Will public debriding bring private healing of the wounds at St. Thomas Aquinas? By Bishop John R. Gaydos St. Louis Post-Dispatch November 22, 2004 http://www.stpeterjc.com/stpeterchurch.nsf/ LinksView/CA330665B7B853A286256F810060C516?Opendocument It was another painful moment as the Post-Dispatch published a series on St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary and the sexual abuse scandal. It contained a lot of previously published facts with a few new details, but maybe it was necessary. You might be familiar with the term debriding -- when the doctor takes a scalpel and cuts away all the dead tissue from a wound in order to prevent infection and promote growth. Perhaps, as a wounded church, this is our debriding. Perhaps we have to go through this agony in order to heal. The victims tell horrible stories of how they were manipulated and abused. I pray it's their debriding, too, ridding themselves of the necrotic events of their past, getting out the ugly and lifeless so that they can be regenerated. And we truly beg forgiveness for any ways in which the Church or her leadership failed them. We acknowledge that much of what was presented in the articles was accurate. It was not family reading, but it could have been a textbook description of relationships between abusers and their victims. Some of those descriptions might have been better left to the textbook, or to the tabloid press, but that would not change the sordid truth of what happened. My quarrel is not with their words, but the way in which they were used to paint a picture of St. Thomas Aquinas as some private reserve of priests who preyed upon young men. In 40 years, more than 1,000 young men received a superb education at St. Thomas Aquinas. Some of the best pastors in our diocese today were once on the faculty there. There were no interviews with others who attended St. Thomas Aquinas or with priests who graduated and went on to a life of caring ministry or with anyone who might have had a rewarding experience there. The reporter alleges that we went to great lengths to keep the abuse a secret. For many reasons, we will not release a list of every priest who has been accused of abuse of a minor. But this is not a cover-up. When we discovered that abuse at the seminary was not an isolated incident, we wrote a letter to all alumni urging them to report anything that might have happened to them. When the former rector was removed from ministry, the action was explained to his parishioners. The article touts a case not previously publicized, but it was addressed. When Bishop Michael McAuliffe learned of it in 1996, the offending priest was promptly evaluated, suspended and sent to treatment. He was laicized in 1999. I met with the victim after I became bishop and we have helped him and his family. It was our moral obligation to do so. I do not believe, however, that it was our obligation to drag this young man into the public spotlight. Most victims request confidentiality, and all of them receive it. Contrary to your editorial, it is not something to be scoffed at. Victims have a right to tell their story later if they wish, but that is their choice, not ours. There were old accusations about Bishop McAuliffe from 2002 and the insinuation that he refuses to talk to the press about how he handled certain allegations in the 1990s. The reporter indicates that Bishop McAuliffe could not be reached for comment, but fails to inform the reader that this is because he has suffered multiple strokes that have left him partially paralyzed and unable to speak. Still, there is nothing anyone can say that will undo the terrible ordeal that these victims suffered. Acknowledging the wrong and the pain it has caused, we are trying both to exercise compassion and make amends. However, in the eyes of some, we will never do what is right. We protect confidentiality and they blame us for secrecy. We provide assistance and they accuse us of paying hush money. We defend ourselves against outrageous settlement demands and they denounce us for abusive legal tactics. Despite the pain, debriding is a therapeutic procedure when performed by an experienced surgeon. In the hands of someone with less skill and care, the scalpel can cut into healthy tissue and cause greater harm. These articles may have done just that by overlooking the good that has been done. The articles ignored the fact that the majority of our abuse allegations were reported after repeated invitations in our diocesan newspaper and in parish bulletins and that the diocese has cooperated with prosecutors. They failed to note the compliance audits which found that we were keeping our promise to deal with abuse and defend our children. They did not mention our full financial disclosure, our "Protecting God's Children" training, or the wonderful work by our teachers and catechists as they educate children to protect themselves. Instead, these articles chose to cut deep and hard just because the abuser was a priest. In its latest report, Kids Count disclosed 2,525 cases of confirmed sexual abuse of minors in Missouri in 2001. By comparison, there have been 71 allegations of abuse against 27 priests of the Diocese of Jefferson City in 48 years. There should have been none, but the irrefutable fact is that priests are not exempt from this destructive behavior. We are working hard to rid the church of this abuse and have not had any alleged incident by a priest since 1997, but we cannot focus simply on our priests and we certainly cannot afford to stop there. The abuse in our church was real, and we have made regrettable mistakes, but there is no institution in our society today doing more to protect the innocence of God's little ones. That should have received at least a footnote. The Most Rev. John R. Gaydos is the bishop of the Diocese of Jefferson City. He declined to be interviewed by the Post-Dispatch for the series of articles on St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary.

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