"Standing up and pointing a finger at the leadership of the church is not disrespectful to God. It is respectful to children."

Letter 1: What you won't hear in Your Parish (Letters to the Editor)
by Letter to the Editor , Sunday, April 11, 2010

This is the introduction to a lengthy reflection by Tim Stier, priest in exile, which has been published on the Voice from the Desert Blog.


GOOD TO KNOW—WHAT YOU WON’T HEAR IN YOUR PARISH

[Five years ago, March 15, 2005, while on sabbatical after 25 years of ministry as a priest in five parishes in the Diocese of Oakland, California, I met with my bishop, Allen Vigneron, and informed him I was choosing voluntary exile from active priesthood until he was willing to initiate a public dialogue about clergy sexual abuse, the exclusion of women from the priesthood, and doctrinal and actual discrimination against gay persons. Because I was refusing an assignment, I stopped receiving a salary, health insurance and retirement accrual.]

People ask me if I am still a priest. I respond with a qualified "yes". Many suggest that I should return to active priesthood because I could do so much good and because there is such a need for priests. I tell people I know too much to go back right now. Here is some of what I know.

As I write, the Catholic Church in Ireland, Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands is reeling from daily news reports of clergy sexual abuse survivors coming forward to report their painful stories, and of bishops who covered up this abuse and reassigned known priest abusers to other parishes or schools where they could prey on new victims. The same pattern of criminal conduct by bishops and priests that surfaced in Boston in 2002 and since then throughout the United States and Australia is now surfacing in the European countries mentioned above. The problem is not going away in any of these places, in spite of some superficial efforts to protect children, because the problem is systemic. A priest friend of mine challenged me in 2008, after he read my last paper, saying that the number of abuse cases was way down since the Dallas Charter set new safeguards in place in 2002. I wish that were true but statistics tell another story.

In a March 14, 2009, article in the San Francisco Chronicle, Rachel Zoll of the Associated Press wrote: "New allegations continue to pour in, seven years after the abuse scandal erupted in the Archdiocese of Boston…The number of claims rose last year (2008) by 16% to 803. The U.S. Church has paid more than $2.6 billion in settlements [$60 million alone right here in Oakland] and related expenses since 1950." More than 500 abuse survivors have filed claims against the Northwest Jesuits in Alaska and throughout the Northwest. The Jesuits in that province and at least 6 U.S. dioceses have filed for bankruptcy. The Legionaries of Christ, a world-wide religious order, has been rocked by a series of allegations of sexual abuse by its now deceased founder, Fr. Marcial Maciel Degollado. While honored and protected by Pope John Paul II, this dangerous predator was finally held accountable by the present pope by being ordered into seclusion. Since Fr. Marcial's death, two women have come forward to reveal that he fathered numerous children by them. Two of his sons in Mexico claimed recently that he sexually abused them. For years, the Legionaries of Christ denied any wrongdoing by their founder and treated him as a living saint and model example of piety to youth.

Lest our hearts harden to such horrendous crimes by priests and bishops, it helps to imagine just one of the tens of thousands of children who have endured the violation of their bodies and souls. Imagine your child, or your nephew or niece, being undressed, fondled, raped, or forced to perform sexual acts on their perpetrator, in rectories, churches, schools, the victim's own home, in cars, vacation spots, or wherever. Take a minute to imagine that! Then imagine a bishop learning of this crime against your child or relative and subsequently reassigning this priest to another parish. You might think bishops who did reassign known child abusers would be removed from office and criminally prosecuted, right? Read on.

Despite Catholic bishops' propensity to pontificate against divorce, abortion, contraception, homosexual activity and gay marriage, there has been no accountability for the 66% of U.S. bishops who moved abuser priests to new assignments where they victimized more children. This includes the bishop of Oakland who ordained me in 1979 and Cardinal Roger Mahoney of Los Angeles. Tom Roberts wrote in the National Catholic Reporter in November, 2009, "No bishop has yet given a detailed report of his complicity in the scandal. No bishop has detailed, without being forced by public pressure or civil authorities, his personal culpability in the scandal." Despite all the apologies, "there's been no full voluntary accounting for what the hierarchy did in the church's name to hide predators, buy silence, and re-victimize victims in sometimes vicious 'legal proceedings'."

These bishops will defend their criminal activity by explaining that they did not know until much later that sexual offender priests could not be rehabilitated and returned to ministry, and that they were following the advice of expert therapists. But in an April 3, 2009, article in the New York Times, Laurie Goodstein wrote "that the Rev. Gerald M.C. Fitzgerald, founder of the Servants of the Paraclete, a religious order that ran retreat centers for troubled priests, had written as early as 1952 to several U.S. bishops that pedophile priests should not be reassigned. Fr. Fitzgerald delivered the same advice in person to Vatican officials in Rome in 1962 and to Pope Paul VI a year later." These bishops knew what they were doing because they chose to put the welfare of priests ahead of the safety of children and youth. The Catholic clergy are a "good old boys club" who has been trained to cover for each other even at the expense of children. The first time I ever heard a Catholic bishop criticize a fellow bishop was this year when the Archbishop of Dublin, Ireland, called on former bishops of his archdiocese, who had been accused of mishandling abuser priests, to consider the good of the church, i.e., to resign. Bishops won't criticize other bishops publicly because of systemic clericalism, the sin of believing that the ordained are superior to lay persons and not bound by the same rules. In the world of clericalism, reputation is more important than truth or children.

If it were not for clergy sexual abuse survivors, the press, and court orders, bishops would still be able to hide their criminal misdeeds. A 2009 New York Times editorial declared: "In the end it was not the power of repentance or compassion that compelled the Roman Catholic Diocese of Bridgeport, Connecticut, to release more than 12,000 pages of documents relating to lawsuits alleging deeds of sexual abuse of children by its priests. It was a court order." And it was court orders that compelled bishops towards transparency in Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Boston, Spokane, Portland, Tucson, Vermont and other dioceses. Thank God for court orders.

The reason I speak out on behalf of abuse survivors and against erring bishops is because silence is complicity with a hierarchical structure that is secretive, self-serving and incapable of hearing the cries of anguish coming from people for whom getting out of bed in the morning is a moral victory. Joelle Casteix, a survivor turned advocate and mentor says, "Standing up and pointing a finger at the leadership of the church is not disrespectful to God. It is respectful to children."

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