By Darren Macdonald
The Sudbury Star
April 10, 2010
http://www.thesudburystar.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2529230
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| Bishop Jean-Louis Plouffe |
Photo:Rev. Jean-Louis Plouffe, Bishop of the diocese of Sault Ste. Marie, makes a point on Wednesday. Plouffe says the church has a lot of work to do to win back the trust of the faithful
Friday saw more evidence emerge linking Pope Benedict to sex abuse scandals in the form of a letter he wrote in 1985 when he was still Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.
In the letter, Ratzinger, who is now in charge of the world's 400,000 Roman Catholic priests, opposes defrocking a California priest who molested children because of the effect it would have on "the good of the universal church."
The letter is part of years of correspondence between the diocese of Oakland and the Vatican about the proposed defrocking of the Rev. Stephen Kiesle.
On Friday, the Vatican confirmed Ratzinger's signature on the letter, but declined comment on its contents.
It's just the latest -- and likely not the last -- twist in a seemingly never-ending series of scandals and cover-ups tearing apart St. Peter's rock of a church. An institution that has, over its 2,000 years, endured repression, instigated the Inquisition, had competing popes claiming the top job and more wars than anyone can count, is being crippled by events that largely took place between 1960 and 1985. While its many, many victims struggle to deal with what was done to them by men of the cloth, the faithful struggle to come to terms with the moral failings of both abusive priests and the higher ups who decided protecting the reputation of the church was more important than helping victims of horrific abuse.
I have been a lapsed Catholic for a very long time. But when I was 10 years old, there was nothing I wanted to be more than to be a Roman Catholic priest. I was an altar boy at Christ the King Church here in Sudbury, and to me, at that time, priests were like religious rock stars. As far as I knew, they had direct conversations with God; or, at the very least, they had direct access to the pope, who definitely spoke to God on a regular basis.
The church played a huge role in my family's life in those days. In my preteen years, Sunday mornings meant mass, followed by breakfast at Gus's Restaurant or, later on, Smitty's Pancake house. I had the entire Mass memorized, each moment of each week exactly the same as the week before. I liked the fact I could go into a church anywhere in the world and the liturgy would be the same.
I wouldn't say my family was passionate about belief, although one of my sisters did attend a few of the meetings of the Charismatic Movement in the church. They're ones who speak in tongues as the spirit moves them, talking in a language that must be interpreted. She never really felt it and, in fact, later confessed to fighting back the giggles as the spirit moved people to speak their mysterious noises.
We grew up in the Donovan, which, at the time, was populated largely by first-generation immigrants from places like Italy, the Ukraine, Croatia and Trinidad and Tobago. My family is from Cape Breton, a rare bastion of Catholic Scots who fled religious oppression hundreds of years ago when the Protestants won the day and England imposed its religion on Scotland.
We were united in being economic migrants to Sudbury and in our faith. My friends had last names like DiBrina, Grano, Stipic and Belinksy. Not many of those in Cape Breton.
But most of us went to the same Catholic schools, the same church and celebrated rites of passage together: first communion, confirmation and confession--sacraments we shared as a community. You knew all your neighbours because you saw them in church.
So it's in this context I have watched people's unwavering faith in the church as an institution crumble as once unimaginable scandals have become routine. I lost my desire to become a priest sometime around puberty, and my lost faith in the monolithic church in university. But I maintained a fondness for Catholics and Catholicism, particularly the many people I knew who believed in and trusted the church unconditionally.
My brother-in-law's mother, an amazing Irish lady who passed away recently, used to subscribe to a magazine that recounted miracles people received through the Virgin Mary. And each time, evidence of rose petals was found after the miracle, a signifier that it was Mary who had interceded. She believed these stories wholeheartedly. I have also known nuns and priests who, it seemed to me, had an air of the divine to them, an inner peace that almost shined from them.
Msgr. Bernard Pappin -- later a revered bishop -- was such a man. He was at Christ the King when I was first an altar boy, and he was the reason for my youthful desire to become a priest. Father Brian McKee used to give hilarious sermons, delivering the moral of the story in such a way that you never felt you were being preached to. Pappin was an inspiration, but McKee you wanted to have over for dinner. But those days seem like another lifetime now.
Margaret Leland Smith was the data analyst for a 2006 study by New York's John Jay College of Criminal Justice, which surveyed sex abuse allegations in 335 Catholic dioceses and religious communities in the United States.
What they have found is that the vast majority of cases of abuse took place from 1960 to 1985. For a variety of reasons, priests were most likely to engage in morally reprehensible behaviour during those years.
Smith says the men involved in the scandals were born in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. Most were born in insular communities.
"These communities were ghettoized and fairly sexually repressed," she says, on the phone from New York. "It was not an expressive time. So there wasn't very much sex information provided to these men.
"So when these men went to seminaries in the 1950s, there wasn't much information provided to them about sexuality. Celibacy was seen as and described as a gift of ordination. So, the idea that people would have to be psychologically prepared for celibacy was much later in coming.
"People were ill prepared for this life."
There are a number of factors behind the spike in abuse cases, but the sexual liberation of the 1960s was a major indirect factor. Reforms brought in by Pope John's Vatican II also left the impression that the end of the celibacy requirement was imminent.
In those days, as well, seminaries took in priestly candidates as young as 13, immature boys on every level. That era also saw 20,000 priests leave, putting a major strain on parishes to find ways to replace them. And so the oversight that might have taken place was not there.
"People wanted to get married," so they left the priesthood, she says. But the baby boom meant there were whole new communities in need of parish priests.
"Of those who stayed, at least 4% of them did things that were inappropriate," Smith said,
The preparation they received on how to embrace a celibate life often consisted of little more than a Latin phrase that means, roughly, "you shall not lie with a woman." Candidates for the priesthood were discouraged from spending too much time with one another, over fears of homosexuality, and so many of them were incredibly lonely and isolated.
And so, cases of abuse began to rise. John Jay's study found that many of the abusive priests who attacked young boys weren't necessarily homosexual. Their sexual development was stunted and, in many cases, altar boys were easy prey.
The church hierarchy's reaction was, largely, to try and cover up the cases, to move abusive priests around in the hopes they wouldn't get into trouble in their new parish. Church figures also used their power to pressure authorities into suppressing prosecutions, and to victimize young boys a second time by denying anything was wrong with the men who were abusing them.
The cases in Sudbury alone are disturbing. Names like O'Dell and Clouthier haunt many families in the Diocese of Sault Ste. Marie, including one man who contacted The Star with his story.
He and his family tried to expose Father Tom O'Dell, but ended up being ostracized by the church in Sudbury. So, he pushed pack the pain and the hurt and left the church until it was time for him to get married.
(In 2000, O'Dell, a former priest in Lively, was convicted of sexually abusing a boy in the early and mid-1980s).
"I knew what was going on behind closed doors and knew O'Dell, amongst others was a pedophile," he wrote in an e-mail. "Because I had left the church and out of respect for my fiance and her family, I bit my tongue and allowed (O'Dell) to preside over our wedding, but not without spreading the news and getting alienated by my mother-in- law for telling such vicious lies.
"O'Dell was eventually convicted and sentenced for exactly what I had known he was doing for years. Finally feeling vindicated allowed me to open up."
Such incomprehensible moral failings from an institution founded on moral authority is hard to process. And it might be hard for young people today to understand the position the church had in Sudbury just 25 years ago. No one imagined that a priest would be capable of committing such crimes.
Today, Bishop Jean-Louis Plouffe is going through the unenviable process of closing churches. Sunday Masses in some parishes attract fewer people than weekday masses did when I was a child.
Plouffe, who presides over the Diocese of Sault Ste. Marie, is especially busy these days. He has been spending a lot of time in the Sault because Bishop Brian Dunn, who was auxiliary bishop responsible for the area, was installed as the bishop of the Diocese of Antigonish, N.S., on Jan. 25.
The reason? The previous bishop, Rev. Raymond Lahey, was allegedly found to have thousands of images of child porn on his laptop computer.
"This is a dark moment for the church," Plouffe says, candidly. "I won't deny it.
"We have put a lot of effort, in this diocese, to get our act together.
"Myself and my priests really have to get our act together. It's a process and I'm not saying it's over."
Plouffe points to steps he has taken to change the way the church operates and to provide oversight that has at least contributed to the many tragic events. For example, 10 years ago, he appointed an Episcopal vicar -- Msgr. Angelo Caruso -- for ethics in the ministry and the workplace. Policies have been revised, committees created, all with the aim of properly dealing with reports of misconduct and establishing rules of conduct.
Candidates for the priesthood used to be welcomed almost automatically. Today, they are screened, checked out and must pass personality profiles to even be considered.
But the damage is done. Clergy who at one time were automatically viewed with deference are now subject to automatic suspicion. One of the John Jay studies recounts an anecdote in which a priest at an airport heads to the washroom.
"Just ahead of me was a young mother with two young boys, aged 4 and 6," the priest writes. "The older was saying to his mother, 'We're going to the men's washroom,' and she said, 'OK,' until she turned around to watch them go in and saw me behind them, and my clerical collar, and said to her sons 'On second thought, here in the airport, you all come with me. Follow me.' And against their protest, (she) took her sons with her into the ladies' room rather than watch them follow me into the men's."
The distrust, Plouffe says, is a new challenge for priests to deal with, and they have received counselling and other resources if they want it.
"In this diocese, we have had a number of cases of sexual abuse, whether it involved minors, adults, or whatever," Plouffe says. "Now, today, priests have to earn their stripes, as it were. (Respect) is not automatic any more.
"Priests, for some, for many in the community, aren't held in the same esteem that they used to. It used to be that people, as soon as they saw the collar, held a favourable view of you. This is not how it is any more. They really have to gain respect now."
To do that, today's clergy has to show far more humility, far more willingness to serve and help than ever before, he says. They must be servant leaders, Plouffe says, an oxymoron that neatly articulates the difficult role priests are in today. Battered in the public eyes, they must serve and lead a shrinking and aging flock that view them with suspicion.
"We're not God, but we're there to help," Plouffe says. "We help people connect with God. That's the whole thing."
In the early 1990s, Pope John Paul imposed a number of reforms in the way priests are brought into the church and trained. The statistics show that abuse cases have dropped dramatically since them. The fact so many cases of abuse are historic and not recent is a source of hope for priests here, Plouffe says.
"They go back 30 years, to the 1970s or the early 1980s," he says. "I would hope that is it. You never know what could happen, but we have changed. What really helps my priests and myself is that the cases that are surfacing now are old cases. The hope is that we have changed the course of events ... (But) when it comes to the abuse of minors, one case of abuse is too many."
There is a renewed emphasis, he says, on ensuring priests are well-adjusted, content individuals who are adequately supported and prepared for the job ahead of them.
"You have to feel comfortable with yourself first if you're going to lead people."
But are there people to lead? Fewer people go to any church these days and a chronic shortage of priests in the church would be a lot worse if more people actually went to Mass. An increasingly secular society and a low birth rate are combining with the scandals to place pressure on the church to redefine its role in the world.
Priests used to tell people how to vote, what was right and what was wrong -- and they would listen. Who is listening now?
While the odds of an Easter-like resurrection for the church are long, Plouffe says that is the goal. It starts with reorganizing the parishes in the diocese and closing underused churches. He's expected to issue a report by the end of next month outlining exactly which churches are going to be affected.
"We don't have as many people going to church as we used to, otherwise we wouldn't have to do this," he says. "As it is, we have too many structures. If we have less buildings to take care of, we'll have more financial and human resources to invest into reaching out to people."
The goal is to become more "mission focused," he says, which means expanding evangelical efforts to take care of existing Catholics and converting others. In other words, rebuilding the church one convert at a time.
"The hopeful sign for us is that there is, in the world today, a spiritual renewal. Call it a longing for spirituality, a longing for something to live for. We can't afford to miss the momentum. We have to be there.
"This dark moment in our history is pushing us inwards, to be introspective and to say, 'What needs to be changed from our perspective?'
"We need to get past the shame, to get past the fact that we have let people down, that we have let Christ down. We need to process all of this knowing that it's not easy to admit. People don't have their act together every moment of their lives. And priests don't, either, and bishops don't. Other professionals don't, too. It's part of being human.
"And we need people to forgive (us), too, just like any other humans. That is what it means to be Christian, to forgive. We need to forgive one another. Otherwise it means we don't believe in God's forgiveness. There's no healing if there is no forgiveness.
"But to reconcile, for reconciliation to take place, we have to come to terms with the fact that the abuse happened. It's there. You can't push it away and say it never happened."
And an essential element of that process, Plouffe says, is hearing from victims of abuse. Listening to them tell their stories, he says, is a powerful thing. Hearing them, listening to them express their pain and suffering, has left an indelible mark on his memory and has changed him forever.
"This leaves deep, deep scars. There are consequences to being abused, especially when you're young, when someone you trusted has taken advantage of you at a time when you're very naive."
Contact: darrenmac@thesudburystar.com
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