A Decade of Crisis, 2002-2012
Santa Clara University
May 11, 2012
I want to begin by sharing the nature of my involvement in the phenomenon
of sexual abuse by Catholic Clergy. I chose the word "phenomenon" intentionally
because I do not believe any of the commonly used descriptors -- "crisis,"
"scandal," "problem," come even close to naming what this has been and what it is
today.
My name is Tom Doyle. I was ordained a Dominican priest in 1970, forty
two years ago. I received my doctorate in Canon Law in 1978. I first became
involved in the issue of sexual abuse of minors when I had a position at the
Vatican embassy in Washington. My initial experiences involved not former
Father Gilbert Gauthe from Louisiana, but two bishops, both of whom are now
deceased. The year was 1982 but my most intense involvement, shared with Fr.
Dr. Michael Peterson and attorney Ray Mouton, began in 1984 and has not ended.
I would like to begin by stating my conclusion. Since 2002 the revelations
of widespread sexual abuse of minors by Catholic clergy and religious men and
women have spread to Europe, Latin America and to some Asian countries. In the
US the Catholic bishops have created a number of programs and policies and have
aggressively implemented their "Zero Tolerance" policy. In spite of these policies
and the expensive public relations efforts they have implemented, the attitude of
the bishops as a collective group has not only not changed but it has gotten worse.
Their disdain for the victims has become more and more obvious. The true
measure of their understanding of the horrific nature of the issue and their
commitment to change is not the programs, policies, documents or speeches they
generate but their unqualified attitude of compassion toward the victims and this is
scandalously lacking. The bishops simply don't get it or if they do get it, they don't
care.
I have been directly and intimately involved in most dimensions of this
travesty. I have been asked by accused priests to help with canonical and fraternal
support. I have given workshops and seminars to groups of diocesan and religious
priests. I have been an expert witness and a consultant in over a thousand civil and
criminal cases throughout the United States, in Canada, Ireland, England, Belgium,
Australia and New Zealand. I have been a consultant to or expert witness for
several of the grand jury investigations in the U.S. including the Philadelphia grand
juries of 2005 and 2011 and most recently I testified at the criminal trial in
Philadelphia. I have served as a consultant or expert witness for the government
commissions in Ireland beginning with the Ferns Commission and for the Cornwall
Inquiry in Canada.
The real truth about what has happened and what continues to happen is not
found in any reports or so-called audits provided by church sources but in the
documents obtained from dioceses and religious orders by victims' attorneys or
surrendered in the course of grand jury or similar official investigations. In 2010 I
was asked to address the special commission of the Belgian parliament. Over
these 30 years I have met and spoken with thousands of persons involved in one
way or another.
I am sharing all of this for no other reason than to illustrate the extent of my
experience and the context from which I make the remarks that follow.
The most important experiences I have ever had as a Christian and as a
priest have been the times spent with victims of sexual violation and spiritual
betrayal by Catholic priests and bishops. With nearly every victim I have had the
privilege of knowing, by far the most painful moment for me has been when I have
apologized for what we, the clergy, have done to them. Without exception, every
man and woman has told me that it was the first time anyone from the clergy has
done so. It is not a matter of parroting meaningless phrases such as "I'm sorry for
your suffering" or "I apologize for the pain you have endured," or "I regret if
mistakes were made" as the pope and some bishops have phrased it. For me the
only honest way to express this important sentiment has been to say, "I am deeply
sorry for what we have done to you and deeply ashamed that we, the clergy, have
hurt you in such a profoundly shameful manner."
The most heart-breaking moments have been the many times I have been
with parents who have shared with me the indescribable pain they experienced
when they learned that their little boy or little girl had been sexually violated by a
Catholic cleric.
These experiences that have changed my life and have reached to the core of
my being. These are the experiences that should have been the norm for the
bishops but sadly, they have been the very rare exception.
In spite of the assurances from Church officials that the worst is behind us,
this is clearly delusion and not reality. Until the primary focus shifts from the
hierarchy, to the victims, there will be no fundamental honesty in the Church's
response and nothing will change. Until the security of creating policies and
programs aimed at protecting the children of the future is superseded by the risk of
reaching out with honest, unqualified compassion to the victims of today, there
will be no true healing and no authentic movement forward. Until the efforts to
blame the secular culture, the media, the sexual revolution, anti-Catholicism,
victims' lawyers, Woodstock or Janis Joplin are abandoned and replaced with a
fearless, probing examination of the clerical culture and the hierarchical exercise
of power, the collective hope that this terrible nightmare will someday be "the
worry of a distant past" will never happen.
With respect to Tom Plante and Kathleen McChesney, I do not agree with
their statement at the beginning of chapter One that the "crisis" began on January
6, 2002 in Boston. It was and is not a crisis and it did not began in Boston.
The sexual violation of minors and adults by clerics of every rank has been a
tragic part of the Catholic Church from the first century. The scandalous evidence
of this is found in the Church's own official documentation. The tragic chapter of
this saga written in our own era did not begin in 2002 or in 1984. Those were
moments of revelation and exposure of a culture that had been hidden not too far
beneath the Church's surface. The difference between the present and the past is
this: whereas in prior centuries the institutional Church maintained control over
the response to waves of revelation, in our era it is not the pope and bishops who
are shaping the continuing history of clergy sexual abuse and hierarchical coverup,
but the victims.
What we have seen publicly exposed since the fall of 1984 has not been a
"crisis" of sexual abuse by clergy. A crisis is a happening with a beginning and an
end that is responded to either effectively or clumsily by the relevant powers. This
has been the revelation of the dark and toxic dimension of the institutional Catholic
Church. The focus has been on the sexual violation by Catholic deacons, priests,
bishops and cardinals as well as men and women religious.
But this tragedy is not fundamentally about sex.
It is about the abysmal and treacherous abuse of power ---
ecclesiastical power, church power, power that has
been given by the Creator only to do good but power that has been selfishly
perverted by those to whom it has been entrusted and which has brought some of
the most despicable harm imaginable to the most innocent and vulnerable members
of Christ's Church. The harm has been sexual, emotional and physical but I
believe that in the end, the most devastating harm has been the assault on the spirit.
A fundamental flaw inherent in every dimension of response has been the
concept of the Church reflected in the response. The image that consistently
comes through from the papal speeches to the scripted apologies of bishops to the
various protection programs, is the traditional though seriously flawed image of the
Church as institution, governed by the hierarchy, all celibate male clerics, none of
whom have ever experienced parenthood. The persistent struggle of the pope and
the bishops to maintain control over this nightmare that never ends is painfully
obvious: a struggle to exonerate themselves, a struggle to direct and determine
every aspect of the response and above all, a struggle to maintain some semblance
of superiority over the victims. We are constantly reminded of the grave harm
done to the Church and of the hope that someday the image and integrity of the
Church will be restored. We are constantly reminded that the bishops acted as
they did out of a misguided belief that they were acting for the good of the Church.
But the good of the Church has been their good and not the good of the victims or
even the Christian community.
The fundamental fault from the earliest centuries to the present has been the
failure to respond not as a papal monarchy, but as what the church really is, The
People of God.
We are constantly reminded of the many ways that dioceses and religious
orders have worked to protect the children of today and tomorrow. The National
Review Board, the diocesan review boards, the child protection offices, the
background screening protocols, the mandatory awareness programs -- are more
than simply commendable but are a remarkable movement to change the meaning
and reality of child safety in our society. But none of these endeavors would have
happened had they not been forced upon the institutional Church by the victims,
the media, the courts and the angry public.
There is however a dark side to the self-congratulatory picture painted by
today's hierarchy. Efforts to change state laws to ensure justice and healing to all
victims and to put more perpetrators out of commission are vigorously and
sometimes viciously opposed by the bishops in every State where such legislation
has been introduced, and this opposition comes at the cost of millions of dollars
donated by the remaining faithful. The excuses given for this organized sabotage
are so self-serving they are not worth mentioning. The true reason is the fear of
even more exposure and the appearance of more victims.
In spite of messages of compassion directed at victims and in spite of Pope
Benedict's direct orders to the bishops to do all in their power to heal, victims who
have the courage to go to court are most often subjected to embarrassing,
humiliating, brutalizing and revictimizing treatment not only by the lawyers hired
by the bishops but often by their public relations firms and by clerics themselves.
The victims will not be told by the institution that enabled their abusers what
efforts they may use in their attempts to heal. They go to court, contrary to the
libelous remarks of some, especially the apparent unofficial mouthpiece of at least
the archbishop of New York, Bill Donohue, not because they and their lawyers
want to bleed the Church of its money but because the civil courts have been the
only venue that has consistently provided justice and validation of the terror
suffered by these men and women. In reality a massive drain is the hundreds of
millions of dollars spent on defense lawyers to fight victims and the equally
exorbitant amounts spent on public relations firms hired to create the illusion that
the Church is doing what it was founded to do.
The most recent egregious example of this hypocrisy has been directed at the
main source of hope and recovery for countless victims; the concerted attempts to
destroy SNAP and defame its leaders for no other reason than the fact that they
have had the courage to stand up to and challenge the integrity of the institutional
Church.
The recent John Jay study on causes and contexts provided important data
that placed the sexual abuse from one chronological period into a broader sociocultural
context but this study didn't come close to examining the true causes.
These causes are in the sacrosanct domain the institutional Church goes to every
length to protect but it is the domain where we will begin to find the answers: the
clerical sub-culture and the narcissistic hierarchical elite that has allowed this
nightmare to happen and has failed to comprehend the profound depth of the
damage done, not to the Church as institution, but to the most important persons
among God's people, the victims.
This dark and toxic side of the Church will only began to fade when popes,
bishops, priests, religious and laity understand that when we say "Church" we
refer not to the hierarchy, the government or the power structure, but those harmed,
abused, marginalized and rejected by a Church that forgot that before all else it
is the People of God.
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