Detroit weekend of lectures, emotions neglects sex abuse crisis

"The single phenomenon that has forced into the open the tragic and often toxic flaws of the institutional Church has been the worldwide rape and molestation of the vulnerable by Catholic clerics, and the inadequate and often destructive response of the bishops in the U.S. and around the world. This nightmare is not over and won’t be over as long as the institutional church places maximum value on image and power and minimal, very minimal, value on justice and healing for the victims of their own clergy."

Well said, Fr. Tom. Latin Masses and silk capes will not solve the church's numerous problems. Still, I believe you are a little too hard on the ACC. No thinking person believes this problem is over, no matter how often the bishops tell us otherwise. Attendance at the conference itself exceeded expectations. I agree that there should have been a greater emphasis on this issue. Nonetheless, I do not believe the inadequate preparation for the breakout is comparable to the bishops war on the victims of sex abuse by priests.

DUELING ICONOGRAPHY:
http://americancatholiccouncil.org/files/2011/06/Program_new.pdf
VS.
http://www.calltoholiness.com/

Choose your side...the ARTWORK pretty much sums it up.

Memo to VatiCAN'T:
And you really think a return to the LATIN MASS coupled with the new translation are gonna bridge this gap?
Surely, you jest!

Conferences come and go, the success or not will not be judged by the numbers that attended either conference, but rather the fruits they develop. What these two respective conferences have highlighted is the division in the Catholic Church in the United States.

I don't know that name calling is the best form of communication. It might sound trite to ask this question, but what happened to "Charity in All Things?"

The two conferences falling on Pentecost Sunday missed an opportunity, in my opinion. You may ask what that opportunity, and I would respond common ground. We know what we disagree about, but what do we really agree with.

Let's pray one day we will all be able to genuinely recognize each other as brothers and sisters in Christ.

Joe Murray

I feel sorry for this man. He's so caught up in the crisis that he can't see anything else. The ACC was not called to address the sex abuse crisis, but they did not treat it as "tangential." When no one can satisfy your expectations, you're making it all about yourself, not the church, and certainly not the children.

Conferences come and go, the success or not will not be judged by the numbers that attended either conference, but rather the fruits they develop. What these two respective conferences have highlighted is the division in the Catholic Church in the United States.

I don't know that name calling is the best form of communication. It might sound trite to ask this question, but what happened to "Charity in All Things?"

The two conferences falling on Pentecost Sunday missed an opportunity, in my opinion. You may ask what that opportunity, and I would respond common ground. We know what we disagree about, but what do we really agree with.

Let's pray one day we will all be able to genuinely recognize each other as brothers and sisters in Christ.

Joe Murray

All those LCWR types who attended the ACC still refuse to meet with their victims or admit any wrong doing. And yet these women have been canonized by the NCR.

Fr. Doyle has been on the vanguard of this of 30 years and this is become what defines him. So he likes neither the general Orthodox Catholic nor the Dissenting Catholic response to the sex abuse issue. Not high enough on their priority list. That seems to be the only thing that matters to him.

Well we all have our priorites. Pope Benedict seems to be somewhat fixed on the genocide and ethnic cleanisng of Christians in the Middle Ease, Africa and parts of Asis. We American Catholics have our own priorities. NCR and many others, including Fr. Doyle seem to think it is the sex abuse issue, court cases, grand juries, etc. Others are fixed on Liturgy and moral theological priorities. And Vatican II "grey heads" have their thing.

I am of the opinion we are living in a time when a vortex is about to be formed like one did circa 1935 and 1860 where good and bad people of similar and differeing associations simply did not want to listen to the opinions of others and they willy nilly got sucked into an epic cataclism that defined the social field for the next 60 years or so.

No mention of 5 wars, of course.

President Obama, he has brought us quiet. No pompous pronouncements from Pax Christi about the victims of war, or calls for impeachement. When a pro-abortion president is in office, the NCR's Peace Advocates all take their vactions. What a hoot.

A courageous, prophetic piece of writing! Thank you very much.

Sexual abuse is primarily an abuse of POWER. I believe it is not driven by sexual impulse, but by a desire to assert power in the face of perceived powerlessness. This is why sexual abuse and its cover-up is rampant in Catholic Church history, where the systemic abuse of power and privilege, where every level of the hierarchy feels powerless and threatened, is the Church's great primal wound.

Thank you Tom Doyle, speaking for thousands and thousands of victims of clergy abuse and cover up of these crimes against kids.

Doyle is talking about the “toxic aspects of today's version of the institutional Church.” While he is reporting on two separate events on the two sides of the spectrum (one of which, as he put is, he ‘obviously did not attend’), I find his assessment and presentation of people and events the most toxic in it all.

His language is confrontational; his characterisation of people and event is prejudiced and partisan. He is not seeking common ground and unity by promoting dialogue. Rather, he is preoccupied with changing of power structures, with promoting what he thinks are the important issues, and with vilifying those not agreeing with him. As a Christian, as a priest and as a canon lawyer he should know better. Yet, he still opts for division, distrust and disrespect.

I completely agree. Today our bishops have no real authority, no real clout among the people. The vast majority of our people do not even listen to them or read them. A minority of faithful Catholics, whether progressive or conservative, hear and use the bishops - if the people agree with them, they may quote them, usually as a weapon to support their own view; if they disagree with them, they will ignore them or openly repudiate them. In no case do they look to them for direction or answers.
What has destroyed the bishops' authority? Their dire failure to handle the clerical abuse crises in a truly just manner; their early, constant and still on-going attempt to cover up the terrible sexual clerical abuse of children;
their actual participation in these crimes by their cover-up: these are the things that have destroyed their moral and teaching authority. The on-going revelations - such as those of Archbishop Weakland's admission under legal deposition in June 2008 that such cover-up was archdiocesan policy, Cardinal George's admission also under legal deposition in August 2008 that he had in 2006 left a chief offender in ministry contrary to the advice of his sexual abuse review board, the files of Bridgeport ordered opened by the state supreme court last December, the Philadelphia grand juries of 2005 and now of 2011, and the present flagrant cover-up of Bishop Finn in Kansas City - have marked our bishops and the USCCB indelibly in the minds of the people as hypocrites. Their refusal, still, to open all their files to public scrutiny by worthy, competent and professional lay persons - to fathers and mothers - drowns out or smothers whatever moral or doctrinal message they may choose to transmit. They stand stripped of the slightest credibility.

I find it interesting that Tom Doyle mentions Bishop Ken Untener and his words to the bishops about their meetings and their agenda. It was after the death of Bishop Untener, and contrary to his specific warnings in 1993, that the bishops began at their yearly meeting to come out with a statement reminding the married faithful that they were in serious sin if they were practicing artificial birth control and that if so practicing, they were not to receive Communion. Each year the USCCB has repeated this "teaching," finding a slightly different wording each time. When the USCCB first came out with that, after Bishop Untener's death, the vast majority of Catholic people turned them off. They lost their credibility then and there. What the clerical sex abuse crises have done is to reveal just how blind, arrogant, and corrupt they really are. As the Lord said to the religious leaders of his day, "Hypocrites. Whitened sepulchres."
I believe that Tom Doyle is right. Our first job as Catholics in alliance is "to speak the truth to one another, honestly, in love," as St. Paul advised. We must speak the truth to our bishops, honestly, in love - "tough love." There is no saving them, I believe, without our doing so.

I think that all sides in the Church would rather not think about the sexual abuse that has occurred and is still occurring in the church. Sexual abuse distracts from the issues which are much easier to think about and less emotionally disturbing, whether it is the ordination of women or the Latin Mass.Sexual abuse victims are like torture victims - people turn away their faces from them because it is too painful to think about what has happened.

Tom, your observations reflect what you, and I, and virtually every other victims' advocate has weathered for the past ten years, particularly those of us with long attachments to the Church:

• An overwhelmingly pervasive level of more or less complicity with the sexual abuse of children and vulnerable adults by priests, religious, and connected laity. It happened right under our noses; either we were in severe denial, or we somehow reasoned it away. That is uncomfortable for those of us who've owned up to it. It is intolerable to the majority, who have not.
• The dramatic irony of these same folks, so progressive on matters of social justice, of theological and of practical reform, being utterly self-absorbed when it comes to dealing with the fact of sexual abuse of others by their peers or their mentors and personal heroes. It is more than they can stand to confront with any degree of candor or honesty.
• The coping mechanism to "move on" and to encourage victims to "forgive," when that mechanism is in its entirety self-serving.
• Personal guilt and culpability...as your colleague Mr. Sipe points out, the degree to which celibacy is observed in the breach inevitably means that there are a lot of priests and religious out there with skeletons in their own closets. This makes it difficult to have a "real" conversation on the matter of inappropriate sexual relationships.
• I vestigial and pervasive clericalism which is tougher to get rid of, because it is the clericalism of those who don't recognize it in themselves. The first person I ever heard utter the word "clericalism" in the pejorative was a (now deceased) Holy Cross priest who was among the most "clericalist" clergy whom I've ever met! Oh, if confronted, he would have denied it. But there you have it. He was also an abuser, to the degree of breaking the Seal of the Confessional to enable abuse of a penitent by another religious.

It is indeed disappointing. Time and time again, I've gone back to individuals who'd I've formerly held in high esteem and found that, when it came to serious conversations about abuses committed by their brother priests or religious, the walls were up and the ramparts manned. They simply cannot look it in the eye.

I can only assume that these are the underlying reasons for the downplaying of the abuse issue at the ACC conference. For too many of the planners, the issue is likely still more uncomfortable than even the nearly-schismatic subjects that they brought to the fore.

"The victims and survivors of the church’s own destructive forces have joined the ranks of the poor for whom there must be a clear preference if the church is to be what it purports to be, the Body of Christ."

Yes, and let's all remember that many of he "victims" have joined the ranks of the well-off at the expense of he poor in the pews.

Fr. Tom Doyle just figured out that the Vatican II crowd really doesn't care about the abuse victims? I've read through numerous reports and have seen that a very good number of the bishops remembered fondly by the ACC crowd not only covered up abuse but were allegedly abusers themselves. The abuse victims really are exploited by the ideological sides in the Church as a means to smear opponents as corrupt, when, in reality, the entire institution is corrupt. NCR aids and abets the farce that Vatican II (or however its fans remember it) is some sort of solution to the abuse crisis. In reality this abuse has been going on for God only knows how long. Fr. Doyle knows this. Of course there are individuals who mistakenly believe that the Tridentine Mass somehow makes all priests holy and, as a result, all this abuse will disappear. No way! But in the present case, it would be interesting for the ACC to confront its own heroes (such as Dearden, Untener, Bernardin, etc.) on how they mishandled and covered up abuse. I imagine that would be quite painful and would blow the lid off the mistaken notion that Vatican II is the answer to all the problems of the Church.

It could be that in a church of 1.2 billion people, there might actually be some OTHER important things happening in the church than talk of sex abuse from 30, 40 and 50 years ago over which the secular press obsesses having covered the story for a decade now ad nauseum.

"The archdiocese sliced and diced all four main speakers without the slightest idea as to what they would say."
- I find your statement funny, as if the speakers actually had anything original to say. Given who they were, I think it is fairly obvious what they would speak about. If you pop the same, worn out cassette tape from the 70s in your tape player, you know exactly what it's going play.

Once again, Tom Doyle has cut to the heart of the matter in so many ways. If we are to re-build the Catholic church, we need to see where we can effect change at it's core, and this stems from the sexual abuse of innocent children and vulnerable adults by priests and religious. Until we see this anawim as the poor in the church, and treat them as Jesus did the anawim of His time, nothing will change. We, the people in the pews, need to be accountable for this horror and hold the hierarchy accountable. If we love the church, we can no longer pretend that either this isn't happening, or it has nothing to do with us. We are part of the Body of Christ - the Church - and until we live as the extension of Jesus's Body, the Catholic church will not survive.

The truth is that the ACC supports all kinds of sexual deviance, homosexuality, and divorce and remarriage to name two, and winks at abortion and pedophilia. The only thing they really care about is the impossible notion of women priests, they will use anyone who comes along to try to achieve this goal.

[My friend Paul Kendrick reminded the ACC and me that the late Bishop Kenneth Untener once said that every meeting should reflect on how their agenda will affect the poor.

The Latin American bishops, before they were decimated by John Paul II, set as a top priority the “preferential option for the poor.”]

May I suggest how this "preferential option for the poor" should reflect on our Catholic Schools.
A “preferential option for the poor” should be maintained in our Catholic
Schools. If we find that we cannot afford to keep our schools open to the
poor, the schools should be closed and the resources used for something else
which can be kept open to the poor. We cannot allow our Church to become a
church primarily for the middle-class and rich while throwing a bone to the
poor. The priority should be given to the poor even if we have to let the
middle-class and rich fend for themselves.
Practically speaking, the Catholic Schools must close and the resources
used for “Confraternity of Christian Doctrine” and other programs which can
be kept open to the poor. Remember, the Church managed without Catholic
Schools for centuries. We can get along without them today. The essential
factor is to cultivate enough Faith to act in the Gospel Tradition, namely,
THE POOR GET PRIORITY. The rich and middle-class are welcome too. But the
poor come first. (William Horan — w.horan@comcast.net.)

For the record: I asked the planning committee of the ACC long before the agenda was set to make sure there was a keynote speaker who could address the greatest scandal in the Church since the Reformation. I volunteered my priest colleague (a VOTF priest of integrity) and I (not a VOTF priest of integrity), who established a non-profit charity to help survivors of clergy sexual abuse, to lead a discussion or workshop or even a keynote about the work we have done since 2002 with victims and those who have abused them. I was informed that not only were we not needed for a keynote, we were not even invited to conduct a breakout session. That wasn't bad enough: I was told that my charity was not as "important" as the survivor group that was invited to conduct a workshop. How was that for a "how-do-you-do?"

Of course the sexual abuse victims only got a "passing nod" at this conference. Another article listed six principal speakers, four of whom are male. Each male is either a priest or a former priest. These speakers are or were part of a culture that places the clergy on a pedestal, and still continues to hide all its secrets about concealing known sexual abusers. Concern for the victims of their brother priests just does not exist.

If the ACC is really interested in reforming the Church, it should ask itself why it looks to the ordained for leadership and inspiration.

I was at the ACC and attended the breakout session on sexual abuse. My recollection is that all of the guest speakers alluded to the abuse crisis and coverup. The main thrust of the ACC was repeated emphasis on the dire need for structural reform as the only remedy that can end the coverup and continued abuse. I do wish that Tom Doyle had been one of the keynote speakers. Nevertheless, the ACC was prophetic and inspiring, and all the people I spoke with "get it" about the abuse crisis being the number one symptom of the abuse of authority and power in the Cathoic Church.

I was at the ACC and the breakout session on sexual abuse. Although I wish Tom Doyle had been one of the keynote speakers, I heard all the speakers allude to the abuse crisis including the coverup as the number one symptom of the abuse of authority by Cathlic leaders. Also, all the people there with whom I spoke "got it" about the gravity and centrality of the abuse crisis. The ACC focused on structural reform as being the essential solution to the abuse crisis. The ACC was a prophetic event, a reminder to me that the Holy Spirit is alive and well. I think Tom Doyle's criticism has validity to the extent that neither he nor someone of his credibility on the abuse issue were keynote speakers.

Tom Doyle cuts to the heart of the matter with this assertion: "Their right (the rights of the hundreds of thousands of abuse victims) to justice and spiritual healing is fundamental. It cuts to the very core of what the church is supposed to be about."

Not sure how anyone in today's Church could argue with his point about this right cutting to "the very core of what the church is supposed to be about"--i.e., the right to justice and healing. But what is the "justice" expected from the Church? How is the term "justice" specifically being used? Is it the "justice" that comes with the monetary settlement of claims from survivors either before or after their day in court, or is there more to it? Doyle and others throw the word "justice" around as if everyone understands what is being said. Not sure that is the case.

Father Daniel Groody, CSC (pp.26, 27, Globalization, Spirituality, and Justice) makes my point much better than I possibly could: "Today…the word 'justice' is so commonplace…that it has come to mean everything and nothing. For some, it conjures up images of picket lines and angry protestors. For other, the word 'justice' evokes the image of a blind-folded woman holding scales in one hand and a sword of retribution in the other. For still other, it evokes wronged victims having their day in court. Common to all these images of justice is some notion of vengeance or revenge. Whatever the debatable merits of these connotations, justice from a Christian perspective has an entirely different meaning… God’s justice…is not principally about vengeance or retribution but about restoring people to right relationship with God, themselves, others, and the environment."

It seems to me that if we are talking about "biblical justice," then "healing" is clearly a major component of it. If we primarily talking about a monetary settlement when speaking of justice for survivors, then the best place to start is with our legal system, for that is probably the only place that this kind of justice will be attained. For this type of justice, we need to find the best attorneys available for the survivors to help them in having their claims adjudicated and look for ways to facilitate their attaining of legal counsel. Conferences like the ones in Detroit cannot possibly do much at all in attaining the justice that comes with monetary settlements for survivors.

Breakout session? Funny, the liberals didnt have one on abortion.

With 55 million killed, just in the US, you'd think they might have a little panel discussion on the holocaust they brought.

I am a female survivor of adult rape by a priest in the early '70s. In Spring '08 I approached my willing pastor for assistance after a failed response from the abuser's order in the early '90s. By Fall '09, with the counsel of a diocesan priest, I learned the term "restorative justice" & followed his, my counselor's & my husband's guidance. The diocesan priest taught me that restorative justice not only returns to me all that was taken but encompasses the need for all bishops to acknowledge their guilt. Indeed, I want & need to hear them say, "we were wrong; forgive us".

I chose no legal counsel and in less than 6 mos., I not only received from the offending religious order, an amount equal to my co-pays, i.e., out-of-pocket costs for decades of therapy, but I also faced my aged abuser, in the presence of those who supported and gave me counsel. The eventual result was unexpected - [gradual] empowerment!

The experience described above has shaken me; my faith is wobbly; and when presented with the opportunity to attend a conference addressing a plethora of issues affecting the church, with others from my parish, I did so with great anticipation and expectations. I was not disappointed. My personal high point was "seeing" Hans Kung - the theologian whose name and connection with the exciting Vatican II I had studied in high school.

But I could not face the pain of the breakout session on abuse. Yet I vowed to "do something" to continue to purge this pain: I am asking those responsible for my situation & those in my diocese responsible for other rapes, to release the names of all living & dead abusers. My reason is this: other survivors deserve the chance to reclaim the soul stolen from them by abusers; seeing a name in print can possibly spark the courage to begin that journey. Such a published [incomplete] list helped me to reclaim myself. The journey continues: PTSD lingers long.

For the record - Fr. Tom Doyle's steadfast work and dedication to the whole
spectrum of this abuse-of-children-and-others-who-are-vulnerable issue, and related matters, are outstsanding by any measure. There is no doubt in the minds and hearts of those who can empathize and have real compassion for the victims and survivors that most of the Church leadership and the membership as well, are willing to be distracted by many/any other concerns to prolong dealing with the significance of this problem, which IS primary. The secrecy
is the clue to the depth of the sickness. I don't know what it will take to wake up the good brains at the center of the leadership. I hope good souls like Frs. Tom Doyle, Bob Hoatson, Dick Sipe, Sr. Maureen, the devoted folks at SNAP and other supportive groups will not be overlooked in the meanwhile,
as they deserve to be recognised for the focus they bring to help us to face
the facts that represent the REALITY of the seriousness of the cover-ups, to
say the least. I for one am overly saddened and angry to see how this issue was dismissed so summarilly by the recent ACC conclave. Sorry to hear that Bob H. got his toes so sorely stepped on! Sincerely in Christ, Elizabeth S.