Excellent article.

It puts in mind the same point Mark Shea was trying to drive home with his article, Fisking King David.

Yes, that was a great article, too.

An excellent article and I couldn't agree more. But, the comment, "What has been difficult, however, has been responding charitably to other Catholics who have chosen to tune out those who are still struggling.", deserves more attention.

Many Catholics still are justifiably angry about the failure of the American Church to protect some of the most vulnerable members of the Body of Christ. That anger was enhanced by the Bishops PR campaign announced at their Dallas meeting that spread the blame over all of the members of the Church and made our priests vulnerable to false charges without due process.

As in any family, when problems are not brought out into the open and discussed, they fester and occasionally create the open sores of anger that Ms. Saxton witnessed. There has been little or no healing in the American Church, only news stories about bankruptcy, parish closings, and new charges of abuse.

In addition to "patience with those blinded by rage" we need to pray for healing in our beloved Church. We need to pray that bishops guided by PR men and lawyers will be replaced with good shepherds who understand understand the needs their flock.

Excellent article, Heidi.

In our diocese, every volunteer and employee who works with children must have a background check, sign a code of conduct, and watch a video that tells how to recognize child physical, emotional, and sexual abuse and how to report child abuse.  While some find it a burdensome requirement, most realize just how important it is to protect our children.

Heidi, I'm glad you stuck around the on-line forum and shed some light in the darkness of skepticism. I

n the last year, however, I've been confronted with the dark side that false abuse claims can do to men, as you mentioned. Aside from those looking for a "pay day" there are young girls and women who are motivated out of vindictiveness to strike at innocent men. The culture's sensitivity to the issue, and immediate assignment of guilt before they are proved so, has ruined a number of men's lives and their families. Once accusations are made, society has been responding in an unjust way by labeling the man guilty without reasonable evidence. One of them, a friend, took his own life on account of the accusations and the attitude of police and prosecutor who had the power (without a trial) to remove him from the home, remove him from his ability to work at his job, and removed him as the guardian to his children. He lost all hope. There was no one to turn to for help.

Just as we need to be aware of the signs of child abuse, we also need to be aware of the signs of false accusations.

Meanwhile, there are many priests in the U.S. who maintain their innocence, for whom there has been no due process, and whose lives have been ruined by vindictive allegations. Check out: OpusBono.org for a ministry that tries to help priests who have been accused, both guilty and innocent.

Stan Williams

Nineveh's Crossing

Thanks for sharing this resource, Stan. I'm sorry to hear about your friend.

As a foster parent, I've had my own interactions with CPS, and agree that there is much room for improvement — unfortunately, there are grievous errors on both sides. Some children are not being protected soon enough, some adults are wrongly accused. Neither is good for families, which is what our children need most of all. Which is why the need for awareness and advocacy from WITHIN the Church — where it can do the most good by protecting and preserving healthy families — is critical.

Heidi Hess Saxton Editor of Canticle (http://www.canticlemagazine.com/). Author of "Behold Your Mother" and "Raising Up Mommy" (http://www.christianword.com/).

But our bishops are delinquent on one BIG issue here. Over 80% of the sexual abuse was priests on boys. This is NOT about pedophilia but homosexual predation by men on boys and yet the bishops wouldn't touch that with a 10 foot pole.

 So when they say what they did to launch their campaign, I too roll my eyes because they are not addressing the "elephant" that is in the room.

Respectfully, mraiello, you need to rethink your response. We cannot wait for the bishops to solve this problem for us. Recent history has shown us the futility of trying to handle this issue and effect change on an institutional level alone. We must ALSO work together at a parish level if we ever hope to change — and save — lives.

Heidi Hess Saxton Editor of Canticle (http://www.canticlemagazine.com/). Author of "Behold Your Mother" and "Raising Up Mommy" (http://www.christianword.com/).

I will use the comment of Mr. Williams to enter into the greater issue of "homosexual predation" as mraiello correctly identifies and the “female” psychology that has operated in this scandal right from the outset. There is  a spirit of vindictiveness and unforgiveness and hurricane style destruction that wants to operate here. These are all attributes of the fallen female spirit.

It's high time that we put this campaign under the command of holy real men who will identify the problem for what it is. Tell the victims that it's time to forgive and move on. Engage the opportunists in battle and most of all protect the good men who are being wronged and demoralized just so we can have an Oprah and Donahue style media spectacle at the expense of sacred honor.

Victims, get over it already. You have your life and your faith, use it to forgive and forget. Work privately to right the wrongs. Don't use your resentments as portals to let the swine into the sanctuaries. The scars in your lives are the wounds of Christ. Stop cashing them in on your insurance policies. Would you not rather present them at the Gate? It's the honorable thing to do.   

Hsaxton,

As long as candadates for the seminary are refused because they are "too rigid and conservative", and less qualified people are admited to the sxseminary, and in some dioceses, this means homosexuals who are not mature to endure the rigors of the priesthood, this problem will continue.  Our seminaries are corrutoped too.  We, as Catholics, have to pray for good vocations and that the seminarians, postulants and novices be on fire with the faith, and also be protected from the harmful influences in their seminaries and dioceses, but we will never change some of these bishops.

In too many dioceses, the faithful have simply been a source of protest to bishops who have made their dioceses in an image that is not truely catholic.

When the Catholic Medical Association released a paper in 2001, concerning the promotion of homosexuality in Catholic Psychiatric Centers that priests were sent for therapy, they were sued.

THe homosexual influence is very powerful in the Church in the developed world and this deamon will only be cast out by prayer.

Again, both you gentlemen are ignoring the whole point of the article, which is to protect the children we have NOW. Goral, it is just as wrong to characterize ALL victims as opportunistic or ALL females as vindictive as it is to characterize ALL priests as pedophiles. For some victims, the path to healing is through advocacy ... and there is nothing wrong with that. Indeed, forgiveness is often what releases them for service.

Mraiello, again I say to you: work is needed at both the institutional level and the parish level. No one — certainly not me — is arguing that prayer is not needed. But in the words of the great Benedict, "Ora et labora."

Heidi Hess Saxton Editor of Canticle (http://www.canticlemagazine.com/). Author of "Behold Your Mother" and "Raising Up Mommy" (http://www.christianword.com/).

with all due respect, I think the authority figures of the Church had no clue  how to handle such a situation. From the way society was when most of this abuse was occurring, there was nothing in the "handbook" on how to deal with such, if and when it came into the light. What are the "sacre cows" of our society these days? Everything else seems to be up for exposure-- good or bad ?  

You are absolutely right, Joe. We cannot expect the administration of the Church to solve by themselves this problem — or any of the social problems we face, such as abortion or domestic violence or unjust war. The most our ecclesial leadership can do is to hold up the light of truth (ideally by modeling it, but often words are needed, too) so that those with the necessary experience and training can act.

Yes, we need holy and courageous bishops and priests who live out the vows they made at their ordination, and shepherd their flocks wisely. Yes, we need devout and courageous seminarians.

We need to pray for all these as we work. And with that, gentlemen, I need to sign off ... My children need me!

Heidi Hess Saxton Editor of Canticle (http://www.canticlemagazine.com/). Author of "Behold Your Mother" and "Raising Up Mommy" (http://www.christianword.com/).

Some men were weak, they sinned,  they do took advantage of the weak.  None of that should be a surprise to even a casual reader of the Old Testament.  What jerked the chain of many faithful in the pew Catholics was not the failing.... but the coverup - the climate of silence - of protection.  And my friends that climate may have changed in the child abuse area (maybe to an excess), in other areas the coverup goes on.  The Bishops did not learn the underlying lesson of openness and transparency.

In most dioceses today, if you make a complaint about a truly serious liturgical abuse, you will get the same two step run around that parents did about abusing priests. 

My dear Bishops, the business field has learned that it isn't the error that kills you it's the coverup.  Get it out and admit the truth.  After all if Richard Nixon had admitted his error, he would have finished his full term.

Some of us living in diocese who are still fighting the Talking About Touching (TAT) program (implemented as a result of ARticle 12 of the Charter for the Protection of Children and YOung People written by the USCCB) still fight with the contradiction.

TAT is nothing less than the psychological and moral abuse of children.  There is much prayer, and much action trying to happen.  But it is a contradiction, nonetheless.

While we pray and work, it is the faithful priests that refuse to abuse the children through this program that are being bullied.  Please pray for them and for all that are working to truly protect our children.

My thinking is that the Church knew exactly what it was dealing with and how to deal with it. What the hierarchy underestimated was how much the media would explode and exploit the scandal. If there's any organization that has a track record of cohesion and meticulous information gathering and interpretation, it's the Catholic Church. She's endured and survived two millennia of scandals of every sort. The cover-up is modus operandi, not necessarily for devious reasons but to protect the innocent and rightly so.

When I listened to a radio commentator from Boston say that "the pope is molesting our babies" I knew that any real and fair presentation of the issue was lost. There was no retraction or qualification of the outrageous statement the next day, just more of the same. There was no outcry from the Catholic audience to remove the talk show host. Any more airing-out would have been hairspray on a flame. No wonder the hierarchy circled the wagons. They know well the prophetic statement: "strike the shepherd and the sheep will scatter." The clergy instinctively protect their own as is the case with all professions.

This scandal would have been better handled privately and confidentially as were previous ones but the sharks wanted the Church to bleed, to cower, to capitulate to the "Accuser" of old. To seek openness and transparency in the life of the Church and all its servants is tantamount to seeking transparency from a married couple. Privacy has its purpose. Be very weary of those who confess or expose personal sins in public. They are the pornographers of our society; they seek destruction of souls and not righting a wrong. 

Goral, I totally agree with you that the Church has been incredibly exploited by the media, becuase it is so meticulous in keeping records, and because the Church has deep pockets.  I also agree that the victims need to use their faith to help them forgive and heal.  But it seems really insensitive for you to tell them to "get over it already".  It's just not that simple.  Those of us who are lucky enough to have made it through life without experiencing sexual abuse can't begin to imagine how incredibly devastating it is.  This certainly doesn't justify vindictiveness or opportunism that we have seen.  But "get over it already" seems harsh.

Goral, sexual abuse often causes mental and emotional wounds that manifest as chronic illness, just as traumatic physical injury may break bones and damage organs so that they don't work correctly even after years go by.  It makes as much sense to walk into a hospital and tell a person who was hit by a car to "get over it" as to say that to a victim of abuse.

I'm on Goral's side on this one, too, and I also was abused as a child, though not by a priest. (Since I wasn't Catholic at the time, there was little chance of that.) I found true healing in Christ, in forgiving (and in asking forgiveness--even a child who is being manipulated knows at some level that cooperating is wrong, if they are of the age of reason) and in moving on. I choose not to continue to be a victim.

Granted, not everyone who is abused will react in the same way, but I know that "solutions" such as TAT, abuse prevention comic books (?!?!), and yes, some lame mention of abuse in the prayers of the faithful is no solution at all. Background checks for parish CCD volunteers? Well, ok, but that's not really addressing the issue, is it? It's merely pretending to address the issue. When a bishop like Bruskewitz is attacked for failing to live up to the Dallas charter even though he would be one to really fix a problem if it was in his diocese while someone like Mahoney gets a pass, well, there's still a problem. And while the laity can do some things to protect children, we cannot fix this problem.

Dear Claire, did you expect something else from me? If I said: you poor dears, how you must be suffering, would that encourage the victims to improve their lot? And when you say, "those of us who are lucky" are you speaking for the mouse in the pantry also?, because I'm not the one. I was about thirteen. I talk to the guy, shake his hand and joke with him. It's water over the waterwheel which can not turn if it doesn't dump the water.

My dad had the bayonet end of a rife stuck at him on the ground by a German soldier. He was just a boy; he has a nervous stomach to this day as a result. We all live with scars. Those of us who didn’t collect any money or sympathy for them got over it quicker.

I do understand mkochan that the psyche is immensely complicated and some have a horrible time of it. Nevertheless the old water must be dumped, that's compassionate advice, isn't it?

I actually feel more for the priest who has lived out his vocation and has been caught in the dragnet of callous retribution. For this man of God there is no anonymity, there is no recourse or retribution, there is a wound more painful than physical abuse. The doubts, suspicions, distrusts and divisions that it sets-up in the Body of Christ is far more damaging.

Bless us Father for we have sinned.

That's weird. My post was made after goral's last one, but it posted (and timestamped) earlier.

Ah Stacey, you gotta be quicker with the clicker. Sorry, I edited mine and pushed you back.

In my case it wasn't a priest either. In fact with all my years as an altar boy there was never any inpropriety with me or any of my dozen altar boy friends. In fact the priests were so helpfull and kind to us in everything we did. They were trully like second fathers.

God help us for the injustices that we have perpetrated on His annointed.

Goral, I'm sorry to hear that you suffered abuse as a child, and I'm glad that you were able to forgive and heal.  I also feel a lot of compassion for innocent priests.  As Father Corapi says, the #1 victims are the direct victims of the abuse, the second victims are all of us who have to face the constant digs against our faith as a result of the scandal, and the third are the innocent priests who are automatically presumed to be child molesters.  And yes, I know better than to expect sappy sentiments from you.  But I still think telling victims to just get over it is overly harsh, and unrealistic.  Although maybe it's acceptable coming from someone who has been down that road.  But for someone like me who has never been a victim, it would be an inappropriate comment to make.  Conversely, I would not appreciate it if someone with 8 children told me to "just get over" my infertility and miscarriages.

"those blinded by rage"...

Call it righteous indignation. Call it holy anger. Call it what it is...a sin that cries to heaven for justice. Blinded? Maybe some are. Most are not. The causes and context have yet to be revealed publicly. Why? Instead the USCCB wants all of us to "share in the blame". Really? Hmmm. Bishop Bruskewicz of Lincoln was correct to refuse to implement the Charter. It doesn't put the scandal in context for what it is. A homosexual problem.

"The floor of hell is paved with the skulls of bishops." -St. Athanasius

Thank you very much for this article.  I printed this article, read it at lunch and thought about it in the quiet of the afternoon.  It helped me a great deal.

The bishops are just human beings who must have struggled a great deal over the right thing to do.  I've made some serious mistakes in my life as well and I have struggled over the right thing to do in many areas of my own life.

I mentor a young girl in a correctional facility whose father was abused by a priest in my former diocese.  She is there because she is having a very difficult time coping with his suicide.  She comes to Catholic classes every week, though and she prays alot and is very interested in our faith.  I also noticed that her father raised her Catholic and sent her to Catholic schools, in spite of this very grave sin that was committed against him by a priest.  I respect this young lady for continuing to believe in God and the Catholic church.  She is an example for the rest of us, because she recognizes that what this priest did to her father, is not a reflection on the Catholic church.  It was that priest's own sin and the rest of us are just trying to cope with it.