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Subject: Hiding the Sins of the Fathers;Why Does the Church Protect Pedophiles and Not
Date: Sun, 15 Nov 92 08:24:29 EST
Message-ID: <10.1992Nov15.082429@AmeriCast.com>

Hiding the Sins of the Fathers;Why Does the Church Protect Pedo-
philes and Not Their Victims?<By Jason Berry=

WHEN THE National Conference of Catholic Bishops' (NCCB) conven-
tion opens tomorrow in Washington, its biggest crisis won't be on
the formal agenda: the impact of child-molesting priests.

It is a special kind of horror for the children - their abusers
are invested with divine authority - and a protest will be aired.
Since 1982, at least 400 clerics have been reported to church or
civil authorities for sexually abusing youngsters - an average of
one case every 10 days. Dioceses have spent $400 million in set-
tlements, attorneys' fees and medical costs for the perpetrators.
The losses stem from a long tradition of reassigning repeat of-
fenders, a habit that plaintiff attorneys have now seized upon.

In recent weeks, pedophile priest accusations have triggered news
coverage in several U.S. cities. This week, 10 adults who say
they were molested as children will attempt to present their ac-
counts to the bishops.

One of the protester-presenters will be Dennis Gaboury, 41, ad-
ministrator of a Baltimore law firm, who grew up in a Mas-
sachusetts parish where then-priest James Porter served. Porter
has been indicted for molesting boys and girls in the 1960s.
During that time, while being treated by Servants of the Para-
clete, a monastic order in New Mexico, Porter allegedly abused
more children. Later, he was transferred to Bemidji, Minn., where
10 men say he abused them.

"The message I want to get to the bishops is that this is just
the beginning," says Gaboury. "Once the bishops know they can't
buy us off, they'll see that this process won't stop." <

In 1988, the U.S. Catholic Conference (USSC) issued a 1,000-word
statement affirming the general commitment of dioceses "to heal
the victims and their families, rehabilitate the offender and
reconcile all involved in the ministry of the church." The state-
ment stressed that each diocese was autonomous. Thus each bishop
fashions his own policy.

In practice, neither the NCCB nor the USCC has a binding national
policy. Rather, bishops show protective favoritism toward abusive
clergymen, most of whom remain priests and often avoid prosecu-
tion. The Rev. Andrew Greeley, the sociologist and novelist, said
recently, "Priests can do anything they damn well please to lay
people and feel pretty confident that they can get away with it."

The scandal's escalation has thrown a spotlight on the burgeoning
victims' movement. In an Oct. 18 speech at a conference of 250
survivors, Greeley congratulated them as "the first explicitly
anti-clerical organization established in the American church."

The group, known as Victims of Clergy Abuse Linkup, is based in
Wheeling, Ill., and directed by Jeanne Miller, who waged a long
legal battle against the Chicago archdiocese after a priest al-
legedly made advances on her son. The priest, Robert Mayer, was
eventually transferred three times before his 1992 indictment for
abusing a 14-year-old girl.

At the Linkup conference, Baltimore psychotherapist Richard Sipe,
author of "A Secret World," a study of celibacy, said, "We stand
on the brink of the most profound reformation of the Catholic
clergy and its celibate sexual system since the time when Martin
Luther challenged clerical integrity" in 1517. Sipe, a former
Benedectine monk, argues that bishops are trapped in denial about
a range of sexual behaviors among clergy behind the scrim of
celibacy.

"The bishops are trying to ignore the crisis," says Rev. Thomas
P.  Doyle, who also spoke at Linkup. As canon lawyer at the Vati-
can Embassy in 1985, Doyle co-wrote a 92-page report warning
bishops of the impending crisis.  Doyle, tapping information from
many dioceses, estimates that 3,000 American priests, of 43,000
active ones, are sexually drawn to children. Sipe's estimate that
6 percent have such proclivities, based on 1,000 therapeutic con-
sultations with clergy, tracks Doyle's findings.

There was one notable absence from the Linkup meeting. At the
last minute, Chicago Cardinal Joseph Bernardin backed out, send-
ing a letter to Miller with the engimatic explanation that his
presence "could, in fact, be counterproductive for those
involved."<There is no reliable base-line against which to gauge
the incidence of pedophilia among priests or ministers in other
denominations. But therapists and ministers who study the ques-
tion see a major distinction. "The Episcopalians and Lutherans
are trying to pull together the smartest teams they have to es-
tablish national protocols, whereas the Catholic Church is in
disarray on this issue," says Gary Schoener, director of the
Walk-In Counseling Center in Minneapolis and a consultant to the
archdiocese there.  The crisis in the Catholic Church lies not
with the small fraction of priests who molest youngsters but in a
power structure that harbors pedophiles, conceals other sexual
behavior patterns among its clerics - homosexuality most notably
- and uses a strategy of duplicity and counterattack against the
victims.

For years, the bishops recycled offenders without telling par-
ishioners. Rarely are the clerics defrocked, or laicized. Yet the
church has no effective way to monitor offenders once they are
put back in clerical life. The image of an all-seeing hierarchy
ready to pounce on errant clerics is farfetched.

Because of the shortage of priests - 1,300 men leave yearly to
marry, while seminary enrollment has dropped 89 percent since the
mid-'60s - the bishops are desperate to attract unmarried males.
As a result, church treatment facilities have a tacit mandate to
get abusers back into clerical service whenever possible. The
Code of Canon Law gives a bishop the right to push for dismissal
of such men from the clerical state, but few do.

In 1986, Chicago archdiocesan attorney James Serritella told a
gathering of religious order superiors at a Dominican priory in
suburban River Forest: "What you people have to remember is that
when one of these situations develops, those people" - meaning
the families - "are the enemy, and I'm on your side."

Lost in all this is the tradition of Catholic moral thought in
which I was raised - concepts of sin, free will and wholesome
character as requirements for priestly service. How many kids
must a man molest before he is considered unfit to be a priest?

Cardinal Bernardin, meanwhile, has tried to promote the image of
a reform agenda: Early this year, he formed a three-member com-
mission to devise a policy. The commission's report, issued last
June, recommended a lay review board. It also stated that the
civil charges against another priest were groundless - without
interviewing the alleged victims.  The two families who sued the
archdiocese over that priest have themselves been countersued for
defamation by the cleric. The commission further declared that
the church had no legal or moral obligation to report abusive
priests to the state.

Following the commission's research into clerical personnel
files, Bernardin announced the removal of 23 unnamed priests be-
cause of past offenses. The state's attorney, Jack O'Malley,
demanded the files.  Archdiocesan attorneys disputed his right to
them; that matter is in court.  The cardinal's commission also
refused to meet with a woman who said her three sons had been
molested by priests she maintains are still in Chicago parishes.
A number of editorials outside Chicago have touted Bernardin's
procedures as a model of church reform. "On paper the guidelines
are excellent," says Linkup founder Miller. "But how can one
trust this archdiocese?"

Says Doyle, "Bernardin's policy is window dressing to set up a
defense against the lawsuits."

Tomorrow the bishops will undoubtedly hear from 36-year-old David
Cholessy, who works in a St. Louis public relations agency. He
was molested 20 years ago by a Missouri priest who was not
prosecuted.

"If you don't believe there's pollution," he says, "all the en-
vironmental policies in the world won't make a difference. The
bishops must sit down with anyone who has allegations. Unless
bishops really hear our pain, they're going to remain fundamen-
tally unmotivated to do anything beyond token p.r. efforts."

True peace, Martin Luther King Jr. said, is the presence of jus-
tice. How do the bishops define justice? What are their values?
And why is the Vatican so silent on these matters?<

Jason Berry, a 1992 Alicia Patterson fellow, is the author of
"Lead Us Not Into Temptation: Catholic Priests and the Sexual
Abuse of Children" (Doubleday).<02:08 11-15C9999-----

Copyright 1992, The Washington Post.  This story is from the
Washington Post's Capitol Edition On-Line and is not to be ar-
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