How has the Pennsylvania scandal affected you personally?

[BlueMaxx]

Maybe now, the VICTIMS will be on the receiving end of compassion from our Church, including the laity. They are ours, they belong to our family and need to be acknowledged with love. This has been the missing piece for the past decades and is needed for not only their healing, but for ours.

I’ll never forget when I stopped coming here many years ago, no it wasn’t bc I hate the new layout. But bc the knee jerk response was to defend the priests at the expense of the victims. This is the same attitude that allowed it to continue for so long!

“We can’t let a few bad priests spoil the bunch”
… We found out it is MUCH more than just a few bad priests now, haven’t we?

“The REAL victims are the good priests.”
… No, the real victims are the actual VICTIMS.

If any one who has suffered sexual abuse at the hands of a “purported” Man of God, is reading this. Please know that I am so sorry for what happened. You deserved to be embraced and the perpetrator brought to justice. I am so sorry that the Church has failed you, has failed all of us. Please, although I know it is difficult, do not turn your back on God. He has promised to prevail, even when it seems the foxes have overrun the henhouse.

Edited to correct spelling

Thank you,

well said…

 

[PetraG]

So, not sure if you realize but these are not new cases. Some of this goes back to the 1940’s. Most of the priests are deceased. I also believe not all were priests, some were deacons and some were lay people

Well, first of all, since the Charter for Protection of Children and Young People there is no excuse for any kind of predator being tolerated or even, at this point in experience, going undetected for an extended period of time.

As any priest in our archdiocese would tell you–I am from the Archdiocese of Portland in Oregon, and we went through a very well-publicized bankruptcy over this very same kind of “history”–it is not just the duty of the priests to avoid being offenders themselves. It is a sacred duty of their pastoral office to be protectors of every person under their care from every person under their authority, to the best of their ability. The priests I know take this very seriously. They do not allow any deviations from the protocols set up to keep children and young people safe.

As for what was going on in Pennsylvania, I haven’t been able to download the entire report. One of the good outcomes of our bankruptcy–and the change in policy and attitude has been a very good outcome–is that the Archdiocese has a Child and Youth Protection Office which employs a Victim Assistance Coordinator. There is a system set up for dealing with allegations and violations.

We may well have one because it was a condition of the bankruptcy and settlement, but every diocese ought to have one.

So here is the question: How have sex abuse claims been handled in Pennsylvania in the past 15 years? If you say there were none until this grand jury handed down indictments, that should be a red flag. Sexual predators do not just give up trying because there is a “zero tolerance” policy. If no one working in a large diocese, whether lay or clergy, is ever caught, not even taken out of ministry in an abundance of caution without an arrest being made, that is actually not a good sign. That probably means there are still places to hide under the radar.

Even so, if the bishops were aware of anyone with a credible claim for whom the statute of limitations had not expired, they ought to have alerted the civil authorities. They have a duty to help the civil authorities to keep children and young people safe from these offenders, not just to keep the Church from being tarred by their crimes.

 

[CilladeRoma]

And it was still covered up!
This is the problem!

Teh cover-up! The fact that people who reported abuse were then victimized even more by being threatened with their immoral soul.

The system that allows this kind of secrecy is what needs to fixed.

 

[PetraG]

If any one who has suffered sexual abuse at the hands of a “purported” Man of God, is reading this. Please know that I am so sorry for what happened. You deserved to be embraced and the perpetrator brought to justice. I am so sorry that the Church has failed you, has failed all of us. Please, although I know it is difficult, do not turn your back on God. He has promised to prevail, even when it seems the foxes have overrun the henhouse.

I had an experience with a member of the clergy. He did a lot of things that would never be allowed now, but the behavior that crossed the line from grooming to abuse was one time. I was a teen at the time, and I blamed myself. When I read of the accusations against him, it dawned on me that it was not me. It was him. It was a pattern, and it was a long-standing pattern. In retrospect, the pattern became far more clear than it was at the time. When you have been taught what to look for, you see things you never would have seen when you didn’t know. (This is why I am such a big advocate of education and vigilance for the laity.)

The clergy I have told about this could not have been more supportive. One responded to my letter about this with “as we go through this” not “as you go through this.” He was as good as his word. There was no way in which I ever felt alone as I went through getting through that. So while there was one priest who was an offender there have been many others who were unquestionably my defenders. They weren’t looking out for themselves. They were looking out for me.

As for the priest who did it, yes, he really does have faith. He is a very confused man, though. To the best of my knowledge, he didn’t do anything that would get him a prison sentence, at least not a lengthy one, but he did do things that ought to have gotten him removed from the ministry far sooner than it did. If it happened now, that is what would happen. People know each other in this archdiocese, and people know the priests. People are no longer afraid to talk about these things. People are taught what to look for and taught that they have a duty to report rather than feeling it is some sin of detraction to report, because they are taught that communication is necessary in order to deny offenders the opportunities, the benefit of the doubt and the privacy they need to offend. Moving a priest with a history like his simply would not be tolerated any more. That is the way it should be.

 

[deMontfort]

Flagged as off topic. This isn’t a thread for the usual laundry list of Rad Trad complaints. Please start a new thread if you h*ll bent on posting on that subject.

 

[MagdalenaRita]

I couldn’t agree more.

 

[PetraG]

One thing no one is discussing much is how parishioners that reported liturgical abuses were blacklisted and filed as troublemakers in those secret diocesan files.

Please tell me you aren’t conflating liturgical abuses with sexual attacks on children. The two are very different.

You may have a discussion–such as whether or not some people who report liturgical abuses are also troublemakers, since the two are hardly mutually exclusive any more than it is mutually exclusive for a priest to be both liturgically orthodox and a sexual offender–but that discussion doesn’t belong in this thread.

 

[MagdalenaRita]

One thing no one is discussing much is how parishioners that reported liturgical abuses were blacklisted and filed as troublemakers in those secret diocesan files.

Perhaps you could start another thread about that because I didn’t read that in the report but I didn’t get very far in it. (Don’t want those images from the report in my mind)

Also, that isn’t what the reports focus was

 

[13pollitos]

The way this report affected me the most…so many things swirling. I feel a deep sadness for the sweet sisters that taught me in school. My principal who was so very loving and supportive, who cried with me over a time that she unintentionally hurt me. The way she swooped me up and sheltered me after a bad experience in confession that left me in tears. The way she stood up to bullies that preyed on weaker students. She was such a good woman. I feel they (and especially her) are being betrayed and their names run through the mud and it is so unfair to them. I am struggling with where to go from here because I just am unable to believe the magisterium is being “guided by the Holy Spirit in matters of faith and morals” or else this would never have occurred. This is going to take me a long time to move on, and if transparency and true contrition does not occur soon, I’m not sure that I ever will be able to reconcile my faith in Jesus with remaining in Communion with these bishops. This culture of victim shaming and covering up is disgusting.

 

[Wampa]

Here is probably the best summation of the situation that I have come across so far.

Good article, @Joe_5859, thanks.

I’ve been quietly absorbing and trying to figure out my response to all of this.

But I will say this: I am normally quick to conclude “it’s old cases, just being reported now, but the problem has been addressed in the last 15 years”. Part of that reaction comes from being in a diocese (St. Paul/Minneapolis) that has gone through all of this already and implemented safeguards.

However, the 2014 anecdote given in the first 9 paragraphs of that CNA article really gives me pause. Conclusion of the section:

"In fact, Bishop John Barres, then Bishop of Allentown, relied heavily on Szatkowski’s canonical advocacy in a 2014 letter written to stave off the possibility that the Vatican might laicize Lawrence.

This extraordinary turn of events bears repeating. In 2014, a bishop allowed a priest who had been charged with criminal sexual abuse of a child to serve as the canon lawyer for another priest charged with criminal sexual abuse of a child. Apparently no one in Szatkowski’s religious community, the Diocese of Allentown, or the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith questioned the wisdom of that plan.

Anyone who finds it difficult to understand the anger and resentment of Catholics toward their bishops in recent weeks need look no further than that story."

Ugh. I’m going to have to dig in and plow through the report.

 

[PetraG]

…I just am unable to believe the magisterium is being “guided by the Holy Spirit in matters of faith and morals” or else this would never have occurred…

We have the guarantee that they will not teach what is false, not the guarantee they cannot do what is wrong.

It is not unknown for the Lord to ask us to follow what teachers of religion teach but not what they do:
Then Jesus spoke to the crowds and to his disciples, saying, “The scribes and the Pharisees have taken their seat on the chair of Moses. Therefore, do and observe all things whatsoever they tell you, but do not follow their example. For they preach but they do not practice…
Matt. 23:1-3

Notice He did not say, “Don’t listen to them, because they don’t do what they teach.” It was the teaching was certain, not the teachers.

 

[SacredHeartBassist]

He also said you’d know his church by their fruit

 

[somecanadian]

Largest charitable organization in the world. Countless orphanages (where children aren’t abused), hospitals, etc. The Eucharist. Millions of good and holy priests, nuns and laity. I dunno, from where I sit the fruit looks just fine. We got some bad fruit that will be pruned but that doesn’t mean all the good should be ignored.

 

[PetraG]

He also said you’d know his church by their fruit

It is possible that a bishop might need to be removed, yes, not only for teaching false things but for seriously failing his duty. This is true. We aren’t given the guarantee that no mistakes will be made.
“…when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face because he clearly was wrong. For, until some people came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles; but when they came, he began to draw back and separated himself, because he was afraid of the circumcised. And the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him, with the result that even Barnabas was carried away by their hypocrisy. But when I saw that they were not on the right road in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas in front of all, “If you, though a Jew, are living like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?”
Gal. 2:11-14

(Note Peter was not teaching something incorrect, but but being a hypocrite about how he modeled it.)

 

[PetraG]

Largest charitable organization in the world. Countless orphanages (where children aren’t abused), hospitals, etc. The Eucharist. Millions of good and holy priests, nuns and laity. I dunno, from where I sit the fruit looks just fine. We got some bad fruit that will be pruned but that doesn’t mean all the good should be ignored.

The passage refers to teachers individually, not the Church as a whole:
“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but underneath are ravenous wolves. By their fruits you will know them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? Just so, every good tree bears good fruit, and a rotten tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a rotten tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. So by their fruits you will know them.
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? Did we not drive out demons in your name? Did we not do mighty deeds in your name?’ Then I will declare to them solemnly, ‘I never knew you. Depart from me, you evildoers.’
Matt. 7:15-23

That is not to say we should judge anyone in the eternal sense, but just to know that while good people will make mistakes there is a limit. Those who stand by grave offenses instead of doing their best to protect the innocent have to be taken out of positions of trust, no matter how many other seemingly wonderful things they do. There aren’t enough virtuous deeds to keep someone in the clergy when he has shown he could violate a child.

 

[somecanadian]

I agree with that. My point is the Church itself has good fruit. Individuals WITHIN the Church are not guaranteed to. We must judge each individual on their own.

I do believe the poster was trying to insinuate the Church isn’t the TRUE Church because of this scandal.

 

[13pollitos]

Not sure if you are referencing me or not, but I do believe that Catholicism is the fullness of truth. It is the insitition I am no longer sure about. Praying and fasting and hoping God will provide a clear path for action soon.

 

[JanetF]

I’m so sorry that you feel this way! We all struggle with this tragedy. One thing that I keep telling people: I’m not catholic because of the priests (or the hierarchy)…I’m Catholic because of the Eucharist. So while I respect your decision, I do hope you will give it more thought.

 

[glencor63]

I read with great sorrow about the victims of sexual abuse by some clergy in the Roman Catholic Church. I pray for the souls of the victims and perpetrators. There have been many heartening comments regarding the root cause of the abuse. One thing that disturbs or rather that I don’t understand is why the reluctance to call the abusers pedophiles? True, some of the abuse is homosexual in nature, but much of what I read is clearly the actions of pedophiles. Why are so many Catholics reluctant to acknowledge that pedophiles have used the priesthood, perhaps for centuries as a cover to abuse children? Why does it seem that defining the scandal as a homosexual scandal is more palatable to many Catholics? Homosexuality and pedophilia are separate issues. Not all homosexuals are pedophiles, but most pedophiles will abuse if given an opportunity. An aside: I am a convert of nearly two decades that has come to regret my conversion. In hindsight, it may have been a grave mistake. Peace.

 

[RosalieM]

I have to try and abandon this item. It’s effect is too daunting. I read somewhere that if you’re confronted by the enemy you shouldn’t try to fight him yourself and that you should ask for Jesus’ help. Every time a dark thought comes because of this I will say “My Jesus I trust in You.”