Thoughts on the Pennsylvania grand jury report on the Roman Catholic church

8/24



On my way to Pittsburgh for a performance, I'm trying to get my head around the recent grand jury report. Over decades in Pennsylvania, over 300 Roman Catholic  priests involved with the sexual abuse of over 1000 victims. They believe this is a conservative number. Think about that over 300 priests. Over 1000 victims. In just one state. It's almost incomprehensible.

Friends of mine post on Facebook. Wondering where they can go now. That they can't go back. Finding their old beloved parish priest on the list. Perhaps the one who married them. Reading the disturbing details. Even marking certain boys with special gold crosses. And me finding names of men I worked with in my Pittsburgh days. Colleagues. Some I always felt strange about but some I really liked. And Bishop, now Cardinal Wuerl who in protecting priests and the name of the church left countless children vulnerable. I remember his piercing blue eyes. He cold meet you once and always remember your name. His support of our interfaith Holocaust remembrance services. Today they removed his name from Pittsburgh's North Catholic High School.

I grew up here. In my neighborhood, we Protestants were the minority. There was a heavy "anti-papist" aspect to our culture. The one thing we knew about our Jewish neighbors is that they weren't Catholics. Our pastor kept us after church to warn us that if John F. Kennedy were elected, the Pope would control his decisions and actions. My first encounters with Catholic iconography were frightening, all the anguished bodies. The feelings ran deep.

Coming to appreciate Catholic spirituality was a journey for me. Some of it was encountering popular Catholic culture in Northern New Mexico. Or a girl friend who gave me San Antonio to look after me. I came to understand that the poor saw themselves in those icons. And a God who understood their suffering. Mary brought a feminine balance to a male theoecclesiastical praxis.

Later, it was Catholic existentialist writers who kept me in the broader Christian faith community. Shusaku Endo's Silence was a vitally important book to me.  And Miguel de Unamuno. And Ignacio Silone. I say all this to say that I had come to recognize that Catholic practice spoke to some very deep places in me. 

When I was Protestant Chaplain at the University of Bridgeport, the Jewish chaplain and the Roman Catholic sister who was the first woman to  be named  a chaplain and I were inseparable friends. As a young single guy, I struggled with my relationships and she helped me see that not loving anyone helped her stay available to everyone. 

For my Latino friends, it's often hard to separate what's Catholic and what's Latino. Friends who no longer can claim Christian faith remain cultural catholics. 

So I come to these thoughts with a sense of respect and some hesitation to speak of (to?)  a community that is not mine. Certainly, manipulative abuse of power is present in every faith community. But when I look at the width, breadth and depth of this abuse, I have to feel that something is seriously broken. That something near the center is just plain off. That it is time for a reboot.

First, there should be no confusion of issues here. Pedophilia is not an LGBTQ issue. It's roots are elsewhere. 

More deeply, I'm thinking that the very veneration of celibacy attracts profoundly disturbed individuals who feel that maybe this is a way out. Or an answer. Or worse, a cover. Certainly, there are many who have lived their ministry with integrity and honesty in a healthy caring way. But the sheer numbers in the grand jury report are just too overwhelming. 

Catholicism has had a major role in global social and cultural history. I pray that it can be capable of critical (self) analysis and the kind of radical reconstruction that seems so clearly to be needed. 

Above and beyond all else is the unanswered suffering of thousands of children. That suffering, beyond reparations, demands change at the deepest level. May my Catholic friends have the courage, wisdom and creativity to undertake this journey.