by Pearl Solas
The bishop’s sharp features arranged themselves in weary exasperation as he looked up at Paul from the file lying open on the desk between them. Like the administrator he was, Bishop Fallin appeared to perform a number of calculations before he addressed Paul.
“You’ve made a real mess, Paul,” said the bishop, removing his glasses and rubbing his eyes.
The bishop began cleaning his glasses with a nearby cloth—examining them for any residual spots or streaks. He remained silent until he was satisfied and then, as if his weariness had simply fallen away, he resolutely replaced his glasses and focused sharply on Paul. “Fortunately, we know how to handle messes like this and, God willing, we’ll have you back to using your talents for God’s Church very soon. For the next six months, you’ll be at a treatment facility in Connecticut. We’ll classify this as a medical leave of absence. You will complete your treatment shortly before the beginning of the Fall term and, by that time, I’ll have a new assignment for you. You will not be a headmaster to begin, but we will expect you to make the best use of your administrative and fundraising talents. Of course, it goes without saying that we must never hear of this kind of trouble again.”
“Of course, Your Excellency.” Paul knew what the bishop wanted to hear. “I’ve made a full confession and I’m confident that, with the help you’ve prescribed and God’s grace, I’ll put this problem behind me.”
“Make sure that’s true,” said the bishop icily. “You’re dismissed.”
In his dream, Paul stood and turned to leave, and when he looked back before reaching the door, the wall behind the bishop seemed to stretch back into infinity, and in the endless space behind the bishop stood a faceless crowd of Church hierarchy, including bishops, archbishops, cardinals, and even Popes, all wearing the most sumptuous accouterments of their stations. Many of the vestments were historical, and others reflected the styles adopted in countries throughout the world. In a single, united voice, these Church leaders spoke, though only the bishop’s lips moved: “We’ll clean up your mess. We’ve done it before. Keep your mouth shut and don’t embarrass us again.”
* * *
The dream lingered with him throughout the following day. His meetings with Father Matt had decreased in frequency from every day to a couple of times per week, and for the first time, he was glad not to have an appointment scheduled that would allow him to unburden himself of a troubling dream. Paul wanted time to unpack this particular vision before discussing it with Father Matt. Like the dreams that had led him to repentance, Paul did not doubt God had sent this dream for a purpose.
He considered what had occurred after Bishop Fallin gave him that slap on the wrist. He had put in his time at the “treatment center,” which had been more like a restful retreat filled with clergymen who had committed similar offenses. Upon completing treatment, he attacked his role at the new school to which he had been assigned, and his teaching and fundraising talents soon led to a position of influence comparable to the one he had occupied before the bishop had imposed his tepid discipline.
It wasn’t long before he began abusing his students again. After his “treatment” and reassignment, his number of victims more than doubled what it had been before. His superiors never asked about his medical leave, and he suspected his immediate superior was not even aware of the previous complaints about his sexual appetites. Paul was able to continue enjoying his “seductions” with impunity until the Matthews family took their complaint directly to the police.
Although Paul had begun his prison sentence stripped of everything he held dear, he had refused to accept the validity of his laicization. In the early days of his prison sentence, Paul debated the issue with Father Matt when the latter visited the prison to minister to the inmates. During these discussions, Paul relied on his extensive knowledge of Church history and tradition to run rhetorical circles around the young cleric.
Paul had defended his position with arrogance and obstinacy, but there was some validity to his assertion that he was a convenient scapegoat in a much larger wheel of blame. While Paul had physically committed the crimes that landed him in prison, there was an argument to be made that the spiritual damages caused by his crimes were compounded because the abuse had been facilitated by the Church’s willful blindness. The Church had chosen to avoid scandal instead of securing the physical, psychological, and spiritual well-being of the children in its care.
As a result of the Event, Paul’s arrogance had fled, and he no longer believed that his right to claim the priesthood had survived his crimes. As Paul waited for God to reveal how he could become the promised tool of redemption and healing, his thoughts often returned to the role of the Church in the whole sordid mess. Paul accepted responsibility for his own actions, and had no interest in avoiding or shifting blame. Even in the midst of his self-loathing and shame, however, his newfound intellectual honesty led him to the inevitable conclusion that, with awareness of his past behavior and absent solid evidence of reformation, the Church leadership’s calculus appeared to have been as simple as concluding that scandal must be suppressed at all costs, and Paul’s success as a fundraiser and school administrator was more valuable than preventing him from causing additional destruction.
While serving his sentence, Paul had followed the clergy-abuse crisis as it continued to unfold, first in the United States and Ireland, and then throughout the world. The larger scandal was consistent with his own experience. At an institutional level, those with authority over abusive priests often transplanted the offender into a similar environment without meaningfully addressing the behavior itself. This tactic, in conjunction with an exertion of spiritual pressure on complaining parents, who almost always brought their grievances to the Church rather than to the police, allowed the Church to appear to have addressed the issue while avoiding publicity disasters. The band-aid would hold until complaints began to surface in the problem-priest’s next posting, and the shell game would resume.
That the same pattern manifested across the globe made it reasonable to conclude that the practice was tacitly, or even explicitly, authorized up to the highest levels of the Church hierarchy in Rome. As investigative journalists attacked the issue of who in the Church knew what, and when, the inference of Vatican complicity became even more difficult to avoid. A prime example was Marcial Maciel Degollado, the long-time head of the Legionaries of Christ, who had been a rock star fundraiser with rare access to the Pope despite decades of substantiated allegations of sexual impropriety and abuse of many dozens of the boys and seminarians within his broad sphere of influence.
Protecting the vulnerable appeared to be the exception rather than the rule as the Church closed ranks around its priests. The Vatican even went so far as to issue written instructions mandating absolute secrecy around the investigations and ecclesiastical trials of priests accused of abuse, impurity, or obscenity.
When increased public knowledge of the breadth and depth of the clergy abuse scandal caused allegations and discovery of corroborating evidence to snowball, the Church followed neither its Teacher’s tenets nor its own sacramental underpinnings: making full confession; demonstrating true penitence; and being willing to forego physical riches for spiritual treasure. Instead, it acted as any other besieged corporate behemoth: it engaged the best lawyers and hired-gun experts. As the many wounded lambs in its flock began to air their sufferings in the courts, though the Church held evidence to corroborate a staggering number of the allegations, it remained firmly in its trenches, using its formidable legal weapons, which were perfectly acceptable in the secular context of litigation, to resist discovery of substantiating documentation.
The Church’s other primary tactic was to rely on statutes of limitation to argue that, even if evidence existed to prove that a priest had perpetrated abuses for years, and even if there was evidence proving Church leaders knew of such proclivities before assigning the man to the parish where he later abused little Suzie or little Johnnie, Susan and John had bee
n adults for some time before hauling the Church into court. They simply had waited too long to hold the priest and the Church accountable. The hypocrisy was rich because the Church’s own doctrine never considered the mere passage of time to be a basis for absolution. Victims whose wounds would always feel fresh were prevented from seeking secular, civil justice, just as they had been denied justice in ecclesiastical and criminal contexts.
Even the few victims permitted to proceed to trial, where they were awarded staggering verdicts, were not “made whole” by the money they received. At best, they took some comfort from knowing that the juries’ verdicts acknowledged their suffering. Those verdicts affirmed what the victims knew intellectually but had difficulty accepting emotionally because of the conditioning inflicted on them by their abusers and the aggressive defense adopted by the Church: what happened to them was not their fault, and the people and institutions to which their care and safety had been entrusted had failed them.
Before reaching trial or jury deliberations, many victims expressed a willingness to forego the opportunity to impose substantial financial damages awards against the Church if only the Church and those men within her who made abuse-facilitating decisions, would simply admit their blame and offer sincere apology. With only the rarest of exceptions, and never at the highest levels, the Church declined these opportunities. Instead, it retreated to secrecy and protection of its institutional power and wealth.
And so a battle raged. On one side stood the growing army of those who were breaking their silence, and trying to hold the Church and her human instruments to account. On the other side stood the individual men who comprised the institution—steeped in tradition and notions of their own infallibility and that of their superiors. To protect their institution, they ordered defensive measures that surely would have disgusted the author of their faith. Caught in the breach were clerics like Father Tom Doyle, who at the expense of his own career within the Church, came down on the side of the abused.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
After so fittingly being called to account for his own behavior, Paul’s tenderized heart bled afresh on behalf of those who had suffered.
Surprisingly, in the midst of his despair and frustration about what he could possibly do to reconcile the hurt, Paul also felt stirrings of joy like shoots from bulbs breaking the surface of spring soil. He had been drudging through a spiritual wasteland for so long that he had accepted it as reality. With awe, he began to explore the well-watered garden of relationship with his Creator. His heartbreak for those he had hurt never left him, but his anguish had a dancing partner: the peace of knowing God had fully forgiven him after a confession that blasted the deepest, darkest recesses of his damaged psyche with cleansing light. Paul’s gratitude for this transformation motivated him, out of love, to serve the remarkable being who excised even the metastases of sin that had seemed guaranteed to destroy his soul. His gratitude was coupled with a need to identify and perform any acts, however meager, that could in some way atone for the damage he had caused.
Meaningful acts of atonement were slow to present themselves, and as Paul continued to meditate and wait for divine instruction, his need for an outward display of his internal remodeling was forced into micro-expression. The charismatic personality that had been larger than life, and that never missed an opportunity for carefully calculated self-promotion à la “the humble brag,” had learned to find joy in quiet, seemingly insignificant acts of service. Paul began volunteering for the most dreaded work and, rather than reviling the drudgery or the filth, doing unpleasant tasks carefully and well filled him with a sense of contentment and accomplishment that he’d never experienced, even when he had been doing the high-flying and “important” work that had won him acclaim. When Paul saw a fellow inmate’s need that he was able to fill unobtrusively and anonymously, he filled it. When he witnessed the strong preying on the weak, he made what intervention he could, heedless of his own safety. As a result, Paul took more physical abuse than he would have taken if he had kept to himself. To him, though, the wounds that resulted from serving others were a cause for joy.
Even though remarkable changes had occurred within him, Paul was still human. As all men, he was imperfect and retained all of the flaws that had so long held pride of place in his life. What had altered was Paul’s reaction to his imperfections. Before, Paul had made extraordinary efforts to deny, obscure, and avoid responsibility for anything within himself that could be perceived as an imperfection. But the Paul who knew himself to be wondrously loved despite his flaws was clear-eyed about his shortcomings. Rather than dwelling on these disappointing aspects within himself, Paul practiced a sort of spiritual judo. He did not resist his imperfections with the force of his equally imperfect will. Instead, when confronted with a troubling self-awareness, Paul accepted the truth of the flaw, asked for God’s assistance in overcoming the obstacle, and expressed gratitude to God for his faithfulness in continuing the work of his creation within Paul.
In this way, rather than suffering the debilitating shame and paralysis of the soul that would have come from obsessively examining his wretchedness in a spiritual mirror, Paul experienced the freedom that came, as C.S. Lewis wrote, from using the mirror to reflect, not himself, but God’s perfect mercy, timing, and strength.
As Paul made himself available and accepted God’s efforts to strengthen the connection between them, a call to action was implanted within his psyche, and God watered and fed the seedling while Paul waited in prayerful meditation. The concept first occurred to him in prayer, and it so perfectly addressed many of the concerns with which he had been struggling that it seemed as if the tumblers of a safe had clicked precisely into place, and a gift of inspiration that had come from outside of himself appeared in his mind.
Paul raised the issue during his next meeting with Father Matt, who was intrigued. He admitted the possibility that it could represent a genuine calling, and promised to pray for discernment as they considered moving forward. Father Matt returned a few days later, saying that he believed the plan was a good one and Paul had his blessing to proceed. Father Matt added that he had not sought approval from his superiors within the Church but, based on the skepticism with which they had dismissed the account of Father Frank’s miraculous intersession, he was wary of their ability to seek instruction from the Holy Spirit regarding this politically sensitive topic. With Father Matt’s blessing, Paul began working on the project to which God had set him, deploying his inborn gifts of charisma and communication, and constantly asking God for infusions of humility and empathy.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Sam Wainwright’s heart raced as he tried to absorb what he was seeing in the Sunday New York Times open on the table before him. The speeding of his heart had begun as soon as Sam saw Paul Peña’s name below a piece titled “A Rapist Priest’s Apology.” Sam closed the paper and shoved it away from him with a shudder. He tried to push it out of his mind, and to restore his shattered equilibrium by scrubbing every surface in his already clean apartment.
Eventually Sam acknowledged that, as much as he wanted to kill his curiosity, he would not have any peace until he read what Peña had written. Sam fished the paper out of his recycling bin, took a few centering breaths, and then opened the paper to Peña’s open letter.
From the outset you should understand that, left to my own devices, I am a liar and a manipulator. I was a priest who raped and otherwise sexually abused many adolescent students at the schools where I held positions of trust and responsibility. Until recently, I refused to acknowledge that my actions could be considered abuse, and I lied to myself by characterizing my choices as consensual relationships with individuals old enough to choose. These lies and the lies I told publicly at my trial exacerbated the damage my earlier actions had caused to my victims.
I do not ask for or expect understanding or the forgiveness of those I hurt, but recently I’ve been the recipient of assurance that God’s grace and mercy, and the re
demptive sacrifice of Jesus Christ, extends even to someone who has done what I have done.
Because I have been given such a precious gift, which is all the more precious because I do not deserve it, I must answer God’s call to tell the truth. I thought about trying to contact each of my victims to tell you this truth, but I worry that direct contact without warning might do more harm than good. Hopefully this open letter is a better method of relaying an important message.
To the people I hurt: You have absolutely no responsibility for what I did to you. I used my position and the force of my personality to convince you that some part of you chose a physical relationship with me. You did not choose it. I knew that I held great influence over you. Over time, I carefully and intentionally prepared each of you for my physical advances so that you would believe yourselves to have played some part, and to have as much of a vested interest in keeping quiet about them as I did. Not only did I assault your minds, I breached your physical defenses with drugs and alcohol. Most shamefully, I used your faith as a tool against you. I know that, for many of you, this betrayal ruptured your relationships with God and with the Church.
For years, I did not possess even a shred of remorse for what I did. I’m sure it is painful for you to consider me invoking God, even in this context, and I am sorry for that pain and for all of the other pain I’ve caused you. Still, I must relay that God motivated this confession by changing my heart and my understanding, and by filling me with compassion for your suffering.
I am so very sorry.
I hope that you are receiving professional psychological help for the hurt I caused you, and I hope the Church is paying for your care. If it is not, and if I can do anything to help get you the care you need, I am willing. My superiors in the Church knew about my pattern of behavior long before it became a matter of public knowledge, and they did not protect you from me. I’m not saying this to deflect my own blame—my choices were mine alone—but to affirm that my case was consistent with the larger failure of Church leadership. The Church has the financial resources to help you, and it should.