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	Letters to U.S. Bishops from Mary Gail Frawley-ODea Voice from the Desert March 4, 2008 http://reform-network.net/?p=1466 This morning (3.4.2008), I received an email from Mary Gail Frawley-O'Dea, a clinical psychologist who was the only mental health professional to address the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops at their seminal 2002 Dallas meeting on the sexual abuse crisis. Dr. Frawley-O'Dea is the author of Perversion of Power: Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church, published in 2007 by Vanderbilt University Press. Donald Cozzens called this important book, which was reviewed on this blog, "the most compelling narrative treatment to date of the scandal shaking the foundations of the Catholic Church." Attached to Dr. Frawley-O'Dea's email were two communications she sent to all 284 U.S. bishops. One was sent by email before the bishops' Baltimore meeting in November 2007; the other was sent by snail mail right before Christmas. Six bishops responded in various ways. The two communications are provided below. * * * Email communication from Dr. Mary Gail Frawley-O'Dea to 284 U.S. bishops, sent before the bishops' annual Fall Meeting in Baltimore in November 2007. * * * Mary Gail Frawley-O'Dea, Ph.D. Clinical Psychologist & Psychoanalyst 2617 Cadagon Court Charlotte, North Carolina 28270 mgfod@mac.com www.mgfod.com Most Reverend XXXXXX (or His Eminence XXXX) Roman Catholic (Arch)diocese of XXXXXX Dear Bishop (or Archbishop or Cardinal) XXXXX: Five and one half years ago, I was honored to speak to you in Dallas about the long-term impact of sexual abuse on the victim. My memory is of a moment replete with possibility and hope; an hour in which grace and promise were present and beckoning; a time of crisis opening up space for kairos. Much has been accomplished since that June morning but, unfortunately, much remains undone. Too many dreams forged in Dallas have been corrupted by the return to familiar paradigms of denial, defensiveness, and distortion. Too often, secrecy still is privileged over the pastoral care of souls. Too many bishops stay apparently unoffended by the offense of sexual abuse, but deeply offended by calls to accountability and repentance. The evidence of Dallas' failures is crushing. From Portland, Oregon to Portland, Maine, the debris of that meeting is evident in abusing priests kept in ministry; in hardball legal tactics pressed against victims even when their accused perpetrator has confessed or is known to be an abuser; in the refusal to release documents or to produce witnesses without protracted battles; in the withholding of names of credibly accused priests from the public. The vow of transparency made in Dallas was compromised almost immediately as the shades were drawn tight in a large number of chanceries across the United States. You and your brother bishops are gathering once again to consider yourselves and the state of the Church as you know it. It is another opportunity to get it right; to demonstrate the functioning of your pastoral hearts, perhaps by breaking them first. Choose one among you to become an itinerant learner for the forty weeks after this meeting. Let him shed his clericals and his pectoral cross for jeans and a millstone around his neck, heavy enough just to be noticed. Send him out alone, with no aides, press, or secretaries. Commission this brother bishop first to speak with survivors: to sit in their kitchens listening to their stories, looking through their childhood photo albums, talking with their parents and siblings and spouses, and apologizing on behalf of you and the Church. Instruct him to immerse himself in the victims' experiences until he truly can feel them as figures alive within his heart. Tell this striving alter Christus next to visit the families of survivors who have suicided: to sit in their living rooms receiving the memories of their sons or daughters/brothers or sisters/husbands or wives, walking with them to their loved ones' graves, breaking bread with them, and apologizing on behalf of you and the Church. Direct him to learn about their grief and loss and bitterness and pain, and let them break his heart in order to repair it. Ask this bishop to visit with perpetrating priests everywhere. They are still your sons. Let him listen with a full heart to their stories of what went right and what went wrong with their priesthoods, apologizing to them on behalf of you and the Church for enabling so many of them, even if unintentionally, to debase their souls and the souls of young people. What do they need in order to grieve and repent for all they cost the Church and their victims? How can you, the bishops, hold them up as your own while ensuring that society is safe from them? How can you draw them into a life of prayer, penance, and productivity that brings meaning to what is left of their lives while reassuring survivors that they cannot strike again? Send your bishop on to conversations with all your other priests across the nation. Direct him to listen abundantly to these men; to their perceptions of the Church and the priesthood today; to their suffering in the wake of the sexual abuse crisis; to their complicity in the secrecy surrounding the soul searing sexual victimization of so many Catholic boys and girls. Expect him especially to listen to the priests who have seen the crisis from the inside Ken Lasch, Robert Scahill, Tom Doyle, John Bambrick, Donald Cozzens, Andrew Greeley, and Richard McBrien. Tell this bishop also to visit with inactive priests who know the crisis well and have much to say Edward Cullen Kennedy, Richard A. Sipe, Patrick Wall, Paul Dinter. Have him apologize to these men on behalf of you and the Church for your roles in depleting the potential fullness of their priesthoods. Tell your bishop to spend some time with prosecutors and/or grand jurors in Suffolk County and Westchester County, New York; Philadelphia; Massachusetts; Phoenix; and Maine. Let him listen to them describe what they thought and felt as they reviewed documents and testimony about the sexual abuse of minors by Catholic clergy in these states. Let him also speak to the members of Defenbaugh & Associates, Inc. who investigated the Archdiocese of Chicago. Ask this emissary also to visit with judges who have spent months or years adjudicating various aspects of the sexual abuse crisis. Instruct this bishop to open his heart to what these men and women have to say as he apologizes to them on behalf of you and the Church for the disregard of the law that has characterized the sexual abuse crisis. Direct this bishop to talk to plaintiffs' attorneys throughout the country. Ask him to listen to these lawyers with his heart first and then his mind as they talk about the stories they have heard and the broken people they have encountered in their work. Tell your bishop to apologize to these people for you and the Church for allowing your lawyers to victimize victims further through excessively long depositions and truly humiliating hardball tactics. Make sure your itinerant bishop stops to speak with religion writers who have covered this story for the press for years. Instruct him to find out what they have experienced as reporters on this topic as he apologizes to them on behalf of you and the Church. Send this bishop to learn from nationally recognized experts on the impact of sexual abuse on its victims. There is a cohort of sociologists, psychiatrists, and psychologists in this country who have been researching and working clinically with sexual abuse survivors for decades. Let him listen long and hard to their wisdom as he apologizes to them for you and the Church for in any way contributing to the scarring of even one psyche and soul through sexual abuse by a priest. Have this bishop also talk to experts on sexual offenders so that he can learn more about what makes, breaks, heals, or contains men who molest young people. These men and women will generate many ideas about ways to house, treat, and care for your abuser priests while protecting others from their presence in communities. Direct your brother bishop to apologize for you and the Church for failing to care appropriately for these men — when you first learned about their crimes, and when you dismissed them from ministry with no plans for their wellbeing or the wellbeing of past and potential victims. After forty weeks of itinerant learning, give your bishop the resources to assimilate all that he has learned into a report for you next November and listen with fullness of intellect and emotion as he tells you all that he has heard and seen. If this bishop has walked his path well, he will return a fundamentally changed man, having heard how many people in this country also have been changed by their roles in the sexual abuse crisis. This assignment would be a sacred gift to the bishop chosen to walk among the people. It would be, I believe, a moment of kairos and I sincerely hope you consider it an idea important enough to discuss at your Baltimore meeting. Sincerely yours, Mary Gail Frawley-O'Dea, Ph.D. Mary Gail Frawley-O'Dea, Ph.D. * * * * This second communication from Dr. Mary Gail Frawley-O'Dea to 284 U.S. bishops, was sent by snail mail before Christmas 2007 * * * * Mary Gail Frawley-O'Dea, Ph.D. Clinical Psychologist & Psychoanalyst 2617 Cadagon Court Charlotte, North Carolina 28270 mgfod@mac.com www.mgfod.com Most Reverend (or His Eminence) XXXXXXX (Arch) Diocese of XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXX, XX xxxxx Dear (Cardinal) (Archbishop) Bishop: Attached please find a letter I emailed to most United States bishops shortly before your recent meeting in Baltimore. I realize it reached you late in the game and I apologize for that. Since I continue to believe that the suggestions contained in it have merit, I am following the email up with this "snail mail" copy. One bishop did respond to me and his letter raised for me the possibility that many of you may not really know what happens in other dioceses. I urge you strongly to add a daily "prayer" to your breviary practice. Once a day, read the articles posted on www.bishop-accountability.org/AbuseTracker. That website collects articles from all over the world on sexual abuse in the Catholic Church and in other denominations. In addition, spend some time on the main website www.bishop-accountability.org. The website collects data of all kinds on the sexual abuse crisis. It also has posted all the grand jury and district attorneys/attorneys general reports from around the country. They are crucial reading for any Church leader. I hope your holidays are reflective and full. Sincerely yours, Mary Gail Frawley-O'Dea, Ph.D.
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