Three Witnesses

Wednesday May 25, 2005

With the passage of several years since the eruption of the massive media ‘siege’ on sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church, it might seem that it is time to put the issue aside and move on and there is much merit to that aspiration not only for ‘Catholics in the pew’ but also for victims and their supporters. That having been acknowledged, there is still denial inside and outside about what happened and although it would be nice to forget, there is still much to be acknowledged.

The breach of trust and the lingering hurt is not easily dismissed by someone else’s need to move on. That ‘someone else’ either has not heard the story or has heard the story but can’t face the consequences of the exposure of the raw truth. Among those ‘someones’ are priests who struggle with the failures of their brothers in ministry. This is complicated by the fact that some priests ‘knew’ what their brothers were up to but were bound by sacramental confidence and others by fear of their own exposure.

Within the past two weeks, three important television productions have brought back into public view what I would call the massacre of confidence in the integrity of the Catholic hierarchy in the United States, indeed, in Rome itself.

Early in the disclosure, I adopted a mantra to which I remain committed, “No healing without justice, no justice without truth, and no truth without full accountability.” I regret to state that this mantra has not been honored always and everywhere but that’s a ‘blog’ for another commentary.

So here’s my take on the latest ‘contributions’ by the media to help us understand more clearly what happened. The whys and wherefores have yet to be unpacked and analyzed.

Holy Water-Gate

The first witness appropriately entitled, “Holy Water-Gate” written and produced by Mary Healy-Conlon, instructor of Communication Arts at the University of Rhode Island, is a documentary based on over 356 hours of taped interviews by Mary dating back to the spring of 2002. Though I didn’t survive the reduction process necessary to win 56 minutes on ‘Showtime,’ I was among those privileged to give witness to my experience in dealing with the disclosure of sexual abuse by James Hanley at St. Joseph Parish in Mendham. Mary spent three hours interviewing me ‘on site’ – in the rectory in which many of the criminal activities took place almost twenty years earlier. It was a local disclosure that triggered off nation-wide attention not only to St. Joseph Parish but also to numerous other ‘epicenters’ across the country.

‘Holy Water-Gate’ tells it like it was and like it is. There is no watering down of facts and no cosmetic cover-up of the details of what happened to four out of the thousands of boys now grown men who were sexually abused across this country by priests through grooming and deceptive techniques to entice them into a massacre of their innocence and life-long psychological trauma to say nothing of the rupture of their spiritual connection to God.

Predictably, spokesperson for Cardinal George characterized Mary interview of the cardinal as unfair, intimating trickery on her part in order to present victims in the most favorable light and the Church in the most unfavorable. But the truth of the matter is that Mary gave the Cardinal every opportunity to depart from the script and unpack the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Cardinal George seemed to prefer a diversionary approach to the questions as if to suggest that in the broader spectrum of Church life, this crisis will only make the Church grow stronger. Unfortunately, he didn’t explain how but the remainder of the documentary seemed to support his prognosis on the premise of greater transparency in the Church not only on this issue but also on all issues that impact upon people in the pew. In essence, the issue is about power and the abuse of power.

Mary has captured the essence of the crisis in the lives of two victims but their story is the story of the many known and unknown victims who didn’t make it to “Showtime.”

I think Mark Serrano stated is best during that historic meeting with Bishop Rodimer at the Pax Christi Center on the campus of St. Joseph in April of 2002: “You’ve heard from us, you’ve heard from these men sexually abused as children by priests… abused as children by your priests! Bishop, where is your moral indignation at what has taken place? Bishop, what is it about your heart that disables you from feeling and sharing our outrage?”

I was present during that awful but necessary exchange. “Bishop, what you heard in this room is what I have been attempting to tell you for several years.”

The testimony of the now deceased priest predator is a powerful disclosure of the intentional effort by church leaders to cover-up sexual crimes.

• Holy Water-Gate presents the facts clearly and unambiguously.

• It is ‘fair and balanced’ as evidenced in the presentation of Bishop Dolan’s response at a public meeting in Detroit.

• Mary Healy-Conlon does not manipulate the data despite charges to the contrary by official spokes persons from Chicago who called Mary’s presentation of Cardinal George biased and unfair. The Cardinal speaks for himself.

• It was an artistic presentation tastefully presented with music accompaniment that did not over-dramatize the already tragic stories that had to be told.

Mary earned the Cine Golden Eagle aware for excelling in investigative journalism for this production.

Our Fathers

is a film based on the book by the same title by David France, published by Broadway Books, a division of Random House, NY. It’s a long, well documented book containing 656 pages dealing with “the secret life of the Catholic Church in an age of scandal” and includes, notes, bibliography and index.

The film as been abridged somewhat, thank God, without jeopardizing the powerful stories of the Boston scandal. Notwithstanding the rather tedious first half hour, the two-hour film makes its case, as did the book. The film characters are well cast with Christopher Plumber playing the role of Cardinal Law and Brian Dennehy the part of Fr. Dominic Spagnolia.

Though I do not recall the name of actor who played the part of the victim’s attorney, Michael Garabedian, he lived the part for the most part. However, the script was weak in spots giving way to some of the pedantic lingo that inevitably afflicts books and films with litigious themes. The producers would have done better to have Fr. Tom Doyle speak and act for himself. His courage and the strength of his convictions did not completely penetrate the smoke screen that protected Church officials in this video version of the Boston collapse.

Those who played the roles of victims were very convincing and were obviously into their roles. The language is touch. Lots of the ‘F’ word from which II ordinarily shield myself. However, I don’t think the film would have had the same visceral impact without it and if you want to know the truth, that’s that way it was! The reality was no less visceral.

The film was well worth the time. I think it was a good idea on the part of Showtime to introduce “Our Fathers’ with the documentary. (BTW, I do not subscribe to Showtime channel but viewed the films courtesy of a family of one of the victims.)

For me it was like reliving the whole experience all over again. To be honest, I really didn’t want to view the either video. I had a similar feeling about visiting Auschwitz during our trip to Poland many years ago but I knew I had to walk through the camp in order to see and feel ‘humanity’s inhumanity to humans’ in order to appreciate what took place there. In similar fashion though to be sure not on the same plane, one needs to be exposed to the brutal stories of these men as they describe the physical and emotional brutality, which befell them by the ‘sacred hands of a priest.’

I wish it weren’t so.

Sixty Minutes

Last Wednesday, Dan Rather told the story of the unsolved mystery of a 13-year-old altar boy, Danny Croteau, murdered over thirty years ago outside of Springfield Massachusetts. The prime suspect from the outset was a now defrocked priest by the name of Fr. Livigne who ironically still lives not far from the scene of the crime.

Due to a lack of hard evidence, he was never arrested and charged with the murder but there are no other suspects. The investigator interviewed for this 20 minutes segment stated that they did not want to pursue criminal charges and a trial for fear of losing permanently the opportunity for his conviction, so they waited, hoping that hard evidence would be forthcoming.

When the Boston scandal broke in 2002 and concomitant to a news item about one man who accused Livigne of molesting him, several more came forth, many of them contemporaries of the boy who was murdered. There is little doubt in the mind of almost everyone who knew Livigne that he is the murderer.

A gripping account of this story may be found at staff@bishop-accountability.org.

When one of the members of VOTF brought the matter to his pastor, Father Scahill, he pulled out all the stops to put pressure on the bishop to have Fr. Livigne defrocked and his pension severed. In fact, at the suggestion of VOTF, he discontinued sending parish assessment tax to the diocese infuriating Bishop Dupris who ironically himself was shortly thereafter accused of molesting two altar servers many years ago. He resigned and was never prosecuted due to the expiration of the statute of limitations.

Livigne was eventually defrocked and his pension stopped but the diocese of Springfield insisted that it was not the result of pressure! Hmmm.

As a result of his initiative and his interventions. Fr. Scahill has been marginalized not only by diocesan officials but also by his priest colleagues.

Danny’s parents have not abandoned their Church and continue to participate at the daily celebration of the Eucharist. .

Addenda

It has been stated more than once that the crisis was compounded by the lack of transparency within the American hierarchy, indeed, within the Church at the highest levels. Cardinal Ratzinger at one point blamed the American media for its relentless and disproportionate coverage as if to suggest as so many others had before him that the crisis was exaggerated. But of course, those who knew the reality rightly responded that in fact the truth was worse than what was reported.

Public relations officers did their best to present their respective dioceses and their bishops in the best light as if to suggest that it was only a few bad apples that portrayed the priesthood and the Church in such a demeaning caricature.

On the eve of the Dallas meeting of the bishops, Buddy Cotton, one of the victims from Mendham, hand-delivered to Archbishop Harry Flynn, chair of the Bishops ad hoc committee on sexual abuse, a letter in which I pleaded with the bishops to address the issue forthrightly. [The Open Letter may be found on my website and may be accessed directly on the home page index.]

The letter has never been acknowledged.

Last year, Fr. Patrick Collins, retired priest of the Diocese of Peoria, Fr. Bob Hoatson, a survivor of sexual abuse, Fr. Tom Doyle, nationally known canonist and advocate of victim-survivors of sexual abuse and I initiated “Project Millstones” [Cf. Website Homepage] in an effort to move bishops to hold one another accountable. Over 1,000 signatures have been collected to date.

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops has never acknowledged the Project.

I remain convinced that had the bishops engaged victims in a true and open dialogue in Dallas and then returned to their diocese for further consultation, I believe they could have reached an agreement and a policy that would have been far more successful than the existing charter. The weakness is not necessarily in the text but in its implementation and lack of full accountability at the diocesan level.

The impact of sexual abuse on victims varies. John Hardwicke, victim of sexual abuse at the American Boychoir School 35 years ago put it this way: “When it comes to consequences of child sex abuse, it really does depend on where you were sitting in the car. It affects different people in profoundly different ways.” Some get over it and move on with their lives. Other victims move on with help from a knowledgeable counselor. Still others struggle with it for years and some never recover and not a few of these latter victims have taken their own lives.

Dr. Robert Langs, PhD, Mt. Sinai Hospital, NYC is initiating a study of the impact of abuse not only on the primary victims but also on secondary victims – family members and victims’ advocates. I am looking forward to participating in this study as a ‘secondary victim.’

Though much has been written about the impact on primary victims, little to my knowledge has been written about the impact on secondary victims. The symptoms are similar though nowhere near as intense as primary victims. In the same way that alcoholism creates circles of dysfunction within family systems, so too the effects of sexual abuse with the family and other societal systems, e.g., denial, anger, shame, fear, confusion, depression, disaffection, etc.

At the end of the day, the issue is power and the need is for healing and wellness.

Both primary and secondary victims in the early stages of recovery in the pursuit of wellness may speak from a platform of anger and even revenge. However, as they move toward survival and wellness, their anger is transferred into positive energy and in the pursuit of justice, which is an important component of healing.

As a victims’ advocate, I have cautioned victims against adopting warrior-like language or the taking up of arms. To be sure, their anger is justified but they must aim to speak from a platform of wellness as survivors.

Rage and raw anger are destructive and in the end hurt only the victim. Wellness and a developing sense of self and self-esteem enable victims to become survivors and their power to do good increases exponentially.

This is the mantra for victims, primary and secondary: “If you want the world to be well, be well yourself!” Not easy but very necessary.

The larger issue underlying sexual abuse has been the cover-up and the abuse of power by bishops and others who “lord it over the faithful.” As long as Catholics in the pew are expected to pay, pray and obey, the crisis will continue with more and more ‘reforms’ being implemented by edict rather than from the fruit of genuine dialogue.

Church leaders have not been transparent in their dealing with these matters and other matters affecting the life of the faithful and until they are, the crisis will not go away.

Father Lasch

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