Half a century since prescient Catholic clerical abuse warning

Half a century ago, Gerald Michael Cushing Fitzgerald, the Catholic priest who co-founded the Congregation of the Society of the Paraclete, informed the Holy See of sweeping clerical sex abuse problems in the U.S. and recommended a solution:

...a more distinct teaching in the last years of the seminary of the heavy penalty involved in tampering with the innocence (or even non-innocence) of little ones." Regarding priests who have "fallen into repeated sins ... and most especially the abuse of children, we feel strongly that such unfortunate priests should be given the alternative of a retired life within the protection of monastery walls or complete laicization.

Fitzgerald's view of abusers was as relentless as the malady they suffer. In a letter to Archbishop James Byrne, his ecclesiastical sponsor and co-founder of the Paracletes, Fitzgerald wrote:

May I beg your excellency to concur and approve of what I consider a very vital decision on our part - that we will not offer hospitality to men who have seduced or attempted to seduce little boys or girls. These men Your Excellency are devils and the wrath of God is upon them and if I were a bishops I would tremble when I failed to report them to Rome for involuntary laicization....It is for this class of rattlesnake I have always wished the island retreat - but even an island is too good for these vipers of whom the Gentle master said - it were better they had not been born - this is an indirect way of saying damned, is it not?

Catholic clergy abuse crisis expert Patrick J. Wall explains that "The Holy See reacted to Father Fitzgerald’s warnings in line with tradition: The report was filed away in the Holy See’s Secret Archives and with no action."

So we have this week Kansas City priest, the Rev. Shawn Ratigan, pleading guilty to five child pornography charges. The incidents were relatively recent (not decades ago) and Ratigan likely to spend the rest of his life in prison.

His bishop, Robert Finn, faces trial on Sept. 24 for failing to properly report the suspected abuse when he learned of it.

That will not be the first prosecution of a ranking church official.

Two weeks ago, Catholic Monsignor William Lynn was sentenced to three to six years in prison for his role in covering the sex abuse of predatory priests.

While in Australia the pattern of unspooling revelation repeats itself. And church concern about scandal and cost apparently continues to outweigh concern about the victims.

Church abuse survivors demand justice

Hilary Whiteman of CNN reports:

Sue Cox was 10 years old when she says she was raped by a priest in her family home on the eve of her Confirmation, a sacrament which signifies the cementing of bonds between baptised believers and the Church.

The attack occurred in her bedroom while her family was downstairs. "I was mortified. I started to self-harm. I was ashamed and guilty," she said. Her mother told her: "Perhaps it was one of God's plans."

It wasn't one of His better ones," Cox said.

Cox was interviewed by Ruthe Glendill, religion correspondent for the Times of London. Glendill uploaded the interview to YouTube:

Michael Hirst of BBC interviewed Cox, who told him:

I feel liberated because I am now able to speak out; I believe that secrets keep you sick.

They do.

Cross-posted from WordPress

Smoke enough around Pope Benedict, but a gun?

The case of Stephen Kiesle raises questions about whether and if so why then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger delayed for years the action requested to protect young Catholics from a predator.

Michael Sean Winters, writing for the Jesuit magazine American, excoriates the secular press and defends Vatican handling of the case in which "the priest who tied up young boys and molested them sexually and whose request to be defrocked came before" Ratzinger.

Grant Gallicho at dotCommonweal strips Winters' defense to the bone today. At the heart of the scandal, Gallicho finds damning questions:

So, why shouldn’t we raise questions about Rome’s role in the Kiesle case? Because the local bishop didn’t do enough, and besides Ratzinger didn’t receive a sufficiently detailed description of the priest’s crimes, and besides the process didn’t engage the proper canonical technicality? But we don’t have to choose to be troubled either by the local bishop or Ratzinger. We need not view the [Ratziner-headed Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith] CDF’s shortcomings in indirect proportion to the local bishop’s, so that the CDF is absolved to the extent that the local bishop failed. The same pattern of argument emerged in the Murphy case. “What about Weakland’s responsibility?” Benedict’s defenders asked, as though that swept away the questions that remained about the pope’s role in the case. Yes, why didn’t Weakland restrict Murphy sooner? Why did he wait three years after learning of Murphy’s egregious sins before sending the case to Rome? Why didn’t Kiesle’s bishop restrict him sooner? But they appealed to Rome, so: why did the CDF wait three years after receiving all the information it requested from Cummins to reply? Why was a Vatican official unable to grasp what the Kiesle’s superiors meant when they gently referred to his abuse of minors, even going so far as mentioning his criminal conviction? Why wasn’t the conviction determinative?

And then there are the larger questions: Why was Ratzinger on this case? Benedict’s defenders have claimed that he shouldn’t be blamed for Rome’s failure to address abuse claims promptly because he wasn’t officially responsible for such cases until 2001. Obviously that isn’t the whole story. Why not? Why was Ratzinger not really engaged in the Murphy case, which involved the abuse of as many as 200 deaf boys, but he was directly responsible for the decision not to release Kiesle from the full obligations of the clerical state? When Kiesle was finally fully laicized at age forty, whose decision was that? Ratzinger’s?

Certainly smoke enough to imply a gun as we struggle with questions Benedict could answer but does not.

What did the Rev. Kiesle do while Cardinal Ratzinger delayed?

The Rev. Stephen Kiesle remained a priest for years while then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger "bucked pleas from the Oakland, Calif., diocese to defrock him." The Associated press has obtained a copy of 1985 letter signed by Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI), delaying a decision for "the good of the Universal Church."

The Contra Costa Times reports:

The letter came five years after Kiesle himself requested removal from the priesthood, and the diocese recommended it to the Vatican, following Kiesle's no-contest plea in 1978 on a misdemeanor charge for tying up and molesting two preteen boys in the rectory of Our Lady of the Rosary Church in Union City.

Kiesle, now 63 and recently released from prison, lives in the Rossmoor senior community in Walnut Creek and wears a Global Positioning System anklet. He is on parole for a different sex crime against a child. A self-described "Pied Piper of the neighborhood," he is perhaps the most notorious among dozens of East Bay clergy accused of sex abuse over decades.

Numerous accusers have claimed he abused them as children at Our Lady of the Rosary, Santa Paula (now Our Lady of Guadalupe) in Fremont and Saint Joseph in Pinole, where he served in the mid-1970s, then returned in 1985 to volunteer as a youth minister.

What comprehensible "good" was there in delay of a decision on this?

[H/T: Eric Bugyis]

About that 'smear' campaign directed at the Pope

Mary Kate Cary, former White House speechwriter for President George H.W. Bush, writes in U.S. News & World Report:

For the hierarchy of the church to imply that the controversy is a "challenge" coming from outside the community of believers is just wrong. The people who are most worked up about the charges of sexual abuse are not the so-called enemies of the church, but the young Catholic victims and their families, the lay parishioners and parents of children being raised in the church, and the good priests whose reputations are being tarred by this. At another Easter Mass in my neighborhood, at a parish so full of young families they have overflow seating in the gym every Sunday, the monsignor got a standing ovation after saying he thought the children would have been better protected if women had been in the leadership of the church in the first place, and that the bishops involved should resign. I've never seen a standing ovation in church in my life. It's the community of believers who are as mad as hell. Really, it's heartbreaking.

Pope Paul VI Knew Five Decades Ago

The correct and authoritative recommendation was made in an Aug. 27, 1963 letter to then-Pope Paul VI from the head of the New Mexico-based Servants of the Holy Paraclete, which was founded to treat priests dealing with challenges such as alcoholism, substance abuse and sexuality. The Rev. Gerald M.C. Fitzgerald recommended to the pope that pedophile priests be removed from the ministry.

Forever.

Indeed, he later developed a plan for isolating such priests on an island, where they could live out their lives in some dignity without harming others.

Anthony DeMarco, a plaintiff attorney in Los Angeles, released the letter Wednesday. It was obtained by plaintiffs in Kentucky who are attempting to sue the Vatican for negligence in allegedly failing to alert police or the public about priests who molested children.

Even if Tod Tamberg, a spokesman for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, is correct in arguing that the pope probably never saw the letter, it is clear that the letter gives written form to ideas that Pope Paul VI and Fitzgerald had discussed when they met. At the time Fitzgerald had two decades' experience working with problem priests and warned against leaving sexually abusive priests in the ministry.

The letter to Pope Paul VI was not the only one Fitzgerald wrote to church officials. In 1957, Fitzgerald wrote to Archbishop Edwin V. Byrne of Santa Fe, his ecclesiastical sponsor and co-founder of the Paracletes:

“May I beg your Excellency to concur and approve of what I consider a very vital decision on our part - that we will not offer hospitality to men who have seduced or attempted to seduce little boys or girls. These men Your Excellency are devils and the wrath of God is upon them and if I were a bishops I would tremble when I failed to report them to Rome for involuntary laicization. ... It is for this class of rattlesnake I have always wished the island retreat - but even an island is too good for these vipers of whom the Gentle master said - it were better they had not been born - this is an indirect way of saying damned, is it not? When I see the Holy Father I am going to speak of this class to his Holiness.”

DeMarco said, "It [the letter to Pope Paul VI] shows without a shadow of a doubt that ... how pervasive the problem was was communicated to the pope. He was able to share with him their knowledge of how pervasive this problems was, how destructive this problem was."

Whether plaintiffs in this case are successful in their effort to bring action directly against the Pope or not, the days of persuasive basic denial are over.

The letter tells us that the well-documented recommendations of the Roman Catholic Church's expert on such matters were communicated directly to then-Pope Paul VI almost five decades ago

Had those recommendations been heeded, so much of the devastation brought to the lives of the young by serial clerical abusers would never have occurred at all. Victims known and unknown, counted and uncounted, would have had real childhoods and would have grown up whole.

One priest speaking 'the truth to power'

The Rev. Kenneth Lasch, JCD is a retired Catholic Priest, trained in canonical law. Ruminating on what happened to Jeremiah when "spoke to the religious and political leaders of his age without equivocation," Lasch wrote on March 26:

It’s curious to me that our Church hierarchy that has taken such a prophetic stand for life is so reluctant to listen to the prophets that have been addressing another life issue – the abuse of minors and vulnerable adults by priests and even bishops. I am referring not only to sexual abuse but to physical and psychological abuse. As clear and explicit as the Holy Father has been on the rights of the unborn, why does he allow himself to be protected behind a wall of silence or prevarication and equivocation by those who surround him. Knowing what I know about how the Vatican system works, there is an inconsistency between the moral edicts of every kind it issues and its inability to hold itself accountable to the same moral standards and principles as they pertain to the inner workings of the Church. It is very disheartening indeed. The Pope’s credibility has not been enhanced and it will continue to decline until the full truth is exposed.

. . .

The Pope’s apology during his visit to the United States rang hallow and his latest apology is no better.

Jeremiah was beaten, put in stocks, thrown into a cistern and imprisoned because he continued to "speak the truth to power."

Jeremiah was still among Lasch's concerns on March 27 when he wrote:

There is an ancient axiom that predates the reformation and is as poignant now as it was when it was first spoken: “Ecclesia semper reformanda est!” – The church is always in need of reform – from the top to the bottom. And if it doesn’t change from the top down, it will change from the bottom up. In the words of my dear mom, “Mark my words!”

In his complex Palm Sunday message about denial, Lasch wrote:

Even the Church can slip into denial about it’s own need for reform from the top to the bottom. Years ago when the news of the sexual scandal broke in this county, blame was assigned to messengers rather than face the truth of mismanagement and cover-ups.

We were led to Lasch after encountering Catholic League President Bill Donohue's use of false comparisons and red herrings to argue that the real problem is, somehow, criticism of the church.

Is it not cautionary that failures of church self-criticism seem to please Richard Dawkins? While simultaneously recognized by decidedly Christian Rod Dreher as "discrediting the authority of the church"?

[H/T: Andrew Sullivan]

Religion story of the decade is sexual predation

The decade's biggest religion story was an abandonment of the dictates of faith in clerical catholic/protestant sexual predation and globe-spanning efforts to conceal it without taking action to heal the victims or prevent further victimization.

Mark Silk wrote:

Unquestionably, the story of how American Catholic bishops, aided and abetted by civil authorities and mental health professionals, had systematically covered up the abuse of children by priests. This was big news locally in every Catholic diocese in the country. It became, because the USCCB was forced to confront it, a major national story. And it sparked rolling international coverage that, as this year's revelations in Ireland attest, continues to play out. Given the breadth and depth of the coverage, I'm prepared to make the case that there has never been as big a religion story in the history of modern journalism--and that given the parlous state of journalism today, we may never see anything on its scale again

Christa Brown covers that beat for Southern Baptists: the largest protestant denomination. She and Bruce Gorley agree that clerical sex abuse is the decade's top Baptist story.

Still unrolling is the Irish Catholic coverup of brutal abuse which dates at least to 1940. It involved transfer of a still undetermined number of pedophile and otherwise sexually predatory Irish prists to the United States when parishioner anger made it difficult to place them in Ireland.

Thus the pattern which is emerging, despite continuous efforts to obscure it, is of a worldwide Catholic coverup. Ongoing.

While the Southern Baptist Convention still pretends it has no responsibility for the horrors precipitated in its name.

While the little children suffer and some live to grow up, scarred by ministerial torture.

Gerald Warner: Today's 'jump-to-conclusions and cast-aspersions' award winner

Gerald Warner of the London Telegraph contrived to sneer at Barack Obama and tar Vatican II for the Irish Catholic Church/police clerical pedophilia cover-up.

Warner did so as part of his argument defending Archbishop of Dublin John Charles McQuaid, whom he admires:

The Most Reverend John Charles McQuaid, Archbishop of Dublin (1940-1972) was a great Catholic prelate. Under his pastoral leadership, the numbers of clergy and religious increased by more than 50 per cent, he created over 60 new parishes and built over 80 new churches and 350 schools. But he was a Vatican II sceptic who implemented reform conservatively, in accordance with what would now be called the “hermeneutic of continuity”. So he is a bogey figure to radicals.

Warner argues that McQuaid was unfairly maligned because he retired in 1972, and the investigating commission dealt with “the period 1 January 1975 to 1 May 2004.”

Er, yes about the time periods, but the commission came across important cases which the record showed had earlier been presented to and had not properly handled by McQuaid. The commission report finds that McQuaid set the pattern of failure to enforce canon law. For example, it found with obvious cause [Part 2, page 191] "that Archbishop McQuaid acted the way he did to avoid scandal both here and in Rome."

Rather than protect the children.

That case and others (some detailed by Warner's commenters) involving decisions by McQuaid as archbishop, led the commission to state in its conclusions [Part 2, page 206]:

This case has a special significance because it was one of the earliest in the Commission‟s remit. The apparent cancellation by Archbishop McQuaid of his original plan to pursue the priest through the procedures of canon law was a disaster. It established a pattern of not holding abusers accountable which lasted for decades. Firmer treatment of this priest might have avoided much abuse in the future. The Archbishop and Bishop Dunne had no doubt that a serious crime had been committed but avoided taking any action as that would have involved Rome becoming involved in the case. The Archbishop appointed Bishop Dunne to investigate the case and, in the Commission‟s view, promptly undermined him in his position.

In the Commission‟s view, Archbishop McQuaid‟s actions fell very short of what should have been done. Given that he was fully aware of the 1922 instruction, there was no justification for his failure to set up a proper canonical process to deal with the matter. In fact, he deliberately manipulated the situation in a manner that did not involve him reporting the matter to Rome.

Lacking evidence that Vatican II created McQuaid's pattern-establishing behavior or precipitated Dublin's fall, we must of course look elsewhere. Less fun than castigating our ideological foes, but if well-pursued, constructive.

The Catholic Church robbed Irish society of the ability to tell right from wrong

For The Irish Times, Fintan O'Toole writes about the massive, decades long cover-up of the sexual abuse of children by Irish Catholic priests:

But in the case of the institutional Catholic Church we have an organisation with an unusually powerful mechanism of self-protection: the capacity to convince the society it is abusing to take part in the cover-up. The damage the church has done to Irish society lies in the ways it has involved that society in the maintenance of an abusive instrument of control and power.

It is easy to miss a central aspect of this whole scandal. The report is concerned with the actions of the church authorities and describes in damning detail their sense of being above the law of the land. (Cardinal Desmond Connell, for example, told the commission that “the greatest crisis in my position as Archbishop” was not, as might be imagined, his discovery of appalling criminality among his clergy, or even his own disingenuous public claims that “I have compensated nobody”, but the decision to allow gardaí access to diocesan files.) But it is striking that parents, teachers and wider communities seldom went to the police either.

This was not a matter of ignorance. It is clear that some of the paedophiles were not secretive and cunning, but reckless and flagrant. In the early 1970s, for example, Fr James McNamee, who had built a swimming pool in his house into which only young boys were allowed, was so notorious among the children in his Crumlin parish that “whenever the older boys in the area saw Fr McNamee, they either ran away or started throwing things and shouting insults at Fr McNamee. Apparently he was known as ‘Father smack my gee’.” If children were shouting abuse at a priest in 1970s Ireland, adults undoubtedly noticed. They must have known why.

Irish Catholic Church/police coverup of child sex abuse

Read the full report: Part One | Part Two | Appendices

Sexual abuse of children by Irish Catholic priests in Dublin was covered up on a huge scale, for decades by church and police, reveals a long-awaited, 720-page report released overnight.

This report was written by the Murphy Commission of Inquiry. It should not be confused with the Ryan Report, which was issued in May.

The Ryan Report was written by The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse and while similarly damning was not tightly focused on church abuse.
The Murphy Commission Report shows that church leadership was aware of the problem, despite claims to the contrary, and put concealment of abuse and purchase of insurance against future claims ahead of concern for the victims. Specifically, the report said:

The taking out of insurance was an act proving knowledge of child sexual abuse as a potential major cost to the Archdiocese and is inconsistent with the view that Archdiocesan officials were still 'on a learning curve' at a much later date, or were lacking in an appreciation of the phenomenon of clerical child sex abuse.

The Dublin Archdiocese Commission of Investigation report took three years to prepare. It focused on the handling of complaints about abuse by priests, using a sample of 46 cases of priests against which scores of complaints had been filed between 1975 to 2004, involving some 320 children.

The Dublin Archdiocese Commission of Investigation report's overarching conclusion is:

The Commission has no doubt that clerical child sexual abuse was covered up by the Archdiocese of Dublin and other Church authorities over much of the period covered by the Commission‟s remit [January 1975 to May 2004]. The structures and rules of the Catholic Church facilitated that cover-up. The State authorities facilitated the cover up by not fulfilling their responsibilities to ensure that the law was applied equally to all and allowing the Church institutions to be beyond the reach of the normal law enforcement processes. The welfare of children, which should have been the first priority, was not even a factor to be considered in the early stages. Instead the focus was on the avoidance of scandal and the preservation of the good name, status and assets of the institution and of what the institution regarded as its most important members – the priests. In the mid 1990s, a light began to be shone on the scandal and the cover up. Gradually, the story has unfolded. It is the responsibility of the State to ensure that no similar institutional immunity is ever allowed to occur again. This can be ensured only if all institutions are open to scrutiny and not accorded an exempted status by any organs of the State.

Irish Minister of Justice Dermont Ahern said:

I read the report as Justice Minister.

But on a human level - as a father and as a member of this community - I felt a growing sense of revulsion and anger. Revulsion at the horrible evil acts committed against children. Anger at how those children were then dealt with and how often abusers were left free to abuse.

But the white heat of our anger should not for one moment deflect us from what needs to be done.

The persons who committed these dreadful crimes - no matter when they happened - will continue to be pursued. They must come to know that there is no hiding place. That justice - even where it may have been delayed - will not be denied.

It is Catholic laity the Bishops fear

Susan Jacoby gets at something fundamental:

The real concern of the church hierarchy is dissent from lay Catholics, and that is why archbishops feathers' are more ruffled when the last name of a critic is Dowd or O'Malley rather than Goldstein or Horowitz. (My mother's maiden name is Broderick, by the way.) The groundbreaking reporting on the pedophile priest scandal was done by journalists for The National Catholic Reporter, as well as by The Boston Globe, which also employs a great many reporters with good old Irish names and Catholic backgrounds. The press is not criticizing "Catholics." As the hierarchy knows perfectly well, the majority of Catholics do not agree with their bishops' and pope's position on opposition to married priests, to women priests, to contraception, to divorce, and to legal abortion. The bishops can't persuade a majority of those raised in their own faith to support their positions, so they lash out at critics and try to intimidate the press with charges of anti-Catholicism.

Homosexuality played no role in priestly sexual predation

John Jay College of Criminal Justice researchers told the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops they found "no evidence that gay priests are more likely than heterosexual clergy to molest children."

USA Today reported:

"What we are suggesting is that the idea of sexual identity be separated from the problem of sexual abuse," said Margaret Smith of John Jay College, in a speech to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. "At this point, we do not find a connection between homosexual identity and the increased likelihood of subsequent abuse from the data that we have right now."
...

[And] many experts on sex offenders reject any link between sexual orientation and committing abuse. Karen Terry, a John Jay researcher, said it was important to distinguish between sexual identity and behavior, and to look at who the offender had access to when seeking victims.

According to Tuesday's interim report on the $2 million study, Catholic clerical sexual abuse peaked in the late 1960s and 1970s before declining in the 1980s, and researchers believe there has been no resurgence. That pattern, they argued, parallels to some degree changes in the society at large during those periods.

Dubbed The Causes and Context Study, it was funded by the USCCB, the National Institute of Justice and several foundations. A complete reported is scheduled for December of 2010.

Judgment Day (at last) for Cardinal Mahoney (and others)?

"It took way, way too long, but the U.S. attorney has finally launched a grand jury investigation into the actions of Cardinal Roger M. Mahony when dealing with rapist priests in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, " wrote William Lobdell.

For eight years Lobdell covered the religion beat for the Los Angeles Times, and specifically the priestly sex abuse scandals. He has a written a book which among other things chronicles how interviewing the victims broke his heart. Commenting on the grand jury investigation, he went on to say:

Reading the initial story, the legal tactic seems a bit of a long shot, but why not try–especially if it can be used to punish other bishops, archbishops and cardinals who covered up and hid rapist priests, many of whom went on to commit sex crimes on other children?

To review just a few of Mahony’s sins (click here to see them all), he quietly kept two convicted child molesters in ministry. A priest who admitted to Mahony that he had molested two boys was allowed to keep his job, the authorities weren’t told, parishioners weren’t warned, and (you guessed it), the priest went on to molest others. Mahony’s handling of serial rapist of little children, Oliver O’Grady, was laid out with sickening beauty in the Oscar-nominated documentary, “Deliver Us From Evil.” As late as 2002, Mahony had at least eight known molesting priests working in his diocese, and only removed them when forced to do so by a legal settlement.

You can see, then, why victims responded with quiet strength to the news of the Mahony investigation. The video snipped from their news conference (below) is, we think, clear enough:

Transcript here.

Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating resigned as chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' National Review Board examining sex abuse by Catholic Priests after Cardinal Mahony criticized him for comparing some church leaders to the Mafia.

In his resignation Keating wrote:

My remarks, which some Bishops found offensive, were deadly accurate. I make no apology . . . 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.

The Honest Services statute was passed to overcome "conspiracies to deprive others of honest services."

Was that, or was that not the kind of problem Keating was describing? The answer is unclear to legal scholars. But L.A. Now was optimistic:

One federal law enforcement source said such a prosecution could be brought under a federal statute that makes it illegal to “scheme ... to deprive another of the intangible right of honest services.” In this case, the victims would be parishioners who relied on Mahony and other church leaders to keep their children safe from predatory priests, the source said.

Your thoughts? Louder please, so they can hear you in Los Angeles.