Holy Warrior, by Bruce Rushton, Illinois Times, December 8, 2011

Holy Warrior

By Bruce Rushton
Illinois Times
December 8, 2011

http://www.illinoistimes.com/Springfield/article-9403-holy-warrior.html

The office of Bishop Thomas John Paprocki is a veritable shrine to hockey.

On a table sits a miniature Stanley Cup, next to a photo of him posing on the ice with members of his beloved Chicago Blackhawks. In the office foyer hangs a photograph of Paprocki posing with the cup itself, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Gov. Pat Quinn.

“Those were in happier times,” quips the bishop, who castigated the governor a year ago, when Quinn, a Catholic, said that his faith prompted him to sign a bill allowing civil unions.

They call him the Holy Goalie, the bishop who saves goals and saves souls. He is, according to Jeff Rocco, director of the Sacred Heart-Griffin hockey squad, the real deal in the net – you’d never know that he didn’t take up ice hockey until the late 1990s, when he was closing in on 50.

What possesses a man in mid-life to become a puck target?

“Why do you want to play goalie – it’s like, why do you want to be a priest?” answers Paprocki, who also runs marathons. “Part of it, I guess, is being at the center of the action. Being a goalie is like being a bishop: You’re at the center of the action.”

Really, Paprocki says, it isn’t much different than playing goal in floor hockey, which he did back in the eighth grade while growing up on Chicago’s south side. There were no ice rinks, and so his six brothers and their friends played in a basement beneath his father’s pharmacy.

“The basic principle is, you play the angles,” he says. “You just want to position yourself in a way so the puck hits you.”

Plenty of pucks have hit Paprocki since his arrival in Springfield 18 months ago. He doesn’t shy from strong statements, which has earned him critics who call him divisive, arrogant, inflammatory – and worse.

The final straw for Maryam Moustoufi came last Christmas Eve. During midnight mass, Paprocki ripped airport security personnel for not profiling Arabs and warned that Muslims could impose Islamist values in the United States if they keep moving here until they reach a majority. He also gave a history lesson about a failed invasion of Europe by Muslim soldiers.

“The commander of the defeated Ottoman army, Kara Mustafa Pasha, was executed in Belgrade on Dec. 25, 1683,” Paprocki preached. “Merry Christmas!”

The homily shocked many.

“I had a number of calls from people who were apologizing for his homily, and that included priests within this very diocese,” says Mostoufi, a Muslim who is a member of the Greater Springfield Interfaith Association. “He’s advocating a religious war. It’s nothing short of fear mongering.”

Paprocki didn’t back down when Corey Brost, a priest and a high school teacher in Arlington Heights, wrote an opinion piece published in the State Journal-Register, saying that Paprocki had given an inaccurate portrayal of Islam, invited fear and advocated unconstitutional human rights abuses.

In a response published in the diocesan newspaper, Paprocki mocked Brost for writing that there is no modern onslaught of Muslims attacking Christians.

“Oh, really?” Paprocki wrote. “That’s easy to say from the calm and peaceful security of Arlington Heights, Illinois.”

Nearly a year later, Paprocki says he didn’t expect the negative reaction and repeats his defense, saying that he had intended to focus on the plight of Christians in Iraq, where observances had been canceled for fear of violence.

“It would have been almost hypocritical for us to be sitting here and having this nice, joyful feeling about Christmas when I know that fellow Christians in another part of the world are not able to share that sentiment,” Paprocki says. “So that was really the main focus.”

The homily was vintage Paprocki, a man known for damning torpedoes. In 2007, Paprocki told a group of judges and lawyers in Michigan that monetary awards to victims of sexual abuse by priests were excessive and that the legal system needed reform.

“Today in North America and elsewhere, the law is being used to undermine the charitable works and the religious freedom of the Church,” Paprocki said four years ago. “This attack is particularly directed against bishops and priests, since the most effective way to scatter the flock is to attack the shepherd. We must also use our religious discernment to recognize that the principal force behind these attacks is none other than the devil.”

Paprocki also told his audience that sexual abuse of minors is a crime demanding punishment. But critics said that his remarks encouraged victims to remain silent rather than join forces with the devil and sue the church.

Six weeks before his installation as bishop last year, Paprocki was still explaining himself, writing in a State Journal-Register opinion article that his remarks were directed at lawyers and judges, not victims, and that he was advocating a middle ground to compensate victims of sexual abuse.

“I still stand by this: Is there a middle ground, what I call charitable viability, where we can compensate victims justly and fairly but we can do that without putting the charitable works out of business?” Paprocki said during a recent interview in his office. “Sometimes, I’ll say things…which would be intended for a particular audience, like a group of lawyers and judges, and then when other people hear it, maybe they hear it in a different way, so that requires a little more explaining – what you mean by that.”

But Paprocki doesn’t back off from statements made a year ago or in 2007.

“You can always think: Did I express myself in the best way possible? Could I have been more diplomatic? Could I have used a different set of words?” Paprocki says. “But in terms of the substance, I do stand by what I said. … It’s not like I’m shooting off at the mouth constantly – I’m not. When I do say something, I’ve usually given it a lot of thought – something like this needs to be said.”

Precisely, says David Clohessy, director of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), who blasts Paprocki’s 2007 statements and accuses him of trying to guilt-trip victims, witnesses and whistle-blowers into remaining silent.

“Paprocki, like most bishops, is a smart, highly educated guy,” Clohessy says. “When a prestigious prelate claims to be misunderstood in a carefully prepared presentation, I think it’s best to be a little skeptical.”

Paprocki says that he believes that the Catholic church has done more to address the sexual abuse of children than any other organization. But the diocesan website does not include a toll-free number set up in 2006 so that victims or whistleblowers can report suspicions directly to J. William Roberts, a former U.S. attorney retained by former bishop George Lucas to investigate sexual abuse allegations. (Lucas is now archbishop in Omaha, Neb.) who is now archbishop in Omaha, Neb. Instead, Paprocki in a column published last May in the diocesan newspaper tells anyone with concerns to contact the “diocesan victim assistance coordinator,” who is also the diocese’s human resources director.

Paprocki says that he is considering posting the toll-free number on the diocesan website.

“I’m certainly open to doing that and looking for the best way to do that on our website,” the bishop says.

This year, on the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 tragedy, some U.S. dioceses held interfaith observances. But not in Springfield, where diocesan services were ecumenical, open only to Christians.

“There wasn’t any conscious decision on my part – I never had that conversation, interfaith versus ecumenical,” says Paprocki.

The bishop says he was out of town and did not participate in planning. But he defends the decision to exclude other faiths from 9/11 services.

“Not that it couldn’t have been interfaith, but that does alter it,” Paprocki says. “It’s one thing for Christians of different denominations to get together and pray to Christ. It’s another thing when you’ve got Jews and Muslims and Hindus and others who don’t believe in Jesus Christ. … There are those of other faiths, as well, who will say that we don’t pray in the same way, we can’t really join in prayer.”

The lack of interfaith services organized by the diocese did not go unnoticed.

Diane Lopez Hughes, a lay Catholic who is active in peace movements, stops short of direct criticism, but sounds disappointed at the decision to make 9/11 observances ecumenical instead of interfaith.

“It would have been a wonderful opportunity,” says Hughes, who points out that people of all faiths died in the attacks, including Muslims who were not terrorists.

Hughes says the verdict on Paprocki is open.

“My sense is, he’s a very traditional bishop,” Hughes says “I certainly am not a traditional, just-go-to-church kind of person. I don’t expect that he’s going to be as active in terms of active social teachings as folks like me would like. The best way I can be honest to my own faith is to put my statements in terms of hope. He hasn’t been there that long.”