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

by D'Antonio, Michael

  With enough money from them, Hamilton promised, she could examine these phenomena and “add significant cover for you and your fellow bishops who even today do not call the police when you learn of abuse by your employees.”

  On the other side of the debate, William Donohue felt comfortable with the way the report blamed liberal social trends, but complained that the numbers pointed to homosexuality as a cause of the crisis although the authors refused to acknowledge it. “The attempt to skirt the obvious,” he said, “is not only disingenuous, it is bad social science.”

  Although nearly all the research on the topic showing no connection between homosexuality and abuse, Donohue stood comfortably alone in his position. However, he was disturbed by the way the world seemed to be moving when it came to homosexuality. As gay marriage became legal in more countries and across the United States, Donohue acknowledged “the battle over homosexuality has been lost. Young people just don’t see anything wrong with it.” But while the Church held no appeal for millions of children from Catholic families, he noted that its orthodoxy drew a strong commitment from a devoted few. Perhaps the Church was becoming the remnant that Joseph Ratzinger imagined during the 1960s, he said. “And if you don’t like what you find there, you can become a Protestant.”

  In America, elements of the Church did begin to behave like an endangered sect, lurching away from the mainstream by reviving old objections to making contraception readily available and adopting a newly aggressive attitude toward sexual abuse claimants. The former cardinal of New York, Timothy Egan, publicly withdrew an apology he had made to victims ten years earlier. “I never should have said that,” and added, “I don’t think we did anything wrong.” Egan also denied that any priests had ever sexually assaulted a child in his former diocese of Bridgeport, Connecticut, where, in fact, as many as ninety people had come forward with claims of sexual abuse by priests.

  Although Egan’s comments prompted outrage among abuse victims, they were more disturbed by the aggressive conduct of Church lawyers in Missouri who targeted SNAP and its leaders with subpoenas. The attorneys, who represented priests accused of sexual attacks, demanded SNAP turn over documents accumulated over twenty-three years and provide testimony that could reveal the identities of rape victims and the content of conversations with journalists around the world. The officers of SNAP resisted the request, insisting it went beyond any reasonable definition of the proper discovery process in a civil suit. Five lawyers questioned David Clohessy during a six-hour deposition in which they focused primarily on SNAP’s finances, activities, and network of contacts. Noting that SNAP was not involved in any of the cases the Church lawyers were defending, Clohessy refused to answer many questions and his organization resisted turning over documents.

  When they targeted the abuse survivors group, the Church’s lawyers forced SNAP to incur legal costs that quickly threatened its solvency. After The New York Times and St. Louis Post-Dispatch published editorials criticizing this tactic, public donations to the organization surged, and several prominent attorneys agreed to volunteer their services. On the other side of the conflict, Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York took to the Internet to call attention to advocate Bill Donohue’s criticism of SNAP and Clohessy, whom he suggested had become a “con man driven by revenge.” In directing readers to Donohue, Dolan put them in touch with the main get-tough voice for the Church, an activist whose inflammatory rhetoric included calling advocates for victims “rapacious” and repeatedly called on bishops to play legal “hardball.” Donohue still believed the Church faced a war with moral enemies, although at times he was able to see they believed they were guided by certain higher principles. Considering Jeffrey Anderson in 2011, Donohue said he knew he was not in it “just for the money.”

  Indeed, Anderson continued to intensify his pursuit of the Church on abuse claims because he believed his clients were worthy and that Catholicism as represented by the hierarchy was hopelessly corrupt. Fully American in his view of human nature, he saw in the Church a system devoid of the checks and balances that would prevent abuses. As long as the men who ran the Church believed they possessed the exclusive power to discern right and wrong, Anderson believed his work would continue. Toward that end, he planned for successors to maintain his firm and its mission after his death.

  Michael Finnegan, Anderson’s young associate, seemed positioned to lead the campaign in the future and he was deeply involved in a 2012 jury trial that ended with the Church threatened by a new wave of abuse claims. Finnegan and Anderson argued that bishops in the diocese of Green Bay, Wisconsin, had defrauded the public when they allowed a priest who was plagued by complaints of sexual improprieties with children to continue in ministry and eventually assault two boys. Todd and Troy Merryfield had been unable to sue for damages because a state statute of limitations said too much time had passed between the moment when they knew they had been harmed and their decision to go to court. Noting that fraud stops the statute clock from ticking, Anderson and Finnegan got into court on a fraud claim.

  In the records presented to the court, Fr. John Patrick Feeney’s superiors didn’t use the kind of smoking gun language that would scream “we knowingly loosed a criminal on the community.” Instead his bishop seemed exasperated, scrawling, “Father Feeney Please!” at the top of one letter of complaint and writing, “If I hear any more about the swimming in the nude and encouraging boys to do it I’ll suspend you.”

  In court, Anderson argued that as the evidence of Feeney’s criminal sexual compulsions accrued, the bishop neglected the danger he posed. And it was this neglect of duty, juxtaposed with the bishop’s role as pastor to the Catholic people of Green Bay, Anderson contended, that met the legal definition of fraud. In his closing argument Anderson said, “They knew he had sexually molested and they knew he posed a danger and a risk to children and thus they deceived the Merryfields and the community.” The jurors agreed, finding in the Merryfields’ favor and awarding them $700,000. Approximately six weeks later, however, the judge granted a new trial to the diocese of Green Bay on the ground that a juror was biased.

  The Appleton case was followed closely by the community of lawyers dealing with claims of clergy abuse. But by 2012 such claims against priests had become so routine that they rarely became national news. In California, John Manly and Vincent Finaldi conducted a ten-week trial on behalf of an airline pilot named Travis Trotter, who said Fr. Kelly abused him when he was an altar boy. Well connected to local business people, government officials, and even judges, Kelly appeared in the courtroom with dozens of supporters who sat stony-faced to show their commitment. Officials of the diocese of Stockton announced their conviction that Kelly was innocent and, in a move consistent with the more assertive strategy urged by William Donohue, paid a team of experienced attorneys to represent him and the diocese.

  The support for Kelly held until the first phase of the trial ended with the jury finding him liable. At that moment Kelly suddenly fled to Ireland. In the next part of the trial, which would determine the financial responsibilities of the diocese, Manly and Finaldi presented evidence that, in their view, showed that Bishop Stephen Blaire knew of complaints about Kelly before he abused their client. With Blaire and retired Cardinal Roger Mahony about to testify, the diocese offered Trotter $3.75 million to settle his claim. He accepted. Bishop Blaire and Cardinal Mahony were spared from testifying.

  In Mahony’s case, the Stockton settlement kept him out of the press and in the quiet of his retirement. However, his long-running association with the sexual abuse crisis was not over. In Los Angeles he remained a central figure in an ongoing struggle over documents related to abuse cases. Manly said that he thought the leaders of the Church in Los Angeles were trying to wear down his clients, hoping they would simply stop asking for the papers that Mahony had agreed to release. A spokesman for the archdiocese, Tod Tamberg, said, “We agreed to a process to release the documents. We didn’t just agree to dump them out the window.” />
  Technically speaking, the lawyers who fought disclosure of the documents complied with the text of the settlement agreement, even if they thwarted its spirit. In this legalism, they followed the example of Vatican authorities, who often stressed the letter of Church law as if they were prosecutors and not pastors.

  On the day when Fr. Kelly fled America to escape the consequences of his sexual abuse of a child, William Levada’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith moved to discipline and publicly humiliate an organization that represented 80 percent of America’s Catholic nuns. As three bishops were named to police the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, the Vatican declared that the nuns had promoted “radical feminist” ideas such as the ordination of women. Rome also scolded the sisters for taking positions that “disagree with or challenge the bishops, who are the Church’s authentic teachers of faith and morals.”

  Anyone who followed Church affairs knew that the male hierarchy wanted nuns to talk more about the evils of abortion, contraception, and sex outside marriage and less about the claims to equality pressed by gays and women. This was an old problem for the men who ran the Church. For decades religious women had focused more on direct service to the young, the sick, the old, and the poor while sometimes critiquing the prerogatives assumed by ordained men. A layperson consulting a sister with questions of sexual morality would be more likely to hear a nun say “follow your conscience” than “follow the Pope.”

  Reaction to the Vatican’s move against the nuns was swift and almost entirely negative. (An exception was the Catholic League, which complained, “Church Bashers Rally for Nuns.”) Tens of thousands of laypeople signed petitions protesting the notice from Levada’s office and sent nuns donations to indicate their support. Public statements, by Catholic and non-Catholic commentators, ran heavily against the churchmen, with most observers noting that the sisters did most of the gritty, dangerous, and thankless work of the Church and represented the essence of Christian love. In more than fifty cities laypeople took to the street to protest the Vatican’s action.

  Seemingly inspired by the support they received from ordinary Catholics, the nuns did not back down. On June 1, 2012, they issued their response, which noted that Rome had acted upon “unsubstantiated accusations” and relied on “a flawed process that lacked transparency.” They accused the men who run the Church of causing “greater polarization” and announced that they would take the debate to the hierarchy in the Vatican. “Following the discussions in Rome, the conference will gather its members both in regional meetings and in its August assembly to determine its response to the CDF report.”

  Ultimately the conflict over the loyalty of American nuns, who sought to serve the larger society, would depend on the same factor that governed the way the institutional Church had managed the sexual abuse crisis: Pope Benedict XVI’s view of the world outside the Church. Despite the passing of communism, the flowering of democracy, and continually rising levels of well-being, he saw the West as a failing civilization drenched in error and in need of his authority and leadership. As evidence he cited the West’s low birthrate (due to contraception and abortion) and what he considered to be the absence of morality in industrialized societies on both sides of the Atlantic.

  Social science experts would reach opposite conclusions, finding a steady increase in the physical and mental health of people in America and across the European continent. For children the picture was even brighter. Awareness and advocacy had led to a gradual decline in child abuse and neglect while the spread of information about psychology improved the ways all types of caregivers—parents, day care workers, teachers and others—treated children. Eventually researchers at Cambridge University would consolidate the data and report that the West exceeded other regions in nine out of ten measures of well-being. They found that people with the highest levels of peace and contentment—the Scandinavians—were also the least religious on Earth.

  In America, despite periodic spikes in media attention for conservative Churches, religious institutions have been losing support for decades. Between 1957 and 2007 the number of people claiming no religious affiliation rose from 3 percent to 17 percent. In the same time, the number of people attending church each week dropped to an estimated 25 percent, and those saying they never go to church almost doubled to 22 percent. Belief in the Bible as the inerrant and literal truth declined by about a third in the last three decades.

  When American Catholics were considered apart from other Christians, similar data emerged. Between 1987 and 2011 weekly attendance at Mass declined from 44 percent to 31 percent. The number of Catholics who said they went to church less than once per month rose from 26 percent to 47 percent. During this same time, respect for the Pope’s authority and the authority of bishops and priests dropped lower and lower. By 2011, a solid majority of American Catholics believed that individuals, and not the Church, should have final say on sexual morality. And like other actively religious Americans, Catholics expressed greater tolerance for others. Today, a solid majority say that religions other than their own can offer a true path to God and half would actually vote for an atheist politician.

  Altogether, the best data show a slow, steady decline in traditional religious beliefs and practices even as Americans continue to describe themselves as generally “spiritual.” This trend is matched by long-term studies showing inexorable increases in well-being—as measured by health, access to education, and economic conditions—for Americans in every demographic group. (Well-being is highest in the Northeast, the region where formal religion is weakest. It is lowest in the South, where religiosity is strongest.) These were the fruits of the society judged by Vatican officials to be so much in need of prayer to save its soul.

  * * *

  As the leaders of the Church who have failed in their response to a crisis of child abuse within their ranks deliver lectures on morality, the dissonance announces a tragedy in three parts. The first element of this tragedy can be seen in the eyes of those who have been sexually violated by Catholic priests, bishops, and nuns. No matter what point an individual may have reached in his pursuit of recovery, he or she will forever live with betrayal experienced in childhood and will grieve over many types of loss. The time, relationships, faith, and community stolen from them cannot be restored.

  The second aspect of the great Catholic tragedy can be seen in the Church itself. The hierarchy’s defensive response to the crisis has demoralized and divided the Catholic community. This process has emptied churches, forced the closing of schools, and required once vibrant independent parishes to merge with their neighbors. It has also handicapped those who do the good work of the Church, especially those who are priests and nuns. When they go into the world they are associated, in the public mind, with a level of disgrace that makes it all the harder for them to serve.

  Finally comes the tragedy suffered by the larger society the Church hopes to save. Historically, Catholicism and the rest of Christianity have made more vital contributions to humanity than can be counted. Much of the morality, conscience, and selfless social perspective felt and practiced by people in all walks of life can be traced to the Church. Entire traditions of service, charity, community, and sacrifice were born in the faith and they were being lost as the institution met its current crisis with angry inflexibility. In failing to grow out of its monarchical structure and into a more humane perspective, the Church impoverishes the world as well as itself. In its crisis, the Church could have seized the opportunity to make itself more relevant and real in service to all. Instead it has turned inward.

  In the meantime, the Church in America will inevitably face new civil claims based on fraud, which will drain it of resources and credibility. SNAP and similar organizations are becoming active in parts of Asia, Africa, and Latin America where clerical abuse has not been addressed, and human rights lawyers promise a continuing effort to hold the Vatican accountable in international courts. Plagued by their own intrigues—Pope Benedic
t XVI’s butler was arrested in 2012 after embarrassing private letters were leaked to the press—Church officials in Rome showed no evidence that they were capable of ending the era of scandal.

  POSTSCRIPT

  With sad predictability, the scandal-without-end that first afflicted the Catholic Church in the Gilbert Gauthe case of 1983 actually reached another low point in early 2013, as this book neared publication.

  On January 31, the archdiocese of Los Angeles made public more than 12,000 pages of documents related to priest sex abuse cases, including files that showed Cardinal Roger Mahony’s direct involvement in efforts to shield priest child abusers from prosecution. The papers showed that despite his many claims to the contrary, in depositions and other settings, the cardinal had been deeply involved in the archdiocese’s response to claims against priests.

  “Sounds good —please proceed!” wrote Mahony, in script, on one note suggesting that a psychiatrist who was also a lawyer treat a sexual predator because attorney-client privilege would preclude the doctor from making a report to police. In another document Mahony directed that Father Peter Garcia, who admitted raping Mexican-American children, remain out of state because “we might very well have some type of legal action filed in both the criminal and civil sectors.”

  Mahony, who had retired in 2011 but remained active in Church affairs, was in Rome at the time of the documents’ release. His successor, Archbishop José Gomez, announced that Mahony would be relieved of his duties and that Santa Barbara bishop William Curry, vicar general under the old regime, would step down from his post. “I find these files to be brutal and painful reading,” said Gomez. “The behavior described in these files is terribly sad and evil.” Mahony bristled defensively, offering reporters copies of a letter to Gomez in which he wrote, “… when I retired as the active Archbishop, I handed over to you an archdiocese that was second to none in protecting children and youth.”