I grew up Catholic. And, this Memorial Day weekend featured two events around that faith – remembering my devoutly Catholic, Irish father on the occasion of his 90th birthday and binge-watching the new documentary series on Netflix, “The Keepers,” which tells the story of an investigation into the yet-unsolved 1969 murder of Sister Catherine Ceznik, who was a beloved teacher at a local girls’ high school in Baltimore run by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore. I’m not giving away the story when I say that the investigation at the heart of “The Keepers” also leads to allegations of sexual abuse and cover-up by the Church.
Both my parents were devout Catholics from baptism to death. My mother attended an all-girls Catholic high school in Rhode Island and my father was an usher at our local parish church throughout my childhood in Florida. He even played football for the local Providence Knights of Columbus league back in the 1950s. Both my brother and I attended Catholic schools during our elementary years until a job loss meant my parents could no longer afford the tuition.
Roman Catholicism is an ancient Western religion of more than a millennia and comprised of millions of wonderfully faithful citizens across the globe who live (and have lived) their lives in faithful service to God. Many Catholic teachings are based on guiding principles I hold dear – the love and compassion for our fellow humans, forgiveness, charity, care for the sick and the poor and, in many cases, a fight for social and equal justice. So, I imagine it would be deeply disappointing for my late parents to hear me describe myself as a former Catholic. But the hierarchy of the Church has left a stain on my faith.
And, two things must happen before I would ever consider returning to the Church, neither of which seems likely in my lifetime. First, the hierarchy and political leadership of the Church must immediately cease the systematic denial of what is today an immutable and irrefutable fact. The Roman Catholic Church has presided over, acquiesced to, been complicit in and covered up one the largest, most despicable sex crimes in history – the wholesale sexual abuse of thousands of boys and girls for decades and throughout the world. How many more exposes must appear, how many more settlements must be announced and how many more lives must be damaged or lost before the Church leadership acknowledges this terrible fact?
Google “Catholic Church sex abuse” and you can read a long (but probably not exhaustive) list of settlements in the United States just since the 21st Century began. It totals more than $1.2 billion and involves compensation to nearly 2,000 victims. In one single settlement, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles agreed to pay out more than $600 million to hundreds of victims. Several large dioceses have declared bankruptcy as a result, including Portland and San Diego. Yet, the allegations continue. And, these settlements involve just the victims who were brave enough to come forward and who courageously withstood attempts to silence them, to intimidate them, and to humiliate and victimize and traumatize them all over again through the criminal investigative and civil litigation processes.
Going forward, I believe the Church must respond to any allegation of sexual abuse in only one way: to treat the allegation not as an internal matter but as a potential violation of the criminal laws of the jurisdiction in which the alleged crime took place. It must cooperate fully and transparently with local law enforcement and prosecutorial authorities to bring any alleged perpetrators of child sexual abuse to justice. Like any other defendant, priests and nuns are entitled to due process, access to counsel and a presumption of innocence until proven guilty. But, nothing more.
Secondly, it’s time to have a robust and honest conversation about the perverse ministerial structure of the Church, which requires priests and nuns to live cloistered lives that deny them the full rule range of adult experiences, including normal human sexuality and identity. This is not a faith-based doctrine. It is a politically and financially advantageous structure, the logical and moral support for which has long passed. Worse, it has come at the terrible cost of creating a perverse and toxic environment that has put thousands of often-vulnerable young people worldwide at terrible risk.
It’s time to come out from behind the cloak of power and wealth and ancient tradition and an army of gimlet-eyed lawyers to answer the faithful this very basic question: How will the Church protect our children? Until that question can be answered satisfactorily, I will continue to mourn the fact that the men (most definitely not the women) who run the Catholic Church left my values, not the other way around.
