Posted on 03/08/2002 2:41:46 PM PST by Tumbleweed_Connection
PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. (AP) - A Roman Catholic bishop admitted molesting a teen-ager at a Missouri seminary more than 25 years ago and resigned Friday, becoming the highest-ranking clergyman brought down in a wave of allegations touched off by the sex scandal in Boston.
"I am truly deeply sorry for the pain, hurt, anger and confusion I have caused," said the Rev. Anthony J. O'Connell, bishop of the Diocese of Palm Beach. "I've been loved since I entered this diocese, far more than anyone should be loved."
O'Connell, 63, admitted to the allegations leveled by Christopher Dixon, his former student at St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary in Hannibal, Mo. O'Connell was the rector there at the time.
Dixon, now 40, said they two touched inappropriately in bed after he sought out O'Connell for counseling. Dixon said the abuse began when he was in the ninth grade and continued through the 12th grade.
"For those who will be angry, I certainly ask, when the time is right, that they pray for my forgiveness," O'Connell said.
Asked whether he had been involved with any other youngsters, O'Connell said there could be "one other person of a somewhat similar situation, in a somewhat similar time frame." He would not elaborate.
The nation's latest and biggest sex-abuse scandal involving priests began in the Archdiocese of Boston, where Cardinal Bernard Law admitted that a former priest molested children for years but was shuttled from parish to parish anyway. More than 130 people have come forward to say the defrocked priest, John Geoghan, abused them.
Since January, when the Boston case gained national attention, dozens of priests out of more than 47,000 nationwide have been suspended or forced to resign, and priests' names have been turned over to prosecutors.
O'Connell, who has been a priest for 38 years, was bishop of Knoxville, Tenn., before coming to Palm Beach in 1999. He succeeded J. Keith Symons, the first U.S. bishop to resign because of sexual involvement with boys.
After that scandal, Florida's bishops began background checks for all clergy, lay employees and volunteers who work with children, elderly and disabled people.
O'Connell said he failed to tell his superiors about the relationship when he was asked to replace Symons. "It should have come up from myself," he said.
O'Connell's admission came only hours after Florida's bishops issued a statement calling sexual abuse "both criminal and sinful" and assuring their 2.2 million followers that the church has procedures to deal with such allegations.
David Clohessy, national director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests in St. Louis, called O'Connell's disclosure "one more painful reminder that an enormous gap exists between the church's wonderful, flowery words and its leaders' terrible deeds."
O'Connell offered his resignation to the pope's top representative in the United States. No one was available to comment at the papal nuncio in Washington.
O'Connell's admission was first reported by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
"I was as wrong as I can be in taking that approach with him and I am sorry," he said. "There was nothing in the relationship that was anything other than touches."
The Jefferson City, Mo., Diocese paid Dixon $125,000 in a 1996 settlement, and he promised not to pursue further claims against the diocese, O'Connell and two other priests. The diocese did not admit any wrongdoing by Dixon.
The other priests are the Rev. Manus Daly, who allegedly abused Dixon at the seminary, and the Rev. John Fischer, who allegedly began abusing Dixon at a Catholic school when he was 11. Daly was removed from a Marceline, Mo., church this week and Fischer was removed from the priesthood in 1993 after allegations involving other children.
Dixon said he thought he could trust O'Connell when he told him about the abuse from Fischer. "But under the guise of trying to help me come to terms with my own body, he ultimately took me to bed with him," Dixon said.
Dixon himself was a priest for five years before he was diagnosed with depression in 1995. He said the depression came after he was assigned to work at the Hannibal seminary under Daly - a move that brought back memories of abuse. He later left the priesthood.
"I had a wonderful way of burying the impact it had on me, emotionally and psychologically," Dixon said Friday. When it resurfaced, "I was either going to kill myself or get help."
O'Connell is not the highest-ranking clergyman felled by a sex scandal.
In 1993, Archbishop Robert Sanchez of Santa Fe, N.M., resigned over his involvement with several women, some of them teen-agers. Archbishop Eugene Marino of Atlanta and Bishop G. Patrick Ziemann of Santa Rosa, Calif., resigned after sex scandals involving adults.
The late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin in Chicago was accused of abuse in a 1993 lawsuit, but the accuser later recanted.
In the last few days, it has been confirmed that at least 10% of its priests are homosexual predators--that is what has been publicly revealed.
Please provide your source for this statement. Statistics reported at www.adherents.com and stats.bls.gov/oco/ocos063.htm state that there are 45,000 Catholic priests, of whom 30,000 are diocesan ministering to the 72,000,000 practicing Catholics in this country. For your statement to be correct, there would have to be 4,500 confirmed homosexual predator priests. In the last few days, there have been fewer than 10.
Given that about 90% of these crimes go unreported, there is no reason for believing that 9 out of 10 aren't the same or similar.
Need a source here too.
It is a crime, for example, to pay a civil settlement to avoid a criminal prosecution in Missouri, yet the Catholic Church did that for Dixon.
I doubt that is the case in Missouri, especially if your source checking is as accurate as the rest of your commentary. It is more likely that it is impermissible to threaten criminal prosecution to exact a civil settlement. However, in the unlikely event you are correctly citing Missouri law, there is no evidence the Church exacted a settlement to avoid criminal prosecution. It would be unlikely they could do so unless they paid off state prosecutors, since crimes are prosecuted by the state and not individuals. The Church, like many litigants, settled with a claimant in exchange for the claimants promise not to pursue further claims against the Church.
The above is in no way a defense of the predatory priests or those in the Church hierarchy who have kept them in the system.
Most Catholics are deeply troubled by these events, particularly since it is our children who are targeted. Instead of leaving our religion, (and after all The Church is ultimately Our Church), we are struggling to find ways to address the problem while maintaining our beliefs.
The visible (political) church should not be confused with the true (invisible) church. The American church scene today is dominated by management types who want a smooth running organization. The only ones disciplined (Roman and Protestant) are those who rock the boat ever so gently. No mercy is shown to those people. But molest a child or have an affair with a teen-age girl or married woman...? Get your promotion and get moved out of there.
The leadership of the Roman Catholic Church needs to be replaced, but so does the leadership of the Protestant denominations in general. But that will not happen. The fat cows of Bashan will keep on their thrones and extort the penalty for their sins from their members. Count on it: Protestant and Catholic alike.
They would do it in one step if all good Catholics left,or two steps,if they implement their solution of married priests which will just go the slippery slope way. They have a plan to turn any event to their benefit. We conservatives need to do the same.
If pedophilia was the problem you would hear of girls being abused at least part of the time. It is extremely difficult to address a problem when even those who are fed up with it don't recognise it for what it is.
Peace Bro.
What would really piss off these smarmy liberals who are waiting for the Catholic Church to fall apart, is to force the Catholic Church to toss these perverts from their ranks for once and for all. Just turn them over to law enforcement and defrock them. This would send the message to would-be priests that this type of deviant and criminal behavior is no longer tolerated. So not only would the Catholic Church be saved, but it shall become more conservative (and stronger) in the process. Suddenly you would see other organizations (like the Boy Scouts) get renewed support with their policies of rejecting sexual deviants. Now that would really tick off these liberals more than anything.
These problems have nothing to do with marriage. These priests are not having affairs with women.
They are homosexuals and pedophiles. Marriage isn't going to cure that. - Tom
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