Posted on 07/08/2002 7:28:10 PM PDT by Antoninus
Seven Months Into Scandals...Priests Disappear And Lay Church Emerges
By PAUL LIKOUDIS
Seven months into the greatest public crisis the Catholic Church in the United States has endured in its 200-year history, occasioned by shocking revelations of decades of clerical sex abuse, episcopal cover-ups, and hush-money settlements, one fact is asserting itself with more and more clarity: Amchurch’s lay-run church is emerging into the daylight.
And priests are being let out to dry, both the guilty and the demoralized innocent.
As politicians, judges, district attorneys, and tort lawyers force their way into Church archives, previously sealed court settlements, and broken confidentiality agreements, lay confidence in their Catholic priests and the sacraments they administer continues in free-fall.
Meanwhile, as bishops remove from parishes an increasingly substantial percentage of their remaining priests, Amchurch’s bishops and bureaucrats appear strangely unfazed by mounting lawsuits, unmoved by the loss of confidence they have suffered in the eyes of the faithful and the American public, and determined to press on with a declericalizing agenda instituted in the 1960s.
Two vignettes, among many available, illustrate the growing lack of respect for bishops:
After the recent bishops’ meeting in Dallas, one prominent Catholic layman (fired from a Catholic university for reporting the habitual sexual abuse of coeds by a priest at a west coast university) wished aloud that President George W. Bush would send federal marshals to Dallas to round up all the bishops and load them on an airplane and deport them to Rome.
Such sentiments, unthinkable by most Catholics a year ago, are becoming more frequent.
In San Francisco, at a recent Confirmation, a layman approached Archbishop William Levada and bluntly told him as he stood in a crowd of well-wishers that he should "clean up his sybaritic seminary," i.e., St. Patrick’s in Menlo Park.
Across the country, lay anger has shifted dramatically from abusive priests, polls show, and is now centering on bishops individually and collectively. Catholic laity, joined by many editorial writers for major newspapers, radio talk show hosts, and TV talking heads, want bishops to resign en masse, are demanding jail for those who protected abusers, and are balking at providing money to bishops and their bloated bureaucracies.
One major survey of nearly 500 self-identified Catholics, reported USA Today on June 25, found that 90% of the faithful want bishops who protected molesting priests to be removed. A Washington Post survey a week earlier found similar sentiment.
When USA Today published the findings, the number of priests resigned, suspended, or "retired’ was approximately 250 within the past six months.
But in the past week, that number has mushroomed, with many dioceses announcing the sudden departures of a half-dozen to a dozen priests at a time, from points across New England to Albany to Detroit to Chicago, to Amarillo and beyond.
While bishops seek to placate riled Catholics and the public, the trend now is for judges and prosecutors to press for more archival material that will only soil bishops’ reputations further — while politicians — such as occurred recently in California — extend the statute of limitations and lower the standards for prosecutions, thus opening up more cases for discovery, depositions, and document demands.
In San Diego, where 23 priests have been accused in recent weeks, the county district attorney has ordered the Diocese of San Diego to turn over all information, including allegations unsubstantiated upon investigation, of sexual abuse by priests dating back to 1936, on the theory that Church officials are not now, and presumably never were, competent to investigate allegations of sex abuse.
San Diego is following the lead of San Francisco, where District Attorney Terence Hallinan ordered the Archdiocese of San Francisco to turn over to him all information pertaining to sex abuse by clerics.
On Sunday, June 30, Hallinan — one of the city’s more prominent Catholics — participated in the city’s Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgendered Pride Parade, under the theme: "Be Yourself, Change the World."
In Rhode Island, Judge Robert Krause "punctured the secrecy" — as the Providence Journal-Bulletin’s Scott MacKay put it — "surrounding personnel decisions by the Roman Catholic Church, ruling that top officials of the Diocese of Providence must open their records of what they knew and what they did about priests who were accused of sexual abuse.
"Judge Robert D. Krause said the diocese’s claim that such information was protected under the ‘clergy-penitent’ privilege was wrong. Krause ordered the diocese to turn over such documents as internal church investigations, complaints against abusers from other priests and parishioners, and medical reports from psychiatric programs in which pedophile priests were enrolled.
"The ruling came in a lawsuit filed against the diocese by more than 30 victims of abuse from Roman Catholic priests. Named in the lawsuit are Bishop Robert Mulvee, former Bishop Louis Gelineau, and former Auxiliary Bishop Kenneth Angell, who is now bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Burlington, in Vermont."
The "Law legacy" in Boston is now engulfing New England, and threatening bishops across the country, who should anticipate an expanding dragnet.
Loss Of Faith In Sacraments
A major component of many stories of clerical sexual abuse, which have come to light in recent weeks, is the abuse of the new rites of Baptism and Confession, with victims charging that they were abused during "reconciliation" or in the baptismal pool.
Allegations that the sacraments were used to abuse of unwitting and vulnerable children (and even adults) raise concerns that some postconciliar innovations provided opportunities for sexual predators.
Indeed, the July 7 edition of Our Sunday Visitor includes a report, "Clergy Re-Examine Confessional Design," which revisits the issue of personalized, face-to-face Confessions in "reconciliation rooms" — not only for penitents’ protection, but also for priests’.
Building The New Church
But in the midst of this crisis, many bishops appear isolated and oblivious.
For example, just days after Bishop Howard Hubbard of Albany removed six priests from active duty — including his longtime secretary, Fr. Edward Pratt; the nationally prominent leader in the charismatic movement, Fr. John Bertolucci; and Fr. James Rosch — the winnowing of the presbyterate — in some instances — is being celebrated as a positive fulfillment of Vatican II’s call for more lay responsibility.
On June 30, the Troy Record — the Albany region’s second largest newspaper — interviewed Sr. Kathleen Turley, chancellor of the diocese, and asked her how the drastically declining number of priests serves Bishop Howard Hubbard’s vision of Vatican II as a call for a lay-run church.
Reporter Anne C. Fullam opened: "In a room hung with prints of medieval cathedrals, Sr. Kathleen Turley explained the twin dilemma of modern-day American Catholicism: Fewer priests and more parishioners.
"Like the period when the spires of the great European cathedrals rose, the church is undergoing tremendous change.
"But the change is almost a complete reversal of what occurred during the Middle Ages and through the mid-20th century, when the church started to diminish as the major route to education and power for those born into Catholicism.
"In America today, Catholics are mainstreamed.
"No longer do they need to take lifelong vows of chastity and obedience to get an education. No longer do they need to rely on a pastor for his/her education. They have their own. No longer do they need immigrant churches on every corner of major cities. No longer do they need to envision a better life in the hereafter. They have one now."
Sr. Turley’s office, Fullam continued, is where "the rubber meets the road" — the aspirations of the faithful for more power and Bishop Hubbard’s desire to involve more lay people in "ministry."
"Prior to Vatican II, the church was known for its stability," Turley explained. "Since then, the church is known for its changes. And the pace of change is going to accelerate in the new millennium. . . . The most significant change is in the staffing of priests. What we were used to was one full-time resident pastor in every parish. Today, 54 parishes share a pastor."
Turley, and Fullam, explained to the readers of this once-heavily Catholic region — which once supplied most of the nation’s railroad steam engines — that for the past ten years, St. Bernard’s Institute has produced nearly 1,000 lay ministers to staff parishes, so Albany is more than sufficiently prepared for the dearth of priests — though Turley did admit that St. Bernard’s might lower some standards for more students.
The priest shortage, in Albany and elsewhere, also provides a way to advance feminist mythology concerning the history of the early Church. For example, Fullam quotes Turley explaining that in the early Church, women were ordained.
Of the diocese’s 192 priests, serving an estimated 400,000 Catholics, 75 will retire within the next four years, and another 30 will be eligible to retire.
These 105 retiring priests will be replaced by ten, if the current crop of seminarians remains until Ordination.
To Sr. Turley, this dire situation is an opportunity to "look at different models of staffing," and to help the Church evolve from a hierarchical to a more democratic structure.
"We live as Jesus did, we’re trying to be of service to others and each other," she said. "We’re more about developing community than building buildings. We need to have adequate facilities that will help us implement that vision, but the emphasis is on the qualities Jesus had in his life and how he served people in his time and how he listened to them.
"Today, we’re called ever more to listen to one another and to hear people’s stories and be with them in their pain and their joys as well," she said.
Turley, Albany Catholics inform The Wanderer, stands in as Hubbard’s surrogate church-closer. When parishioners meet after being informed their church is to be closed, or no longer staffed by a priest, Turley is said to harangue parishioners for not accepting the plan.
"She just doesn’t hear our voices or pain," one said, "or share our faith."
Game Plan
With hundreds of priests removed from ministry, many of them elderly and without means of support — many of whom were never convicted of crimes and never will be, given the standards of criminal prosecution — the bishops are flailing around, searching for gimmicks that will win them some public approval.
One of the most nonsensical was floated by Bishop Gerald Gettelfinger of Evansville, Ind., who suggested the establishment of a national directory of abusive priests.
Such registries already exist, and are operated by such clergy-abuse victims’ groups as Link-Up and SNAP.
But Gettelfinger said such a registry would protect the public.
"I’ll do what I can do keep predators off the street," Gettelfinger said after the meeting in Dallas.
In the midst of the crisis, meanwhile, this country’s Catholic bishops continue to refuse to accept responsibility for the sexual abuse of children; but even more important, there are no signs on the horizon that the bishops will address any of the scandals in other areas of Church life, starting with liturgy, catechesis, sex education, seminary formation, and vocations recruitment.
And as time passes, it seems more and more that those attempting to build a lay-run church are making ample use of the clergy sex abuse crisis.
http://www.boston.com/globe/spotlight/sexabuse/mccormack.htm
Thomas Blanchette, another man who alleges that Birmingham molested him in the 1960s, said he approached Law at Birmingham's funeral in 1989 and told him about the abuse. Blanchette said Law silently prayed for him, but then instructed him to keep the information secret.
''He laid his hands on my head for two or three minutes,'' Blanchette, who said his four brothers were also molested by Birmingham, said of Law. ''And then he said this: `I bind you by the power of the confessional never to speak about this to anyone else.' And that just burned me big-time. ... I didn't ask him to hear my confession. I went there to inform him.''
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