Courier News
December 20, 2009
http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/couriernews/news/1949042,3_1_EL20_06CATHOLIC_S2-091220.article
Illinois -- Peter Isely's image of Christ is the suffering on the cross: Christ calling out in fear, pain and lost faith that he had been forsaken.
It is the image he has had since he was 13, when more than a year of repeated, methodical rape began at the hands of the rector of the seminary where Isely was studying to be a priest.
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| Rev. Richard Rosinski (right) smiles as Mass starts at St. Catherine of Siena Catholic Church. File | The Courier-NEws |
"I remember being assaulted in this man's office and looking up at the crucifix on this wall," said Isely, now 49. "I can't tell you how many victims say the same thing."
Rev. Richard Rosinski (right) smiles as Mass starts at St. Catherine of Siena Catholic Church. File | The Courier-NEws
Monsignor Martin Heinz blesses the host during a latin mass Sunday at Holy Angels Catholic Church in Aurora. Mary Beth Nolan | For The Courier-News
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| Monsignor Martin Heinz blesses the host during a latin mass Sunday at Holy Angels Catholic Church in Aurora. Mary Beth Nolan | For The Courier-News
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The scandals surrounding priest sexual abuse cases -- cases which have cost the Catholic Church more than $2 billion to victims of abuse -- will never go away. While the Catholic Church's new campaign, Catholics Come Home, briefly addresses the issue on its Web site, Isely finds the entire campaign offensive.
Although the site declares: "At Catholics Come Home, we are dedicated to presenting the honest truth about even very difficult subjects," there is no mention of any of the hundreds of cases where it was proven the church protected pedophile priests, nor would Catholics Come Home founder Tom Peterson discuss the issue when contacted by phone.
"We addressed that issue on the Web site. If you don't like the answer, you can dig further," Peterson said.
In a now-familiar twist to Isely's story, he reported the priest years later, only to find out church officials had known about the man for years.
They then moved the priest to a new parish, where he was counseling children, said Isely, now a social worker, Harvard Divinity School graduate and Midwest regional director for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. The case was the subject of a 2004 documentary called "Holy Water-Gate."
"The issue has never just been about the priests who committed these sex crimes against children. It's been about the now-proven systematic institutional policy and practice of covering up these crimes," Isely said.
He calls the Catholics Come Home program "public relations spin."
"This completely mixes and misrepresents the anguish and the moral outrage that has been generated by these continual revelations of how the Catholic Church has handled -- how its authorities have handled -- sex offenses against children," Isely said. "The American Psychiatry Association, for example, is not conspiring with doctors who have raped children to move them around the United States."
Seven years ago this week, Isely got a call from the mother of a friend who had been molested by the same priest.
"On Christmas Eve, he took a gun to an underpass and killed himself," Isely said. That person, that story, that mother, deserves better than what is presented in those advertisements."
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