WISONSIN
Kenosha News
By J.J. Steinhoff
Special to the Kenosha News
In the last few years I’ve noticed that many of the Catholic churches in Kenosha have reduced their Mass schedules. Even with these reductions, many parishes appear to be only half full during their weekly services and those in attendance seem to be more old than young. As a lifelong Catholic, I often wonder why so many people have left the church and what we can do to get them back. In my view, the first steps are to restore the image of the Catholic priest and to also make the public aware that the church has cleaned up its act.
To be clear, I was as disgusted as anyone when the sexual abuse scandals rocked the church back in 2002. The cover-up and subsequent payoffs by the Archdiocese of Milwaukee made it even worse. When the Kenosha News ran their front page story in July on the 10 local abusive priests, I studied documents on each one for hours. Some of the priests were alcoholics with emotional problems and some never should have been ordained to begin with. One in particular was nothing more than a monster who used his position of power to terrorize others. There is nothing that can be done to remove the pain of each victim, their families and all of those who were involved in this scandal. However, it’s time to move on and look at some current facts about today’s Catholic Church, and specifically its priests.
Almost all accusations against Catholic priests date from many decades ago, and nearly half of all abuse accusations concern priests who are already long dead. The 10 priests who were featured in the Kenosha News over the summer fit this profile. None of them had performed Mass in this area for many years, yet judging by their pictures on the front page, it appeared as if they were current and active priests. Nationally, in today’s Catholic Church, accusations against current clergy are very rare and averaged only eight per year between 2005-2012. With an overall Catholic population of 77 million people, this is a very low number.
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