"Unprecedented" Removal of Bishops" Names Signals "They Have All Been Culpable"

By Ivey DeJesus
Penn Live
August 1, 2018

https://www.pennlive.com/news/2018/08/legacy_catholic_bishops_priest.html

Bishop.jpeg Bishop Ronald Gainer, head of the Catholic Diocese of Harrisburg, has ordered the removal of the names of all former bishops dating to 1947 from all diocesan properties. That includes the Cardinal Keeler Center, (pictured here) part of the sprawling Catholic Diocese of Harrisburg headquarters in Lower Paxton Township. (Dan Gleiter | dgleiter@pennlive.)

Over the past decade, the Cardinal Keeler Conference Center, named after the seventh bishop of the Diocese of Harrisburg, has been the site of youth council dinners, seminarian family picnics, World Youth Day events, even funerals.

Now the legacy of Cardinal William H. Keeler, who went on to become Archbishop of Baltimore, is coming to an abrupt end.

On Wednesday, Harrisburg Bishop Ronald Gainer ordered the names of all bishops who preceeded him since 1947 be removed from all diocesan properties, saying they had failed to protect children from sexual predators.

"That is a gutsy move," said Charles Zech, director of Villanova University's Center for Church Management and Business Ethics. "I commend him for stepping forward and showing that the responsibility, the real problem lies with church leadership.

"This is unprecedented. You hear it here and there when someone has been found to not have lived the perfect life, but to remove all of the names is is unprecedented. I applaud him for recognizing that they all have been culpable."

Gainer also released the names of 71 people who have been accused of child sex crimes. The diocese has turned over all names to local authorities, he said.

Both moves came just ahead of the release of what is expected to be a scathing, 900-page report into clergy sex abuse in six dioceses, including Harrisburg. The report contains the names of more than 300 clergy and other individuals accused of criminally or morally reprehensible conduct.

Victims advocates are predicting that former bishops will be implicated in the report.

The Commonwealth has been ordered by the state Supreme Court to release the report to the public as early as next week, but no later than Aug. 14. On Tuesday, Attorney General Josh Shapiro, whose office led the investigation, announced the first conviction of a priest as a result of the 18-month probe.

The Keeler Center arguably is the most notable property that will be affected by Gainer's decision. Others include the Bishop Dattilo Retirement Residence, which is named after Nicholas C. Dattilo, the eighth bishop of the Diocese of Harrisburg.

Dattilo served from 1990 to 2004; Keeler served from 1983 to 1989

Staff from the diocese on Wednesday learned of Gainer's decision just moments before he announced it at a press conference held at the diocese headquarters in Harrisburg.

The Keeler Center is part of the sprawling complex.

Mike Barley said that diocesan officials are scrambling to take inventory of all diocesan properties -- conference rooms, auditoriums, buildings and more -- affected by the bishop's decision.

"There are a lot of little rooms and halls in some of these parishes," he said.

Barley said that as difficult as the news may seem to some Catholics, the focus must remain on survivors of abuse.

"It's not just staff but all the faithful Catholics...it's the same reaction," Barley said. "It's disappointing and hurtful that these actions have occurred. Some may not have done enough in their position of power to address these issues. Also it's one of sorrow and also apologies to folks that were hurt by these actions. There are many emotions today. This is not an easy thing."

Gainer's decision arguably signals that the grand jury report is going to be scathing and implicate a roster of church officials.

Throughout his career, Keeler, as bishop and archbishop, fended off accusations that he had protected predatory priests.

A 2002 report by The Dallas Morning News, for example, noted that Keeler, who was appointed archbishop of Baltimore in 1989 by Pope John Paul II, had returned the Rev. Maurice Blackwell to the ministry in 1993 after police dropped a molestation investigation. Blackwell was suspended again in 1998 after admitting sexual abuse of a minor that predated the 1993 case. Keeler acknowledged that the 1993 accusation had been credible, saying he regretted his earlier decision and apologized to victims of clergymen.

"I take full responsibility for the decision I made in 1993 given the facts and circumstances before me," Keeler wrote in an opinion piece published in The Baltimore Sun on May 17, 2002. "In light of what has occurred and of what was revealed in 1998, I would not make the same decision today."

Keeler went on to strengthened youth protection policies and in 2002 became one of only a handful of bishops in the nation to release the names of 57 clergy, living and dead, who had been "credibly accused" of the sexual abuse of children.

He died at the age of 86 on March 23, 2017 and was given a cardinal's funeral attended by dignitaries and power brokers.

Investigative reporter Jason Berry, author of Render Unto Rome: The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church, likens Keeler's evolution to that of historic U.S. figures embroiled in dark chapters of American history.

"There is a group here in New Orleans that wants to take down a statute of Andrew Jackson at Jackson Square because he owned slaves," said Berry from his Louisiana home. "The counter was that he was a military leader who saved the city from being taken by the British. Sometimes these decisions can be fraught with with nuances."

Berry stressed that he was not defending the decisions of bishops. He noted, however, that Keeler, as archbishop, released the names of perpetrators.

"It is an intriguing standard to say he concealed all these men," Berry said. "He participated in some way and yet later in life he appears to have done the right thing. How do you strike a balance towards someone like that in the public square? I think it's important for people to understand the degree to which he evolved."


One of the most outspoken advocacy groups for survivors on Wednesday assailed Gainer for the timing of his decisions, coming just two weeks ahead of the court-ordered deadline for release of the grand jury report.

"Church authorities responded only because they were compelled by the public release of the Pennsylvania Grand Jury next week," said Judy Jones, an official with the Survivors Network for those Abuse by Priests.

"The Church hierarchy knew about the systematic sexual abuse of children and did nothing. While the public has previously known of only ten publicly identified predators in the Harrisburg diocese, the Church hierarchy knew, maybe for decades, of sixty other credibly accused clergy. This demonstrates that for Church hierarchy, the reputation of the Church and the Church hierarchy was more important that the safety of children."

Other advocates welcomed the bishop's actions.

"I've never heard of a bishop removing the names of predecessors from properties belonging to the diocese," said Nick Ingala, a spokesman of Voice of the Faithful, a Boston-based group of devoted Catholics formed in response to the child sexual abuse crisis in the Archdiocese of Boston. "I think it's an incredibly important symbolic gesture on the part of the bishop to recognize by this action the culpability of previous administration in the covering up of abuse."

At most, he said, he was aware of dioceses removing the name of a school or a building, or as in the latest scandal surrounding Archbishops Theodore McCarrick, the revocation of an honorary degree.

Pope Francis this past weekend accepted McCarrick's resignation from the College of Cardinals, and suspended him from the exercise of any public ministry. McCarrick faces allegations of sexually abusing, assaulting, or coercing seminarians and young priests during his time as a bishop; as well as sexually molesting a teenager in the Archdiocese of New York.

Ingala points to the grand jury report - which Gainer like his five other counterparts - has read.

"They know what's in it," Ingala said. "I wonder what this indicates about what is in the report."

Indeed, almost all major investigations into clergy sex abuse in this country over the last decade - from probes into the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown and the Archdiocese of Boston - have found that church officials knowingly failed to protect minors from predators, and protected the latter from law enforcement.

Berry reflected on a related sobering reality of the leadership of Catholic Church.

"Most bishops over 60 at least have second-hand knowledge through their administrative backgrounds of this," he said. "That's not to say they are all guilty of moving people around, but when you are dealing with a history of systemic behavior that was embedded in the governance of the church, at some point, when men begin to change it's not necessarily surprising that they would have great chapters of their own back in the day. Change has to start somewhere."

Former bishops of the Diocese of Harrisburg include:

Bishop Joseph P. McFadden, 10th bishop

2010-213

Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades, 9th bishop

2004-2010

Bishop Nicholas C. Dattilo, 8th bishop

1990-2004

Bishop William H. Keeler, 7th bishop

1983-1989

Bishop Joseph T. Daley, 6th bishop

1971-1983

Bishop George L. Leech, 5th bishop

1935-1971

Bishop Phillip R. McDevitt, who served until 1935, is not included in Gainer's decision.