Posted on 03/02/2003 8:54:18 AM PST by sinkspur
Prominent friar's counseling criticized by NJ diocese, victims
In the world according to Father Benedict Groeschel, the Catholic Church's sexual abuse scandal is largely the stuff of fiction. Reporters "doing the work of Satan" are driven to lie, the New York priest says, because they hate the church's moral teachings.
These are not the opinions of a marginal figure. Indeed, Father Groeschel is one of the most prominent priests in America, reaching millions with his books, tapes, parish lectures and regular appearances on the Eternal Word Television Network.
His stature is high among many church leaders, too – he has heard the confessions of a cardinal, consulted with the Vatican on a case for sainthood, been a friend to Mother Teresa.
The preface to his media-blaming 2002 book From Scandal to Hope was written by Milwaukee Archbishop Timothy Dolan, who praised Father Groeschel for putting the abuse scandal in context.
For all his commentary on the crisis, Father Groeschel has revealed few details about his role as a player in it: He has been a key figure for 30 years in the loose-knit nationwide network of therapists who have helped troubled priests keep working.
The Franciscan friar's base is a mansion on Long Island Sound, where he runs the Archdiocese of New York's spiritual development office and Trinity Retreat Center for clergy. There, according to his own written account, he has counseled hundreds of his brethren and "happily, 85 priests have returned to the active ministry."
Father Groeschel, who declined interview requests, has not said publicly how many of his clients were accused of abuse. Archdiocesan spokesman Joseph Zwilling would not comment on Father Groeschel.
Dallas Bishop Charles Grahmann has allowed one of his priests, removed from parish work after the diocese concluded he had abused a girl, to help manage the retreat center in recent years. That priest, the Rev. Richard T. Brown, moved to a hermitage a few months ago and "is not contactable," said Father Groeschel's secretary, June Pulitano. Neither she nor Bishop Grahmann's spokesman, Bronson Havard, would identify the hermitage.
Mr. Zwilling said Father Brown "never did any pastoral work" in the archdiocese and did not have its permission to serve as a priest there.
Leaders of the neighboring Diocese of Paterson, N.J., one of several that sent business to Father Groeschel, blamed three "unfortunate" reassignments on his advice. Two of those priests were subsequently accused of misconduct in their new jobs.
"We relied on his recommendations," said Marianna Thompson, spokeswoman for Paterson Bishop Frank Rodimer. Father Groeschel used words such as "transformation," she said, and helped arrange transfers between dioceses.
Ms. Thompson said Father Groeschel had much to recommend him – he had taught pastoral psychology at Catholic institutions and had a doctorate in psychology from Columbia University's Teachers College. He had close ties to the late New York Cardinal John O'Connor, who endorsed the friar's secession from a Franciscan order in the 1980s and formation of a new group that has won renown for service to the poor. The cardinal earlier had Father Groeschel prepare the sainthood case for the previous leader of New York Catholics, Cardinal Terence Cooke, for whom the priest had served as confessor.
In From Scandal to Hope, completed shortly before the nation's bishops met in Dallas last summer, Father Groeschel acknowledged that some priests had abused boys. He described the problem as "active homosexuality with minors," stressing that most victims were teenagers and never mentioning girls.
"Many of the cases now in the papers are about clergy who, perhaps under the influence of alcohol two or three decades ago, engaged in improper actions, but not sexual acts," he wrote. "They went into treatment and have behaved well over the years."
Father Groeschel also said that church leaders sometimes had relied, to their detriment, on the advice of behavioral experts.
"I've been involved in psychology for four decades, and we in the profession were naïve enough to think that these offenders could almost always be cured," he wrote. Therapists "often were correct in their assessments," but "were sometimes tragically wrong about a particular case."
Father Groeschel said nothing in his book about his own success rate in treating priests.
He saved his harshest words for the news media's coverage of the abuse issue, which he called a "blitz of lies." Like Adolf Hitler, he wrote, news organizations are "spreading lies in order to destroy" the Catholic Church.
"When a scandal occurs," the priest wrote, "about two percent of what is said in the media is true." Last month, he made similar statements to a standing-room-only crowd at a suburban Boston church.
Such statements have infuriated victims. "It just burns me to no end," said Buddy Cotton, who has accused the Rev. James Hanley of abusing him in the Paterson Diocese and recently called Bishop Rodimer to complain about Father Groeschel.
The bishop, Mr. Cotton said, agreed that Father Groeschel "had failed a lot of victims."
Ms. Thompson, the bishop's spokeswoman, said Father Groeschel's critique of the media was misguided. "Bishop Rodimer has told the media, 'Thank you for opening the window on this,' " she said. "The media have been fair. We created this story, not the press."
The victims
Father Groeschel has said he is sensitive to victims. "As a psychologist for priests, I have occasionally spoken to the victims of priests and to their families," he wrote in From Scandal to Hope. "I can only say that I am deeply, deeply grieved. I often had to accept their anger, not directed personally at me, but at Church authorities. ...
"I am willing," he added, "to suffer with the victims."
Mark Serrano, who also has said that Father Hanley abused him as a boy, questioned Father Groeschel's sincerity. His skepticism, he said, is based on an experience he had after his family's complaints led Bishop Rodimer to suspend Father Hanley.
In 1986, the year after the abuse complaints, Mr. Serrano agreed to talk to Father Groeschel, who was counseling Father Hanley. Mr. Serrano, who was then a college student, said he thought the counselor "wanted more information" for therapeutic purposes. Instead, Mr. Serrano said, Father Groeschel lashed out at him.
"He said, 'Why don't you stop harassing this poor priest? He's a sick man. You are wrong for what you're doing to him.' "
Monsignor Kenneth Lasch, a Paterson diocesan priest, said he had urged Mr. Serrano to talk with Father Groeschel because the friar had expressed pastoral concern for Mr. Serrano – "something like, 'Mark seems to be a troubled person.' "
Hearing Mr. Serrano's account of what ensued "left me very, very uncomfortable," Monsignor Lasch said, "and made me wonder what was going on" at Father Groeschel's retreat center.
Father Groeschel's 2002 book warned that Catholics would still face a crisis after "the media monster ... slither[s] away to attack other victims." He prescribed a return to conservative moral teachings, saying that nothing would restore confidence in church leadership "better than a firm stance against pornography, extramarital sex, abortion, euthanasia and the general moral decline of the United States. ... Tough topics like contraception and autoeroticism need to be consistently and publicly addressed."
He said that the news media fail to mention that most priests aren't pedophiles, that cover-ups occur in other denominations, and that abusers "are among the most penitent people I've ever met in my whole life."
He cited the example of the late Atlanta Archbishop Eugene Marino, who resigned in 1990 after an affair with a young woman in lay ministry and went to Father Groeschel's retreat center, in the New York City suburb of Larchmont. He "lived a life of extreme humiliation, humility and penitence," Father Groeschel wrote.
In the mid-1990s, Archbishop Marino became spiritual director of the outpatient Clergy Consultation and Treatment Service at St. Vincent's Hospital, near Trinity Retreat. It was formed at the request of the late Cardinal O'Connor and works closely with the retreat center.
One priest who was counseled by Archbishop Marino and Father Groeschel was the Rev. Morgan Kuhl.
He was sent to them in 1999, after he solicited sex online from undercover officers posing as adolescent boys and was arrested. The subsequent FBI investigation showed that he had met teens this way and abused them.
Clergy treatment
The prosecution of Father Kuhl, who has been removed from ministry, opened a rare window into the Catholic clergy treatment system.
A psychologist who evaluated Father Kuhl for federal prosecutors recommended that he "be enrolled in a program specific to sex offenders," not just in the general psychotherapy and spiritual counseling he was getting. Dr. Barry Katz wrote that the priest "expressed regret over the effects that his actions have had upon himself, but no remorse for the effect that his actions have had upon the minors with whom he was involved."
After pleading guilty, Father Kuhl apologized to a judge for "the hurt and the embarrassment that I have caused so many other people." He also said he had devoted his life to helping others, and had learned in church-sponsored therapy "that there was one person I never did seem to try to help, and that was myself."
U.S. District Judge Anne Thompson initially sentenced Father Kuhl to a short prison term followed by house arrest. But she later reduced the penalty, over the objections of prosecutor Donna Krappa, to five years of probation and ordered the priest to "adhere to the program requirements at Trinity Retreat."
In advocating probation, Father Groeschel represented himself to the court as a counseling psychologist, Ms. Krappa said in an interview. New York state officials said he has never had the license generally required for use of that title. Using the title without a license is a misdemeanor, state officials said.
"I think that the judge would have been interested in this fact," Ms. Krappa said, "when she considered the quality of treatment Father Kuhl was receiving through the archdiocese."
My take on this media circus is not so much the abuse (although it is detestable) ..Abuse could and does happen everywhere today..the issue is in the coverup and the indifference to the potential future victim
This priest is in a state of denial IMHO
Thanks.
Do you have any comments as to why Groeschel chose not to comment to the writer of this article?
Oh, I forgot. Groeschel blames the media for the sexual abuse crisis.
It's best left under the rug.
I've got another article that I will have to type in, but it details how a Dallas priest, Fr. Richard T. Brown, identified by the bishop of Dallas as a sexual perpetrator (the bishop of Dallas, no less), was relieved of duty in Dallas, and then went to work with Father John Hardon (yes, the Father Hardon), and helped him lead retreats for adults in Detroit.
It sure is in my own diocese, but us laity are getting the upper hand here finally: Altoona-Johnstown Diocese muzzles priests [threat of excommunication]: "Bishop must end cover-up" ^
Why?
Lots and lots of cover-up still goin' on.
How is it orthodox or conservative to minimize or shift blame for the sexual abuse of children by priests? Or to berate victims when they come to you for help?
Is it any wonder that this stuff kept on happening? Not even a saintly man like Groeschel saw how perverse it was to keep putting these guys back in situations where they could abuse children again!
This is just an attack on a holy man, and you can't wait to attack another holy priest, may he rest in peace.
This is just an attack on a holy man, and you can't wait to attack another holy priest, may he rest in peace.
You accept this as fact because it is printed in a newspaper article? Come on. Everyone is smarter than that, sinkspur.
In the whole of the Catholic Church in the US, this problem does not concern large numbers of priests, though it is very hurtful. The article is written to make it sound like Fr. Groeschel is blowing the problem off, when it seems to me he's only putting it into perspective. The above quote shows where the majority of the problems lie, and that can only be solved by weeding out those men during their Seminary training when it shows up, and it always does.
He may have sent a few priests back to active ministry, but remember, the most egregious of these molesters are usually described as nice men who are very popular in their Parishes. They could very well have snowed the therapists into thinking they were just fine and could be trusted again.
You make this sort of declaration with only a newspaper story or two to back it up. That is truly pitiful and reprehensible, sinkspur.
No the records are clear and obvious on Bishop Hubbard in Albany, Bishop Imesch, and we all know about Cardinal George letting Al Sharpton preach at St. Sabina's (TALK ABOUT OUTRAGE). And we know about Bishop Adamec who has been proven to be one of the worst human beings in the episcopate. But Father Groeschel is a great and living saint, and this sort of assault on him is just like that drunkard Christopher Hitchens bitter attack on Mother Teresa. In the end it is more revealing about the author's agenda than it is about the person they are attacking.
Mary, Queen of All Saints, pray for us.
A holy man who recommended that child abusers be put back into the active ministry.
Do saints berate victims of sexual abuse?
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