Bruce Andriatch: An open letter to my church that I never wanted to write
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Dear Catholic Church:
I’ve been your staunch defender for as long as I’ve been able to speak. Credit 17 years in your schools and a family that forced me to try to live the lessons I learned.
When people would ask why I stuck it out with you when so many others had given up on you, I had a ready answer: Show me a religion founded on and dedicated to better principles than the ones you preach, to love one another, take care of the weakest among you, turn the other cheek and forgive your enemies.
Even when you let me down, when you called homosexuality a sin, refused to consider allowing priests to marry and continued to push women away from leadership roles, I disagreed with you even as I stood by you and believed in you. You are my family and that’s what families do: Even when someone screws up, you stand by and defend the family.
I won’t anymore. I can’t.
Maybe this day should have come a lot sooner. I guess it did for a lot of people. All the former churches dotting the landscape and empty pews around me every Sunday speak to that.
I kept clinging to the idea that while it was true that despicable men were committing evil with the power you gave them, the church itself was good and decent and caring. It was led by people who wanted to follow in the footsteps of Jesus, who wanted to help the sick, the poor, the lonely, the forgotten.
I was wrong. I have sadly come to the conclusion that when it really counted, when lives depended on it, you saw your mission as protecting the guilty and condemning the innocent.
For me as I suspect for others, the end came this month in the form of a searing grand jury report in Pennsylvania. It is troubling that I was not the least bit surprised to hear that it found more than 300 priests had engaged in sexual abuse over a period of 70 years. But the worse crime – or, in terms you can appreciate, the mortal sin — is that your leaders, the men who could have done something about it, knew what was happening, did nothing to stop it and then covered it up.
Given the choice between protecting monsters and helping their victims, you chose the monsters, seemingly as a matter of policy.
As reported by the New York Times, the grand jurors found a “playbook” for what church leadership was to do when one of its priests was accused of sexual abuse. It called for using euphemisms so that “rape” could become “boundary issues”; using clergy to investigate other clergy by asking inadequate questions; sending priests for “evaluations” to hand-picked centers where diagnoses could be based on the priest’s “self-reports”; transferring the priest to a new parish; and hiding the truth from the public.
And most importantly, never, ever tell the police.
“While each church district had its idiosyncrasies, the pattern was pretty much the same,” the grand jury report says, according to the Times. “The main thing was not to help children, but to avoid ‘scandal.’ That is not our word, but theirs; it appears over and over again in the documents we recovered.”
We saw the pattern play out in the Boston Globe and in the film that dramatized its work, “Spotlight,” when, for the first time, a church leader was exposed as knowing about and covering up what priests were doing. We have seen examples of it here in Buffalo, with numerous examples of priests being transferred or sent for treatment or put on leave when abuse was alleged or suspected.
I had forgotten until last week one of most compelling parts of “Spotlight,” which comes during the end credits and lists dozens of cities where allegations of abuse by priests had been uncovered.
Or maybe I didn’t forget. Maybe I was holding on to the fantasy that it was a few bad apples. Maybe I didn’t want to believe that my church, my family, could be responsible for this.
I may have made the mistake that people make when they hear that a person they know has been accused of sexual misconduct. They say, “I can’t believe it. I have known him for years and he never did anything like that to me.” My guess is it’s not that they can’t believe it – it’s that they don’t want to believe it.
I know I don’t want to. All of the important moments in my life are connected to you. You have been there for my greatest joys and worst heartaches. I can't think of my life without thinking of you.
The words I have heard in your buildings time and again have always been like a balm for my soul. The song lyrics of my youth that play on in my memory still guide me today. “And they’ll know we are Christians by our love” … “Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, that you do unto me” … “Come follow me and I will give you rest.”
But this is not about what you did and do for me. It’s about what you didn’t do for so many others. You ask me to be a missionary for our faith. How in God’s name could I ever tell someone to be a part of an institution that has done what you have done?
The answer is I can’t. You want me to be Christian and forgive you? I’ll tell you what the nuns used to tell me: Being sorry isn’t enough. Actions speak louder than words.
You need to make serious, structural changes, rethink everything and come up with a church for these times and one that responds to crisis, not hides and excuses it. You have avoided this for generations, claiming that such things would go against church teachings, often quoting the Bible to justify your decisions or lack of them. But the words in the Bible didn’t prevent you from looking the other way as children were being molested, so maybe that’s not going to work anymore.
I don’t have a solution for you. And even though I understand why so many of my friends have abandoned you, I will not walk away.
It would be easy to turn my back on you the way you turned your back on countless victims of your crimes, but I won't do that. Your failure was massive, but it is no match for my faith or my capacity to forgive.
A few years ago, I made a promise that I would try to be a better Catholic. For me that started with something small, a pledge to always be at Sunday Mass, which is why even though I am this angry, you will still find me in a church every weekend.
But from now on, when I’m on my knees, I’m going to be saying a prayer for you. It’s going to be a simple one: Please help them to practice what they preach.
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"Maybe this day should have come a lot sooner."
You think? $3 billion has been paid out to the victims of Catholic priest abuse so far, and much more is likely in the coming years as more and more of these children come out and talk about what they went through at the hands of those who are supposed to be some peoples most trusted confidants.
I've been reading about these issues for decades, there have been theatre release movies about it, there have been numerous newspaper and media headlines when major cases break, I'm really not sure why this got looked over for so long. Is it something about the #metoo movement moving the needle on abuse? Considering the huge number of young people who have been abuse for so very long by this disgusting wolf in sheep's clothing, maybe #methree or even #metoothousand would be appropriate.
Any organization supporting abusers at the expense of victims to protect their organization is always wrongheaded in the long term...
You would think the Catholic Church would have learned this by now but the church's knee jerk reaction is always to blame the victims.
"Those awful worldly children seduced our poor godly priests and bishops". Perhaps if priests were not so damn sexually repressed...
Bingo! God is a piss poor lover!
There's an author from the Chicago area named Andrew Greeley (Father Andrew Greeley) that has been including this in his writings for decades and how the right approach would be head on, making it stop as opposed to protecting the church, and doing it more harm in the long run.
There was a Catholic church in Houston(?) the other day which called the cops on one of their priests when they discovered he was a pedophile. That's the first time I've ever heard of that happening.
I'm kind of surprised that there are any Catholics left given that the RCC's global criminal conspiracy has been know about for several decades, and their "slap on the wrist" policy while moving the rapist to a new parish has been their official policy since 306 AD. Literally 1,712 years since that shameful policy was developed at the Council of Elvira.
As impossible as this may sound, I think the Attorney General of PA should seek to dismiss the statute of limitations on rape and child abuse. Go after the priests who committed the atrocities and those who sought to cover it up. And then throw the book at them.
Pope Francis has done a little by writing a letter that was to be read in Mass on Sunday. It's not enough. It's time for the Church to rethink it's stance on priestly celibacy and allowing women to become priests, not just nuns.
Why has the Catholic Church seemingly universally protected child abusers? Why did they not call the authorities? To protect The Church.
How did that worked out for them? Not well. Short term solutions, like moving abusers to other parishes, certainly blew up on them IMO.
The Pope, IMO, is properly humiliated and sorrowful for what all went on but plainly many of the faithful still support priests over victims.
If we can go back over 70 years to prosecute Nazis then we should be able to go back at least 20 to 30 years to prosecute creepo priests...
But some of this abuse has gone for nearly 50 years as the grand jury report states
I feel sorry for those Catholics who still put priests over victims
I do not. "Verily I say unto you that whatsoever you do unto the least among you, you also do unto me". Those damn priests fucked Jesus...
I don't mean sorry in a good way
We rarwely agree, JBB, but in this case we are in lock step. Looking after the church as opposed to those who are the faithful is wrong, no matter how you look at it.
Taxing the Catholic church like a business for the next 70 years sounds like fair punishment.
Only if whatever money they collect goes to the victims.
Seize the assets of the guilty parishes and split it among their victims. Make those parishes lease back their churches from them at prevailing commercial rates and tax any parish money transferred to the RCC at 50% for 70 years.
The biggest problem with that? The parish is largely paid for by the parishoners with their donations. Should the parishoners be penalized for the actions of the priest(s) who are indirect employees of the Roman Catholic Church? I can't see any parish continuing it's existance in those circumstances.
Seems like this is something that should be directed towards the vatican itself, as it seems the policies of protecting predator priests originates there.
Either, or. I'm good with the RCC cutting a $3 million USD check to each victim or their survivors.
I can live with that too. Unfortunately the people that pay the wy are not the people that the church answers to. Ingrained faith in their institution.
I remember listening to the news on the radio when the first Catholic Church sex scandal came to light, not that there hadn't been rumors for years. I distinctly remember it being said that the Church thought it could deal with the problem internally, with no involvement from the police, and that was being looked at by prosecutors as an option.
My reaction then and now was "What the hell?!" No, that should never be an option. The organization that covered up the crime and harbored the criminals should never, ever be in charge of investigating or punishing the criminals.
Time to stop playing nice with the church. They have shown that they are not only unable, but also are unwilling, to clean their house. Arrest those involved and prosecute them. Period. The church's role should be limited to providing them with a defense attorney, if the church decides to do so, and making reparations to the victims. And that's it. Their dirty fingers need to stay out of the investigation.
I agree, and it is an international thing......crimes against humanity, no? The RCC is not the only ones that do bad in the name of religion, but someone has to take a stand somewhwere.
No, they're not the only organization to commit crimes and human rights violations in the name of religion. But I think they may well have been the only organization in the western world that could do so, and then say to police and prosecutors, "No, guys, we've got this covered. We'll make sure it's handled. No, we can't imprison anyone, but we can send them for mandatory treatment and set a really tough penance." and actually have government officials allow that to happen.
It would happen with other religions in other parts of the world, I'm sure. But the very option being mentioned here should have raised somebody's hackles.
Agreed, there is no excuse for it.