The Catholic Church is not new to controversy. The institution’s actions prompted The Boston Globe’s Pulitzer-winning spotlight investigation detailing the pedophilic transgressions of Catholic priests and enabling evasive maneuvers of their bishops. However, there are many other scandals involving the church, including more instances of sexual abuse, privacy violations and discrimination against the LGBTQ+ community.
1 Child sex abuse in Pennsylvania
In 2018, a Pennsylvania grand jury issued a 900-page report detailing 70 years of child sex abuse by the Catholic Church in the state. The report found 300 priests involved in the sexual abuse of more than 1,000 identifiable victims and likely many more that went unreported. The grand jury said the church followed a “playbook for concealing the truth,” The New York Times reported.
“Despite some institutional reform, individual leaders of the church have largely escaped public accountability,” the grand jury wrote. “Priests were raping little boys and girls, and the men of God who were responsible for them not only did nothing; they hid it all. For decades.” The investigation was led by then-Attorney General Josh Shapiro, who is now Pennsylvania’s governor. He said the cover-up “stretched in some cases all the way up to the Vatican,” adding that the church “protected their institution at all costs” and “showed a complete disdain for victims.” The report also prompted investigations in other states, many of which uncovered similar findings.
2 Sex, drugs and nun control
The Bishop of Fort Worth and 10 cloistered nuns in Arlington, Texas, have been at odds in a convoluted scandal, Slate reported. The head of a local convent, Mother Teresa Agnes Gerlach, had a seizure in 2022 requiring medical intervention. While medicated, Gerlach admitted to committing online “sexual sin” with a priest, a violation of her vow of chastity. The information was reported to Bishop Michael Olson, who began a crusade against the nuns, interrogating them and confiscating their devices. Soon, the nuns refused to cooperate, claiming Olson was “traumatizing” them.
Things escalated further, with Olson threatening to dismiss the nuns from their Carmelite order, and the nuns then suing Olson for violating their privacy and defamation. The nuns’ lawyer also called in the police to investigate Olson, prompting Olson’s office to release photos by a “confidential informant” taken in the nuns’ monastery showing “marijuana edibles, a bong and other drug paraphernalia.” The nuns claimed that the photo was staged and that Olson was trying to shut the monastery down to seize their property.
The conflict is still ongoing and the nuns have rejected Olson’s authority over them, despite Vatican intervention. “Every action he has taken with regard to us has proven to be devious and deceptive, marked by falsehood and an intent to persecute us,” the nuns wrote.
3 Art, abuse and Marko Rupnik
Slovenian priest Marko Rupnik was expelled from the Jesuits in June 2023 for “sexually, spiritually and psychologically abusing women” for decades, The Associated Press reported. However, Rupnik is also a famous Catholic mosaic artist whose work is in chapels all over the world, including the U.S. This has sparked debate as to whether his art should be removed or whether people should separate the art from the artist.
“The good of art is in the work of art itself,” argued the Rev. Patrick Briscoe in Our Sunday Visitor. “If we say anything else, we concede that art is, of itself and in fact, ideological.” On the other side, the victims of Rupnik’s abuse and other abuse survivors are calling for the art to be removed. “His artwork should be removed, as a testimony to the entire church, and as a witness, that there are consequences to perpetrating abuse,” clerical abuse victim Gina Barthel told The Pillar.
4 Child sex abuse in Baltimore
In April 2023, Maryland’s attorney general released a report outlining the sexual abuse of children and teenagers over six decades by clergy in the Archdiocese of Baltimore, The New York Times reported. The 463-page report identifies 156 abusers (10 of whose names are redacted) connected to the church, mostly men who served as priests, who abused more than 600 children dating back to the 1940s.
The report “illustrates the depraved, systemic failure of the archdiocese to protect the most vulnerable — the children it was charged to keep safe,” Attorney General Anthony Brown said. Archbishop William Lori, head of the Baltimore archdiocese — the oldest diocese in the U.S. — said in a statement he sees “the pain and destruction that was perpetrated by representatives of the church and perpetuated by the failures that allowed this evil to fester, and I am deeply sorry.”
5 The outing of a top priest
Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill, secretary-general of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, was forced to resign from his position in 2021 because he was found to have downloaded the gay dating app Grindr and frequently visited gay bars. However, there was controversy in the the way this information was discovered. Catholic news site The Pillar outed Burrill using “commercially available data to trace his calls, movements and behavior since 2018,” The Atlantic reported.
The manner in which The Pillar outed Burrill bothered many people more than his evident breaking of his vow of celibacy. “The use of app-based location tracking data to make public that which someone assumed would remain private should be chilling to any American with a smartphone,” remarked Catholic journal America Magazine. In addition, The Pillar “missed no opportunity to mention … charges that Grindr and other ‘hookup apps’ are used to facilitate sex with minors,” The Atlantic added, essentially conflating homosexuality with pedophilia, despite an acknowledged lack of any evidence that Burrill was in contact with any minors.
6 The prosecution of McCarrick
The Vatican expelled former U.S. cardinal Theodore McCarrick from the priesthood in 2019 for sexually abusing minors. In 2021, he was officially charged in Massachusetts with sexually assaulting a 16-year-old boy in the 1970s, making him “the highest-ranking Roman Catholic official in the United States to face criminal charges in the clergy sexual abuse scandal,” The Boston Globe reported. McCarrick pleaded not guilty.
However, McCarrick, now 93, had the charges dismissed in August 2023 due to “age-related incompetence,” with the judge determining he was not mentally fit to stand trial, CNN reported. “In spite of the criminal court’s decision today, many clergy sexual abuse victims feel as though former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick is and will always be the permanent personification of evil within the Catholic Church,” said the victim’s lawyer, Mitchell Garabedian.
— Fort Worth’s bishop said on Saturday that one or more nuns might have incurred on Friday an excommunication, because of a “scandalous and schismatic” statement issued by a Carmelite monastery in Arlington, Texas.
Fort Worth Bishop Michael Olson in a video released June 11, 2023. Credit: Diocese of Fort Worth.
While the bishop is competent to formally declare the nun excommunicated, he stopped short of that step Saturday, and did not indicate what his next steps might be.
Instead, Bishop Michael Olson warned Aug. 19 that Mother Teresa Agnes Gerlach might be excommunicated, along with several nuns living in the Arlington Carmel.
Olson wrote that on Friday, Gerlach “issued a public statement on the website of the Arlington Carmel by which she publicly rejected my authority as diocesan bishop and Pontifical Commissary.”
“Thus, it is with deep sorrow that I must inform the faithful of the Diocese of Fort Worth, that Mother Teresa Agnes, thereby, may have incurred upon herself latae sententiae ( i.e., by her own schismatic actions) excommunication,” Olson wrote.
The bishop’s warning came one day after a statement released on Friday from the Carmelite monastery of Arlington, Texas, in which both Gerlach and the monastery’s leadership group said they “no longer recognize the authority of, and can have no further relations with, the current Bishop of Fort Worth or his officials.”
Olson said Saturday that he believed the nun’s statement was an act of schism — a public rejection of his “authority as diocesan bishop and [as] pontifical commissary” of the nuns’ monastery. But while canon law would have permitted him to declare by decree that Gerlach was formally excommunicated, the bishop wrote instead only that her excommunication was a possibility.
He made a similar statement about the other nuns of the monastery, writing that they, “depending on their complicity in Mother Teresa Agnes’ publicly, scandalous and schismatic actions could possibly have incurred the same latae sententiae excommunication.”
It is not clear whether the bishop intends to initiate an administrative penal process to resolve clearly whether or not the nuns are excommunicated, or if the matter will remain ambiguous.
But Olson said the nuns’ monastery — over which the Vatican has given him authority amid a complicated dispute — “remains closed to public access until such time as the Arlington Carmel publicly disavows itself of these scandalous and schismatic actions of Mother Teresa Agnes.”
As the dispute continues, some sources close to the monastery have told The Pillar that Olson’s distinction between Gerlach and the other nuns could be significant — suggesting that Olson likely intends to urge the other nuns in the monastery to separate themselves from Gerlach.
Sources close to the monastery have told The Pillar that the nuns are facing acute psychological distress, and that some may not understand the stakes of the dispute.
Excommunication is an ecclesiastical penalty, intended to reform a Catholic who commits a significant canonical crime, and to encourage their repentance. A person who is excommunicated is prohibited from receiving sacraments or from exercising a leadership office in the Church.
In the case of Gerlach and other nuns, Olson suggested that they might have incurred a latae sententiae — or automatic — excommunication by their rejection of the bishop’s authority, which he characterized as an act of schism.
But because the bishop did not declare an excommunication formally, the nuns’ situation is ambiguous, limiting the practical effect of the “automatic” penalty in the administration of the monastery.
At issue could be Gerlach’s mental state. Amid a complicated dispute with Olson, the nun has claimed to be impacted at various times by significant medications. If her mental capacity is presently diminished by medication, canon law would require that Olson assign to her a lesser penalty than excommunication — and the bishop may intend to undertake a relatively thorough canonical process before declaring a penalty, in light of that possibility.
The bishop’s statement did not specify whether that is the case, or whether there are other reasons why he stopped short of formally declaring a penalty, even while characterizing the nuns’ actions as schismatic.
Canonists have suggested to The Pillar that in addition to his public statement, Olson could have issued to the nuns a formal canonical warning that they must repudiate the Aug. 18 statement within a certain timeframe, or see their excommunication publicly declared. But sources close to the monastery say there is no indication that Olson has yet sent any such formal warning, leaving his plans unclear.
The conflict between Bishop Olson and the nuns of the Carmelite Monastery of the Most Holy Trinity has been ongoing for several months, since Olson in May initiated a canonical investigation into their superior, Mother Teresa Agnes Gerlach, for allegedly admitting to violating her vow of chastity with an unnamed priest.
Lawyers for the convent and for Gerlach, both civil and canonical, have said that her supposed admission of an affair was made following a serious medical procedure, under the influence of painkillers, and when she was in and out of lucidity.
Olson, however, said the prioress had repeated her admission to him during an in-person conversation, in the presence of several other individuals. He said Gerlach was lucid and spoke clearly at the time, and was not recovering from surgery at the time.
The bishop claimed that the nun named the priest — who was identified in June by his diocese as Fr. Philip Johnson of the Diocese of Raleigh — during that conversation, and that the priest’s diocese of residence, his immediate superior, and his bishop had all been informed of the situation.
>The nuns, in response, filed a million-dollar civil suit against the bishop, as well as a criminal complaint alleging that Olson had stolen their property by seizing their phones and computers during a search of the convent. They have suggested that the bishop’s actions are financially motivated, and that he is seeking their donor list.
The bishop told the sisters he was restricting their access to Mass and confession until they withdrew the lawsuit. He restored their access to the sacraments on June 1, when he also issued a decree dismissing Gerlach.
His decree came one day after the Vatican appointed Olson “pontifical commissary” for the sisters and retroactively sanated any and all canonical procedural issues raised by Olson’s previous actions involving the monastery.
In June, the diocese also said that it was in communication with the local police department regarding serious concerns over “the use of marijuana and edibles at the monastery,” along with what it called “other issues that the diocese will address at another time and in a proper forum.”
The diocese released photos which it says are from the inside of the monastery. The images appear to show an office with several tables strewn with drug paraphernalia, dispensary bottles, branded marijuana products, bongs, and a crucifix.
But the nuns have apparently continued to recognize Gerlach as their superior, and they have made various appeals to Rome, including the objection that Olson had employed powers reserved for a criminal canonical investigation despite the mother superior’s alleged actions — while sinful — not constituting a specific crime in canon law.
The conflict escalated Friday, when the nuns released an unexpected statement rejecting Olson’s authority, alleging months of “unprecedented interference, intimidation, aggression, private and public humiliation and spiritual manipulation as the direct result of the attitudes and ambitions of the current Bishop of Fort Worth.”
“No one who abuses us as has the current Bishop of Fort Worth, has any right to our cooperation or obedience,” the statement said.
“For our own spiritual and psychological safety, and in justice, we must remain independent of this Bishop until such time as he repents of the abuse to which he has subjected us, apologizes in person to our community for it and accepts to make due public reparation,” the nuns wrote.
They also released on Friday a statement of support apparently written by former U.S. apostolic nuncio Archbishop Carlo Vigano.
“The repeated abuses of power by those who hold ecclesiastical Authority over religious Communities – especially communities of contemplative women – are part of a subversive plan carried out by corrupt and heretical Prelates whose purpose is to deprive the Church of the Graces which such Consecrated souls cause to descend upon Her,” the statement said.
The Vigano statement connected the conflict in Texas to Vigano’s long standing criticism of Pope Francis.
“I invite everyone to support the courageous resistance of the Carmelite Nuns of Arlington with prayer and material help, not only for the sake of supporting them but also in order to send a clear signal to those in the Church who believe that they hold absolute power, even to the point of contradicting with impunity the Authority of Christ, the Head of the Mystical Body.”
Those Friday statements from the Carmel prompted Olson’s Saturday statement, in which the bishop said that the Carmelite statement “has hurt me as a friend and as the bishop because of the deep wound this has cut in our unity as the Diocese of Fort Worth.”
Olson wrote that he “stand[s] ready to assist Mother Teresa Agnes on her path of reconciliation and healing.”
But while he addresses problems in the monastery, some Catholics in Fort Worth say that Olson has a record of acting rashly, or autocratically, amid disputes in the diocese. Some point to a group of Catholics which has submitted a petition to the Vatican calling for Olson’s removal, citing the Carmelite conflict and several other issues. The group says more than 900 people have signed a petition sent to the Vatican.
For his part, Olson has insisted that he is concerned for the spiritual welfare of his diocese.
“Since the late 1950’s the nuns of the Carmelite Monastery have sustained so many of us in our times of doubt, sickness, and grief with their prayers and devotion to their Carmelite vocations to pray in communion with the Church. Their example of prayerful fidelity has for many years strengthened the mission of Christ’s Holy Catholic Church in North Texas. I have personally relied on their prayers and have enjoyed a spiritual friendship with so many of the nuns,” he wrote Saturday.
“Please join me in praying for the nuns, and the restoration of order and stability to our beloved Arlington Carmel. May Saint Teresa of Jesus intercede on their and our behalf,” he added.
— Brendan Watkins is one of thousands of children of priests who found their biological parents through DNA testing and social media. His birth wasn’t the only secret his father kept.
There is a half-crumbling church, covered in red dust, at Radium Hill, a former uranium mine deep in the South Australian desert. It was built by Father Vincent Shiel, with his own hands, in 1956. Six years later, his son Brendan was born in Melbourne to a former nun — a secret the priest kept until he died 37 years later.
Brendan was one of the lucky ones. Both he and his brother Damien were adopted by Roy and Bet Watkins, in Richmond, Melbourne. As Damien, who was adopted two years before Brendan, recalls: “One day a clergyman was talking to Roy and said, ‘Uh, how come you don’t have children yet?’ And Roy said, ‘Well, we haven’t been blessed’. And he said, ‘Maybe that’s something we can help you with’.”
A sepia toned photo of two smiling toddlers dressed in white for a formal photograph Adoptive brothers Brendan and Damien Watkins in 1962.
Brendan and Damien had an idyllic life with Roy and Bet, who were huge Richmond Tigers fans. They told the boys they were adopted when they were young, but it was Brendan who was most curious about finding his biological parents.
In 1990, at the age of 29, Brendan decided to apply for his original birth certificate because it would carry the names of his biological parents. A meeting was set up at the Catholic Family Welfare Bureau in Melbourne. But it wasn’t what he expected.
Bet and Roy Watkins in the 1980s.
“I was hoping that the birth certificate would have both parents’ names,” says Brendan. “It just had my mother’s”. And she wasn’t 16, 17 or 18, as he expected, but much older — 27 — and from South Australia.
Brendan asked the social worker to contact her, but she was reluctant. He was later called back for another meeting. “I was told that I wouldn’t meet my mother, I wouldn’t talk to her,” he says. “And very directly told to go home and forget about her forever. It was the most wounding, impactful trauma of my life.”
A search for answers
Brendan has discovered that globally there are thousands of children of priests, just like him, who as adults found their biological parents through DNA testing and social media groups. There are 450,000 Catholic priests around the world and, though there are no accurate records, it is estimated that they have fathered over 20,000 children.
Crucially, a 25-year study of 1,500 Catholic priests found less than half the priests in the United States attempt celibacy — which experts say is a major factor fuelling so-called reproductive abuse. The study’s author, ex-priest Richard Sipe, argued it creates a culture of secrecy that tolerates and even protects paedophiles — though he estimated that four times as many priests involve themselves sexually with women than with children.
Brendan’s partner Kate did her own research on Brendan’s mother and eventually found one of her relatives. “I recall being at work, and Kate rang and said, ‘Are you sitting down? I found your mother. She’s a nun’, he says. “I pictured my mother in a nun’s habit in a convent walking silently through churches … it gave me some peace.”
Father Vincent Shiel
But he still had many questions — and was determined to find answers. He eventually made contact with his mother, ‘Maggie’ (not her real name) through letters and a short visit. But who was his biological father? “What followed was essentially 30 years of different stories,” Brendan says. “My father was dead … or she didn’t know what happened to my father.”
Maggie eventually gave Brendan a name, but it turned out to be false. “I wrote back to my mother, and I told her that. And she wrote back and said, ‘Well, I was dumped and so were you’. And she was right … the chase was over.”
Five years later, in 2015, Brendan sent a DNA sample to Ancestry.com.au. Four men came back as possible candidates for his father. One was ruled out. “He was a Catholic priest, so it couldn’t be a Catholic priest. Could it?”
The site of the old Catholic church at Radium Hill.
But Brendan’s mother Maggie then confirmed he was indeed the son of Father Vincent Shiel, who died in 1993, at the age of 90. He was still alive when Brendan first contacted Maggie.
But the priest had sworn his mother to secrecy – Brendan says this was a form of spiritual abuse. “It says so much about the misogyny of the Catholic church, the institution,” he says. “It’s a male-centric institution that doesn’t recognise the rights of women. I found that my mother had met my father when she was 14 or 15, and he was 30 years older … so he had enormous influence over her.”
Documents missing, records destroyed
Now he had his father’s real name, Brendan applied to Mackillop Family Services in Melbourne for his file. The archivist couldn’t find any records and told Brendan this was very “unusual”. Brendan had to appeal to the Victorian Department of Justice to receive his file.
“The more children of priests I met and spoke with, I found all sorts of anecdotal stories about destroyed records and people knowing and systems within the church [for] hiding the children of priests and documents going astray,” says Brendan, who was unable to track down his birth records and baptism certificate.
Charlotte Smith, the chief executive of Vanish, an advocacy agency for adopted persons in Victoria, says it’s an “ongoing theme”. “Records have been known to fall off the back of a truck or be destroyed in fires,” she says. “I think it’s really important to investigate what happened. We have quite a few adoptees over the years who have found no paper trail.”
Brendan has made several trips to remote South Australia to find out more about his father and the diocese he oversaw.
Brendan has spent the last few years writing a book about his adoption journey — Tell No One — published this week. He has made several trips to remote South Australia to find out more about his priest father and the diocese he oversaw. From 1943 to 1977, Father Vincent Shiel lived and worked across a vast area of remote inland towns and coastal cities.
But Brendan’s birth wasn’t the only secret Father Vincent Shiel kept. In 1950, Father Shiel received a call from a doctor from Whyalla Hospital on the Eyre Peninsula. A baby had been born 10 days earlier to a 16-year-old girl who fell pregnant to a farm worker. The problem was, the baby had been left languishing in the ward.
That baby is now 72 years old and lives in Perth.
A bible and rosary belonging to Father Vin Shiel.
The right to know
Father Vincent Shiel organised for a young woman to take the baby to Sydney to be brought up by his brother, William Shiel.
Terry grew up the youngest of 10 children. His siblings later told him Father Shiel had sworn them to secrecy. Terry always felt lucky to have such a loving family, and William’s last words to him were: “Just remember, you are my son and you always will be.”
Terry only found out he was adopted in his 30s, when he applied for his birth certificate. It showed he wasn’t officially adopted until he was two years old. He confronted the priest, who was living in the Blue Mountains, and asked for the name of his biological mother.
Terry’s father
“I said to him, ‘I found out I was adopted … can you help me out? And I’m trying to track down my birth mother.’ And he sort of shook his head and said … [they’re] probably all dead.”
But Terry’s biological mother wasn’t dead — he eventually met her before she died four years ago — Father Shiel had told him a lie. “I think it’s something that should have been brought out in the open a long, long time ago,” he says. “Everybody has a right to know where they come from … what their background is.”
A global issue
Greens Senator David Shoebridge says Terry’s case raises concerning questions. “These are extraordinary facts that seem to show a national undocumented trade in babies being run by the Catholic Church, says Shoebridge. “But from a systemic level it raises just so many troubling questions about what happened and where the documents now lie.”
There has never been a global scholarly study on the numbers of children of priests and nuns. But in 2022, Doris Reisinger, a senior academic at the Goethe University in Frankfurt and a former nun published a landmark report on the issue in the United States.
“We are definitely talking hundreds of thousands of children affected by reproductive abuse,” says Dr Reisinger, who has examined thousands of pages of survivor accounts, court documents and newspaper articles. “I found the first abortion case involving a 13-year-old girl. And I found cases with girls even younger than that — 11-year-olds who had become pregnant as a result of sexual abuse by a priest.”
Dr Doris Reisinger says the clerical power of priests and mandatory celibacy are often a perfect cover for reproductive abuse.
In many cases, Dr Reisinger says, mothers were put under pressure by priests to have abortions or were coerced into hiding, where they’d give birth under “terrible” circumstances.
“I actually think we can assume that this is still going on because none of the contributing factors has been erased,” she says. “The clerical power of priests, mandatory celibacy that often works as a perfect excuse and cover for reproductive abuse — all of that is still fully in place. And no major research has [looked] into reproductive abuse. So there is still lots to be done.”
What DNA evidence reveals
Linda Kelly Lawless is another child of a priest who is seeking official recognition of her ancestry from the Catholic Church through Melbourne Archbishop Peter Comensoli.
Linda’s father Father Joseph Kelly said mass for pregnant unwed mothers who came to the St Joseph’s Receiving Home in Carlton to have their babies and adopt them out. Linda says he was having an affair with her mother at the same time – she was not at the home.
“Only a few months later he was actually using the adoption system to get rid of me, which happened the following year,” she says. “And when I was born … my paperwork was never finished and … seemed to vanish from this hospital. All my paperwork has ‘baby for adoption’, false names, I can’t find my baptism records.”
Linda Kelly Lawless has asked the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne for a letter recognising they acknowledge Joe Kelly is her father.
Over the last five years, Linda has met with Archbishop Comensoli and presented him with many documents, including DNA reports and affidavits from family members. But Archbishop Comensoli said while he personally believed she was the daughter of Father Joseph Kelly, any formal recognition would need to come from the state, not the church.
Linda engaged the US company Parabon, which is used by the FBI and Queensland Police Service in criminal and missing persons cases. “I had legal DNA testing with Parabon in America, and a cousin from my grandfather’s side and a cousin from my grandmother’s side set forward,” she says .“The results came back that I was 99 per cent related to both of them.”
Linda Kelly Lawless as a girl and her dad, Father Joe Kelly.
Linda presented the results to Archbishop Comensoli. In April this year, she received a letter in response in which he suggested an exhumation of Father Joseph Kelly’s body would be necessary in order for the Catholic church to officially recognise Kelly has her father. He wrote:
“In saying this, I must be very clear that I cannot state categorically that he is your biological father. There is simply not the level of information to do so. You have provided significant evidence of a shared heritage, but it directly doesn’t lead to a singular person … I again note that although I do not have the authority to request an exhumation of Father Joseph Kelly, if it is to be sought, it would need to come from you. I would be prepared to support such an application from your yourself.”
The Archbishop of Melbourne Peter Comensoli.
In a statement, Archbishop Comensoli told Compass that the Archdiocese of Melbourne has “supported Linda … and have offered financial support”:
“There is no denying the historical fact that priests have fathered children. The church now steps forward in finding ways to acknowledge children who have priests as their father.
“I cannot state categorically that Fr Kelly is her biological father — there is simply not the level of information to do so at this point in time.
“Regardless of the above, I have shared with Linda in writing that I believe that Fr Kelly is her biological father.”
Linda says she will consider exhumation if that is what it takes to get official recognition from the Catholic Church.
The cemetery where her father is buried has allowed her to take ownership of his plot and put her name on the headstone. “I now actually own my father’s and grandfather’s grave in the private Catholic cemetery,” she says. “They seem to believe my evidence and DNA was enough to show that he was my father.”
She says she is not seeking legal compensation: “I’ve asked for a letter of recognition that they acknowledge that he’s my father. I asked for some support to sort out my birth certificate because it’s not finished. I don’t have a surname, which they have helped me with. I asked for an apology for my mother.”
Charlotte Smith says a public inquiry would help provide victims and survivors with “some sort of justice”.
An inquiry for truth and justice
Vanish, the peak adoption advocacy group in Victoria, is calling for an independent public inquiry into the treatment of the children of priests and their mothers.
“It’s clearly the case that he’s the father and it would appear that since they’re not accepting responsibility, that an inquiry is required to push that,” says Charlotte Smith. A public inquiry would help shed light on how many children have been fathered by priests, she adds, and provide victims and survivors with “some sort of justice”.
Dr Reisinger agrees: “We need an independent inquiry with a strong political backing and with thorough scholarly experience to look into this.”
David Shoebridge is calling for a federal inquiry into the treatment of the children of priests and their mothers.
Federal Greens Senator David Shoebridge wants a federal inquiry. “There clearly needs to be an inquiry which has the power to compel the truth out of the church,” he says.
“We cannot leave these people who were literally stolen at birth by the church to do this fight alone. This is a matter that I think needs to be closely considered by the Federal Attorney General and by the federal government — the fact that it was happening all over the country and the fact that these children were moving across borders.”
Brendan Watkins wants an inquiry to also look at the church’s treatment of the mothers.
“In truth, there’s probably thousands of women like my mother, who live with enormous shame and guilt,” he says. “And they suffer.”
Priestly celibacy, or rather the lack of it, is in the news. There have been allegations of sex orgies, prostitution and pornography against Catholic clerics in Italy. On March 8, Pope Francis suggested, in an interview with a German newspaper, Die Zeit, that the Catholic Church should discuss the tradition of celibacy in light of an increasing scarcity of priests in rural areas, especially in South America.
Although some headlines have suggested that the pope’s latest comments signal a new openness to priestly marriage, neither of these recent developments – the allegations of sex scandals nor the debate about the tradition of priestly celibacy – should be surprising.
Celibate Christians, both monks and clergy, have a long history with scandal. As a scholar of early Christianity, I think it’s important to highlight the fact that Catholic priestly celibacy has never been practiced uniformly and is, in fact, a late development in church practice.
Origins of Christian celibacy
One of the surprising and distinctive features of early Christianity is the praise of celibacy – the practice of abstaining from all sexual relations – as an exemplary way to demonstrate one’s faith.
Given Christianity’s origins within first-century Palestinian Judaism, it was hardly a given that the new religion would develop a high regard for celibacy. Judaism valued family life, and many ritual observances were centered on the family.
But the early Christian Gospels, which told the story of the life of Jesus in the early first century A.D., never mentioned a possible wife – a fact that has given rise to wild speculation in novels, films and recent sensational news stories. And Paul, a Jewish convert whose letters are the earliest books contained in the New Testament, implies that he himself was unmarried when he writes to the earliest Christian communities.
Early Christian Gospels never mentioned a possible wife of Jesus.
The stories of these founder figures, however, do not explain the course of Christian teaching about asceticism – a wide range of practices of self-discipline that include fasting, giving up personal possessions, solitude and eventually priestly celibacy.
By the third and fourth centuries A.D., Christian writers had begun elevating the practice of celibacy and asceticism. They did so by pointing to both Jesus and Paul as models of the ascetic life as well as by carefully interpreting scripture in support of the practice of celibacy.
The influence of Greco-Roman philosophy
Christianity developed in a complex world of Greco-Roman religious diversity, including Judaism as well as a variety of Greco-Roman religious movements. From Judaism it inherited monotheistic ideas, codes of ethical conduct, ritual practices like fasting, and a high regard for scriptural authority.
From Greco-Roman philosophies, Christian writers adopted ideals of self-control (“enkrateia,” in Greek) and withdrawal (“anachoresis,” a term that came to be applied to Christian hermits). Discipline and self-control meant control over one’s emotions, thoughts and behaviors as well as, in some cases, careful attention to what one ate and drank, how attached one was to possessions and the control of one’s sexual desire.
Over the course of several centuries, Christian writers – church leaders in many cases – took the moral and scriptural ideals from Judaism and coupled them with Greco-Roman philosophical ideals of self-control to argue for the virtue of celibacy.
Christian views on suffering and persecution
Simultaneously, and also from a very early stage, Christians viewed themselves as a persecuted minority. This meant that one way Christians could prove their faith was by being resolute during these times of persecution.
This victimization could take the form of individuals being called before a judge and possibly executed, or it could be directed against communities as a whole through mocking and slander. In either case, from the beginning Christians developed a view of themselves as a suffering and persecuted minority.
This attitude naturally changed when the Roman Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity in the fourth century and issued an Edict of Toleration for all religions.
Christians now had to reevaluate their self-identity. And they appear to have increasingly channeled their views about suffering, asceticism and celibacy into the formation of monasteries and convents, where groups of men and women could live lives of celibacy, prayer and manual labor.
Priestly celibacy
What do these developments have to do with priests, though?
Although Christian “clergy,” such as bishops and deacons, begin to appear around the year A.D. 100 in early Christian communities, priests emerge as Christian leaders only much later. Priests came to be the ordained clergy tasked with officiating rituals like the Eucharist or Lord’s Supper, also known as Communion.
Austrian and Slovenian bishops attend a mass in the Basilika of Mariazell, June 23, 2010. Austrian bishops met in Mariazell for their annual summer conference to discuss taboo issues such as celibacy and priest education.
And what about their celibacy? Even here, evidence is both unclear and late: there were reports that some bishops at the Council of Nicea, called by Emperor Constantine in A.D. 325 to address the problem of heresies, argued for a consistent practice of priestly celibacy. This, however, was voted down at the conclusion of the council. The debate resurfaced a couple of hundred years later, but still without uniform agreement.
Over time, priestly celibacy became a serious point of disagreement between the Eastern Orthodox and the Western Roman Catholic churches and contributed to the Great Schism between the two in A.D. 1054. Pope Gregory VII attempted to mandate priestly celibacy, but the practice was contested widely by Christians in the Orthodox Eastern Mediterranean world.
Five centuries later, the issue was once again at the forefront of debate when it became a significant factor in the Protestant split from Catholicism during the Reformation.
A diversity of beliefs, practices
Given this widespread disagreement about the requirement for priests to be celibate, it is not surprising to find that there was widespread diversity on instituting the practice, even within Roman Catholicism. There have always been exceptions to the celibate rule within Roman Catholicism as, for example, among married priests from other denominations of Christianity who convert to Catholicism.
So will the pope’s words about an open discussion bring about dramatic change? Probably not. And will the latest round of scandals be the last of these sorts of allegations? Perhaps not. In my opinion, it is unlikely that we will see a dramatic change to policy or practice.
But the latest developments do highlight once again an abiding feature of world religions: They are dynamic social and cultural institutions that manage to encompass both doctrinal teachings and a diversity of practices and beliefs.
— A former diocese organist filed suit in February 2022. Some laity and priests are unhappy with Stika’s staunch defense of a seminarian accused of rape.
Bishop Richard F. Stika waves to the congregation during his during his episcopal ordination March 19 at the Knoxville, Tenn., convention center. Bishop Stika, a St. Louis native, is the third bishop to lead the Diocese of Knoxville, which was founded in 1988 and is home to almost 60,000 Catholics.. At left is principal consecrator Cardinal Justin F. Rigali of Philadelphia.
By John North
Knoxville Catholic Bishop Richard Stika is facing increasing criticism and scrutiny over his leadership, including how he’s handled accusations that a former seminarian raped a church musician, newly gathered documents show.
The musician is suing Stika and the Catholic Diocese of Knoxville in Knox County Circuit Court. Judge Jerome Melson is expected to hold a hearing Friday for the musician’s lawyers and diocesan attorneys.
The hearing comes as local and national attention grows about the diocese, the boundaries of which stretch from Chattanooga to Knoxville and on up to the Tri Cities. An online publication called The Pillar has published numerous stories critical of Stika’s leadership since 2021.
Complaints against him gained even greater prominence May 11 when the National Catholic Reporter published a lengthy story about the bishop and his leadership.
WBIR previously has reported about the ex-organist’s February 2022 lawsuit as well as a federal complaint filed in November 2022 against the diocese by a Honduran woman who alleges a Gatlinburg priest sexually battered her.
In recent weeks, however, numerous internal documents including emails, reports and handwritten notes from 2021 and 2022 have surfaced as the organist’s lawsuit slowly advances through the legal system.
They show priests in the Knoxville Diocese expressing increasing complaints about Stika, 65, and his handling of a rape allegation made against the Polish seminarian. They’ve been baffled by his persistent support of the seminarian, records show.
Bishop Stika at a past ceremony at the cathedral.
Many of the documents appear to serve as the basis or source of allegations in the musician’s February 2022 lawsuit, which alleges defamation and negligence. The organist is suing the diocese and Stika; he is not suing the seminarian.
Records and two secret audio recordings from 2021 also show Stika steadfastly defending the now former seminarian and at times scolding and criticizing those who have questioned him.
“Bishop Stika has a history of intimidating people he does not agree with or like,” one priest wrote in October 2019 as tensions mounted within the diocese.
“We humbly ask for appointment of a new Bishop who we can believe in, put our faith in, and who can appropriately guide us in our Catholic lives,” a 2022 petition on change.org from a lay member and Chattanooga area attorney states.
Appointed in 2009 to come to Knoxville, the bishop previously has told priests that he is staying right where he is.
“I ain’t going anywhere,” Stika told the men during a meeting May 25, 2021, after controversy over the Polish seminarian arose. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”
In May, three priests in the diocese also met with WBIR to express their concerns.
The diocese said it could not comment because of the ongoing litigation.
HOW IT STARTED
The organist worked in the diocese from 2015 until August 2019.
WBIR is not naming him because he alleges he is a rape victim. WBIR is not naming the former seminarian — whose name is widely known within the diocese — because he has not been charged with a crime.
In January 2019, the freshly arrived seminarian struck up a friendship with the organist.
According to the lawsuit, the musician alleges the seminarian sought a sexual relationship. He states in his complaint that he was “pressured into brief sexual touching and oral sex on isolated occasions. Plaintiff did not feel particularly attracted to (the seminarian) and was not interested in a sexual relationship with someone so forceful and aggressive.”
The Polish man would at times forcefully kiss the organist, the lawsuit alleges.
The organist is seven years older than the seminarian, Stika has said.
The seminarian wanted to keep his physical relationship with the musician secret, according to the lawsuit.
According to the complaint, the musician kept up his association with the Polish man “because he felt bad for him as a gay seminarian.” He also alleges he felt obliged to stay on good terms because the seminarian had a close relationship with Stika, who had taken him in. Stika has said the seminarian came recommended by the late Pope John Paul II’s personal secretary in Poland.
Cathedral of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus in West Knoxville.
On Feb. 5, 2019, the organist alleges, the seminarian came on to him aggressively, pinned him down and raped him to the point that he suffered bleeding.
The musician alleges he went to bed that night “in shock and pain” and that the seminarian spent the night with him in bed.
Five days later, the seminarian left a Catholic prayer book for the organist with an inscription of well wishes from Stika. Four days later — Valentine’s Day — the Polish man handed him a card and a bottle of Champagne. In the card he expressed thanks for his friendship and added, “And for what was wrong — I apologize with all my heart.”
According to the lawsuit, the musician went to the Knoxville Police Department on Feb. 25, 2019, to report the rape. But the lawsuit states that a KPD officer told him if he pursued the criminal case the church would “come after” him and he’d lose his job. It would be his word against the seminarian’s, the plaintiff says he was told.
No rape charge was ever filed.
The musician alleges he tried to avoid the seminarian but the Polish man “stalked” him.
On March 29, 2019, some six weeks after the alleged rape, the two young men had dinner at a restaurant with Stika. Because of Stika’s position as bishop, the musician alleges he felt he had little choice but to go along with the dinner.
A photo — submitted with the lawsuit — was taken of the trio, with Stika on one side of the table and the two younger men on the other.
“At the end of dinner, Stika asked (the organist) if he ever had any trouble with his co-workers,” the lawsuit states. “(The musician) felt constrained to answer no, given (the Polish man’s) relationship with the bishop.”
In August 2019, six months after the alleged rape, the musician moved on to Atlanta. He filed his lawsuit 18 months later in Knox County.
During 2019, the seminarian lived at Stika’s West Knox County house along with retired Cardinal Justin Rigali, a longtime mentor of Stika’s. The seminarian drove the older men around as needed. Stika would later say — at a 2021 meeting secretly recorded in Knoxville — that he’d lost sight in one eye and didn’t trust his driving.
The seminarian also traveled with Stika and Rigali, including joining them on a trip to the Vatican.
In the fall of 2019, the seminarian went off to Saint Meinrad seminary school in Indiana. By early 2021, however, he’d been dismissed, records reviewed by WBIR show.
Some of his fellow seminarians in Indiana reported that he’d touched them inappropriately or acted inappropriately around them.
Letter to the bishop from Saint Meinrad on March 1, 2021, about the seminarian.
In one encounter in January 2021, he tickled and grappled with a student who was visiting Tennessee from out of town. He also sent unwanted and invasive Snapchat messages about his penis, documents reviewed by WBIR state.
Another seminarian reported that while at Saint Meinrad in February 2021, he caught the Polish man spying into his room from across the courtyard.
The seminarian was dismissed from the Indiana school that month, an email shows.
On March 1, 2019, Meinrad President-Rector the Very Rev. Denis Robinson wrote Stika that the school had decided to dismiss the Polish man because of what his fellow students had experienced and also because of online accusations that had emerged about the 2019 alleged rape.
“While we have no way of adjudicating the reliability of this case, its presence on the internet is very damaging to a seminarian,” Robinson wrote. “Once again, many of the interactions we have had with (the Polish man) in the past have been quite positive, but I do believe that the issues raised by the seminarians need to be addressed and corrected before (the Polish man) can re-enter seminary formation.”
In two years’ time, Robinson wrote, they’d be willing to review his case “if you (Stika) see that as a proper move.”
A QUICK INVESTIGATION
Emails, notes, reports and the two audio recordings from spring 2021 show rising skepticism, even anger, about the way the bishop handled the Polish seminarian.
Reports about the man’s conduct with the organist began circulating in the diocese in early 2021.
On Feb. 26, 2021, after dismissal from Saint Meinrad, Stika sent a note to priests in the diocese stating that the seminarian had entered a “two-year period of discernment,” meaning he would be reflecting on what God wanted him to do. He wrote that the man would be helping him in the Chancery in Knoxville and helping the octogenarian Cardinal Rigali.
His note offended some priests in light of allegations about the seminarian’s aggressive, sexual conduct, documents show. Priests complained Stika was giving him special treatment.
A formal investigation was needed, one priest wrote. Furthermore, he wrote, Stika needed to be held accountable.
A March 11, 2021, email from the bishop to an attorney and senior members of the diocese stated, “I have informed the individual of his need to return home. I am working with his former school on when this would be necessary.”
Any assumption that the Polish man would be sent home to Eastern Europe, however, proved false. Instead, Stika sought to have him go off to Saint Louis University in St. Louis, Mo., Stika’s alma mater and hometown, to enroll at the diocese’s expense, a letter shows.
Carleton E. “Butch” Bryant, a church member and former staff attorney for the Knox County Sheriff’s Office, notified Stika and members of the diocese’s internal Diocesan Review Board that he was calling a March 25 meeting to consider whether they should formally investigate allegations against the seminarian, records show.
The board is a “confidential consultative body” to the bishop, according to the diocese.
An investigation was indeed launched, with George Prosser, a former Tennessee Valley Authority inspector general, tapped to do the investigative footwork.
Stika, however, as he would later say at a May 2021 meeting with area priests, didn’t like the way Prosser conducted the inquiry. He asked questions that confused and upset people in the diocese, he said. Prosser was a nice man, he’d say later, a 75-year-old neighbor, but he wasn’t the man to handle the investigation.
He removed Prosser.
Diocesan Review Board member Christopher J. Manning took Prosser’s place.
Note to board about Manning report.
Manning’s report shows he interviewed the Polish seminarian April 16, 2021. He did not talk with the former church organist or the students in Indiana at Saint Meinrad.
Three days before, however, Bryant sent an email to members of the Diocesan Review Board stating that Stika had informed him the investigation “is closed.” They could all talk about it at an upcoming meeting later that month, Bryant’s email states.
After his interview, Manning prepared an April 16, 2021, report for Stika, Bryant and Vicar-General Doug Owens.
In his interview, the seminarian said he’d been friends only with the musician and that there’d not been mutual sex. He said the musician told him he was gay, the report states.
He alleged that the musician initiated sex with him during a trip in late January or early February to Atlanta, Manning’s report states. The seminarian said he resisted the overture. The seminarian told Manning they shared a king-size bed in Atlanta and that the musician tried to perform oral sex in the middle of the night.
The pair traveled to Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon in May 2019, according to Manning’s report. While in their Las Vegas hotel, the seminarian claimed he saw the musician and a young Hispanic man kiss and have sex.
In June 2019, according to his conversation with Manning, the seminarian said the musician told him he was moving to Atlanta. They had dinner and the musician gave him a shirt as a gift, the report states.
The seminarian denied any inappropriate conduct with the men at the Indiana seminary school, the report states.
“There is no indication that Mr. ——— was untruthful during this interview. He did not hesitate (sic) any of the questions and provided specific details when those were requested,” Manning wrote.
Bryant sent the Manning report to the Diocesan Review Board on April 28 ahead of that night’s meeting. Emails show some in the diocese strongly disagreed with the conclusion of the investigation and lack of action against the seminarian. It was one-sided, they said.
Interior of the Knoxville cathedral, the construction of which the bishop considers to be among his most important contributions to the diocese.
One priest wrote that Stika had impeded the investigation. He wrote that the bishop had a history of “intimidating” people who disagree with him, records show. The bishop had even threatened to resign because he thought it wrong to send the seminarian back to Poland, according to the priest.
In a letter dated April 12, 2021, four days before Manning talked with the Polish seminarian, Stika wrote “To Whom It May Concern” at Saint Louis University that the Knoxville Diocese would cover room, board and tuition for the seminarian in the amount of $48,258 for the fall 2021 school year.
“(He) will not in any way be a burden to the United States of America or the State of Tennessee,” the letter stated.
‘DRIP, DRIP, DRIP’
Stika addressed priests in the diocese in meetings in May and June 2021. A priest recorded the gatherings, and they’ve now become part of the allegations contained in the organist’s lawsuit.
The meetings came soon after another critical online piece by The Pillar.
The bishop told the men he regretted having invited The Pillar to come to Knoxville and see the work of the diocese for itself. He warned against speaking to the media because the priests wouldn’t be able to control that outcome.
“He (The Pillar writer) doesn’t care about us. He just wants to sell subscriptions,” Stika said in the June 8, 2021, meeting. “He moves on, and here we are.”
He told the men he believed the musician was the sexual aggressor, not the Polish seminarian.
Draft of letter to Chrisophe Pierre, the apostolic nuncio, from 2021.
By September, some priests in the diocese had begun putting together a letter seeking action by Archbishop Christophe Pierre, the apostolic nuncio in Washington, D.C. They expressed their reservations about Stika’s leadership. The nuncio acts as a liaison and formal representative of the pope.
Multiple priests signed the letter sent to Pierre. They did not get a response, according to three priests who asked that their names be withheld to avoid possible retaliation.
A Vatican investigative team did end up traveling to Knoxville and interviewing various people, according to the priests and several Catholic media reports. But there’s been no obvious action.
In addition, records show, respected priest Father Brent Shelton quietly drafted an email to Stika, circulated among various priests, that questioned him about the church investigation and what Stika was doing to serve the diocese. Shelton ended up leaving the diocese this spring after Stika proposed moving him from his Oak Ridge church.
The “drip, drip, drip” of new allegations was worrisome, the draft email circulated among some priests states.
“We are losing parishioners; parents are questioning whether to entrust their children to our schools and we are given little guidance into how this matter is progressing and when and how it will end,” the email stated.
In October 2022, Chattanooga area attorney and lay diocese member Theresa Critchfield also prepared a letter on her TLC Law stationery about Stika’s leadership. It was uploaded as a petition to change.org.
The Oct. 3, 2022, letter was directed to Pierre in Washington as well as Jose Horacio Gomez Velasco, the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and to the Rev. Shelton J. Fabre, the archbishop of Louisville, which presides over the Knoxville Diocese.
According to the letter, members of the Chattanooga Deanery had lost faith in Stika “as our shepherd.” The letter cited among other things church finances and Stika’s handling of the seminarian’s time in Knoxville.
Letter from Chattanooga Deanery lay member, posted on change.org.
LINGERING QUESTIONS
There’s been little movement with the organist’s lawsuit since it was filed in February 2022.
Judge Melson has granted the defendants’ request that the organist amend his lawsuit to identify himself by name rather than as “John Doe”. The amended complaint was filed in January.
The former seminarian moved to St. Louis and is believed to still live there, according to the three priests.
On May 11, the independent National Catholic Reporter, which has reported for decades on the church, published a lengthy story that included an interview with Stika, Critchfield and unnamed priests, among others. The story detailed multiple concerns among parishioners and priests about the state of the diocese. It reported some in Knoxville feel “demoralized” by the ongoing turmoil.
Stika told the newspaper he didn’t practice retribution. He said he also saw great progress across the diocese, which has some 70 priests and more than 70,000 parishioners.
“I see growth, I see financial stability, I see vocations and I see happiness,” he told the paper.
The organist’s lawsuit is the second to challenge Stika’s leadership in recent years. A complaint filed in November 2022 on behalf of a Honduran woman alleges she was sexually battered by priest Antony Punnackal in 2020 inside a Gatlinburg church.
The federal lawsuit names the diocese, Punnackal and the Carmelites of Mary Immaculate as defendants.
The complaint also alleges the diocese tried to discredit her and to silence her when she began making accusations against Punnackal. The complaint is on hold while a criminal case against the priest proceeds in Sevier County Circuit Court.
Punnackal was removed from active ministry in January 2022, according to the diocese. He appeared earlier this month at a court hearing in his case in Sevier County.
The sexual battery trial is set for September.
Antony Punnackal and his attorney, Travis McCarter in May 2023.
