Mortal Sins: Sex, Crime, and the Era of Catholic Scandal

by D'Antonio, Michael

  The deposition experience convinced Doyle that no matter how gently Bernardin ministered to the victims of abusive priests, officials of the archdiocese would fight every attempt to hold the Church accountable and to protect its assets.

  At the hotel in Arlington, the men who knew best how the clergy thought and acted were among the least optimistic. After describing his own failed effort to help the bishops, Doyle said he was skeptical about the hierarchy’s ability to even recognize the scope of the problem they faced, let alone deal with it effectively. Andrew Greeley, the only man who appeared in clerical black, sounded more like Richard Sipe’s ally than his critic. (The two men greeted each other cordially and no mention was made of Greeley’s earlier attacks on Sipe’s work.) Greeley spoke of “the sexually maladjusted priest who has been able to abuse the children of the laity and thus far be reasonably secure from punishment. There is no power of church or state that is willing to force priests to be accountable for their behavior.” Priests inhabit an “immune class,” he said, which is protected from “sanctions of both church and state” by the “rules of the club.” (A few months later Greeley would back up his words with a study estimating that the Church was spending $50 million per year on the sex abuse scandal and that as many as 100,000 American Catholics had been abused by priests when they were young.)

  Greeley and Doyle represented the outraged but loyal priests who remained inside the clerical culture hoping to change it. It would be left to Richard Sipe, former priest, to suggest something more radical might be required. Not quite ready to abandon the Church, he nevertheless raised the notion that Catholics who spoke out against abuse stood at the beginning of a process that might lead to profound changes in the Church. He did this with the first words he spoke, which referenced the place where Martin Luther spoke out against corruption. At this gathering where scattered advocates and agitators first came together as a true movement, Sipe smiled and opened his arms and said, “Welcome to Wittenberg.”

  Perhaps the best-informed expert in the field, Sipe said that the Church was run by clerics who inhabited a world “in which men are revered and powerful and boys are treasured as the future of the Church.” However, as celibates deprived of intimate relationships, many of these men never leave “a preadolescent stage of psychosexual development,” said Sipe. Those who would abuse minors could not be screened out because they evolve into this behavior as “products of the system.” The same system was unable to acknowledge the problem raised by victims of abuse because any effective response would include a reconsideration of basic assumptions about gender, sex, and the credibility of the Catholic Church.

  The paralyzing power of the Church’s dilemma was made clear to Sipe when he attended a conference at the Vatican where he heard dozens of expert opinions of celibacy. The official Church position was argued by a cardinal named James Francis Stafford who said that married men could not function as priests because in conducting Mass they would commit adultery against their wives. In this paradigm, the celebration of Mass became a spiritual/sexual event shared by the priests and the Church, which becomes his symbolic sexual partner. Sipe saw danger in this type of talk, which made him wonder if certain clergy weren’t doing more harm to themselves than was being done by outsiders. The wider society was already reconsidering the status of the Church in law, the moral authority of its bishops, and the trust enjoyed by priests. This process, enabled by the mass media, would continue as lawyers used the courts to pry evidence out of Church archives and victims organized to share what they knew and discover additional routes into the clerical culture. In time, said Sipe, “When the whole story of sexual abuse by presumed celibate clergy is told, it will lead to the highest corridors of Vatican City.”

  Slow moving and defensive, the Church was not organized to respond to the hundreds of scandals that threatened to explode like so many wildfires across the Catholic landscape. As someone who still valued the institution, Sipe hoped for a brave change in thinking—perhaps one dictated from the top—that would begin a new, modern era of equality and respect among believers. If this happened, outspoken victims of abuse could actually “save the Church and its priesthood from destruction.” Otherwise, said Sipe, the Church faced a fate similar to that of the steamship Titanic, which was grand and indestructible until the moment it wasn’t.

  13. THE MEANING OF MEMORY

  With hands and feet numbed by wind-driven sleet, Barbara Blaine walked the sidewalk in her mother’s green wool coat, which she had borrowed as she passed through Toledo on her way from Chicago to Washington, D.C. Although the inked letters were dissolving, the people in passing cars could still make out the message—“Child Rape is a Cardinal Sin”—on the placard she held in her hands. Nearby, another victim of clergy abuse held a sign that announced, “Priests Are Not Above the Law.” In time these slogans would be staples at demonstrations mounted by the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, but in November 1992 they were new and disturbing to read.

  The picketers at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C., wanted to be heard by the bishops of the Catholic Church in America, who had gathered there for one of their semiannual meetings. In general, the demonstrators still hoped that the Church was a holy institution that would hear them and change its ways. Based on her experience with the Oblates, Blaine was wary of the hierarchy, but she believed that the high-ranking men of the Church were misinformed and perhaps ill-served by lawyers and underlings. She hoped that victims of abuse could educate them and that this education would change the way they responded to cases.

  Others had come to the meeting of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops with similar intentions. Members of the Women’s Ordination Conference wanted to be heard before the bishops approved a pastoral letter outlining their stand on the status of women. Gays and lesbians, who sought the same sort of rights and respect accorded by the Church to heterosexuals, also hoped to get a hearing. They arrived with a petition signed by Catholics opposed to the Vatican’s position on gay rights. It bore 12,000 names.

  A few bishops and cardinals seemed receptive to these causes. Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago had issued a statement affirming “the fundamental human and civil rights of persons who are gay or lesbian.” In the same paper he had said that while he could not “endorse” homosexual activity he recognized “the inviolable dignity of a gay or lesbian person and the goodness to their stable, loving, and caring relationships.”

  Slightly built and ever-smiling Bernardin represented for many a more flexible Catholicism suited to the times. Along with bishops Rembert Weakland of Milwaukee, Thomas Gumbleton of Detroit, and Philip Francis Murphy of Baltimore he was one of a handful of hierarchs who seemed open to a conversation about the way the Church approached sex and gender. Murphy had recently published an article favoring ordination of women. In it he recalled visiting a Catholic school classroom where he asked children how many sacraments were offered by the Church. A little girl answered “seven for men and six for women” because females were denied ordination. Murphy wrote that the child’s answer was correct, but the practice was wrong because “justice demands” equal treatment.

  Although men like Murphy and Bernardin gave her hope, Blaine understood that compared with the national community of Catholic women, and the gays and lesbians who numbered in the millions, a small, less-than-organized band of sexual abuse victims seemed unlikely to move the bishops to act. As the conference began, the bishops signaled they would not meet with the sidewalk picketers. Then, on the first afternoon of their meeting, they changed their minds and sent an invitation. They wanted to hear what the demonstrators had to say. Immediately.

  On the sidewalk about a dozen of the men and women near Blaine suddenly dropped their signs and began to scurry across the lawn toward the hotel entrance. A few even ran to reach the brass-trimmed doors, which opened to let them into the lobby. Struck by how eager, and even giddy her fellow picketers had become, Blaine realized they were still deeply a
ffected by the status of the powerful men inside the hotel. A moment before, they were determined to shame the bishops. Now they wanted nothing more than to be welcomed into their presence.

  Inside the hotel men in black stood in small groups or moved from one meeting room to another. Some held folders filled with papers under their arms. A few sipped coffee from cardboard cups. The picketers were directed to a small meeting room where eight were permitted to meet with Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles and two bishops, Alexander Quinn of Cleveland and Harry Flynn of Lafayette, Louisiana. (Jason Berry, who dealt with Flynn when he was transferred to Lafayette after the Gauthe scandal, would recall him as comparatively open-minded.)

  Barbara Blaine found it strange that the bishops welcomed TV news crews to film the meeting, which took place in a small conference room. Mahony held his hands together, as if in prayer, and tilted his head as he listened to several of the men and women describe their experiences. Hovering behind the speakers, sound technicians hoisted up microphones attached to long poles and struggled to position them to pick up the conversation.

  Many of the survivors who spoke shed tears. Others asked for the bishops to worry less about defending the institutional Church and more about Catholics who had been abused. In one of the few sharp exchanges, Blaine asked Mahony about a woman named Rita Milla, who had been sexually violated by seven Los Angeles priests. As she spoke, Blaine felt her hands and feet, which had been chilled by freezing rain, tingle and ache as they thawed in the warmth of the meeting room. She also felt a familiar sense of outrage over what had happened to Milla, who was a teenager when one of these priests made her pregnant. Fr. Santiago Tamayo sent her to his family in the Philippines. The diocese then urged Tamayo to flee the country, and paid him while he stayed abroad for four years.

  In Los Angeles, Mahony had acknowledged the facts of the Milla case but had said any apologies should come from “the people who did the actions.” In Washington the cardinal wouldn’t answer Blaine directly, but he did shift on the matter of apologies. At four different points he offered some form of regret and sorrow. Around him many heads nodded in response but one of the victims did express some skepticism. Ed Morris, who said he had been raped at age fourteen said, “As my abuser used to tell me: ‘The road to hell is paved with good intentions.’”

  After the forty-minute session, Mahony reported to his fellow bishops that the meeting “was one of the most moving experiences I have ever had in my seventeen years as a bishop.” He urged them to “show loving concern and healing” for the victims of abuse, and to refrain from “legalistic protecting of erring priests.” He noted that he had apologized several times on behalf of the Church, and he recommended that every bishop pay closer attention to the concerns of those he described as “victims of priestly misconduct.” He added, “You and I know many victims of sexual misconduct across the land. People are looking for accountability. We have much to learn from those who are hurting and aggrieved.”

  The victims who met with Mahony responded gratefully. Frank Fitzpatrick, the private investigator who had tracked down James Porter, told reporters, “We achieved all that we could with this meeting. In a perfect world we would have sat down with all the bishops but we sat down with three and that’s a start.”

  Barbara Blaine was not so generous in her private assessment. To her ear, Mahony’s sentiment was a lukewarm response expressed in the kind of obtuse language that minimized the damage done by abusive priests. The people he had met were raped as children by trusted men of God. Some had wept as they spoke. To observe that they were victims of “erring priests” or “priestly misconduct” seemed strangely cold. Mahony had listened, but not with his heart, thought Blaine. Nothing else could explain why he showed no anger toward the perpetrators and expressed no urgency about how bishops should respond. He had not promised any action or committed to further meetings with victims. However, he had succeeded in seizing the high ground before the national press.

  On the same day as Mahony’s meeting with the picketers, other church officials had held a similar impromptu conference at the hotel with gay and lesbian activists. The next morning the two events were reported together in major newspapers across the country. It was a public relations coup for the bishops, who managed to squeeze two difficult issues together and made their openness the most remarkable aspect of the story. Two days later, as they closed their conference, the assembled men of God pledged to reevaluate their polices on sexual abuse and agreed that the Church should offer:

  • Prompt response to accusations

  • Swift suspension of an offender if the evidence warrants and referral for medical treatment

  • Full reporting to the civil authorities and cooperation with investigators

  • Emotional and spiritual support for victims and families

  • Forthright public explanations within the limits of individuals’ privacy

  Policy reviews had been promised in the past and the five guidelines were no different from the principles voiced by top leaders in the years since the crisis began. Moreover, as outgoing conference president Daniel E. Pilarczyk of Cincinnati noted, such resolutions and recommendations were not binding on any individual bishop. As a national group, the bishops’ conference was not responsible for anything done by a diocese or order. Similarly, the Pope and other Vatican officials could distance themselves from responsibility for the actions of individual clergy and local Catholic organizations. Vatican officials might hold the power to defrock a priest, but they could deny all civil legal responsibility for them, even when they acted as representatives of the faith and its institutions.

  Anyone who tried to figure out where the ultimate decisions were made in the Catholic Church would not find easy answers. On matters of faith and morals, individual believers were encouraged to think for themselves and the Pope often sought advice from gatherings of bishops. However, the final word on religious matters resided always in Rome and this was especially true whenever John Paul II issued teaching documents, called encyclicals, which were then wielded to discipline theologians and others. Thinkers who were too independent could be stripped of their status as clerics or teachers and even excommunicated.

  As he observed the way the Church worked, Jeffrey Anderson began to conclude that in fact all important decisions were made at the Vatican and anyone who said this wasn’t true had to ignore that the Church was a monarchy with the Pope its ruler, requiring absolute obedience and secrecy. This belief was based on his review of thousands of documents and dozens of depositions by Church officials, including bishops and cardinals.

  When it came to operating in the larger society, especially in civil legal systems, the Vatican claimed diplomatic immunity as a sovereign nation while local Church authorities sought to protect themselves from liability by a variety of means. Within their dioceses bishops often oversaw dozens of different corporations, which allowed them to protect various assets so they couldn’t be sought in payment of a court judgment. When it was useful, they described priests as independent agents, only nominally under their control. And wherever the law provided special status for religious activities—as the United States Constitution does—they would claim they were acting as a matter of faith.

  Under these conditions, the Pope and the American bishops could seek to avoid liability when individuals filed lawsuits but command respect and attention as religious authorities. In the 1980s and 1990s John Paul II used this status, and his enormous talents as a public person, to attract the kind of welcome associated with conquering heroes. The American bishops accomplished the same thing, on a smaller scale, when they sent a delegation to meet with abuse victims and invited the press to attend. Calm, kindly, and authoritative in their immaculate black suits, Mahony, Quinn, and Flynn seemed like very important men who had been generous with their time and attention.

  As Barbara Blaine considered what happened at the Omni Shoreham she concluded that people who literally ran to meet with a few high
er Church officials weren’t likely to carry the fight for change in the Church. What seemed to them like a victory had actually been a setback. Blaine found agreement with her friend David Clohessy, who had come to Washington from Missouri to get soaked on the sidewalk.

  Clohessy had experienced memories of being abused by a priest named John Whiteley after watching the film Nuts, in which Barbra Streisand plays a character who was sexually abused. For years Clohessy had managed to wall off memories of Whiteley in his mind. Common to people who experience trauma, this coping mechanism is typically an unintentional process and it doesn’t save a victim from the aftereffects of abuse, including depression and problems relating to others. Prompted by the film, Clohessy reconsidered what had happened to him and the harm it had caused and took legal action.

  A public relations expert and political activist, Clohessy had been represented by Jeff Anderson in a suit he filed against the Diocese of Jefferson City, Missouri. The claim depended on a new state law, enacted in 1990, that allowed adults to sue for childhood abuse within three years of the time when they realized they had been harmed. A few weeks before Clohessy went to picket in Washington, the judge hearing his complaint threw it out, declaring the law was unconstitutional because it was retroactive. Clohessy’s appeal to the state supreme court would fail; however, over time he would become one of a handful of national leaders in the victims movement.

  In the early days of SNAP, before the World Wide Web made keeping current easier, Clohessy sent out regular packets of articles about clergy abuse, which he gleaned from newspapers and magazines and then copied at his own expense. Like a pre-Google news alert system, the packets informed Blaine, Jeff Anderson, Jason Berry, and others of developments in cases all over the country. With this information, supplemented with telephone calls, faxes, and occasional gatherings, they could look for patterns in the way bishops and their attorneys responded to claims.