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

by D'Antonio, Michael

  For an archbishop speaking for a Church with strict public positions on all sorts of moral issues—abortion, the ordination of women, homosexuality—Weakland’s position on priests who engaged in sex with minors was notably ambivalent. However, Sipe saw that it was consistent with the forgiving attitude clergy assumed when dealing with their own behavior. After thousands of confidential interviews with clergy at all levels Sipe developed some estimates of sexual issues among clergy. These figures were based not on a tabulated survey or scientific sample, but on his own deep experience with a significant number of priests. Extrapolating from this base, Sipe concluded that fewer than 2 percent of American priests ever managed to sublimate their sexual urges to the point where they were truly celibate. More remarkably, he estimated that at any given moment about 20 percent were involved in relationships with women, 10–13 percent were sexually active with men, and 6 percent were either occasionally or regularly violating adolescents or children.

  As Sipe finished his book in 1989, he had met with more than a hundred priests who had exploited underaged victims and knew of one psychiatric center—St. Luke Institute in Suitland, Maryland—that had evaluated one hundred and thirty priests in a less-than-one-year period and diagnosed seventy-two as pedophiles. He believed that the culture of the clergy, which was organized around secrecy and privilege, made the priesthood attractive to men with serious sexual problems. Canon law allowed for the Church to remove an accused priest from ministry but Sipe knew that fear of scandal and a shame-based theology of sex made it impossible for the hierarchy to respond quickly and decisively. As a psychotherapist Sipe saw the devastating effects of abuse on victims and considered the Church responsible for helping them. As a Catholic who valued the institution, he wrote that “to survive” the Church needed to reassess basic beliefs that had stood for centuries.

  The crisis, which Sipe thought he understood, got much bigger between the time when he finished his manuscript and chose a title—A Secret World: Sexuality and the Search for Celibacy—and its publication in the fall of 1990. In the Canadian province of Newfoundland a Church-sponsored inquiry criticized Archbishop Alphonsus Penney for ignoring accusations of sexual abuse against twenty priests and layworkers at a Catholic orphanage called Mount Cashel run by the Irish Christian brothers of Canada. Penney resigned saying, “We are a sinful church. We are naked. Our anger, our pain, our anguish, our shame are clear to the whole world.”

  In time more than a hundred men would say they were abused at the orphanage and eight brothers would be convicted of sexual offenses against minors. Almost $30 million (Canadian) would be paid to victims by the order and government agencies that sent boys to the orphanage. The judge who sentenced one of the brothers to twelve years in prison for his crimes told him, “You are a disgrace to the order and to humanity.” In time the orphanage itself would be torn down and the site would be covered by a supermarket parking lot.

  Although it was the largest scandal to date in North America, events in Newfoundland were not noted in press reports on Richard Sipe’s book, which he reviewed in a talk at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association in August 1990. Instead, the press seized on the opportunity to address the broader issues of sex in the Church and the lives of priests. In dozens of interviews Sipe was astonished by the curiosity of journalists who seemed full of questions that they had never felt free to ask anyone else.

  The interviews, which were full of pointed questions about controversial topics, made full use of Sipe’s skills as an academic, therapist, and former priest. However, he found he liked talking with reporters who reached far more people with their words than Sipe’s book might ever touch. He came to see the journalists as a bridge that might bring his ideas further into the world. They came to rely on him as a guide through obscure corners of the Church and an interpreter of the ordained psyche.

  A Secret World was welcomed by the mass media, but it met sharp criticism in other circles. A spokesman for the Catholic Church insisted that Sipe’s methods were flawed because he did not conduct a random survey and his conclusions couldn’t be applied to the overall ranks of the clergy because his information came from sexually active priests. (The assumption here was that most priests were successfully celibate.) This criticism was seconded by the famous sociologist/author/priest Andrew Greeley, who said that Sipe’s book offered “wild” guesses instead of scholarship.

  Greeley was famous for his own evaluations of Catholic America, which depended on annual surveys, which he often used to counter negative stereotypes about Catholics. Given the difference in their approaches—Greeley deployed surveys while Sipe dove deep into the lives of priests—his critique was an apples-to-oranges exercise, but he pressed it nevertheless. In an opinion piece published by the Los Angeles Times he declared that Sipe’s book marked the arrival of a “silly season” for commenting on sex and the Church. Setting aside the elevated power and status priests claim for themselves as ordained men, he compared clergy who struggle with celibacy to married men who have trouble being faithful. He wrote:

  Someone ought to say that when a man like Sipe, who abandoned his own priestly commitment, accuses those of us who honor it of not doing a perfect job, one hears a bit of axe-grinding in the background, a touch of self-justification, a smidgen of guilt and defensiveness.

  After the column was published, Sipe heard from academics, media figures, and prominent Catholics around the world who told him they had been contacted by Greeley, who continued his attack in private. Greeley apparently resented how Sipe, an ex-priest, had dissected his former brothers and invited the public to view what he found. Greeley rejected the notion that a psychological/anthropological approach would yield meaningful insights, and suspected Sipe harbored some deep antipathy toward celibate priests. However, a careful reading revealed that Sipe actually respected the few true celibates he had encountered, describing them as flexible and good-humored men who were “brave, courageous, and devoted.” Still, he saw so much suffering related to the way the Church handled sexual issues—the problem of pedophile priests being just one example—that he couldn’t understand why the hierarchy wouldn’t consider examining certain beliefs.

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  The gap between the nuanced conclusions of A Secret World and the response it provoked from the Church and critics like Greeley might be explained by the fractured quality of the sexual abuse crisis. Depending on one’s perspective, the Church was embroiled in a spiritual struggle over sex, a conflict between democracy and monarchy (which was how Jason Berry saw it), or a legal war over the crimes of priests. The crisis involved all three of these battles and more, but this fact made talking about what was happening a difficult task even for sophisticated observers who were willing to discuss sex, religion, politics, and money, all at once.

  Any attempt to consider the wave of sexual abuse claims and its true meaning was further complicated by the structure of the Church and its many institutions. With hundreds of dioceses and thousands of other entities—orders, schools, parishes, hospitals, colleges, seminaries, etc.—the Catholic Church exists in so many pieces that it was practically impossible to confront any major issue in a comprehensive way. Most of these divisions and subdivisions in the Catholic community could claim financial independence when it suited them, and seek the shelter of the law’s special provisions for religious activities.

  Because they were the main employers of priests, diocesan officials and the leaders of religious orders were more likely to find themselves dragged into abuse cases. As news about Gauthe, Porter, Adamson, Mount Cashel, and other cases shocked the public, the Catholic bureaucracy had struggled to respond. Along the way American bishops seemed to reach an informal consensus on the psychological problems of abusive priests. In their view, most of these men were actually expressing homosexual desires with young people who had passed puberty. While illegal, this practice, which was called ephebophilia, was regarded by them as something less disturbing than classic pedo
philia. The bishops also embraced the notion that these priests could be treated effectively at places like St. Luke’s or various Paraclete centers. As they sent accused priests to these facilities, bishops could appear to be addressing a problem while they also bought time for themselves and the accused. Not coincidentally, a priest could be spared prison time if, while he was in treatment, the statute of limitations on an offense expired.

  The consensus of the bishops, when it came to priests and sexual abuse, was voiced by auxiliary bishop Alexander James Quinn of Cleveland to an April 1990 gathering of canon lawyers. Quinn, who had worked with Doyle, Mouton, and Peterson, told his fellow priests that the problem of sexual abuse was no more common in the Church than it was in the society as a whole. “We knew it was there, before,” he said of the problem, but in the past decade it had become “discussed publicly.”

  Noting that in every case a bishop is caught between his role as “chief pastor” to laypeople and “father of his priests” he stressed that no harm be done to a “… brother priest who may be suffering from an illness and may also be innocent…” When valid claims arise, Quinn added, Church officials should act as caring pastors. “If we’re going to save ourselves, we’re going to save ourselves big,” he said. “Let’s be pastoral.”

  A civil attorney as well as a churchman, Quinn advised the men at the conference that the Church was vulnerable to lawsuits on many different fronts. Where once it enjoyed “almost complete immunity” from lawsuits it now faced “a tort litigation boom,” said Quinn.

  Although he didn’t mention the case by name, a United States Supreme Court ruling handed down one week prior to the canon lawyers’ conference had set the conditions for the “boom.” At first glance Employment Division v. Smith seemed to have nothing to do with the Catholic Church or clergy abuse. The case involved an American Indian claim that the use of the illegal peyote mushrooms should be permitted because the drug was used as part of a spiritual practice. By siding with the State of Oregon, which outlawed the drug, the court signaled that the First Amendment did not allow religious groups to define generally illegal practices as religious activities and therefore be exempt from regulation. The conservative Catholic justice Antonin Scalia wrote that such exemptions would “make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and in effect to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself.”

  In Smith, Scalia signaled that Churches and other religious groups enjoyed no special exceptions from the laws that applied to all. Where clergy abuse cases were concerned, the ruling seemed to suggest that like any employer or supervisor, dioceses and bishops bore some responsibility for the conduct of rank-and-file priests. Like other employers, Church officials bore some responsibility to the public for the men they sent to serve them, and they could be charged with negligent supervision and blamed for the emotional distress caused by an abuser’s crimes.

  The Smith decision was just the latest in a series of legal developments that had shaken church officials who had been accustomed to special treatment from the legal system. The clergy abuse cases brought in Louisiana and Minnesota had shown that even confidential personnel files could be subpoenaed by lawyers suing on behalf of victims. Under these new conditions, said Quinn, bishops and other administrators needed to be much more careful about the documents they collected and preserved. He recommended that they review their files routinely and either dispose of controversial items or use the Vatican status as a sovereign state to hide them from subpoenas issued by plaintiffs’ lawyers.

  “Comb through your files,” said Quinn. “If there’s something there that you really don’t want people to see you might send it off to the Apostolic Delegate because they have immunity to protect something that is potentially dangerous or that you consider to be dangerous.”

  As he spoke of the Church and the abuse crisis, Quinn presented a picture of a besieged, even persecuted institution hard-pressed to defend itself. But he also offered a bit of macabre history that was intended to startle but reassure the men he had counseled. He recalled a New York case in which a Catholic priest arranged an illegal abortion for a woman he had made pregnant. When the woman died, Fr. Hans Schmidt and the dentist who did the operation dismembered her body and “part-by-part” dropped her off the side of a ferry boat. A jury rejected Schmidt’s insanity plea and he was executed.

  Reassured when Quinn told them the case was from 1913, some of the men in the room chuckled as he explained that the State of New York judicial system “did all the penal work” and saved the Church the bother of disciplining Schmidt. Quinn’s point was that the “diocese didn’t have to do anything more than survive that, and I suppose it will survive some of these other things.”

  Borrowed in large part from 1913, the strategy Quinn proposed for the modern sexual abuse crisis was reported by Jason Berry in the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Baltimore Sun. (Editors at The New York Times and The Washington Post both turned down the piece, which meant it received less notice nationally.) Berry called Quinn before writing about the bishop’s remarks. In their conversation, Berry recalled that Tom Doyle had warned against using the Vatican’s diplomatic privilege to dodge civil responsibilities because such a scheme, if discovered, might cause an international incident.

  “Whatever I said is my own opinion,” Quinn snapped at Berry. “It was never discussed with the nunciature.”

  11. WILLFUL INDIFFERENCE

  Having aided Richard Sipe’s research, Jeanne Miller welcomed his book and the increased attention it brought to the issue of clergy abuse. Sipe referred to her the people who contacted him about problem priests and as this number grew, Miller thought about creating a formal organization that might do more, in terms of education and advocacy, than she could do as an isolated individual. Moving slowly, she picked a name for her group—Victims of Clergy Abuse Link-up—and began having meetings at her suburban home. At these sessions abuse victims and their supporters talked mainly about ways to reform the way the Church dealt with problem priests and to find justice for victims.

  Perhaps because she was a victim herself, Barbara Blaine was more interested in forming a mutual support network for people struggling with the aftereffects of clergy abuse. And since she was already experienced as a social activist, she didn’t need to think much about organizing. From the day that the Donahue show brought that first flood of phone calls she began refining the self-help model to create something for abuse victims. She changed the name of The Victims Network to: SNAP, which stood for Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. Even though she wasn’t especially picky about terminology, in choosing to use the word “survivor” Blaine signaled that she was sensitive to those who didn’t consider themselves “victims” and preferred to emphasize their recovery from the effects of abuse.

  When she had collected enough names to draw a decent crowd, Blaine found a Holiday Inn in the suburbs of Chicago that would give her free use of a conference center if she could guarantee that a certain number of hotel rooms would be taken by SNAP members. Fewer than twenty people arrived for the Friday night registration but Blaine conducted a press conference that prompted another fifteen or twenty to show up for the Saturday session. The agenda included talks by a therapist, a local lawyer, and a nun who addressed the spiritual impact of abuse. Before group discussions began Blaine established ground rules to encourage openness.

  “We’re a self-help group,” she noted. “You don’t get to tell others what to do. You are not allowed to give advice. We don’t make judgments. There are no right and wrong statements. We are making a sacred commitment to each other. Everything said in this room is confidential.”

  Safe among people who shared their experiences, participants told their stories and discovered they had much in common. To a person, victims had been vulnerable to a persuasive and manipulative authority figure and so ashamed or traumatized by what occurred that they kept it secret. Most were only able to connect the abuse to later pro
blems such as depression or addiction after entering treatment or reading about the long-term effects of sexual trauma. The survivors who spoke also told consistent tales of Church leaders who denied or downplayed what they reported and moved slowly, if at all, to help them.

  More meetings would follow the first gathering and Blaine would slowly acquire the skills to respond when someone needed more than the self-help model could provide.

  * * *

  At a meeting in Rhode Island, the decorative candles Blaine brought to distribute as gifts brought one woman to tears. Candles had been used by the priest who molested her.

  Unexpected reactions gave the members of SNAP opportunities to learn about the nature of sexual trauma. The candles in Rhode Island had triggered a psychological flashback in the woman who associated them with her abuse, making her feel as she did when she was molested. In another telling case, a woman named Anne, who belonged to the Chicago chapter, asked others to help her tell her parents about what she had suffered as a child. On the day Anne chose, SNAP members went to a park and watched from a nearby picnic table as their friend explained what she remembered to her parents. According to their plan, they would be available if the woman’s parents reacted negatively. As it turned out the woman’s mother and father already knew what had happened. Their daughter had reported it when it occurred. At the time they had found other parents whose children had also been abused and forced the priest to leave the parish.

  The memory gap that allowed a woman who had been molested as a girl to forget she had once told the truth about it illustrated one of the major controversies that arose around all types of child abuse claims in the late 1980s and early 1990s. On one side of this issue stood therapists, victims, and others who would consider Anne’s experience and say it proved that someone could forget an assault, or even a series of assaults, but still suffer from the effects. Indeed, they would consider memory loss a hallmark of trauma and be unsurprised when incidents were recalled in the safety of adulthood. On the other side of the controversy gathered a number of people accused of abuse, a handful of psychologists and social scientists, and defense lawyers who raised a host of questions about the reliability of memory. These skeptics could point to cases where suggestive questioning had apparently led children to allege abuse by preschool teachers and argue that this event threw all such allegations—against teachers, parents, clergy, and others—into the category of mass hysteria.