BALTIMORE (MD)
Baltimore Sun [Baltimore MD]
April 6, 2023
By Elizabeth A. Murphy
The Archdiocese of Baltimore (AOB) has had an intellectual conversion not a moral conversion concerning the thousands of Catholic schoolchildren who have been raped and abused and tortured while under their care. (”Maryland attorney general releases report on Catholic clergy abuse in Baltimore archdiocese,” April 5) An intellectual conversion has happened because the law does not permit them to continue to hide abusers. We can also see this in the sympathetic language they try to use while referring to survivors. We see this in their policy changes.
However, a moral conversion comes much slower and continues to elude them. We see this as they continue to pay lawyers to protect and defend the enablers and the people they have decided to have not been “credibly accused.” We see this in hollow apologies and pitiful monetary settlements they have offered. And be assured they have offered this pittance for future protection against a change in the statute of limitations. They did not do this out of genuine concern for survivors.
More than anything in this moment, I want to admonish the AOB for the cover up of crimes against children, for putting the power, prestige and possessions of the church before the lives of the children entrusted to their care. I know all too well the devastating consequences of being raped repeatedly as a child. I know too well what it feels like to be abandoned by the Church that once nourished my spiritual life.
And Archbishop William Lori sends an email to the Catholic faithful that the report will be devastating to read. To read? It has been devastating to carry the trauma of my childhood in my very cells. It has been devastating to watch the Church continue to protect and conceal identities of those involved in this sinful, criminal tragedy. And I along with many survivors have waited far too long for justice while the AOB delays and delays the inevitable. The truth will prevail because Jesus is the way and the truth and the life — not the Church.
Lent is a fitting season for the report to be released. It is past time the AOB pick up its cross and walk. Shame on them for the precious lives that have been taken from us far too young. In the end it is a report and I fear it will change nothing for those Catholics who choose the comfort of their sanctuary. Things will only change when the Catholic faithful who remain call this woefully inadequate leadership to account.
— Elizabeth A. Murphy, Lutherville
The writer was tortured and sexually abused repeatedly by John Merzbacher, a teacher at the Catholic Community Middle School in the 1970s; Merzbacher was sentenced to life in prison in 1995 for his crimes against her.