many cases, to some of the most vulnerable among us.  When I read Joseph Palacios today about the disgusting defense the Vatican representative at the U.N. recently gave for the Vatican's refusal to endorse a U.N. statement deploring violence against LGBT persons; when I wade through Cardinal Wuerl's pre-Vatican II rationale for the U.S. bishops' condemnation of Elizabeth Johnson's work; when I read that, right on the heels of the grand jury report in Philadelphia that found 37 priests credibly accused of sexual abuse of minors still in ministry, Pope Benedict honors Cardinal Rigali: I see a mean machine in operation, which has little connection to anything I recognize as authentically spiritual, as capable of moving my heart towards God, or as skilled at breaking open the Word of God for me.

As the Vatican tinkers with new, theologically regressive translations of the liturgy regarding which the laity and even liturgical experts have had no say; as bishops reassert their right to control theological discourse and demand that theologians seek an imprimatur for any word they utter, and as they quench the Spirit by acting this way; as the Vatican depicts the Catholic hierarchy as the real victims in the struggle for human rights for LGBT persons while ignoring the actual violence to which LGBT persons are subject around the world; as a cardinal who has sheltered priests abusing minors is given an honor in the weeks before the beatification of John Paul II, who protected Marcial Maciel: I don't see spirituality at work.  I don't find my heart warmed.  I don't feel impelled to open the Word of God and read it.

Instead, I want in every way possible to distance myself from the mean machine the Catholic church has become at this point in history.  And I suspect a considerable proportion of those who have walked away and will continue to do so until these and the other significant ways in which the Catholic church now functions as a counter-sign to the gospels is addressed also share this perspective.

Gay Marriage and the Philadelphia Situation: Two Blog Recommendations

And as a p.s. to my posting earlier today about what happened in Maine in 2009, I'd like to take note of a valuable compendium of resources that blogger Terry Denson of the Theology Degrees website sent to me recently.  It's a gathering of what are, in Terry's view, the top 10 blog sites offering resources for those interested in promoting marriage equality.

And since I'm taking note of blogs new to me, I'd also like to mention a blog site recently launched by Susan Matthews, a Catholic living in the archdiocese of Philadelphia.  This is the Catholics4Change site, which has been set up to monitor, talk about, and address the situation in Philadelphia about which area Catholics now know from the grand jury report there.  This looks like a very valuable new contribution to the discussion of the sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic church.

Two More Valuable Statements on Catholic Abuse Situation: Patrick Wall and National Catholic Reporter

And, to place the discussion of Donohue's New York Times ad in the broader context of ongoing discussion of the cover-up of the abuse crisis by church leaders, two more valuable statements hot off the press:

The first is a posting Patrick Wall made on his blog yesterday about how Philadelphia signals the turning of the tide in the public's understanding of the abuse situation in the Catholic church, and the understanding many faithful Catholics now have of this situation.  In Wall's view, it is and always has been about cover-up.  Not about addressing the abuse crisis honestly and proactively.  It has been about cover-up from the very moment the U.S. Catholic bishops told us in 2002 that they intended to offer healing to survivors of clerical sexual abuse and to assure that children would be protected from abuse in the future.  

From that time forward, Wall maintains, the bishops have been mounting a "grand plan" that has employed "four distinct modes of tactical deception."  These are the National Review Board, the John Jay study, the Gavin Group's annual audit, and diminishing enforcement of the Dallas charter.

Re: the National Review Board, Wall reminds us of a significant bit of history we ought not permit ourselves to forget, as Donohue raves on (with the apparent blessing of the USCCB): former FBI agent and federal prosecutor Frank Keating resigned from the board in 2003 stating, after a year of frustrating experiences trying to deal with bishops whose behavior he characterized as akin to that of the Mafia, “To resist grand jury subpoenas, to suppress the names of offending clerics, to deny, to obfuscate, to explain away; that is the model of a criminal organization, not my church.”  And since that time, Wall points out, the Review Board has done little to nothing to assure that the bishops adhere to their promises of 2002.

Re: the John Jay study, which Bill Donohue and others keep using to "prove" that the abuse crisis is all about the abuse of young adolescent males by gay priests, Wall points out: "John Jay was utterly dependent upon the information each Bishop decided to give them."  And: "The study was nothing more than a third-party rehash of only the information that the USCCB wanted to be publicly disseminated."  As Wall notes, the method this "study" employed was tantamount to asking the police to investigate a murder, and then informing the criminal investigators that they could use only evidence turned over to them by the murder himself.

Re: the annual "audit" conducted by the Gavin Group, Wall reminds us, the auditing method is like nothing we'd encounter in the real world, where outside auditors have the right to request any and all evidence available to assure a group is on the financial up and up.  Instead, the method used is "stunningly similar" to that of the John Jay "study": "The Bishops ONLY give the Gavin Group what the Bishops want the public to know."

And we now know, per the 2010 audit just published, that the archdiocese of Philadelphia can pass the annual audit just as a grand jury investigation finds an alarming number of priests credibly accused of abuse still in ministry!  And it has done so every year the audits have been conducted!!

And, finally, there is a growing body of serious evidence demonstrating that the bishops are quietly engaged in diminishing enforcement of the 2002 charter, despite their claims that the abuse crisis is resolved, over and done with, things all cleaned up.  Even with its access to partial, highly selected, carefully massaged information, this year's audit found 55 dioceses and eparchies out of compliance with the Dallas charter.

Catholics, are you listening?  The U.S. Catholic bishops have played you for fools.  And they have every intent of continuing to do so, if you permit this.  If anybody can tell you the truth about what's going on with the abuse cover-up, he (and Tom Doyle, and Richard Sipe and the folks at SNAP) can do so.

And there's also this: the same day that Donohue published his New York Times ad and the USCCB released the results of the annual audit, National Catholic Reporter published an editorial deploring the constant "legal shenanigans and ethical lapses" of the Catholic bishops vis-a-vis the abuse cover-up, shenanigans and lapses on full display all over again in Philadelphia courtrooms right now.  And so, 

It is time for Catholics to acknowledge what is clear: Despite the promises made at the height of the sex abuse crisis nearly a decade ago, the leadership of the church on both a local and national level has failed to deal forthrightly with the clergy abuse crisis. Certainly many dioceses and bishops are diligently applying the charter they adopted in 2002. They respond quickly to accusations and do their best to work the canonical system to remove problem priests. But what Philadelphia reveals is that the system is easily compromised, dependent as it still is on sheer trust at too many levels and on the goodwill of bishops who remain above accountability.

And what does NCR propose, concretely?  First, faithful Catholics need to call on the hierarchy to implement the recommendations of the Philadelphia grand jury at a national level.  Second, there need to be "Philadelphia-style investigations" in more places.  And, finally, Cardinal Rigali needs to resign.

Because, if Philadelphia shows us anything, it shows us the whole system is broken and not capable of working without major overhaul.  And all the bullying and the frothing at the mouth of Bully Bill Donohue and whoever keeps funneling money to him to engage in his shameful, mean-spirited carnival sideshow is no longer going to divert most thinking folks' attention from that glaringly obvious reality.

Not Forgetting Cardinal Burke as Philadelphia Story Unfolds: Making the Connections

When I wrote about Cardinal Raymond Burke and Fr. Andrew Hamilton two days ago, John Shuster posted a valuable comment in response to my analysis.  Shuster writes,

When Burke was in St. Louis, he welcomed publicly-identified predator priests from around the country to live in his archdiocese.  Prendergast in Ottawa has the same track record.  We feel that Sartain in Seattle will do the same given his recent ordination of the troubled Father Flores who is now doing hard time for child rape in an Illinois pen.  What is it about high ranking prelates who so brazenly take those who commit sex crimes against children unto themselves?  Richard Sipe's website has pictures of Burke's extensive clerical wardrobe with details on how much it all costs.  And then there's Jesus...

As we look at Burke in his resplendent (and exceedingly expensive) clerical costumes, it's important to remember his history of dealing with priests abusing minors.  When John Paul II promoted Burke to the position of prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, the highest court within the Catholic church, which hears cases of bishops accused of malfeasance, Peter Isely of SNAP noted that, in his years as bishop of La Crosse, Wisconsin, Burke had "cleared" a higher percentage of priests accused of abuse than any other bishop in the nation.  His rate of "clearing" accused priests in La Crosse was six times higher than the national average.

One of his own priests, Fr. James Connell of Milwaukee, sought to blow the whistle on Burke by noting that Burke created standards in La Crosse that effectively abolished the norms of the Dallas Charter of 2002, by raising the bar to a level that made it exceptionally difficult to prove that an accused priest had abused a minor.  In Connell's view, Burke's behavior placed children at risk.  

And this pattern of "clearing" abused priests is, of course, right at the heart of the Philadelphia story now, where it appears diocesan officials may have deliberately withheld pertinent information from members of the diocesan review board, resulting in decisions to keep priests in ministry when abuse charges made against  them were credible--decisions the review board may have made on the basis of skewed and partial evidence.  It is not without pertinence to note that Burke came to St. Louis to succeed Cardinal Justin Rigali as Rigali went to Philadelphia.  St. Louis was the only single diocese in the U.S. that John Paul II visited during his papal tenure, a privilege granted to St. Louis that, this document on the St. Louis archdiocesan website boasts, was given to that diocese because of John Paul's friendship with Rigali, who previously worked in Rome and helped select bishops--something Rigali's friend Burke now does, as a kingmaker for U.S. bishops in Rome.

Burke's behavior as an overlord who has no obligation to account to the underlings whose money clothes him in his resplendent regal garments does have a human price, however.  In 2004, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse at the hands of a priest of the La Crosse diocese, Brenda, spoke about this human price to a reporter in La Crosse.  This survivor, Brenda, noted that, when she went public with her story of having been repeatedly raped by Father Raymond Bornbach when she was a nine-year old girl, she asked to see Burke, then the bishop of La Crosse, to discuss what had happened to her.

He refused to meet her face to face.  Finally, two weeks before he was to leave to take the position of bishop of St. Louis, he granted her an audience.  Brenda asked that Bornbach's case be reviewed by the review board of the La Crosse diocese and his name be made public.  Burke told her he would get back to her about this before he left for St. Louis.

He left two weeks later and she did not hear from him.  She never heard from Burke again.  Burke left La Crosse with a policy in place that did not permit the release of names of credibly accused priests to the public.  Bornbach did eventually face the diocesan review board, which found Brenda's allegations credible.

What the princes of the church like Cardinal Burke do as pastors, while robing themselves in splendor, has a human price.  For those who are interested, the full story of that human price, in the case of the Brendas of the world, is well told by Malcolm Gay in this 2004 Riverfront Times [St. Louis] article entitled "Immaculate Deception" reviewing Burke's sordid history as a pastor in La Crosse, vis-a-vis handling of abuse cases (and see this overview, as well).

John Shuster's comment notes that Richard Sipe's website has a gallery of pictures of some of Burke's most outré costumes, with information about just how much these costumes cost.  At this link, you'll find links on Sipe's website both to a photo gallery of Burke's fabulous clerical couture, and an article by one "Huguccio della Chiesa" entitled "The Cost of Looking Fabulous," with details about the price tags for the chic gloves, dazzling hats, resplendent lace and silk, and good, old-fashioned Catholic bling Burke enjoys sporting to impress us and remind us of his importance (and our obligation to obey) in Christ's scheme of things for church and world.

Hint: a family of five could eat--and well--for a month, with the price of those chic red gloves girlfriend His Eminence is rocking in the ecclesiastical fashion-plate snapshot of John Paul and Benedict's restorationist "reform of the reform" above.

But when I look at those gloves, in addition to thinking about their price, I keep thinking about Brenda, and that promise Burke made as her pastor, as the chief pastor of the flock of the La Crosse diocese, to do something about her pain and suffering, and about children who continued to be placed in harm's way by his policies designed to protect priests accused of abuse and not the children they were abusing.

And I can't help thinking, God help me, that the gloves are designed to hide dirty hands every bit as much as to display an overlord's power and glory.

P.S. I do intend soon to comment on Archbishop Diarmuid Martin's valuable analysis of the abuse crisis in his recent Marquette lecture--analysis that tells the truth in ways that go well beyond anything an American bishop has said about the crisis.  And in light of that lecture, I am also intending to post something about two other stories good readers of this blog have brought to my attention.  A bit pressed for time today, as I prepare a lecture I'll be giving tomorrow--and also distracted as I try to find a doctor to attend to a medical thing, a task made more difficult by my lack of health insurance and the apparent disinterest of some doctors in dealing with patients without coverage.

Questions Continue to Arise, Post-Philadelphia, As New Abuse Stories Break

Several good overviews in recent days of the questions we're left with after Philadelphia, where it has become apparent that a significant number of priests credibly accused of abuse have been left in active ministry, despite assurances of the U.S. bishops that we now have a well-functioning system in place to remove such priests from ministry:

As Laurie Goodstein and Tom Roberts report recently in the New York Times and National Catholic Reporter, the Philadelphia news, and the indictment of that archdiocese's secretary for clergy Msgr. William Lynn on charges of endangering the welfare of children, come as a shock to many U.S. Catholics, since we've been told by the bishops that the abuse situation is a thing of the past, that it's under control.  Among the questions Goodstein and Roberts report American Catholics are now asking (and have to ask), post-Philadelphia:

1. Do the review boards set up by dioceses to review allegations of clerical abuse of minors receive all pertinent information from diocesan clergy files?  Are files scrubbed of some information before they reach reviewers' hands?

2. Since the annual audit completely missed the 37 priests in the Philadelphia archdiocese who have apparently continued in ministry despite credible allegations of abuse of minors, is the audit system functioning?  Is there any assurance that auditors have access to all information they need in every diocese to do their job?

3. How are review boards selected, and what independence do they actually have from diocesan control as they do their review work?

4. Are all the standards and norms of the 2002 Dallas charter actually being applied uniformly in dioceses across the nation?

5. And--to me, most ominous of all--how many other situations like Philadelphia are still out there?

In my opinion (and I've linked to a statement of Peter Isely of SNAP suggesting this--see here), Philadelphia is not unique.  On a daily basis, new indicators come out of an abysmal lack of accountability and transparency among the pastoral leaders of American Catholicism, vis-a-vis the abuse crisis.  Two examples from the past day or so:

It was announced yesterday that St. John's Benedictine Abbey in Minnesota has just reached a settlement with nine victims of abuse at its St. John's Prep School in Collegeville.  The abuse situation at St. John's has been in the public eye for some years now.  Several years ago, Patrick Marker, who was abused as a teen at the prep school, created a website to track what has happened at St. John's, and to make it known to the public.  The website, Behind the Pine Curtain, does outstanding work gathering information about St. John's Abbey and the abuse situation at this institution, and making that information available to the public.

Marker served for several years on an external review board at St. John's, and then resigned when, as he indicates, the abbey's abbot withheld information on credibly accused monks from the public and other board members supported this action.  And as he maintains now that a settlement has just been reached with some victims of abuse by members of this monastic community, the problem of a lack of transparency and accountability remains, in his view, even with this settlement:

What they're doing is reacting. They haven't been active in addressing this problem.  Names that they knew back in 2002 were not part of the public release back then. The external review board that they created as part of that 2002 settlement was a farce. And I was very hopeful in 2002 that we would see change and that St. John's would turn the corner. It didn't happen. 

That's one alarming indicator from very recent news which suggests to me that the Philadelphia story is hardly unique--that there continue to be many situations within the American Catholic church in which a refusal of pastoral officials to behave pastorally, to be transparent and accountable re: abuse cases, still hampers the attempts of American Catholics to address the abuse crisis.

And here's another: just yesterday, a poster commenting on this blog, Augusta Wynn, logged in to say that the Corapi story reminded her of the story of another rock-star priest given free rein to roam the globe as he provided spiritual direction to various religious communities, including Mother Teresa's community.  The priest to whom Wynn is referring is Jesuit Fr. Donald McGuire, who, according to Wynn, brought in much money for his community's coffers, and may have had unusual latitude to pursue his ministry (which was dogged for years by persistent credible reports of abuse of teenaged boys) because he was a cash cow for the Jesuits.

And immediately after this blogger alerted me to the story of Donald McGuire, about which I knew nothing, news began to break about a case filed against him yesterday, which claims that the Jesuits long knew of McGuire's abuse of minors, and did little to curb the abuse or protect minors McGuire targeted.  Erik Erickholm reports on this case today in the New York Times, and the Bishop-Accountability site has just uploaded an important cache of documents tracking the Jesuit cover-up (for years) of McGuire's abuse.

The common thread of these two very recent post-Philadelphia stories?  It's still going on.  The cover-up continues.  There is still a shocking lack of accountability among the pastoral leaders of American Catholicism, vis-a-vis abuse of minors.  Clericalism--the belief that priests attain some ontologically superior status through ordination, which sets them above common lay Catholics and gives them power and privilege that flow from the change in their ontological status effected by ordination--remains front and center in all of these breaking stories of abuse.

And it's everywhere.  It's not only in Philadelphia.  It runs throughout the Catholic church in the U.S.

And it's still enabled by far too many American Catholics, some of whom have logged into this blog in recent days to slam open discussion of how clericalism and the adulation of rock-star priests feed the abuse situation and its cover-up, and who have suggested we need to shut up, stop our idiotic yammering, and pray, pay, and keep obeying.  

And so, for me, another of the questions to be added to the list of questions the Philadelphia story raises is this: how have some American Catholics gotten so stupid?  And so morally doltish?  So morally doltish that they'd continue to put the reputations (and cash-flow needs) of venal rock-star priests or bishops and religious superiors ahead of the safety of children (or adults under pastoral care) who are endangered by predatory priests?

Until American Catholics deal with that question, too, I don't think we'll make much headway in addressing the abuse situation in any effective way.

Mary Gail Frawley O'Dea Asks, Where Is Catholicism's Tahrir Square?

As I do, the broken record knocking again and again as the turntable rounds another time, Mary Gail Frawley O'Dea asks when Catholics will finally say, "Enough," and claim ownership of their church:

So where is Catholicism's Tahrir Square? Why isn't the Philadelphia chancery surrounded by thousands of Catholics and their priests shouting for Cardinal Rigali to "Go! Go!" What will it take to mobilize the People of God to insist on, to fight for an end to a privileged patriarchy holding up a feudal monarchy whose members tolerate sexual and spiritual slaughter of the lambs?

When will the people say, "Enough!" and assume the power that is theirs to wield within their own church?

As O'Dea notes, "Philadelphia renders us out of excuses and rationalizations."  

And she's right.  It's time for Catholics to ditch the moral imbecility of one excuse after another for a thoroughly rotten and thoroughly system.  And to become accountable adults.  If what we believe in really means anything at all, that is.

Jim Jenkins on Philadelphia Story: Bishops at Heart of Story, but Lay Catholics Complicit

And another must-not-miss piece of commentary today for anyone tracking the abuse crisis in the Catholic church and wanting to understand why it has happened and what needs to be done to deal with it: James Jenkins' "Philadelphia Story" at the National Survivor Advocates Coalition (NSAC) website.  Jenkins formerly chaired the archdiocesan review board in San Francisco.  He knows whereof he speaks.

His take on where the heart of the problem lies?  Certainly with the bishops.  And their corrupted pastoral leadership.  In their handling of the abuse situation, many bishops are and have been "conniving corrupt politicians," "cowards," "morally compromised," "criminally complicit." 

The diocesan review boards are "creatures of the bishops' authority," controlled by the bishops and lacking any authority to compel a bishop to do anything.  From the outset in many dioceses, bishops violated the pledge implicit in the 2002 charter to give review boards an independent status free of episcopal manipulation.

But there's more: if we, if we lay Catholics, let this sham go on, then we are every bit as much a part of the problem as are the bishops and the priests abusing minors.

It is our money that makes up the hush funds to silence survivors, our money that priests use to buy their vacation homes or motels rooms where they take children to assault them, it is our money that pays for the rectory residence where most of the assaults occurred, it is our money given to priests that pays for bribe gifts and credit cards for victims, it is our money that supports the phalanx of lawyers and public relations firms that defend the bishops. (I could go on, and on). 

And so the solution to this crisis lies in the hands of those providing the money that fuels the machinery that keeps the pay-offs and hardball legal defenses and media spin machine (aka Bully Bill Donohue's Catholic League) running.

History will continue to repeat itself until Catholics take matters into their own hands and forever reform the priesthood from parish to pope, as we have known it.

Jenkins is right on target.  Are lay Catholics beginning to wake up?  I'm not getting the picture that they are.

For Catholics Who Still Don't Get It . . .

Hans Küng

Swiss Catholic theologian Hans Küng has an important message: 

In the book [i.e., in his new book Can the Church Be Saved?], he argues that resistance to church doctrines that are 'obviously against the Gospels' is a duty.  . . .

He said the church could only saved by the faithful taking over responsibility for their church.

The preceding snippet from the Clerical Whispers site points to an article at the reactionary Catholic website Catholic Culture, which identifies Küng, who was a peritus at Vatican II along with the present pope, as a "dissident" theologian who is "attacking" the church.   But for some reason, the version of the Catholic Culture article to which the Clerical Whispers link points is not synonymous with that on the latter site, and does not include the observation about the faithful taking responsibility for their church--though the truth-evading title about Küng attacking the church remains the same.

The pope himself would seem not to share Catholic Culture's magisterial dismissal of Küng as a dissident attacking the church, since, as John Allen reported in 2005, Küng and Benedict met following Benedict's election to the papacy in a meeting widely regarded as cordial.

And back to my primary point: Küng is, in my view, right on target with his observation that the Catholic church is in serious trouble today, insofar as lay Catholics have not yet awakened to their ownership of the church and taken responsibility for its future.  As I said some days ago, I turn an increasingly deaf ear to the special pleading of Catholics who continue to stick with the church--special pleading on behalf of bishops who have, as the Philadelphia story tells us all over again, grossly abdicated pastoral responsibility for the church.

So spare me the litany of excuses, including the silly argument often floated on right-wing Catholic websites, that the Catholic church is somehow special and above non-Catholic churches, and its leaders are God's men in a special way that is not the case in Protestant or Orthodox churches.  If you imagine you can push that argument with a straight face now, and convince folks, go for it.  I admire your chutzpah (or foolhardiness, or plain foolishness) in trying to press this point in the face of all we've learned about the abuse crisis in recent years, and most recently in Philadelphia.

But spare your breath when it comes to trying to convince me that the bishops are some special group of men led by God in some unique way.  Not after Boston.  Not after Philadelphia.  I'm not buying what you're selling.

For me, it's glaringly obvious that the Catholic church is in serious trouble, and that if you want to have any kind of church at all for the future, you're going to have to stop covering for the bishops and start taking responsibility for your church--as Jamie Manson notes in her recent reflection on the Philadelphia events and the legacy of lay passivity in the Catholic church.

Call Küng or Manson dissidents or defective messengers all you want.  Killing the messenger is not going to make this particular message goes away.

If lay Catholics don't wake up soon and stop making silly, evil excuses for the bishops and asserting their ownership of the Catholic church, there is not going to be anything left to own--not very far down the road.

Terence McKiernan to Catholic Hierarchy, Post-Philadelphia: Start Thinking about the Handcuffs

Speaking of good advice (here, I'm keying off what I just said about Marci Hamilton's advice to Gina Maisto Smith re: probing the files of the Philadelphia Catholic archdiocese): Terence McKiernan of BishopAccountability has splendid advice for the next diocesan official who might be thinking of concealing evidence or continuing to transfer predatory priests while claiming no known predators remain in ministry.  

As McKiernan says, after what has taken place in Philadelphia, 

The next time a vicar for clergy or vicar general has a case to deal with and is considering moving a predator to another location, he’s got to think about this. He’s got to wonder if he wants to be handcuffed or put on trial.

McKiernan thinks we've crossed "a deference threshold" with the Philadelphia grand jury report, in which we see law enforcement and justice officials now willing to demand that Catholic church officials stop protecting criminals.  In his view, what has taken place in Philadelphia will have a "chastening effect" on the church hierarchy everywhere.

I hope he's right.

Marci Hamilton's Advice to Philadelphia "Independent" Investigator Gina Maisto Smith: Eyes Wide Open

For those who imagine we have complete data on the abuse situation in the American Catholic church, that all the data are on the table, that the John Jay study had access to all the information available to the bishops and Rome, and that we can make sweeping generalizations about the situation on the basis of the very partial information released by bishops up to now as they kick and scream to keep their files sealed, I highly recommend Marci Hamilton's article yesterday at the Patheos website.  

Hamilton's list of pointers for Gina Maisto Smith, the "independent" invesigator hired by the archdiocese of Philadelphia to review its files and sort out the Philadelphia mess (but I had thought that was the job of the diocesan ordinaries and their review board!?), is worth the entire read.  

I hope Smith listens.  Marci Hamilton knows what she's talking about when she says that Catholic dioceses keep layers on layers of files, some of them secret and persistently withheld from any investigator, that the bishops withheld secret files from the John Jay investigators, that files have been sent to Rome which may or may not be trackable, and that apologists for the pedophile system are now trying to engage in scorched-earth tactics with the term "credible" as they seek to give it a new definition not found in any dictionary.

And above and beyond this, there's also increasing evidence of destruction of  damning diocesan files in a number of places (see here and here, e.g.).  I don't envy Smith's assignment.  She'll have to exhibit the cunningness of a serpent to get at information that has always been known to those who kept credibly accused priests in ministry in Philadelphia, who did not do their jobs, and who have created the mess that resulted when it took a grand jury investigation to make Philadelphia church officials even pretend to try to adhere to the terms of the USCCB 2002 Dallas charter.

Michael Sean Winters on Philadelphia Story: Telling It Like It Is

Michael Sean Winters preaches, re: the Philadelphia story:

The New Evangelization? Forget about it. Pro-life activities? Not a chance. Advocacy for the poor? It rings hollow. If the leaders of the Church cannot be trusted to keep their most solemn pledge to protect children, they cannot be trusted at all. If they fail to see this, their moral sensibility is not merely skewed, it is dead. It is not only that they cannot be trusted, it is that they should not be trusted. 

And he's right.

Philadelphia and Ash Wednesday: My Continued Response to Richard Gaillardetz on the State of the American Catholic Church

As I noted in my posting yesterday about Richard Gaillardetz's recent sounding of the current state of American Catholicism, Gaillardetz frames his analysis by noting that the American Catholic church is in a "state of unrest."  Gaillardetz's analysis contains one phrase after another denoting unrest: "something is amiss" in the American church right now; there are "warning signs" everywhere, if we have eyes to see them; thousands of Catholics have left in "a state of resigned disillusionment"; large numbers of Catholics are simply giving up and going elsewhere; the U.S. Catholic church is "in crisis."

In particular, Gaillardetz notes the findings of the Pew Forum in the spring of 2008, that one in three American adults raised Catholic had left the Catholic church by 2008, one in ten American adults is a former Catholic.  A study done by the Center for Applied Research (CARA) at the same time found weekly Mass attendance among Catholics at 23%.  In 2002, when the U.S. Catholic bishops met in Dallas to deal with the first round of revelations about the abuse crisis, a report done by the Dallas Morning News found that roughly two-thirds of U.S. Catholic bishops could be proven to have shielded a known clerical sexual predator.

As Gaillardetz notes, there has been a "mass exodus" of American Catholics from the Catholic church in recent years, and this reality poses a significant pastoral challenge to the entire American Catholic church.  It presents each and every Catholic who remains affiliated with and active in the Catholic church in the U.S. with an absolutely compelling and unavoidable pastoral responsibility--the responsibility of understanding why this mass exodus is occurring and the responsibility of responding, as the gospels command us to do, with healing intent, with the intent to bring back those brothers and sisters who are walking away from the church.

Gaillardetz writes,

The future of American Catholicism will depend in no small measure on our willingness to take seriously this mass exodus from the Church. We need to ask ourselves, what is going on here? 

And then the abuse crisis, which is right in front of us again--all over again!--with the news from Philadelphia yesterday.  News that suggests it has never gone away at all.  That, despite continued reassurances that the bishops have handled all the problems and no known perpetrators are being kept in ministry, significant numbers of priests credibly accused of abusing minors have remained in ministry in Philadelphia--and in other dioceses, as well. 

The ongoing revelations from Philadelphia suggest we've been foolish if we have ever taken our eyes off this crisis and assumed it's over and done with, a thing of the past.  And that the church is back on track, is in capable, ministerially sound hands.  The Philadelphia story (and the Los Angeles one, and countless others) suggest to us that groups like Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP) have been right on target as, over and over, they've sounded a warning bell, telling us that credibly accused priests remain in ministry in many places, that pastoral officials are not telling us the truth when they assure us they have conformed to the stipulations of the Dallas Charter and removed all credibly accused priests from ministry.  

SNAP has told us over and over again that significant data about the abuse crisis--including the numbers of credibly accused priests still in ministry and their identities--have been hidden from us, and that such data as we have have been issued to us by the bishops grudgingly and always under legal duress, are partial data, and have been manipulated by the bishops to deflect attention from their astonishing lack of pastoral responsibility in handling priests abusing minors.  And that we may never know anywhere near the full picture of the abuse crisis until some outside governing body like the Philadelphia grand jury becomes serious about prosecuting Catholic pastoral officials who continue to engage in cover-ups and who continue to keep abusive priests in ministry.

And what to do about all of that, in light of what Gaillardetz tells us about our pastoral responsibility, here and now, in a church in crisis?  For what it's worth, on this Ash Wednesday, here's my take on how not to be a pastorally responsible, faithful Catholic as huge numbers of your brother and sister Catholics are walking away, and as yet another ugly story about the abuse crisis breaks wide open in another diocese.

Here are some of the exceedingly shopworn excuses, rationales, diversionary tales, and outright lies that some Catholics who still have anything to do with the church want to tell me and others--still! still, now that we're so far down the road of understanding that only a fool or a moral imbecile would try to tell these lies.  Here are some of the sad old song-and-dance stories I hear "faithful" Catholics still trying to tell on this and other blog sites, even as the news from Philadelphia breaks.  Stories you might as well not try telling me, because I'm not listening any more:

1. We have it under control.  Our bishops have cleaned house.  In fact, the Catholic church is doing a better job than any other group in the world in handling the child-abuse problem.

And my response:  Really?  Philadelphia.  Los Angeles.  And just about any other diocese in the nation.

2. We have never had a problem, really.  The Catholic church is being singled out for unfair, anti-Catholic persecution, when there are problems like this in all other religious communities, in schools, and in other organizations.

And my response: Really?  Matthew 18:6.  You're a church, for God's sake.  Comparing yourself to other organizations, particularly secular ones that don't have your mandate from the Lord to love, heal, protect, nurture, cherish, etc., is unworthy of you.  Can you really not see that it undermines, in the starkest way possible, your claims to be a unique sacramental sign of Christ in the world?

3. Take some pity on these priests accused of abuse.  They were lonely, confused, scarred by their seminary training.  And there's a huge distinction between sexually molesting a child and a teenager, anyway.

And my response: Really?  What does it say about the Catholic community and its moral acumen--its moral standing in society at large--that we've come to this: trying to make deceitful distinctions between whether it's better to molest a child or a teen?  Why are we even having this discussion?  How can it not be perfectly obvious to us now, given all that we've learned in this painful journey, that adults seeking human relationships are well advised to seek relationships with other adults and not with minors?  

Why do you keep trying to change the subject from power to sex and all the gradations of permissible and impermissible sex, in any case?  Do you really think the vast majority of people can't understand that this is all about the absolutely insupportable abuse of power by an adult who considers himself, qua his ordination, entitled in some godlike way, that it's all about power exercised over the vulnerable bodies of minors with no autonomy and few psychological resources?  Find an adult with whom to engage, if you're a priest making these deceitful distinctions-- and preferably not a vulnerable one whom you're exorcising.

4. And, most astonishing of all, priests are being dismissed right and left on the most tenuous of charges by bishops who are throwing priests to the wolves.  And if you look carefully at the cases of Father Shanley and Geoghan in Boston, you don't find any strong evidence at all to support the charges made against them.  And oh, yes: all those poor innocent priests being thrown to the wolves?  Those hounding them are doing so for money (thanks to John Bijarney below, for reminding me of this persistent lie).

And my response: Really?  You really want to put your integrity on the line and tell these lies when anyone able to read can go to the BishopAccountability site and see the caches of abundant documents about Shanley and Geoghan and numerous other priests who have been proven to have abused minors?  And you want to argue that bishops are throwing priests to the wolves right as we discover that a shocking number of priests credibly accused of minors have been kept in ministry in Philadelphia?  You want to argue for a witch hunt in which innocent priests are being thrown out of ministry now, as the Philadelphia story breaks open?

As I say, save your breath for someone who is capable of being duped.  I'm not listening.  Please shop these toxic, game-playing lies someplace else.

But I do have something to say to you, you faithful Catholics who continue to involve yourself in the church and who think that, in some alternate universe apparent to you but invisible to me and others, you're doing the church a favor by spreading these tales.  You can choose to listen to this advice or not, as you wish.  It comes, after all, from the lips of a dirty gay Catholic who has been shoved to the margins of the church and who couldn't get a job in a Catholic institution if his life depended on it.  And who doesn't darken the door of a church after he and his partner have been treated like human garbage by the pastors of the church.

So take this advice for what it's worth, considering its source.

My advice this Ash Wednesday to faithful Catholics who keep engaging in the game-playing represented by the excuses I've just outlined is this: if you really do care about the future of your church, and if you're truly faithful to the mandate of Christ on which the church is founded, stop colluding.  Stop colluding with pastoral officials whose exercise of authority is not pastoral in any shape, form, or fashion.  There is a serious abdication of pastoral responsibility going on among the U.S. Catholic bishops, and that abdication has been going on for some time now.  And anyone with eyes to see can see it.

If we need any evidence for that abdication beyond each new revelation of the abuse crisis, think about this: there has not been a single initiative anywhere in the American Catholic church to respond to, open discussion of, or craft strategies to respond proactively to the Pew Forum data of 2008.  About which we've now known for three years.  Sound empirical data pointing to a mass exodus of Catholics from the church in whose bosom you yourselves remain comfortable, an exodus almost certain to have grown more concerted in the period from 2008.  Empirical data pointing to a mass exodus of a church whose pastors claim to stand in persona Christi--in the person of the Good Shepherd who told his followers to seek even a single sheep straying from the fold.

If you care about the future of your church--since it appears your bishops don't--then you need to do something about this mass exodus.  Because you can't really call yourself a faithful Catholic and a good disciple of Jesus if you stand by in silence as brother after brother and sister after sister walks away.

You're definitely not helping by continuing the excuse-making, because many of those who can't run away fast enough are running away, quite precisely, from the moral imbecility of a community that can not only do what we have done in the abuse crisis, but which can still find excuses for what has been done,  with each new revelation about the depths of the damage done to others.  It's time to put childish things behind you--it's time to put away moral imbecility--and start doing something constructive about the mess in front of you.  You might start by organizing a national dialogue that brings together the thousands on thousands who have walked, and permits those vanished brothers and sisters to tell their stories.

The bishops are certainly not going to organize that dialogue.  Because they don't intend to talk.  Except to God and each other.  And I'm not entirely sure about the God part of that equation.

If you don't start there, you're soon not going to have a church at all to speak of.  Except perhaps a tiny, bitter, claustrophobic little enclave of morally imbecilic like-minded believers who maintain their sectarian comfort by redefining abuse as intimate relationship, injustice as justice, and savage indifference as love.

Catching Up on News in Philadelphia: 21 Priests Suspended Today

I'm just now seeing the news from Philadelphia today: that 21 priests were placed on suspension today, following the recent grand jury report and the indictment of the secretary for clergy for the archdiocese of Philadelphia, Msgr. William Lynn.  As Joann Loviglio notes at Huffington Post, 

The actions of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia stand out because they come more than eight years after the U.S. bishops reformed their national child protection policies and pledged swift action to keep potential abusers away from young people.

The grand jury named 37 priests who remained in active ministry despite credible allegations of sexual abuse. After the release of the report, the second such investigation in the city in six years, Rigali vowed to take its calls for further reforms seriously.

Let me repeat that: what is happening in Philadelphia stands out because this is happening more than eight years after the U.S. bishops reformed their national child protection policies and pledged swift action to keep potential abusers away from young people.  And it took a grand jury report and an indictment of the archdiocese's secretary for clergy to produce this suspension of 21 priests who are still in active ministry despite, one understands, credible allegations of abuse of minors.

And so segue to Barbara Dorris at SNAP who notes that earlier today, two well-connected bloggers, one of whom is Rocco Palmo of the Whispers in the Loggia blog, had been reporting that sources told them these suspensions were imminent.  And Barbara Dorris concludes, re: these suspensions,

When a doctor deceives a patient and delays surgery until death is nearly imminent, and removes just 30% of the life-threatening cancer, he is terribly irresponsible. And we’re irresponsible if we praise him for it.

And Dorris also concludes that temporarily suspending a handful of credibly accused predator priests is not going to fix the deep, seemingly intractable endemic problems in the American Catholic system to which each new epidemic outbreak of the abuse crisis points all over again.  Dorris's bottom-line final conclusion:

So if some credibly accused predator priests are suspended, it will be a small step forward made terribly late and only due to massive pressure. It’s a very belated and begrudging beginning – nothing more. And we do an enormous disservice to many innocent kids and still-suffering adults if we even begin to feel complacent because of this one small step.

And as SNAP's Peter Isely notes in Joann Loviglio's HuffPo article,

We have no reason to believe that Philadelphia is unusual – in other U.S. dioceses, credibly accused priests are no doubt still in ministry, and review boards are protecting priests instead of protecting children.

As all this happens--all over again--the same old, same old set of excuses and the same old, same old dishonest defensive mechanisms are in evidence all over again among many American Catholics: a point on which I intend to comment in a subsequent posting linking to Richard Gaillardetz's analysis of the state of contemporary American Catholicism, and what might be done to address that state.  In my view, many Catholics are mind-bogglingly obtuse, when it comes to understanding the most elemental moral issues involved in the abuse crisis.  And whatever's wrong with the Catholic church isn't going to get resolved until that moral obtuseness is addressed far more honestly and proactively than has been the case up to now.

I hope to say more about this down the road.

Philadelphia Abuse Story Continues to Unfold

The abuse story involving the Catholic archdiocese of Philadelphia keeps unfolding.  CNN is reporting today that attorneys for an unnamed adult male plaintiff living in Delaware will announce a lawsuit today against the archdiocese:

"The Lawsuit will allege that Archdiocese officials conspired to endanger the safety of the Plaintiff when they actively concealed their knowledge of (a) priest's previous offenses, lied to parishioners, and created a sham sexual abuse victim assistance program for the Archdiocese," according to a news release announcing the lawsuit. 

Named in the suit are Cardinal Justin Rigali, the current archbishop of Philadelphia, Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, former archbishop, and Monsignor William Lynn, a former top aide to Bevilacqua.  Lynn is the secretary of clergy who is under indictment in the current grand jury action.  

The suit will accuse these defendants of conspiracy to endanger children, fraudulent concealment, and actual fraud.  As Patrick Wall asked in a posting a few weeks ago at his blog site about Lynn--a  "bishop's man," Wall calls him, borrowing the term from Linden MacIntyre's novel of that name--how is it that diocese after diocese seems to have missed what the 2002 USCCB Dallas charter says about keeping priests credibly accused of abuse out of ministry?  Bishop's men are priests who will do anything their bishops command, no questions asked, scratching the superior's back in the confident expectation of having their own backs scratched eventually in the system of ecclesial preferment.

Wall notes that not only has Lynn been recently indicted in Philadelphia, but his counterpart Msgr. Michael Myers in Los Angeles also had to resign in February when it was discovered that the Los Angeles diocese placed a known offender, Rev. Martin O'Loghlen, back into ministry in the spring of 2009--contra the norms of the Dallas charter.  As Wall notes, the replication of this occurrence in various dioceses shows us that we're not dealing with isolated incidents but with a pattern--and one that the much-touted John Jay audit did not discover: a pattern of Catholic ordinaries skirting the norms of their own USCCB charter to keep credibly accused priests in ministry, and lying to the public as this takes place, and as they make false claims that the abuse situation has been resolved and the crisis is over.

If anyone thinks we're moving in a new and hopeful direction and that the Catholic church in the U.S. is back on track, just take a look at the thread following my recent posting about Joelle Casteix's radio interview re: the O'Loghlen case.  Look at the continued attempts--still! even now--to offer every excuse under the sun for Martin O'Loghlen's predatory advances to a teenaged girl, and to assassinate the messenger, Joelle Casteix, for breaking this story.  Look at the ugly misogyny underlying the whole story, with its implication that men should have the right to own women, that women reporting sexual abuse shouldn't be believed, that women are deceitful temptresses creating the conditions for their own abuse.

We haven't come far at all down the road to healing.  Or honesty.  Or the kind of truth that washes away filth, for which Patrick Wall prays in the posting to which I like above, citing an ancient Jewish prayer: Blessed is the flow of the River of Truth, which helps us to wash away the filth.

May that river keep flowing.  And washing.

Andrew Sullivan Comments on Philadelphia Story: Even Now, the Catholic Hierarchy Doesn't Get It

Andrew Sullivan tells it like it is in this posting today commenting on the New York Times article about the Philadelphia story re: which I wrote yesterday.

Sullivan's conclusion as he reads the Philadelphia story:

There has been some progress in accountability and openness. But the core elements that made the Catholic Church one of the biggest pedophile conspiracies in the world for decades if not centuries remain: incoherent, irrational and data-resistant doctrines on homosexual orientation and sex in general; a Western culture in which fewer and fewer straight men are prepared to give up sex and love and marriage to serve the church; and a hierarchical structure designed to instill control rather than openness, and perfectly set up to enable cover-ups.

Since the church even now seems incapable of treating child abuse as seriously as the rest of society, it seems to me that increased police involvement is necessary.

Abuse Story in Philadelphia Archdiocese Deepens, and Circus Side Show at Chestnut Hill College Continues

The situation in the archdiocese of Philadelphia remains dismal, where Katherine Seelye and Jon Hurdle are reporting in the New York Times that  three weeks following the grand jury report which resulted in the indictment of the diocese's secretary of clergy Msgr. William Lynn, most of the 37 priests credibly accused of inappropriate behavior towards minors in the report are apparently still in ministry.  

Cardinal Rigali initially responded to the report by claiming that no priests credibly accused of molesting minors are still in ministry, but then suspended three priests accused of abuse who were, in fact, still in ministry.  Seelye and Hurdle report that many Catholics in the Philadelphia archdiocese are stunned by this latest report, which is like "Boston reborn" (this refers to the first major round of abuse revelations in the American church in 2002), since Catholics in the area had been informed that the broken system had been fixed and abusive priests had been removed from ministry.

Meanwhile, the story of the openly gay and partnered Old Catholic Apostolic priest who was fired recently at Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia becomes stranger and stranger, with reports that Fr. Jim St. George had previously been jailed for mail fraud in the early 1990s.  Despite this, as the Advocate is reporting, support for St. George on the campus and among students remains strong, and students have organized a Facebook group to express support and are planning demonstrations.

Chestnut Hill officials are on the defensive, and on Thursday, the college issued a new statement saying that it expresses its sorrow for not having communicated clearly about a situation that it regards as "rife with complex and complicating factors," and that the college "aches" for the deep pain and anguish the firing has produced for gay members of the campus community and gay alumni.

I have to wonder what's the deeper story here, the backstory to all of this turmoil.  On the one hand, St. George's criminal record certainly doesn't look good.  On the other hand, as someone who has done administrative work as a university department chair, academic dean, and academic vice president, I'd be very surprised to learn that someone with a known criminal record could not have been well vetted prior to hiring.  Just as I'd be astonished to learn that those who hired St. George did not know he was an Old Catholic priest and in a gay relationship when he was hired.

I have to wonder if those digging up dirt now are engaged in a game designed to divert attention away from what's happening with the diocese and its officials.  And if the dirt digging was already going on at the time whoever's been pushing for St. George's firing began that push--that is, if he was carefully selected as a target and a sacrificial scapegoat precisely because someone knew that they could bring out this dirt down the road, to make the decision to fire him because he was gay sound even more plausible.

Given that all of this is happening just as the grand jury report comes out and the seemingly criminal behavior of diocesan officials--behavior that many people would see vastly transcending in ugliness what St. George has been accused of, and behavior that has gone unpunished for years--becomes known to the public, I have to wonder why St. George is being pursued so vigorously.  And who's behind the pursuit.

This is not to excuse criminal behavior on anyone's part, or to suggest that St. George should be given a free pass simply because he's gay, and because that's the ostensible reason Chestnut Hill fired him.  It is to point out, though, that smear campaigns of this sort are not anything new in faith-based institutions,  including Catholic ones, when the target is a gay person who has spoken out against unjust discrimination by these institutions premised on the sexual orientation of the person being targeted.

Meanwhile, in another bizarre twist in the story, it appears Sister Carol Jean Vale, the Sister of St. Joseph who is president of Chestnut Hill, is now also being targeted on reactionary Catholic blogs--for having hired St. George in the first place.  And for being, well, a Vatican II-style nun.

This response to the St. George story on Daniel Hamiche's AmeriCatho blog is astonishing.  Hamiche entitles the posting, "Schismatic, Openly Gay, and Professor in a Catholic College," and under the title, has a picture of Vale with the caption, "All smiles, with a permanent and earrings, a necklace and brooch, this is Sister Carol Jean Vale, SSJ, a perfect idiot."

Hamiche goes on to express astonishment that "Father" St. George, a member of a schismatic "church" in a relationship of "homosexual concubinage," would be hired by a Catholic school (the first two sets of quotation marks are in the original).  He concludes with the hope that the "false priest" (my quotation marks) sues the school and wins.  

Hamiche is, according to a biography at Wikipedia, a royalist Catholic traditionalist, and a French journalist--which makes the fact that he maintains a website whose subtitle says it's devoted to the history of and news about American Catholicism fascinating.  Why would a French journalist who promotes royalism have any interest in blogging about American Catholicism, I wonder?  With a prominently displayed link on his blog's homepage to an essay entitled "The Battle Against Obamacare" . . . . 

Curioser and curioser, the St. George story and the commentary swirling around now about it seem--especially in light of the real story, the really important one, that's breaking in the Philadelphia archdiocese at the moment.  And which the circus sideshow at Chestnut Hill College should not obscure.

And, finally, I have to say it: the declaration of Chestnut Hill College that its administration "aches" for the pain its decision to fire St. George has caused to gay members of the campus community sounds hollow to me, when Sister Carol Jean Vale's initial statement about why St. George was fired still stands: his partnered gay life is "contrary to the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church."  The Catholic church, its bishops, priests, and nuns can't have it both ways: you can't fire people because they're gay and then say your heart "aches" at the pain you've inflicted.

You can't do that and be credible, that is.  What speaks loudly and clearly is not the tinny insistence that your heart "aches" at a cruelty you're inflicting.  What speaks loudly and clearly is your unjust treatment of those who are gay solely because they're gay.  And the cruelty you're willing to practice in the name of church teaching.  No matter how much you claim to be aching about that cruelty.