A sickness has infected the Catholic church in Scotland by Kevin McKenna

Not an ounce of compassion has been shown to survivors of sex abuse; if the hierarchy doesn’t wake up the church will not survive in the 21st century
The dawn of the new year brought with it an old tale with some familiar themes for the Catholic church in Scotland. These included an attitude towards some of its most vulnerable and damaged members that bordered on callous.

It was revealed that more than two years after the conclusion of the McLellan report into historical sex abuse in the church no contact has been made with victims’ groups. The report was compiled and delivered by the Very Reverend Dr Andrew McLellan, a former moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. He expressed astonishment at the Catholic hierarchy’s conduct.

McLellan’s report reviewed child protection and safeguarding policies and the church’s leaders greeted it with apparent humility and honeyed phrases. The archbishop of Glasgow, Philip Tartaglia, issued what sounded like a genuine and heartfelt apology. Two years on, his contrite tone rings hollow in the ears of many survivors of sex abuse in the Catholic church.

The Catholic church’s response is pitiless: why are you making trouble now, so long after the event?

The clumsy attempt by the church to ridicule McLellan’s claims was chillingly familiar to those who have found themselves on its wrong side in recent years. A spokesperson said this: “Crucially, no individual or organisation has a monopoly on survivor representation or interaction. Contact with survivors, by its nature confidential, is taking place across the church. Many survivors do not identify with or join national groups and such groups should not presume to speak for them.”

Essentially, we are being told that we must trust in the integrity of the Catholic church in Scotland to do the right thing and not ask any questions. The statement possessed not an ounce of compassion and was vaguely threatening. Why on earth would anyone ever trust this outfit?

The survivors’ groups do speak for many who have suffered sexual abuse within the Catholic church. I have met several of these people and listened to their stories. The raw pain of their abuse at a time in their lives when they were at their most vulnerable and most trusting of the church is indescribable. It is a blend of hurt, fury and sadness beyond any I have ever encountered. It comes from being grievously hurt by someone you love dearly and finding deep down, after all that has happened, there is still love there and that it is still being abused.

The response is pitiless: why are you making trouble now, so long after the event? Why are you being so disloyal? Why are you questioning our authority? The lickspittles who refuse to see any evil in their beloved church will try to insist there have been very few reported cases of abuse. There are also very few reported cases of rape in this country and this is due to a sense of shame, the continuing trauma of the attack and a fear of being treated badly by the police and the courts. These same reasons have stopped some victims of Catholic sex abuse coming forward.

A sickness has infected the Catholic church in Scotland which has left it vulnerable to the predations of a loud and implacable anti-Christian body in government and on Holyrood’s most influential committees. Those who insist on upholding the teachings of the church are set upon and wrongly accused of sexism and homophobia. We are one nation and many cultures apparently, but not if your culture is a traditionally Christian one. The absence of strong leadership in the Scottish church and its behaviour over the scandal of sex abuse fuels the hostility of its opponents. It gives them hope that they are one step closer to their goal of creating an atheist totalitarian state.

The signs of decay in the church are not difficult to detect. This year is the centenary of the 1918 Education Act which saw the birth of Catholic schools in Scotland. If the Scottish Catholic hierarchy doesn’t wake up soon there will be no such thing as a Catholic education to celebrate for much longer. Last year the Scottish Catholic Education Service (SCES) failed to lift a finger to save the 140-year-old St Joseph’s primary school near Glasgow. After numerous entreaties for assistance it became clear to school campaigners that the SCES was just another indolent Catholic lay body that exists to provide its bosses with a seat near the top table at Glasgow’s annual archbishop’s ball. The phrase “chocolate teapot” is never far away when assessing the use of this outfit.

In its traditional heartlands, dozens of once vibrant old churches are shutting their doors. They have been rendered obsolete by a crisis of faith among its young people and by the few priests available. The profound sense of betrayal over the conduct of the church in first attempting to cover up its crimes and misdemeanours, followed by its heartless response, has contributed to the falling numbers. In one case a few weeks ago, a trusted and loyal church helper received a visit from two retired cops now running “a security business” after she’d had the temerity to question the new and very well-connected priest’s methods.

Such tactics will be familiar to the journalist Catherine Deveney who broke the story about Cardinal Keith O’Brien’s sexual misconduct five years ago. Deveney subsequently received a slew of deeply unpleasant communications from senior church officials for having done so. She had come up against “the Scottish inquisition”, a small cadre of hard-right and ultra-traditional lay officers who now wield disproportionate influence at all levels of the church in the absence of anything resembling proper leadership. They are encouraged by a vindictive group of reactionaries and ultramontanes who rail against Pope Francis’s compassion and understanding for gay Catholics and divorcees. Instead they would rather intimidate pregnant women seeking an abortion with all-night vigils outside hospitals, the Catholic equivalent of a picket line.

The Catholic church in Scotland is in deep, deep crisis. The Protestant reformation in Scotland more than 450 years ago helped the old church to break free from corruption and superstition. A second one is now sorely needed if the Catholic church in Scotland is to survive in any meaningful way in the 21st century

Father Tom Doyle Says Tax Concessions Should Be On Table As Church Responds To Australian Royal Commission

A Newcastle Herald article by Joanne McCarthy

The Dominican priest Tom Doyle, outside the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in 2017 said, after giving evidence, ‘Be Bold. Government deference towards the Catholic Church has to end because of the child sex scandal’.

THE Australian Government should ignore the church/state divide and put “massive pressure” on the Catholic Church to name child sexual abuse as a crime in church law, says the American Catholic cleric who first blew the whistle on the global abuse scandal in 1984. “The church gave up this privilege long ago when they started to enable sex abuse, lie about it to society and cover up for abusers,” said Dominican priest Tom Doyle after the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse’s final report in December recommended major changes, including to celibacy and the secrecy of the confessional. The government must link tax concessions with the need for significant change in the church because “when enough money goes away they start to feel the reality”, he said. Australian politicians needed to end the “deference and preferential treatment” given to the Catholic Church because “the deference accorded by many sectors in civil society has done its part to enable this harm, by allowing the churches to escape accountability”, he said in response to Newcastle Herald questions.

The results of the royal commission will be read and studied by people in any country where there has been sexual abuse by clergy, which includes just about every country on the planet. The reports will give rise to other reports, action, proposals and protocols, and it will also provide incentive for people in other countries to press for similar investigations.

“There is no sane reason why such deference and preferential treatment should exist. The Catholic Church alone has caused massive and irreparable harm to society because of its intentionally irresponsible manner of dealing with child sexual abuse.” Father Doyle said the royal commission’s recommendations – including that priests should report child sex disclosures during confession to police and the Vatican should make celibacy voluntary – needed the strong backing of Australian governments because Australian bishops “will not be bold” in arguing the case for change with the Vatican. “I don’t know of any group of bishops who have ever been bold when facing off with the Holy See,” he said. A lay Catholic, and not a bishop, should steer the Australian Catholic church’s responses to the royal commission, including a recommended national review of the church to include the participation of lay men and women, transparency and the management structures of dioceses and parishes, he said.

The church gave up this privilege long ago when they started to enable sex abuse, lie about it to society and cover up for abusers.

Celibacy should “absolutely be closely examined” because it is a “powerful symbol of the elite and exalted nature of the clergy but in actual practice, it is and has been a failure”, he said. It “devalues women in a terrible way” and devalues all relationships as “lesser than the solitude of the celibate life”. It was a “bizarre, unrealistic and destructive traditional attitude towards human sexuality and sexual expression”, he said. Father Doyle gave evidence at a final Royal Commission public hearing into the Catholic Church in 2017 in which he said the church’s “troubling” views on human sexuality led it to commit the “soul murder” of child sexual abuse victims. He told the commission he wrote a report for the church in 1984, which he was told was handed to Pope John Paul II, calling for an investigation of the extent of child sexual abuse in an American diocese after several shocking cases of abuse were raised. He said he was “exited” from his position as a canon lawyer working for an American Papal Nuncio after his report became public in 1986, after some of the victims took court action and the action was publicised in the media. Fr Doyle said meeting a child sex abuse victim, aged 10, “changed my life”. He said the Australian Government should “completely ignore” any claims by the church that recommendations flowing from the royal commission would be interfering with internal church business. “The government now has the church on the defensive where it should be. The force of the government behind the proposals adds mightily to their credibility and relevance,” Fr Doyle said.

The government now has the church on the defensive where it should be. The force of the government behind the proposals adds mightily to their credibility and relevance.

It is essential the Australian Government apply “massive pressure” on the church to act on a Royal Commission recommendation to name child sexual abuse as a crime in church law, rather than a sin or moral failure, he said. “By persisting in calling sexual abuse a moral failure the institutional church is continuing to try to avoid the true nature of child abuse, as well as its own accountability. Its insistence on calling it a moral failure is tantamount to claiming there are two standards of accountability and the church is ‘special’, with the right to respond to sexual abuse within its own system and its own standards.” Father Doyle said the Australian Royal Commission had gone “far beyond what any other country or organisation has accomplished” on holding organisations, and particularly the Catholic Church, accountable for a global tragedy. “The results will be read and studied by people in any country where there has been sexual abuse by clergy, which includes just about every country on the planet. The reports will give rise to other reports, action, proposals and protocols, and it will also provide incentive for people in other countries to press for similar investigations.   “The Australian investigation has been the result of a massive investment in Australian tax dollars which is most important because it shows the value placed on children and the vulnerable and the state’s obligation to protect them. “The Catholic church does not, in reality, place much value on children and the vulnerable.” The final Royal Commission report said the majority of survivors who said they were sexually abused in religious institutions – 61.4 per cent – said they were abused in Catholic institutions. The next highest rate of abuse allegations – 14.8 per cent – was reported in Anglican institutions, followed by the Salvation Army (7.2 per cent).

Evil Hid Behind Handy Seal Of Confession
AN ARTICLE BY CHRISSIE FOSTER WRITING FOR ‘THE AUSTRALIAN
(Chrissie Foster is co-author with Paul Kennedy of ‘Hell on the Way to Heaven’).

This week saw the publication of the Criminal Justice report by the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. It calls for sweeping change to the Catholic Church’s seal of confession. The confessional seal can be hideous: it has been proven to be so in the case of former Catholic priest Michael McArdle and shows emphatically why change is needed. This case is not from some far-away Third World country; it is from here in Australia, in Queensland. It is an expose of blatant criminal behaviour that can be hidden by the confessional seal — a noxious secret between a priest and a pedophile colleague that facilitates and enables heinous crimes to continue and be swept under the carpet at the expense of children, their lives and their wellbeing, all of which neither sinner nor holy forgiver give a damn about.

It is rare to obtain powerful insight into a pedophile’s private, secret confessions because the “good” priest will not tell and neither will the criminal priest … usually. That’s what makes the Mc¬Ardle case gold; this one example we have needs careful examination because it exposes what happens behind the private and closed seal of the confessional for criminal child clergy rapists. McArdle, after pleading guilty in a Queensland court to sexually abusing children, made an affidavit in 2004 stating that he had confessed 1500 times to molesting children to 30 priests across 25 years. After being forgiven 1500 times for his regular criminal offending in face-to-face confessions with his fellow 30 priests, he was told to “go home and pray”.

Apart from the utter disgrace of this behaviour, we need to analyse this rare look into a pedophile priest’s confession. In his affidavit McArdle stated this about his crimes: “I was devastated after the assaults, every one of them. So distressed would I become that I would attend confessions weekly.” After each confession, he said, “it was like a magic wand had been waved over me”. The confessional forgiveness gave him a clean slate that allowed him, within the week, to reoffend — a cycle that lasted for several decades. The problem was not just the offender but the priests supporting a system that was profoundly flawed and catered to and protected priests who should have been reported to the police, not forgiven and just sent home.

In McArdle’s 1500 face-to-face confessions the identity of the offender priest is revealed — and we have 30 “good” priests who heard that these sins and crimes were happening week after week, month after month, year after year for many years. What did they do? En masse they forgave him and, as if of one mind, they told him to “go home and pray”. During my 32 years of confession I was never once told to go home and pray. Is this something priests are taught at the seminary to say to fellow priests under such circumstances? How else could they all say the same quite curious thing? Why did not one of those non-offending “good” priests protect the children? When they saw McArdle’s face yet again, why didn’t they say, “Before I can forgive you, you must get help” or “You have to stop this” or “I cannot forgive you”, instead of enabling him to go off and reoffend for decade after decade? Did not one of those ordained and ontologically changed men, those good and godly priests, feel anything for the children who were being endlessly assaulted and tormented?

In 2011, when senator Nick Xenophon released a press statement headlined “Confession of Child Abuse Must be Reported to Police”, one priest defended the confessional seal saying: “The proposed change could scare offenders away from confession, which otherwise could be a first step towards seeking treatment or surrendering to police”. Where is the evidence of such noble intent in the 30 priests? Where is the encouragement for the pedophile priest McArdle from his fellow 30 priests to surrender to the police? It wasn’t there. All 30 said “go home and pray”. And that is all. If McArdle had not been forgiven perhaps his guilt would have compelled him to get help or surrender himself to authorities.

McArdle’s weekly cycle of confession and forgiveness aided and abetted him in his crimes. Mandatory reporting would have stopped him 25 years earlier at his first confession. The subsequent effect would have been generations of children saved from the lifelong affliction of childhood sexual assault. Instead, we have heartbreaking lives of pain and suicide.

McArdle received a six-year jail sentence for his uncountable crimes against innocent children. Perhaps the 30 priests he made his confession to should have volunteered to accompany him to jail. The church and the 30 “good” priests did nothing to help the children. The children had to grow into adults and become brave enough to speak of their trauma. The children speaking out have lessened the carnage when the priests and their hierarchy chose to do nothing but protect each other and church assets. The royal commission is right to call for the removal of the seal of confession for priests in instances of child sexual assault because we know what members of the priesthood have done with the trust bestowed upon them by society. And it has to stop. If the confessional seal prevails over the demand for child protection by civil authorities, what precedent is being set when mandatory reporting of child sex crimes cannot be enforced because of a foreign sovereign state’s (the Vatican) religious law? The government must be brave and follow the royal commission’s informed recommendations. The Catholic Church priesthood says confession is sacrosanct. I say the bodies of children are sacrosanct.
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Comment By Brian Mark Hennessy of the Comboni Survivors’ Group
The raw feelings expressed by Chrissie Foster in the above article will be the first sincere thoughts of anyone concerned for the welfare of the children and it would appear to be the obvious solution that mandatory reporting, as recommended by the Australian Royal Commission, is the obvious solution. The Catholic Church has a different view on that matter and states that the priest in the Confessional is an intermediary between the sinner and God and that the priest’s secrecy is, therefore, sacrosanct. There is a possible way forward with this difficulty for the priest is enabled to defer absolution until the sinner has demonstrated his ‘true sorrow’ for his actions by owning up to the civil authorities the nature of his crime. The priest would be able, therefore, to verify that that had been done and grant absolution. The dilemma is that should the sinner not surrender himself to the civil authorities, then more children might be in danger of abuse. What then? I believe that the priest should approach the individual outside of the confessional situation and agree to discuss the issue further, and having done so outside of the confessional, the priest would then be at liberty to report the individual himself should the sinner not be prepared to do so. A way to protect children has to be found.

After all, surely that is what God would want!
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Whether Hollywood Or The Vatican, Patriarchy Gives Men
License To Abuse

(Article by Jamie L. Manson who is National Catholic Reporter books editor. She received her Master of Divinity degree from Yale Divinity School, where she studied Catholic theology and sexual ethics. Her email address is jmanson@ncronline.org.)

In mid-November, at what many thought was the height of revelations about sexual misconduct by powerful men in the media (we were post-Harvey Weinstein and Louis C.K., but pre-Charlie Rose and Matt Lauer), the New Yorker Radio Hour presented a series of interviews on the fallout from the unrelenting flood of sordid tales of sexual misconduct and assault by men. In one interview, feminist author and activist Bell Hooks was asked about the roots of this male aggression and violence. She told New Yorker editor David Remnick that, though she had read a lot of commentaries since the first revelations about Weinstein, hardly any commentator had used the word “patriarchy” to explain the root cause of all of this bad behavior. “We want to act like this is individual male psychopathology,” Hooks said, rather than admit that this behavior has been normalized for men by a patriarchal system.

Lately it feels like every day another a man vanishes from the limelight, as if taken by a plague. But in these cases, the pestilence was of their own making. And, as Hooks points out, patriarchy created the conditions under which it could breed. Patriarchy is any system in which men hold the power and women are largely excluded from it. In a patriarchal structure, powerful men dominate women, children, nature and other men. Frequently, one of the key ways that men predominate over women is by fixating on and controlling female sexuality. In Hollywood and in the media, elite, ruling classes of wealthy men act as kingmakers. They have the power to decide what faces will become famous, which voices will become influential, and whose unknown name will become a household name. The patriarchal system gives these men license to abuse their power through the sexual coercion and domination of women and, in some cases, minors. The entertainment industry’s patriarchal system enabled obscene levels of sexual misconduct, gross abuses of power, and conspiracies of silence. If it feels like we’ve seen this movie before, we have. Remember “Spotlight”? The patriarchal structure that led to this moment in Hollywood is remarkably similar to the system at the root of the prolonged sex abuse crisis in the Roman Catholic Church.

The Catholic Church may not have invented patriarchy, but it has certainly sanctified it. The patriarchal system that allowed famous actors, producers and newsmen to move about like gods is not much different from the patriarchy that has for centuries told priests that they are divine, exceptional men, set apart to rule over a lowly and lost laity. If Hollywood had a pope, it was surely Harvey Weinstein, with his omnipotent authority to make actors’ visages immortal or condemn them into irrelevance, and with his access to resources that could enforce secrecy and make unseemly rumors disappear. Rose and Lauer, we are finding out, functioned almost like bishops, dominating their own little fiefdoms, with unchecked power and scant accountability.

True to the patriarchal system, in both the church and entertainment industry scandals, the majority of victims were women and minors. In the church’s crisis, of course, the bulk of victims were children, but there are also untold cases of priests’ committing acts of sexual assault and impropriety with adult women. Whether the crimes take place in Hollywood or the newsroom or the church, abusers who thrive within a patriarchal environment seem to fit a very similar psychological profile. In her recent article, “The Power of Preying,” Dr. Alexandra Katehakis explains why men target women in the workplace. She could just as well have been writing about sexually abusive priests. “These men have ample opportunity to groom the innocent by garnering their trust and seducing them with false promises,” she writes. “They bank on the likelihood that their victims’ terror of exposure will keep them from exposing their perpetrator.”
She also explains why, after being violated, so many victims remain silent: When the predator finally strikes, the victim becomes disorientated – a trusted, admired other has violated the victim. Sexual acts happen swiftly, sending the victim into a haze of confusion or freezing the victim’s ability to move or to determine what’s okay and what’s not in that one moment. Katehakis says that these acts are an “erotic form of hatred” that is born out of feelings of sexual inadequacy, of shame and of entitlement. “For who else but a man who feels profoundly (if unconsciously) inadequate would find nonconsensual, non-connective acts arousing, and would indulge in them?” she asks. Katehakis believes that most male perpetrators suffered “grave verbal, emotional, or physical abuse as children.” She explains, “They have a shame-based personality that manifests itself in a shame-based sexuality. When a male in power ‘acts out’ his sexuality, it means just that: He is regulating his long-buried rage (generally at the offending gender) by acting it out in the mime language of sex.”
Tragically, these damaged men find a haven in patriarchal systems where they have unparalleled access to women and children to act out their eroticized rage, often with little accountability. And, should a victim speak out, these predators can count on the protection of their fellow patriarchs. Given how much sex abuse is fueled by shame, it is no wonder that it was rampant inside the Catholic Church, where sexual morality, from the time of Augustine, is founded on the notion that sexual desire is sinful and irredeemable. Many people hope that the “#MeToo” cultural moment will give rise to a reckoning in which women, at long last, will experience respect and justice in the workplace as well as the opportunity to gain better positions and leadership based solely on their talents. But there is also a #ChurchToo movement that has arisen in conjunction with #MeToo, in which victims of sexual abuse, particularly from Catholic and evangelical backgrounds, are speaking out. As their stories testify, it’s a much steeper climb towards justice in Christian patriarchal traditions where, as one blogger has described it, “the husband leads, the wife submits, and the children obey.” If we think Hollywood is tough, try reckoning with Catholic and evangelical theologies that insist that God has ordered the universe so that men are always destined to be the leaders and authorities. The church is so entrenched in its patriarchal ways, there should be little wonder that initiatives like Pope Francis’s papal commission on clergy sex abuse failed to enact any real reforms and, instead, eliminated abuse survivors from participation. Last week, the New York Archdiocese boasted — perhaps in response to the current cultural milieu — that 189 victim-survivors of abuse had received collectively $40 million in compensation. Settlements provide long overdue support for individual victims, but they do not create the structural change necessary to address the fundamental causes of sexual abuse. If this watershed moment in Hollywood and the media reminds Catholics of anything, it is that patriarchal systems are a breeding ground for sexual assault and misconduct. Most importantly, it shows us that sexual abuse will only be eradicated from the church if we continue to challenge its patriarchy, the real root of the problem.

Drawing Lessons From The Life Of
Cardinal Bernard Law
This article, published in the ‘National Catholic Reporter’, was compiled and written by:
Dennis Coday with reporting from Heidi Schlumpf, Joshua J. McElwee, Brian Roewe, Peter Feuerherd and James Dearie. Additional material came from Catholic News Service and Religion News Service.

Sources for the article include:
Donna B Lucette, Executive Director of ‘Voice of the Faithful’, Jesuit Fr. Tom Reese – Author, Dominican Fr. Thomas Doyle – Canon Lawyer, Terance McKiernan, co-director of ‘Bishop Accountability.org’ – Fr. James Connell, a founding member of Catholic Whistleblowers – Christopher Bellitto, professor of history at Kean University in Union, New Jersey – Thomas Rzeznik, associate professor of history at Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey – C. Colt Anderson, professor of Christian spirituality at Fordham University in New York.

For those trying to understand the legacy of Cardinal Bernard Law, Donna B. Doucette, executive director of ‘Voice of the Faithful’, may offer the most useful insight. Doucette’s organization grew out of the revelations of clergy sexually abusing children and its cover up that forced Law out of Boston in 2002, ripped the lid off a simmering cauldron of scandal, and made the sexual exploitation of children by clergy an issue of global concern. She says Catholics should learn three basic lessons from Law’s legacy: “absolute power corrupts absolutely,” “secrets destroy” and, for those interested in reforming church structures, “trust but verify.” Law died in Rome Dec. 20, 15 years after resigning as Archbishop of Boston. In the winter and spring of 2002 as the public began to learn the tragic, awful truth of how clergy had sexually abused minors, some 25 parishioners gathered at St. John the Evangelist Church in Wellesley, Massachusetts, offering to provide support and counsel to the archdiocese and the cardinal. Within weeks, the group had swelled into the hundreds, but “they learned that Cardinal Law didn’t want help from the laity,” said Doucette. In retrospect, she said, it was because Law knew more disclosures of failure on sex abuse policy would eventually become public. It was becoming clear that church leaders had deliberately and systematically covered up these horrendous crimes for decades. “Cardinal Law was an illustration of how systemic corruption had taken hold of the hierarchy,” Doucette said.
The obituary ‘National Catholic Reporter’ (NCR) ran the day Law died identifies him as “disgraced former archbishop of Boston,” but it also carries the line: “Law had been expected to leave a far different mark on the church.” That sentiment was carried in official statements and by those who knew him well. “It is a sad reality that for many, Cardinal Law’s life and ministry is identified with one overwhelming reality, the crisis of sexual abuse by priests. This fact carries a note of sadness because his pastoral legacy has many other dimensions,” said his successor in Boston, Cardinal Sean O’Malley.
In the 1980s, as Law was solidifying his position as a national and international ecclesial and political power. Jesuit Fr. Tom Reese was researching and writing his trilogy of books — Archbishop: Inside the Power Structure of the American Catholic Church, A Flock of Shepherds: The National Conference of Catholic Bishops and Inside the Vatican: The Politics and Organization of the Catholic Church. Writing about Law, Reese observed: “With this power and influence came a growing arrogance that demanded others, including bishops, defer to him. Rather than trying to persuade his fellow bishops, he did ‘end runs’ around them by going to Rome to get his way. Bishops did not appreciate this and responded by voting him down for conference offices – including president.” The extent to which Law would go to protect the powerful institution of the church came to light in January 2002. An investigative series of articles by The Boston Globe and the release of court documents from the criminal trial of a priest of the archdiocese, John Geoghan, who was convicted of child molestation and laicized, showed that Law and his predecessor had hidden priests who had sexually abused children from police, parents and other church members. He had covered up their crimes, moving them from parish to parish, allowing them to victimize more children. The Boston Archdiocese would eventually settle about 1,000 claims of clergy sex abuse at a cost of $215 million, but by then, Law had found refuge in Rome.
Dominican Fr. Thomas Doyle, a canon lawyer, who over 30 years has become on outspoken advocate for abuse victims, knew Law personally since the early 1980s, beginning when Doyle was on staff at the Vatican embassy in Washington, D.C. “I was impressed with him because he was both very intelligent and interested in much more than hierarchical politics,” Doyle told NCR in a recent statement. When Law was appointed to Boston, he asked Doyle to join him there as his personal canonist. “I declined even though I knew it would have been a great career move,” Doyle told NCR. He continued, “A friend had advised me not to take that job. I took that advice, thank God. What very few people know (however) is that Law was very instrumental in bringing attention to the emerging clergy abuse crisis in 1984.” Doyle had turned to Archbishop Law for advice and help when a case of clergy sex abuse was exposed in Lafayette, Louisiana. He was a part of a three-person team, which included civil lawyer Ray Mouton and priest-psychiatrist Mike Peterson, trying to build a response to clergy abuse for the hierarchy. The three “were struggling to get the papal nuncio and the leadership of the bishops’ conference to realize that what was happening in Louisiana was merely the tip of a mammoth iceberg. Bernard Law believed us and was an active supporter and advocate for what we were doing. When he was made archbishop of Boston, I had high hopes that because of his stature he would see that the abuse issue received the attention it demanded.” Doyle said. However, the two men drifted apart as their careers took divergent courses. Law continued his climb up the ecclesial ladder. Doyle left the Vatican embassy, joined the US Air Force as a chaplain and began his advocacy work for victims of clergy sex abuse. “When I first learned of the Boston cover-up, which was a year before The Globe’s revelations, I was stunned. I had a hard time believing that the man I had known and trusted was behind one of the worst cover-ups in the country. I was even more stunned when I saw his arrogant attitude. I will never know what happened after he got to Boston. Perhaps it was the impact of his rise in the hierarchy, but whatever it was, it was tragic.” Doyle said. He continued “The Boston revelations changed the course of history. One of the most important results of the Globe’s investigations and their publication is that it effectively removed control of the sexual abuse phenomenon from the bishops. The victims and survivors gradually realized their power and took control.”

Fr Thomas Doyle calls Law an ‘Anti-hero’. He said, “Cardinal Law has a very vital, but sad role in this chapter of church history. His attempts at control and cover-up led to the 2002 tsunami, which in turn led to society’s acceptance of the evil of sexual abuse.”
The victims, their advocates and concerned Catholics successfully lobbied for changes to how the hierarchy handles cases of clergy suspected of abusing minors. According to Terance McKiernan, co-director of ‘Bishop Accountability.org’, it is important to acknowledge where the church has made strides, such as the Dallas Charter and Essential Norms. Also, 40-plus U.S. dioceses have published lists of credibly accused priests; while that is less than half of the nation’s dioceses, it is still more than what has been released elsewhere in the world. But it is equally important to acknowledge what the church has lost on account of this crisis. The most obvious loss is the squandering of resources. An investigation by NCR in 2015 found that up to that point, the U.S. Catholic Church had incurred just under $4 billion in costs related to the priest sex abuse crisis since 1950.
Doucette said that Law’s failure resulted in a diminishing of respect for Catholic clergy all over. Lay Catholics have emerged from the crisis with a sense that “there was a sickness and it was clericalism,” she said. “You cannot place absolute faith and trust in any human.” She added, “Betrayal can happen even among those we have looked to for guidance in our moral and spiritual lives.” Fr. James Connell of Milwaukee, a founding member of Catholic Whistleblowers, called the revelations of Law’s mishandling of abuse allegation in Boston “an explosion that pointed out how he and other bishops destroyed trust. That trust remains broken today, and evidenced by Catholics who left the church in the wake of the abuse crisis, and from those still within it who wonder whom among its leadership they can believe. It’s a very sad commentary when we are hearing from so many people (who say to us), we don’t know who we can trust in the church anymore”.
Church historians see Law’s legacy and that of the larger sexual abuse scandal as a massive loss of credibility in the church, resulting in an exodus from the institution and the rise in the “nones” (those with no religious affiliation), especially among younger Catholics. “The millennials that grew up with this crime of predator priests and the cover-up don’t trust the structure of the Catholic Church,” said Christopher Bellitto, professor of history at Kean University in Union, New Jersey. “They may believe in Jesus, but they’re not going to trust the structure of the Catholic Church to get to Jesus.” The sex abuse crisis has “left the church impoverished, and not just financially,” said Thomas Rzeznik, associate professor of history at Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey. “It’s going to take some time – a generation or more – for the church to replenish that storehouse.” In addition to its impact on the church and its members, the sexual abuse crisis also has affected everything from topics of church history research to the church’s relationship with the media. “No longer are you going to have media that work to protect the image of the church or editors who are concerned about alienating Catholics by airing the church’s dirty laundry,” Rzeznik said.
The changes that did happen in the aftermath of the crisis have helped protect children, yet accountability for bishops who participated in the cover-up has been limited. “There is very little transparency, even now, and there are not clear ways to hold bishops or religious superiors accountable,” said C. Colt Anderson, professor of Christian spirituality at Fordham University in New York. This crisis of authority in the church has led to some positive change, with many lay people claiming their own power and authority as adult Catholics while also questioning and criticizing the clericalism that contributed to the scandal and cover-up. Yet church reform has been uneven, at best, and real change to entrenched clericalism will take time, especially since some lay Catholics are invested in the more traditional institutional culture. In some cases, lay Catholics were among those who were reluctant to expose the truth about sexual abuse. Anderson said, “It takes a really long time for clerical culture to change. I do believe we are moving in the right direction, especially with the sense of consciousness among the laity and some reform-minded clergy.” Already, there are Catholics – such as today’s college students – who were too young to be following news reports of the crisis and thus have no first-hand memory of it. “They’re familiar with it, but they do not share the trauma and the immediacy of the event. Instead, they think about the church in new ways. They want the church to engage with issues of diversity, politicization in the church and crafting a meaningful spirituality.” Rzeznik said.
Doucette is among those who can cite reforms the church has made in the wake of Law’s 2002 resignation, including widespread application of child safety measures throughout American dioceses. “Voice of the Faithful has lobbied for action on sex abuse policies as well as financial transparency in American dioceses., but response has not been uniform”, she said. Many dioceses continue to hold back release of potentially damaging files about priest sex abuse. And, while exhaustive national government studies have examined the issue of sex abuse in the church in Ireland, Australia and Germany, no national study in the United States will ever be undertaken because of the American tradition of church/state separation. Catholics have had to rely on piecemeal local investigations; the full picture may never be known. “To this day”, she said, “Bishops are notoriously uncomfortable in talking about errors and sins in the hierarchy.”
The chief job of bishops today is to rebuild the community’s trust. To do that, Connell said, the bishops must first in a meaningful way bring survivors of sexual abuse into the conversation about how to address the abuse issue. He also suggested the need for an “internal struggle” within the body of bishops, where the newer bishops, appointed in the last decade or so, grab the reins from bishops who were in office at a time when secrecy and self-preservation were the norms. Finally, Connell said, “The laity must demand an end to clericalism – the sense of privilege and excuse from responsibility among priests and religious – given that the clergy themselves were unlikely to change on their own. I really think it is a major part of the problem and it will remain until the laity throws clericalism out”. As for what lessons the church hierarchy has taken from Law’s resignation, Connell hesitated to say it has learned much. While he acknowledged the Dallas Charter has aided in creating a safer environment for children, he said there are questions about the U.S. bishops’ adherence to its zero-tolerance policy, and the issue of accountability remains unresolved.
“Case in point”, he said: “Law’s funeral Dec. 21 in St. Peter’s Basilica followed normal procedures for a cardinal residing in Rome. Pope Francis, as is customary for the funerals of cardinals who die in Rome, arrived at the end of Mass to preside over the final commendation and farewell. He read the prayers in Latin, sprinkled the cardinal’s casket with holy water and blessed it with incense. But he made no remarks about the cardinal or his life”. Cardinal Angelo Sodano, as dean of the College of Cardinals, celebrated the funeral Mass. He made no mention of Law’s resignation or the abuse of children. The closest he got was saying in his homily: “Unfortunately, each one of us can sometimes lack in fidelity to our mission.” Connell said that such treatment and Law’s burial at St. Mary Major Church was akin to calling him a hero and contributes to the scandal Law and other bishops brought on the church. “That is a tremendous missed opportunity on the part of Pope Francis. He had an opportunity with this funeral to make a statement that the legacy of Law includes a terrible, terrible happening,” Connell said.
McKiernan said any honors that Law received were an extension of the Vatican’s own mishandling of the cardinal following his resignation – that despite him admitting what he called “mistakes,” he received a prominent church, was placed in the Congregation for Bishops and maintained his placement in the conclave. While some criticize that Law was never properly disciplined for his role in the abuse crisis, McKiernan noted that his resignation still stands as an exception, in that other bishops who shielded abusive priests from the public maintained their posts at the head of their dioceses. “Many, many other bishops who did similar things during their time in office were never removed at all, or were removed in a way that did not really connect that action with the ways they had behaved during the crisis,” he told NCR. In that way, McKiernan said Law wasn’t a scapegoat for his brother bishops but “a convenient shorthand” who came to represent something much larger than himself. “I think that people poured a lot of their indignation into his story, but I don’t think that that was inappropriate.” McKiernan said that many worry that the culture in the church has changed little when it comes to the abuse issue.
The recent lapse of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, as well as the Vatican’s inability to establish a bishop accountability tribunal, are signs, he said, of the long way the church has to go to get to the core of the issue. He also pointed to Francis’ defense of his appointment of Chilean Bishop Juan Barros, who has been accused of covering up abuse by a fellow priest. “I don’t see under Pope Francis that the church is really walking the talk, and I think that that sends a very, very bad signal down the chain,” McKiernan said. It’s important not to view Law’s death as the conclusion of the clergy abuse story, but rather an opportunity to re-examine the situation and where the church is today, not only in Boston but across the country and the globe. “We need people to really dig into this and continue to work on this becaus if the church really didn’t understand why it happened, the danger is it will continue to go on and on,” McKiernan told NCR.
Speaking to journalists Dec. 20, O’Malley said, “This is a very difficult day for survivors and all of us in the Archdiocese of Boston and for me. We have anticipated this day, recognizing that it would open a lot of old wounds and cause much pain and anger in those who have suffered so much already, and we share in their suffering,” he continued. The archdiocese has a continued commitment to “provide for the assistance and support for victim survivors and their families, and to strive to maintain safe environments in all of our churches, schools, institutions and agencies. For victims, the hurt is still there, the healing is still necessary. We must all be vigilant, particularly for prevention of child abuse and to create safe environments and to be constantly monitoring how we’re doing following our policies, our commitment to the whole community to take this very seriously, and do whatever we can to guarantee safe environments for our children.”

Note by Brian Mark Hennessy – Comboni Survivors Group:
This important article has been slightly shortened for the purposes of publication in the Blog ‘Comboni Missionaries – A Childhood in their Hands’. The Original article was published on-line by the ‘National Catholic Reporter’ on 27th Dec 2017.

Cardinal Law’s Complex Role in the Contemporary History of Clergy Sexual Abuse

by Thomas P. Doyle
(Thomas P. Doyle is a priest, canon lawyer, addictions therapist and long-time supporter of justice and compassion for clergy sex abuse victims)

Brian Mark Hennessy,  as an introduction to this article by Tom Doyle,  writes: “it gives an account of how deeply  the desire to “cover up” was embedded in the Church – and how unconcerned the Vatican was. They seemed to think they were able to control it when the battle was already lost.
Public awareness of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy actually dates from 1984. It was triggered by the public exposure of widespread sexual violation of children by a single priest in the Diocese of Lafayette, Louisiana, and its systemic cover-up by the church’s leadership that lasted well over a decade.
Cardinal Bernard Law, who went from in 1974 being bishop of Springfield-Cape Girardeau, Missouri, to in 1984 being named archbishop of Boston, became the most powerful and influential Catholic bishop in the United States. This all came to a screeching halt in 2002. In one day Law became the face of hierarchical treachery and dishonesty when The Boston Globe revealed the systemic cover-up of widespread sexual abuse by Boston priests, most of it his doing. He remained the face of the hierarchy’s disgraceful attitude towards the violation of minors and the vulnerable. Even in death he remains the focal point of the anger and rage of countless victims of sexual abuse by clergy – certainly Boston victims, but also others worldwide.
Law’s role in the history of clergy abuse is more than the systemic cover-up in Boston. What is little known is the influential part he played in the early days when the extent and depravity of this evil was first exposed. In those very early days in 1984 and 1985, I believed that when the bishops realized the nature of sexual abuse and potential plague before them, they would lose no time in doing the right thing.
Collaborating with Law
I first met Law in 1981 when he was a bishop and I was a newly appointed staff member at the Vatican Embassy in Washington. Our association started when I was asked to do some research for a committee on which he served. From the time we met, I was impressed with him. He was highly intelligent, read books, actually listened when people talked to him and did not allow episcopal politics to dominate his conversation. We became friends, and before long I would lean on this friendship for help in navigating the sexual abuse crisis that burst onto the scene in late 1984 in Louisiana. At the time I was working closely with two others who were instrumental in prying off the cover of secrecy the bishops had depended on to keep these horrific crimes from seeing the light of day. At first, the Lafayette vicar general assured the papal nuncio that although several families had complained to the bishop, the diocese entered into confidential settlements with them and all was under control. A few days later we learned one family had not only pulled out of the deal but was suing everyone from the local bishop on up to Pope John Paul II. That’s when it all burst into the media.
I had enlisted Mike Peterson, a priest and psychiatrist who ran St. Luke’s Institute, to offer to help the diocese deal with Fr. Gilbert Gauthe in a responsible way, which they were not doing at that point. Ray Mouton, the Louisiana attorney of the Diocese of Lafayette, asked to represent Gauthe in the criminal prosecution. Mouton came to see me in Washington when he learned that the diocese knew about several other perpetrators who were still operating in ministry. Mouton was and is a decent man and a father who had three children living in the diocese. The three of us began to collaborate because we realized the Louisiana scene was explosive. We were also worried about the increasing number of reports of clergy abuse being reported to the nunciature. Mouton was actually the one who predicted massive legal problems if the bishops didn’t face the problem head on and do something about it. We decided to put together a position paper that we envisioned would contain all the pertinent information a bishop would need when faced with a report of abuse by one of his priests. This was later commonly known as the “Manual.”
I began to talk to then-Bishop Law about the situation. He agreed about its severity and our predictions if the bishops ignored it. He and I spent a good deal of time discussing the danger posed by perpetrating priests and how bishops should respond to reports. He reviewed our proposed manual, which ended up being about 100 pages long and included several professional articles on pedophilia selected by Peterson. The soon-to-be cardinal was well aware of the danger facing the church and especially the bishops if they remained inert. He helped work out three action proposals that would include in-depth research into every aspect of sexual abuse, a committee of bishops assisted by independent experts and an office at the U.S. bishops’ headquarters that would coordinate immediate responses to particular situations if such assistance was requested by the bishop. He was chairman of the standing committee on research and pastoral practices and offered to set up the sexual abuse committee as a sub-committee. It would be made up of bishops, but the real work would be done by carefully selected lay experts.
Law also assured us that he would “lobby” other bishops to get on board with the action proposals and the creation of the sub-committee. We had planned to meet with him at a Marriott Hotel in Chicago in May 1985. He had been recently named a cardinal, so we were not surprised when he phoned to tell us that he could not make the meeting as it was close to the time of the Vatican ceremony. In his place, he sent then-Auxiliary Bishop Bill Levada of Los Angeles. (Levada, now 81, would be named archbishop of San Francisco and in 2005, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under Pope Benedict XVI.) Levada met with us for most of a day and was affirmative and approving of all the points of our agenda. About two weeks later, Levada informed me that the entire proposal had been shelved by the leadership of the bishops’ conference. The excuse was that it would conflict with the work of another committee that had been assigned the issue of clergy sex abuse. The conversation was short because I was too surprised to argue the point. Not long thereafter I called Law to ask what was going on. He told me he had opposed the move, but was limited in what he could do since he had been in Rome when it happened.
Ironically the two others I had worked closely with and who provided valuable advice and support were Anthony Bevilacqua, then-bishop of Pittsburgh and later archbishop of Philadelphia, and Cardinal John Krol of Philadelphia. A 2005 grand jury investigation would find Bevilacqua and Krol successfully shielded from prosecution 63 priests who had sexually abused hundreds of children. I never knew if Law had put up a fight to save our proposal or not. In one of our conversations he told me that internal politics in the bishops’ conference had a lot to do with the non-attention given by the conference leadership. At that time, Law was not one of the “in crowd” at the conference because his ecclesiastical political bent was much more conservative than the leadership.
Mouton came up with the idea of sending a dozen or so copies of our “Manual” with the action proposals to the upcoming national meeting of the bishops planned for June 1985. We knew they were planning a discussion on clergy sex abuse for a one-day executive (therefore closed) session. Since neither Mouton nor Petersen nor I were invited, we asked another bishop we thought was sympathetic to take the copies and give them to bishops he felt would be supportive. That was Auxiliary Bishop A.J. Quinn of Cleveland who not only turned out to be non-supportive, but a part of the cover-up. I had discussed this tactic with Law and he agreed. We never knew what happened at the meeting other than receiving reports that two out of the three main speakers at the executive session were duds (the general counsel and Kenneth Angell, who was then auxiliary bishop of Providence, Rhode Island, and later bishop of Burlington, Vermont.) I spoke to Law several times after that, trying to figure out what to do next since it was clear the conference leadership not only planned on doing nothing, but would resist any attempts at meaningful action. He suggested sending a copy of the “Manual” to every bishop in the U.S. He subsidized the mailing, which took place on Dec. 8, 1985. He had also provided the funds to pay the professional typist who prepared the final copy of the “Manual.”
The Problem Ignored
I left the Vatican embassy in January 1986 and in June 1986 was sworn in as an officer and chaplain in the Air Force. My contact with Law gradually tapered off not because of any rift between us but probably because of the lack of a common cause to justify collaboration. I became increasingly involved in the sexual abuse issue. Between 1985 and 2002, there were several major eruptions, including the Jim Porter trial, the Rudy Kos trial and the exposure of multiple perpetrators among the faculties at two seminaries — St. Anthony’s in Santa Barbara, California, run by the Franciscans, and St. Lawrence Seminary near Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, run by the Capuchins. In spite of the media attention to each of these and other cases, nothing lit up the Catholic rank and file to the seriousness of the issue. The bishops remained in control giving the expected lip-service followed by continued lying, stone-walling and cover-up.
I learned about the cover-up in Boston in 2001 from Kristin Lombardi, a reporter who was writing a series for the Boston Phoenix. It was a wide-ranging cover-up engineered mainly by Law but one for which his predecessor, Cardinal Humberto Madieros (1919-1983), shared some responsibility. By that time nothing the bishops did surprised me, yet I was still really upset that Law would have been the source of as widespread a conspiracy as had happened in Boston. I collaborated with the Phoenix reporter and learned just how bad it was. Late in 2001, I was referred to The Boston Globe spotlight team by Richard Sipe, who had been consulting with them. I knew in the first week in January that it was going to hit the fan on Jan. 6, 2002. Having grown cynical that anything would really cause a widespread and effective wake-up call, I expected the Globe coverage would cause a major explosion but then the dust would settle after a couple weeks and it would be back to ho-hum. I was dead-wrong, thank God.
Cardinal Bernard Law’s scandalous cover-up and resignation led to a phenomenon that was not expected
nor clearly obvious at the time, but it was real.

I was both saddened and angered by Law’s public responses: “If mistakes were made … etc.” That line, which he came up with at the first press conference, made me furious. What was worse was that he knew how destructive sexual contact between an adult and a child could be and that the historical cover-up, the default response by the bishops, was a recipe for disaster. He also knew, because we had discussed it enough, how crucial a sympathetic and compassionate response was to the victims and their families. It seemed like everything that had been discussed in 1984 to 1986 had been intentionally buried. Law’s role in the historical development is vitally important. Up to that time it was nearly impossible to get the deposition of a bishop, much less a cardinal. Yet the Suffolk County, Massachusetts, district attorney managed to overcome all the delaying tactics of the archdiocese’s lawyers and deposed Law in May 2002. This broke the ice and paved the way for the depositions of a number of other bishops, archbishops and cardinals in sex abuse lawsuits.
Law’s resignation was forced by public pressure, increasingly damning media coverage containing more and more revelations and a no-confidence statement by 58 Boston priests. By the time he left in December 2002, the clergy abuse issue had dramatically and fundamentally changed. It was no longer a question of a few Don Quixotes tilting with the massive, powerful and unmovable Catholic Church. Victims and thousands of angry and sympathetic supporters were not only energized, but organized. Victims’ support organizations began to make noise that could not be ignored. Several such groups started up in Boston, but it was the Survivors Network of Those Abused Priests, or SNAP, the only effective national group (founded in 1988) that really rose to the challenge and made a significant difference.
Law’s scandalous cover-up and resignation led to a phenomenon that was not expected nor clearly obvious at the time, but it was real! In spite of the negative and critical publicity aimed at the bishops, they remained firmly entrenched and in control of the nationwide epidemic. They fully believed they could and would determine how this all played out. The day of January 6th 2002, in Boston changed that. Now for the first time in the history of the church, the victims of the clergy’s malfeasance were in charge, whether they fully realized it or not.

The Catholic laity, the general public and especially the victims called out Law’s empty rhetoric and continued to challenge bishops from then on for their baseless and self-serving assertions and lack of follow-through. Law’s downfall marked a rapid increase in the erosion of the traditional deference for the hierarchy and the institutional church in general.
The Vatican Takes Notice
The Boston event and the public reaction to the cardinal’s presence brought the seriousness of the issue home to Catholics in other countries but especially to the Vatican. Pope John Paul II summoned the American cardinals to Rome in April 2002 for a meeting that was substantially useless, yet it showed that the Pope and his Curia could no longer ignore the reality of the problem even though they continued to try and minimize it and shift the blame elsewhere. It would only be a matter of time before officials in the Vatican itself would be uncovered. The first and highest-ranking hierarch to fall was not a lowly diocesan bishop from somewhere in the boondocks but the most powerful cardinal in the United States and a close collaborator of the Pope. After that no one was off limits or out of bounds. The victims knew this all along, but now the Catholic faithful and the public knew it. It was another harsh reminder of just how horrific it was to condone sexual abuse of anyone – much less a child. Law’s brazen cover-up and his public downfall caused massive scandal to the U.S. church. In any normal organization, it would have meant the end of the line for him, but this was the monarchical Catholic church, where up is often down and black is usually any other color, but black.
After a few months, Pope John Paul II made Law the archpriest of the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, which carried with it significant perks as well as a palace to live in. He remained an influential member of several Vatican congregations. This screamed volumes about the pope’s complete insensitivity to the incalculable harm done to the people of the Archdiocese of Boston but most importantly, the harm done to victims. Many who thought the Vatican would do something began to learn just how out of touch the papacy and the Curia really were and how obsessed they were with their own welfare. This hasn’t changed in spite of the seemingly sympathetic rhetoric. All talk but no action, then and now. Law’s life after January 6th 2002, was no doubt marked by a good deal of personal pain, stress and bewilderment. He was the center of a phenomenon in Catholic life that was unheard of :- the public disintegration of the life of a prince of the church culminating with his resignation and departure in disgrace.
In spite of the opprobrium heaped on him, his actions in Boston were far less blameworthy than several of his brother bishops: Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles, Cardinal Edward Egan of New York, Archbishop John Neinstedt of St. Paul-Minneapolis, Archbishop John Myers of Newark, New Jersey, Bishop Robert Finn of Kansas City, Missouri, to name but a few. These men and others not only engineered multiple cover-ups blanketed in lies, but in many instances, they “punished” victims for challenging the church in court by allowing and even encouraging their attorneys to attack, humiliate and eventually re-victimize them. When Law finally realized his stature and his power had eroded, he asked Pope John Paul II to allow him to resign. Twice the pope refused, indicating his own blindness to the plight of the victims and faithful of the Boston archdiocese. The pope finally acceded in December 2002, and thus Law became the first and only American hierarch to resign because of his role in the clergy abuse scandal.
I’ll always wonder if Law fundamentally changed when he had to face sexual abuse by his own clergy right in his own back yard. It no longer was an impersonal problem far removed from his world. I wondered if his response in Boston was really a tragic manifestation of skewed loyalty to the hierarchy’s bizarre notion of the meaning of church. Whatever is true is dwarfed by his impact on the unfolding sexual abuse phenomenon in the modern church. He is a tragic anti-hero because his actions as archbishop were the catalyst for fundamental and far-reaching changes in the Catholic clerical culture and in the victims’ and laity’s realization that their days as docile, silent sheep are forever dead.

Have a look at the link below:

https://t.co/OhxkmNQ0MJ?amp=1

Tom Doyle speaks about priests, abusers and the confessional.

“The institution of the Catholic Church can not, and will not fix itself,” Tom Doyle.

“Very few priests really comprehend the damage that sexual abuse by clerics does to minors,”

Click on the link below to access the video

https://t.co/OhxkmNQ0MJ?amp=1