UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage
William D. Lindsey
On the weekend, a reader, Boltingmadonna, posted an extremely valuable response to my posting about Fr. Groeschel and his statement (for which he later apologized) that pubescent youths seduce priests who are then accused of abusing minors. As Boltingmadonna predicts at the end of her comment, Catholic blog sites are now seeing an avalanche of comments defending Groeschel. I myself am receiving emailed defenses of Groeschel and outraged denunciations of anyone who dares to question the wisdom of an elderly priest with a degree in psychology who has had such a high profile in American Catholicism through his EWTN program.
Because I think it’s critically important that American Catholics keep looking in the mirror and asking ourselves how we’ve become the kind of people, many of us, who are willing to defend a statement by a powerful priest that the abuse crisis boils down to teens seducing priests, I want to highlight Boltingmadonna’s comments in a stand-alone posting. They’re superb, and they deserve attention. She writes:
I keep trying to comment on this, and then giving up and walking away because it’s so disturbing that I fear I won’t be coherent. We used to have friends who knew Groeschel and thought he was a real saint. (And I’m not calling him “Father” Groeschel because he isn’t my father, and it is no longer my policy to let the Church dictate my honorifics.) I took their opinion at face value. And then I started listening to his talks. Holy moly, what a load of misinformation and bad faith. What a demonstration of good intentions swamped by the number of lies swallowed and spewed. This is what happens when people enslave themselves to the institution and destroy their own integrity in the process.
Then I learned that Groeschel was one of the counselors to whom rapist priests were sent for “evaluation.” He was responsible for sending a good number of abusers back into the population, where most if not all of them abused again. He was one of the pet “experts” who told the bishops these men were redeemable, one of the “experts” at whom they now point their fingers to direct blame away from themselves. Of course he told them what they wanted to hear! He was paid to do exactly that.
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