DENVER (CO)
National Catholic Register
February 18, 2019
By Kevin Burke
This week, the bishops of the world will gather in Rome for an international summit to address the clergy abuse scandals in the Catholic Church.
The Catholic News Agency reported the comments of Pope Francis on a Jan. 28 papal flight from Panama concerning the summit that “the bishops receive a ‘catechesis’ on the suffering of abuse survivors…” The Pope emphasized the importance of survivor testimonies to understand the lasting effects of sexual abuse.
In the spirit of the Pope’s desire to highlight the experience of victims I felt inspired to share my experience as a social worker and songwriter to create a song and video that tells the story of a young man abused by a priest. The process of creating this musical story also inspired me to share my own deeply painful experiences, in my youth, and later as a father of 5 children, with clergy abusers.
Music provides an effective vehicle to help the listener enter the life of an abuse victim and intimately share in their emotional experience. The perpetrator priest in the song “Uncle Ted” is partially based on the notorious Theodore McCarrick. McCarrick instructed his minor and young adult victims to call him “Uncle Ted.” Like the young man in this song, more than 80 percent of clergy abuse victims were adolescent males.
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