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	Beyond Betrayal If Dante Had Given His Inferno Another Level, It Would Be for Priests Who Prey on Kids. Their Breach of Trust Strikes to the Very Soul, Not Only of the Child, but of the Entire Community By Janice Kennedy The Ottawa Citizen February 3, 2008 http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=419e0a29-c3d4-40ba-8619-ebce66a3ed4d On Sunday morning, the traditional mind used to drift to images of stained glass, wooden pews, earnest young servers and saintly ministers of God. Nowadays, it's as likely to drift, unbidden, through the same scene to images that horrify and repel. No, not every Catholic priest is a sexual criminal. But there have been too many such criminals, for too long now, for ordinary people not to be disturbed. The latest in our area -- apart, that is, from those implicated by the ongoing Cornwall public inquiry into the abuse of young people -- is Monsignor Bernard Prince, the 72-year-old retired priest recently handed a four-year prison term for molesting 13 young boys. Once a highly respected priest who worked in this region at the parish level and was rewarded with a promotion to the Vatican, Prince was even a personal friend of the late John Paul II. In court, with his written statement in hand, he read out his pro forma regret for the "legal and moral" wrongdoing. "I wish to sincerely apologize to everyone concerned," he said, "for the harm that I have caused, directly or indirectly." And that was it, that cool, clinical acknowledgement wrapping up his act of public contrition. There appeared to be scant awareness of how monumental his crime was, and not just in Criminal Code terms. In that, he was following the lead of his church. It has now become apparent that the sexual abuse of young people by priests has been going on a long, long time in many, many places. Like the countless other abusive priests who have been caught, Prince simply parroted the party-line apology and accepted his punishment. As far as the church is concerned, too-bad-so-sad, and there's an end to it. They don't get it. They don't have a clue. There's the crime, the sin itself. And there's the killing breach of trust. All breaches of trust wallop their victims, but some are worse than others. Those involving children and such adult victimizers as teachers, coaches and choirmasters are, for any human being not yet a saint, beyond the realm of forgiveness. Dante fittingly reserved the ninth circle of his hell for those who betray. But if he'd given his inferno another level, it could have belonged to priests who prey on kids. Their breach of trust strikes to the very soul, not only of the child, but of the entire community. In this area, Prince is only the latest criminal in clerical collar to hit the sordid headlines and only one of God knows how many similar court cases around the world this winter of 2008. And the tales of his abuse are sickeningly familiar. Who knows what comforting self-justifications he, or any other priest who's abused kids, used to silence that irritating little voice that kept nagging him to stop? Did he tell himself that he was really just showing them love? If they seemed emotionally needy, did he tell himself he was giving them what they were missing elsewhere? Did he believe that his younger victims would somehow forget what had been done to them as they grew older and that his teenaged victims were somehow mature enough to be his sexual partners? That there was an implicit consensual nature to his victimization, despite the gross age disparity? Did he think, finally, "Oh, come on. Where's the harm?" And where was the harm? Medical, psychological and sociological experts predict a depressing variety of likely outcomes for people bowled over by sexual abuse during childhood, during their crucial period of development. (That includes adolescence, when bodies seem adult while hearts and minds are still fragile, growing and vulnerable.) Leaving aside the very real possibility of physical damage (almost too tough to even think about), abused kids and teens face much higher than average odds of developing depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, various neuroses, variations on post-traumatic stress disorder and pathological symptoms of dissociation. Any of these can pave the way toward school difficulties, criminal activity, addictions, problems with relationships and suicide. Our professionals understand the fallout much better now than they used to, and there is help available for victims. But it doesn't always work. And the going is always long, slow and tough. In short, the sexual abuse of kids is a poison, a slow-seeping toxin that slips slowly into kids' psychic bloodstream, relentlessly sickening them, eventually destroying what was healthy and hopeful. Where's the harm, Father? Right there, in that bruised and bleeding chunk of human life. But the victimization runs even deeper. Every pedophilic priest breaks the faith not just of his victims, but of the community, Catholics and non-Catholics alike. It's worse for the former, of course. And it's made worse again by the fact that the church itself, in its hollow and inadequate response, has broken faith with its own members. Apart from relying on a process of case-by-case damage control (which has historically often involved just moving an abuser around), the institution has latterly decided to be more proactive in screening candidates for the priesthood. They also offer the standard apology to victims and shell out mightily in legal settlements. But there have been no apologies to the faithful -- the waning faithful -- for what these cases have done to their belief in God, in the church, in religion generally. And there have been no credible attempts to address the heart of the problem, which, given the numbers, is clearly endemic to the institutional organism. Church leaders keep on condemning the crime while continuing to think inside the crime's cozy little box, never questioning if fundamental changes might not be the answer. Would there be fewer pedophilic priests if the priesthood were more normalized? Would there be fewer if, say, Catholic women were ordained or if marriage were permitted, as it was centuries ago? These questions are not being asked in the blinkered conservative church of today. But they should be. You have only to look at contemporary Ireland to glimpse the depth of the damage. The nation that used to be one of the most Catholic in the world -- and which has also suffered through its share of priestly sex scandals -- is now marked by a powerful and vehement stream of anti-clericalism. In his 2006 novel, Priest, Irish mystery writer Ken Bruen is savage in his denunciation of clerical abuse and the church's implicit collusion in the face of it. An elderly nun in the book had "known about Father Joyce's little temptations and had seen the altar boys crying, in obvious distress, but she had never told a soul. ... She couldn't go up against a priest." And when someone asks the main character, "Did you hear about the priest?" he thinks, "You hear about priests now, it ain't going to be good, it's not going to be a heartwarming tale. ... No, it's going to be bad, and scandalous. ... The clergy will always hold a special place in our psyche, it's pure history, but their unassailable position of trust, respect and yes, fear, was over. ... Was it ever." That's for Catholics. Out in the larger world, the stream of scandals has made the phrase "priests and altar boys" a gag-line classic, something so mainstream that the jokes are only barely naughty. A few years ago, the cover of the popular humour magazine National Lampoon depicted Boston's Cardinal Law (who had been shamefully protective of pedophile priests) sitting in his jockey shorts reading a copy of "Altar Boys' Life." Even more mainstream, network television's David Letterman and Jay Leno have minced few words in directing righteous indignation, cloaked in laughter, at the church. In one of his monologues, Letterman referred to the priest shortage in New York: "To give you an idea how bad it is, earlier today in Brooklyn an altar boy had to grope himself." He has also taken sharp jabs at the institution, describing the Vatican's new "tough stand" as "three strikes and you're transferred," and a big conference of Catholic bishops as "great for the city -- it brings in about $12 million in hush money." Leno's comic anger has been balder: "The House Transportation Committee is now considering a bill that would allow pilots to carry guns for protection. I've got a better idea. Why not give guns to altar boys -- give them a fighting chance." When the criminal abuse of kids by men of God becomes so commonplace as to become joke material -- so painful that jokes may be the only way to deal with it -- you know that the last bond of sacred trust has been broken. We all break the faith from time to time, in big ways and small. We don't behave as we should, we disappoint, we erode a loved one's trust. That's the nature of our divine tragicomedy. We try to do better, occasionally succeed and, when lucky, are forgiven. But not many of us manage to breach trust on so monumental a scale as abusive priests. That's when forgiveness, which we're told is divine, looks a lot more elusive. All those men who have preyed on kids, destroying them and their families -- all those men who have helped crumble the spiritual foundations of untold millions -- they're going to have to hope for forgiveness from their God. Because it will be in short supply everywhere else. Janice Kennedy can be reached at 4janicekennedy@gmail.com
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