“Monsignor, can you see how this looks very, very bad?” Manly asked. “Can you see where someone would look at this and say, ‘You have…the person who is investigating the matter going to a dinner with him, who is an accused child molester?’ Can you see how people would perceive this as—I mean no disrespect—but duplicitous?”
“Yes, I can,” Urell admitted.
As each duplicitous move by the diocese was revealed, I cheered a little. It meant the story was getting even better. For the moment, the case of Michael Harris had nothing to do with my faith. What I was experiencing was just a pure, journalistic adrenaline rush. Each time I thought there was no way church officials could act any worse, they did. I greedily gathered the information that this rare peek inside the Catholic hierarchy provided. I felt that the gods of journalism were looking after me. I did have some sense of bewilderment that an entire diocesan team could act so contrary to the Gospel, but those feelings were simply overwhelmed by the thrill of the hunt.
In September 1994, David Price became the first person to publicly accuse Harris of molestation, filing suit against the priest and the diocese. The former Mater Dei student had first met privately with church officials and told them that Harris molested him repeatedly when he sought counseling after his father’s death in 1979. Price said he had remembered the episodes during a series of therapy sessions years later. Church officials did nothing. “Instead of apologizing that day, Monsignor Urell lied to me,” wrote Price in his self-published memoir, Altar Boy, Altered Life.
“The truth was that he and the church knew at this time exactly who Monsignor Harris was and what they were dealing with…But nobody at the diocese offered to help me, or offered any hint of an apology.
“I was told by Monsignor Urell that, ‘First and foremost, the Catholic Church is a business, and secondly it’s a religion…The religion part is church on Sundays, but we’re not talking about church right now—we’re talking about business.’”
Two months later, after hearing nothing from church officials, Price filed suit. Larry Rehab and another victim also went public to bolster Price’s allegations. The documents revealed what kind of treatment the diocese gave Price and Rehab when they spoke out about their alleged abuse. First, an outraged Monsignor Lawrence Baird, the spokesman for the diocese, told an Orange County Register reporter that Harris was “an icon of the priesthood.”
Next, Harris’s top defense attorney, John Barnett, savaged the three accusers in the press. He called the alleged victims “liars” and “sick individuals” who were just after money. Barnett compared the allegations to those at “the Salem witch trials of 1692, in which 29 people were executed in Massachusetts after being falsely accused of being witches.” Again, no one within the diocese stepped forward to defend the victims or simply to tell the truth about Harris.
In November 1994, more than 350 Santa Margarita High School students and their parents held a rally for Harris at a park near the school. Among them were the parents of Ryan DiMaria, who, unbeknownst to them, had been molested by Harris. The crowd sang “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.” At one point during the 45-minute gathering, an airplane flew overhead with a banner that read: “We Love Father Harris.” Several prominent Orange County leaders spoke in an impassioned defense of Harris’s innocence.
“He is a victim,” said Sharon Cody, a Mission Viejo councilwoman, at the rally. “I believe in the end we will find he has done nothing wrong. But in the meantime, the real sadness is that his life will forever be changed because of this. This is not deserved.”
Church officials again decided to let the lies go unanswered.
Finally, the church’s attorneys were let loose on Price in May 1995. By Price’s count, they deposed him for 11 days, eight hours a day, despite repeated motions to the trial judge to end the ordeal. In his memoir, Price wrote that he was questioned by about a dozen attorneys who represented the church or Harris. They asked about his sexual history, whether he liked the way Father Harris touched and sucked him, if he fantasized about having sex with his father, if he ever resisted the sex acts, and if he welcomed the sex acts. They also asked, “What do you think God thinks of your lawsuit?”
When his suit was eventually tossed out of court because of the statute of limitations, he said the diocese threatened him with $60,000 in legal bills unless he dropped his appeal. Not wanting to go deeper in debt, Price agreed.
The diocese’s strategy of using disinformation and hardball legal tactics worked. Harris’s accusers—already emotionally fragile—faced the wrath of the public, a battery of church attorneys and an expensive legal battle. Who would want to take on such formidable opponents?
Ryan DiMaria didn’t want to sue the diocese. He only wanted an apology, and some money for counseling for what he claimed Harris had done to him as a high school sophomore. In 1988, when Ryan was despondent over a friend’s suicide, his parents had asked Harris to counsel the boy. Ryan said Harris took him out for dinner and a performance of The Phantom of the Opera in Los Angeles before returning to the priest’s house, where the boy spent the night. Ryan said Harris invited him to share his bed. He refused and slept on a couch in another room. The next morning, Ryan said, Harris repeatedly abused him.
Ryan spent the next six years battling depression and thoughts of his own suicide. He wanted to tell his secret, but to whom? Who would believe his word against Father Hollywood’s? His parents had even attended the rally to support Harris. Ryan vowed he would go to his grave with the secret—and he wanted that grave to be an early one. In 1996, after a night of drinking, Ryan called his father and said he was going to kill himself. He started to explain how to access his various bank accounts. Ryan’s family rushed to his home in time to stop him. Finally, the secret came out.
Ryan brought his case to the district attorney’s office, which declined to press charges in what was then a six-year-old incident despite pleas made by Ryan and his parents the day before the criminal statute of limitations expired. In the fall of 1996, church officials met with the family, but offered no apology.
“We thought we were doing the church a favor,” his mother, Diane DiMaria, told me. “What we found out a long time later is that they knew much more [about Harris] and really didn’t care. They were trying to keep us quiet about it.”
Unhappy with the church’s response, DiMaria filed a civil lawsuit in 1997.
His attorneys had no experience in clergy sexual abuse cases, and most of their colleagues advised against taking Ryan as a client. They took the case anyway and spent the next four years fighting the dioceses of Orange and Los Angeles. At the time, few people had ever beaten the Catholic Church in a clergy sexual abuse suit. The bishops had superior resources. They also maintained a secret set of files where sensitive documents were stashed, unbeknownst to plaintiff’s attorneys. The statue of limitations was often a problem because victims of childhood sexual abuse usually don’t come forward until well into adulthood. The victims and their families were frequently told by bishops, parishioners and friends that the church shouldn’t have to endure a scandal.
Getting ready for the DiMaria trial, his attorneys spent more than $150,000—a fortune for a small law firm. Along the way, Ryan’s team floated various settlement offers: $100,000, $150,000 and, as the case got closer to trial, $1 million.
“They basically told us to drop dead,” Manly recalled. “That’s how stupid they were.”
As the trial’s opening neared in the summer of 2001—and a judge gave the okay for Ryan’s attorneys to depose Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, the powerful archbishop of Los Angeles—settlement talks accelerated. Mediated by Judge James Gray in Orange County Superior Court, the two sides agreed to an unprecedented $5.2 million settlement, and at Ryan’s and Gray’s insistence, to a new set of rules the church would enact when dealing with allegations of clergy sexual abuse.
The negotiations got stuck on two points. First, Ryan’s attorneys insisted that Harris be removed from the p
riesthood. The priest, who continued to deny any wrongdoing, didn’t want to leave the clergy. It took hours before church officials and Ryan’s attorney could extract that concession. Harris reluctantly agreed to ask Pope John Paul II to release him from his vows.
Second, Judge Gray wanted to get a promise from Ryan. He asked the young man, who often had suicidal thoughts, to vow to him that he would live a long and happy life. It took most of a day, but the judge finally got the promise.
Our lengthy profile, “Sins of the Father,” came out in November 2001, two months after the settlement. It portrayed a deeply conflicted man who spent the vast majority of his time in saintly pursuits that positively affected thousands of students and parents, but who harbored untamed demons that turned him into an alleged predator.
Yet there was a bigger, deeper story here that I didn’t fully recognize at the time: the response to the victims by the bishop and his lieutenants. They had acted more like Mafia bosses than shepherds. I wrote off their actions as the work of a single, morally corrupt diocese. I filed the story neatly away in a compartment in my mind. And even if all of organized religion were somehow fundamentally corrupt, that didn’t mean God isn’t real. It seemed a ridiculous thought. Besides, I was still quite sure that organized religion was not inherently bad—only a few individuals were, as is the case in every organization. I had just gotten an unvarnished look into a single diocese that had forgotten what it was about.
I was attending my Catholic conversion classes twice a week and was being fed all the rich teachings of the church. I felt inoculated from an attack on my faith from the likes of Father Harris and the Diocese of Orange.
In a boxing match, a powerful body blow early on might not seem too damaging to the fighter. But it can have a devastating effect. The boxer who is pounded hard in the ribs will instinctively lower his guard to protect against another blow, leaving his chin open to attack. He’ll be sapped of strength. And he’ll think twice about aggressively punching away, knowing that he’ll be exposing his tender midsection.
For me, the Father Hollywood story was a spiritual body blow, but I didn’t sense it at the time. Of course, it wasn’t an isolated story for the Catholic Church, as we now know. I have also come to realize the widespread church corruption reflected in the sex scandal is not isolated to the Catholic institutions. Much that would trouble me about my faith in the next five years of reporting was neatly contained in the Father Hollywood story. Hypocrisy at all levels of the church, innocent people put in harm’s way by the church’s “shepherds,” self-interest triumphing over Christian values, lies big and small and a general lack of courage among followers of Christ, especially those in power, would be recurrent subjects of my reporting.
My reporting on Michael Harris had one other effect. It made me realize I had a knack for investigative reporting, and that the world of religion offered fertile ground for my use of that God-given gift. I still didn’t think it would harm my faith. My beliefs were too strong, too real. Father Vincent had taught me to pray the Rosary. I studied the Bible. I walked the Stations of the Cross inside my parish. I read books about St. Francis of Assisi, St. Augustine of Hippo, St. Theresa of Lisieux, St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Thomas Aquinas and St. John of the Cross. I prayed that I would experience a sense of holiness that infused the saints, and occasionally—surprisingly—got glimpses of it. I wanted to be like the biblical David, a deeply flawed person who was still described in Scripture as “a man after God’s own heart.”
My faith was as natural—and essential—to me as breathing. I thought nothing could take it away.
NINE
The Golden Rule
…If your enemy is hungry, feed him, and if he is thirsty, give him something to drink…
—ROMANS 12:20
MOST PEOPLE OF faith don’t spend a lot of time considering beliefs different from their own. For Christians, for example, it is comforting to believe that all denominations—Protestant or Catholic—share the same belief in Jesus as their Savior and the Bible as Holy Scripture. Most differences between Christians can be chalked up to hair-splitting. But as a journalist, I was exposed to a much wider range of religious experience and needed to take all seriously. I covered many stories about Judaism and Islam, in addition to having some contact with Buddhists, Unitarians, Hindus, Sikhs, Scientologists, Jains and Baha’is. This can raise questions most of us don’t usually confront. What would you do if you met people you admired greatly, who reminded you of the best examples of your fellow believers, yet whose faith rested on what you saw as patent absurdities? In my case, I met such folks when I covered Mormonism.
I found Mormons mesmerizing—especially their generally high moral conduct—even though I didn’t believe a word of their doctrine. In a nutshell, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints teaches that an angel named Moroni led Joseph Smith in 1827 to discover a divine set of golden plates buried in a hillside near his New York home. God provided the 22-year-old Smith with a pair of glasses and “seer stones” that allowed him to translate the “Reformed Egyptian” writings inscribed on the plates into an additional revelation from Jesus called the “Book of Mormon.” Mormons believe this scripture restored the church to God’s original vision, leaving the rest of Christianity in a state of apostasy.
The book’s narrative focuses on a tribe of Jews who sailed from Jerusalem to the New World in 600 BC and split into two main warring factions. The God-fearing Nephites were “pure” (the word was officially changed from “white” in 1981) and “delightsome.” The idol-worshiping Lamanites received the “curse of blackness,” turning their skin dark. The resurrected Jesus appeared in the Americas in about 34 AD and gave instructions on how his followers should conduct themselves. This ushered in 200 years of peace until the Nephites and Lamanites began fighting again. By 385 AD, the dark-skinned Lamanites had wiped out their Hebrew enemies. The Mormon church calls the victors “the principal ancestors of the American Indians.”
Independent scholars have dismissed this account as implausible. In 1996, the Smithsonian Institution responded to rumors that it was using the Book of Mormon as an archeology guide. It issued a stinging eight-point statement on why there was “no direct connection between the archeology of the New World and the subject matter of the [Book of Mormon].” Smithsonian officials and others point out that the Book of Mormon contains a long list of anachronisms unknown in ancient America, including such animals as cattle, horses, oxen, domestic sheep, pigs and elephants; such metals as steel; such weapons as swords; and such inventions as the chariot.
“Reports of findings of ancient Egyptian, Hebrew, and other Old World writings in the New World in pre-Columbian contexts have frequently appeared in newspapers, magazines, and sensational books,” the Smithsonian wrote. “None of these claims has stood up to examination by reputable scholars.”
Of course, absence of evidence is not always evidence of absence, but you won’t find many Mormon archeologists digging up the Americas in expectation of unearthing ancient chariots and swords. And the best Mormon apologists can say is that the text is rich, complex and written in a revelatory style that Joseph Smith, a rural man of simple education, wouldn’t have been capable of producing.
But those are minor problems compared to recent DNA evidence that shows the descendants of Native Americans came from Asia, not the Middle East. This knocks away the underpinnings of the Mormon scripture, though church officials are hurriedly reinterpreting the Book of Mormon on the fly to account for the absence of Hebrew blood in Native Americans. These hastily constructed explanations, mostly by Brigham Young University scholars, contradict 150 years of teachings by the church and its prophets, but have been mostly unquestioned by the Mormon faithful—if they are bothered by the controversy at all.
Mormons also believe the leader of their church, called their president and prophet, has the ability to receive direct revelations from God. For example, Joseph Smith learned from the Lord that the Garden of Eden had bee
n in Jackson County, Missouri, and it was there that Jesus Christ would return to Earth.
In a revelation that became better known, God instructed Smith in 1831 to begin the practice of polygamy within the church. Smith later explained that he had no choice but to take multiple wives (33 in all, most historians believe, ranging in age from 14 to 58 at the time of the marriage).
“God commanded me to obey it,” Smith said. “He said to me that unless I accepted it, and introduced it, and practiced it, I, together with my people, would be damned.”
But in 1890, long after Smith’s death, the Lord instructed another Mormon prophet to halt the practice. The timing was fortuitous, as federal opposition to Utah’s statehood was gaining strength because of the Mormons’ polygamous practices. God also sent a message in 1978 to the Mormon prophet that blacks should be treated equally in the church and should no longer be barred from ministry. This particular revelation came 116 years after the Emancipation Proclamation and 13 years after passage of the Civil Rights Act.
Cosmologically, Mormons believe that human souls begin as a pre-human spiritual—but also physical—presence on a crystal orb in outer space. These spiritual children are made by God the Father and His wife procreating and eventually make their way to Earth. After humans die, they have a chance to become gods themselves and live on their own planet. Mormons are also taught that once our planet reaches its “sanctified and immortal state,” it too will turn into crystal.
I thought this was all quite nutty, yet from what I could see, Mormons faithfully lived out their beliefs in far greater numbers than other Christians. Most of them tithed, giving 10 percent of their income to the church, as instructed. This provided the church with a large revenue stream for building projects and for charity. The church had developed a private welfare system that would be the envy of any government, creating a large safety net for Mormons down on their luck. Members in good standing neither drink nor smoke. Their clergy comprise a nearly all-volunteer force, with most of the church’s paid members headquartered in Salt Lake City. Their members observe Family Home Evening, a weekly at-home event where the television is turned off and the parents and children sit down for spiritual lessons or board games, conversation and special treats. About 40 percent of young Mormon men agree to go on a two-year mission where they spend their days in short-sleeve, white dress shirts, ties and black slacks, knocking on doors and telling people about the Mormon faith. Can you imagine any other Christian denomination where nearly half of the young adult males sacrifice two years of their life to go and make converts?
Losing My Religion Page 11