Insights and Outbursts: The Catholic Church's unsung heroes

By Eileen Ford
Gloucester Times
August 05, 2015

http://www.gloucestertimes.com/opinion/insights-and-outbursts-the-catholic-church-s-unsung-heroes/article_ddab9266-6c19-5d7e-acb6-b1d05266a60e.html

“Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

– Lord Acton

I spent a week last month at the Marie Joseph Spiritual Center in Biddeford Pool, Maine, on a directed retreat, speaking with one of the sisters for an hour each day but otherwise, remaining in silence most of the time.

At Marie Joseph, newspapers were available on a table near the entrance to the dining room but I wasn’t interested in news until I read “It’s time to end pattern of deceit and denial on clergy sex abuse cases,” a headline on the July 3-16 issue of the National Catholic Reporter. 

It took me back to a painful time when I lost faith in a church I always respected. As a retired NYC Transit Police lieutenant responsible for investigating allegations against police officers at one time, I wondered if the church needed a civilian review board, for it was obvious that in at least one critical area, the welfare of children, church leaders failed to police themselves.

I shared those feelings with my director and our conversations helped me regain the sense of living in the present moment and enjoying my time there.

But I also felt a need to celebrate the “unsung heroes” responsible for any improvements in the church, not bishops or popes but the survivors of abuse and clerical negligence I got to know, many of them still standing outside Catholic cathedrals every Sunday, ignored by bishops and parishioners.

I also wanted to celebrate the work of a Catholic newspaper whose “first major exposé on the abuse of minors by clergy (was in their) June 7, 1985, issue… (That) coverage comprised a long piece out of Louisiana by Jason Berry about a young priest-pedophile in the Lafayette diocese” and “an equally long report on other predatory priests around the nation by Arthur Jones, (NCR’s) Washington bureau chief.”

After the Boston Globe revealed extensive cases of clergy abuse in the Boston Archdiocese under Cardinal Bernard Law in 2002, I joined other Catholics in the “Voice of the Faithful,” standing with survivors and advocates in Boston and Manchester, N.H., calling on bishops to release the names of priests they transferred to other dioceses.

None of our efforts stemmed the tide of sexual abuse in the U.S. or other countries, but for me at least, it was a way to support survivors of sexual abuse as I once assisted victims of crimes committed on New York City subways as a policewoman.

Dominican Father Thomas Doyle, a canon lawyer and courageous advocate for victims abused by priests and bishops, spoke at the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) in 2014. He warned bishops about pedophile priests long before the negligence of Cardinal Law and his assistants in the Boston Archdiocese was exposed in 2002 by a secular newspaper.

The following comments are from NCR’s coverage of Doyle’s speech as well as their editorial comments last month:

“For much of church history, the default response to a report of child, adolescent or adult sexual abuse was first to deny it and, when denial failed, to enshroud it in an impenetrable blanket of secrecy.

“A small number of perpetrators were sent to special church-run institutions that treated them in secrecy and in many instances, released them to re-enter ministry.

“Over the decades, the church has made progress in addressing the issue, most notably under Pope Francis with his tribunal for bishops and the forced resignations of bishops who have failed in their handling of sex abuse cases. But all of that still must be accompanied by a serious qualification: None of it happened voluntarily. All of it was forced by public pressure.

“Survivors have changed the course of history for the church and have accelerated the paradigm shift. If the Catholic Church is to be known not as a gilded monarchy of increasing irrelevance but as the people of God, the change in direction hinted at by the new pope’s words and actions are crucial. If he does lead the way to a new image of the body of Christ, it will be due in great part because the survivors have led the way for him.”

Eileen Ford lives in Rockport and is a regular Times columnist.