Category: Secrecy

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Roman Catholic Church refuses survey request

The Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales has turned down a request by members for the results of a sexual ethics survey to be made public.

 

The unprecedented worldwide poll was commissioned by Pope Francis.

Reformers said refusing to publish the results would suggest the Church was not sincere about sharing responsibility with lay people.

A Church spokesman said a senior Vatican official had expressly asked for summaries to remain confidential.

Sensitive subjects

FrancisThe survey was sent to Catholic bishops around the world last November, with instructions to consult as widely as possible.

It tackled sensitive subjects such as contraception, cohabitation and homosexuality.

BBC religious affairs correspondent Robert Pigott said the 39-question survey – designed to inform a Vatican conference on family life in October – had been enthusiastically greeted by rank-and-file Catholics.

Many Catholics saw the inclusion of such questions as a sign that Church teaching in such difficult areas might be reformed, and that lay people might be allowed a greater say in how the Church was governed, he added.

Father Marcus Stock, general secretary of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that the questionnaire was a “much broader consultation than just a survey”.

He said orders had come from the Pope, via Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, that the information should not be made public until after October.

Pope Francis is calling bishops to Rome to discuss possible reform that considers modern social realities.

The consultation is part of the preparation for the extraordinary meeting of the Synod of Bishops, which will focus on the subject of family.

Fr Stock acknowledged there were “great expectations” of the process, but insisted bishops’ decisions should not be predetermined.

“The reflection of the bishops during the Synod must not be predetermined by individual groups or by the concerns of northern Europe alone,” he said.

“It’s a world-wide consultation.”

‘Dialogue and transparency’

A Call to Action, a group working for reform in the Church, said people who had completed this “challenging” questionnaire would be saddened and perplexed if the results were withheld.

Jean Riordan, chair of the group’s national leaders team, told the Today programme that “dialogue and transparency” would help the process – and not put pressure on bishops or predetermine their decisions.

“Groups within the Church are not necessarily pressure groups, we are not a pressure group, we are not a dissident group” she said.

“We are not actually disputing much of Church teaching. What we’re saying is Church teaching should be formed by consulting.”

Other Churches which have published summaries of the responses, including those in Germany and Austria, have described a wide gap between Church teaching and the behaviour of ordinary Catholics.

However, Fr Stock ruled out similar action in England and Wales.

The Pope has signalled greater openness, and has said the Catholic Church is too tied up in “small-minded rules”.

Complete Article HERE!

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Book Review by John Minck

Secrecy, Sophistry and Gay Sex in the Catholic Church — Book Report
Rev. Richard Wagner, PhD, ACS

This is a tough book to read. It covers a complex and detailed, 13-year-long administrative action to dismiss a Catholic priest from his Oblate Community. That’s the hard reading part, because the investigation and the proceedings were so convoluted, and there were hidden agenda on the part of his superiors. The priest is Father Richard Wagner, PhD, ACS, ordained in Oakland in 1975, and a self identified gay priest. The interesting part is the second half which is a verbatim printing of his PhD dissertation of 1981, Gay Catholic Priests, A Study of Cognitive and Affective Dissonance.

Richard Wagner is a psychotherapist, a clinical sexologist in private practice for over 30 years and the only Catholic priest in the world with a doctorate in Human Sexuality. His practice includes a special outreach to survivors of clergy sex abuse as well as clergy offenders. Wagner technically remains a Catholic priest, his “priestly faculties” have been removed and he is expelled from his religious order, the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate.

It could be assumed that this kind of research work by a practicing priest would not endear himself to the Catholic Hierarchy or to the Vatican, who never cease to proclaim that ANY homosexual activity is sinful. They have a BRAND to protect. They try to contend that the Church loves the homosexual as a person, but condemns any active sexual behavior. And yet, Wagner proposed his thesis project to his Oblate Provincial Superior and it was approved, probably even to the next higher level of General Superior located in Rome.small_front

The dissertation was undertaken during his study at the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in San Francisco, where he was getting his PhD. It was a 3-year project, ending in 1981, when the dissertation was accepted. Just before that in 1980, he published an article in the liberal National Catholic Reporter (NCR) newspaper, Being Gay and Celibate–Another View. At that time, with the Church defending its strict views on sexuality across the board, the subject of the priesthood containing gay priests was not a subject that was encouraged. The early 1980s were also the time that the Bishop’s Club, USCCB, was becoming keenly aware that a serious child sexual abuse scandal was brewing, but so far they had been able to keep a lid on it. The stressful lives that homosexual priests led in the Catholic Church was an important subject to examine, not in the least, because there were a lot of them. And there were indications that many of them were ignoring the celibacy oath and engaging in forbidden sexual behavior.

Remember that the key Catholic ritual is the Mass and the Eucharist. The Eucharist requires regular Confession, and in the priesthood, one priest hears another’s confession. As a homosexual priest confesses his sins against his celibacy oath, other priests would be aware of what is going on. This is not to say that ANY priest confessor EVER revealed the secrets inside the confessional. Yet, the broad awareness of an active sexual culture was pretty commonplace.

As the 1962 Vatican II Council teachings swept over the global Church, they taught that the Church was more than the “Monarchial” Rome and the Hierarchical “Nobility.” In fact the term “People of God” was promulgated to mean that a big component of THE CHURCH was all of the people members. One outcome was that 125,000 priests globally left to get married or to lead civilian lives. To find enough recruits to re-fill the ranks, restrictions were relaxed to accept homosexual young men, who were already “out” and those who were still in the closet emotionally. These gay men were reaching their times of ordination in the late 1970s and early 80s. So the issue of gay priests in Wagner’s mind was of primary importance, as they struggled with a Church that was schizophrenic about this large cohort of new priests.

The panic among Church leaders of that time to Wagner’s research, stands in stark contrast to their apathetic response to the endemic child sexual abuse that has engulfed them, now for over thirty years. The tragic reason for their panic? The Church always uses the specter of gay priests as a scapegoat for ecclesiastical malfeasance to manipulate the faithful by bogus scandals involving homosexuality. The hierarchy just can’t seem to understand that gay people, both priests and society at large can experience a happy, healthy, life with integrated same-sex relationships. For the hierarchy, it’s all mixed in with pedophilia, making an outrageous and immensely destructive lie, to be fed to their doctrinaire disciples for the masses.

But living the life of a gay priest within the Catholic teachings in those years was lonely and scary and fraught with continuous misgivings. The Church had defined homosexuality as “Intrinsically Disordered,” while still proclaiming that gays were human beings and welcome into the community. And yet that welcome did NOT include homosexual behavior, meaning that there was to be NO genital sex. That would be the definition of celibacy, which ALL priests swear an oath to. BTW, I’m using the term HE and male throughout, but of course there are Lesbian nuns too, maybe a lot of them. Technically, celibacy applies to both heterosexuals and homosexuals, so it should not be any more repressive to one than the other. But in those years, being identified as homosexual was bad in both civilian life as in the life of the priesthood.

Wagner’s 1981 article in NCR was essentially his decision to reveal his homosexuality. Interestingly, he had previously revealed it during his acceptance interviews when he was applying for the seminary more than a decade before. His NCR declaration hit Rome and immediately there was kickback from the top command of the Oblates. In spite of the fact that he had already been “out” to his immediate superiors the wider publicity triggered a top down order to start proceedings for his dismissal from his priesthood. A part of the problem was that in editing his article some crucial content was deleted, somewhat changing his recommendations of how the Church should manage their considerable ranks of gay priests.

Worse was to come, because he had also agreed to an interview with a San Francisco Bay Scene 7 TV news program, done in a 2-hour session. While Wagner was very careful to ask the interviewer to restrict certain questions, he was also serious about not letting the content to be sensational. Unfortunately he was completely naive on protocol, and even with assurances with a member of the TV production team, the final cut trimmed the whole interview to a mere 15 minutes, and the questions preserved did in fact sensationalize the program. Instead of allowing any modifications, the producer brought in Fr. Gerald Coleman, an instructor in moral theology at the Catholic Major Seminary in Menlo Park, to add on a 5-minute rebuttal. So the combination was a disaster.

I remember Coleman, because our monthly diocesan newspaper, Valley Catholic, has a regular column by Coleman. His subject matter usually dealt with current media events, which had theological elements involved. I have always dismissed his writings because virtually every subject that he undertook got the most RIGID formulation of Church authority. So I can just imagine what the Coleman rebuttal did to Wagner’s position, which was already tenuous.

Dissertation. For the survey research, Wagner recruited 50 self-professed gay priests. It is not surprising that getting the right demographic sample was not just important, but quite difficult to achieve. He worked for a national distribution as even as he could, and winnowed an early 73 candidates down to 50. Candidate’s ages ranged from 27 to 58, with a median of 35. Among the potential candidates, there was a natural fear of reprisals and feelings of guilt. His search for candidates was aided by an existing informal network of gay priests, who supported each other in their lonely lives in a cold Church. Obviously, many of them in their vocations had to overcome what Wagner termed cognitive and affective dissonance. Recall also, that a very important part of Catholic life is the ritual Sacrament of Confession. Priests go to confession to other priests, so a gay priest, if he was sexually tempted or actually active, would be confessing those sins to another priest regularly.

The survey construction was modeled to a good extent by the well-known Kinsey sex behavior study of the early 1950s. The 34 survey questions were remarkably detailed to gain an understanding on the sexual awakening of the interviewee, and then on the practices of his present sexual behavior, along with considerable attitude discovery.

Dissertation Summary. The following is the verbatim summary section of the thesis, which is about 1/2 of the book :

1. The composite picture of the sexual behaviors of this sample of fifty gay priests reveals them to be sexually active. Forty-nine respondents are masturbating at a mean frequency nearly three times that reported by Kinsey in Sexual Behavior in The Human Male.

2. Fourteen respondents report a history of heterosexual coitus. Eight respondents report that this contact occurred after ordination; no one reports an occurrence within the past year.

3. Forty-eight respondents report a twice-a-week mean frequency of same-sex contact. The remaining two respondents are currently abstaining from same-sex contact. Interestingly enough, this sample has nearly five times the number of respondents reporting 500 or more total partners than Kinsey’s sample.

4. Overall, the respondents report enjoying their sexual activity while experiencing a minimum of sex-related guilt.

5. It was learned that 50% of the respondents had their first post-pubertal same-sex contact before entering the seminary; another 26% had their first experience during their seminary years.

6. The majority of the respondents, 62%, self-identified as gay before they were ordained, but only 46% had shared that identity with another person by that same time.

7. The respondents were almost unanimous in their rejection of official church positions regarding homosexuality and mandatory celibacy for priests. At the same time, nearly half of the respondents still experience some guilt because their lives do not reflect ecclesiastical expectations.

8. All but six report being unfulfilled in terms of intimacy needs by their priestly or religious lifestyle. Coupled with this is the recurring theme, appearing throughout the responses, of a desire for a lover by the majority of those who are currently without one. Only thirteen respondents report having a lover at this time.

9. The questions dealing with aspects of the priests’ dual identity were particularly revealing of the dissonance in their lives. The amount of discrimination experienced by the respondents for being gay in the church or for being a priest in the gay community is in direct proportion to the degree the priests are “out” to either group. Thus, when the majority of respondents report that they have not experienced hostility or oppression from either the gay community or the church, it is usually because they are still “closeted.” The path most frequently taken by the respondents in this regard is not to identify as gay in the church or as a priest in the gay community. This conflict is the source of much personal anguish and disappointment for the respondents.

This study reveals a group of highly motivated men, both professionally and sexually. The respondents seek integration and fulfillment in their personal lives as well as in their work, but they are often frustrated by what they report to be stifling role expectations put upon them by both the church and the gay community. While they are quick to criticize the shortcomings of both the church and the gay community, they report a sense of loyalty to and affection for both. It is as if both communities demand an exclusive commitment, one that would have them disown an integral part of their identity. This dissonance is reinforced by the respondents’ refusal to abdicate to either demand.

They are engaged in a process of questioning moral theology as well as reinterpreting traditional expectations of the celibate lifestyle in an effort to minimize the dissonance. Unfortunately, this process has been going on in secret. The fear of disclosure and possible reprisals has made this struggle a lonely one.

Impressions. For me there are two main impressions of this book:

1. Remembering that Wagner’s inquisition started in 1981, with the acceptance of his PhD dissertation, and the television interview, and ended in May, 1994, with the document that expelled him, his recall of the details of those 13 years is exception. He describes conversations with a presence that puts you right there, and augments those details with many letters and documents. I have to infer that he must have kept a diary of that difficult period.

Wagner uses abundant source material to detail how he, as a young Catholic priest, weathered a blistering 13-year battle with his religious community; only to be destroyed by the very Church he so loyally served. He is almost overly kind and tolerant, and forgiving of the mean-spirited bureaucrats of his own order as well as with the Church Hierarchy. His experience is remarkably similar to the treatment endured by lay Catholics going through the struggle of their lives, in the decades of child sexual abuse.

During those 13 years, there were many silent delays of years, then new alternatives would be proposed, including being subject to a process called an “obedience,” whereby Wagner would be ordered into a monastery for “prayer” and contemplation, and isolation. Wagner had to constantly weigh his options, whether he was going to do the right thing or do the thing that would protect his interests. And yet, at every step of the way, knowing his faith in the Church was implacable, he choose to do the right thing and paid the highest price of all for it.

The letters he includes present his side of the case of Inquisition, and they reveal the depth of the stone-cold prosecutions by the Church, which include some sideline proposals from Rome too. His immediate superior was his friend for years, they shared much comradeship, including the fact that his superior KNEW of his homosexuality for years. As the inquiry started, that superior was his enemy, no longer even open to reason. He includes a ‘swan song” letter he wrote to all of his comrades in the entire Oblate community.

2. The dissertation itself shocked me with its raw approach to the survey questions. There are sections on attitudinal and personal historical data, when the subject discerned he was gay, parent’s attitudes and behavior, and events that led to a call to the priesthood. The extent of the probing into sexual behavior is QUITE detailed, how often he masturbated, elements causing sexual arousal, first Fex contacts, intimate details on sex techniques (and I mean intimate), first times, and later frequencies. He makes tabular comparisons to the earlier Kinsey sex research for civilians.

Then he asked questions to develop the candidates’ present sexual activities, lovers? monogamy? how long relationships? what kinds of gay social procedures did he use, gay bars, out of town? anxiety of being found out? One survey answer mentioned that the gay priest was in an adjacent town at a gay bar, and ran into a Monsignor from his own diocese staff.

Considerable space was spent on compiling the interviewee’s attitudes on their life satisfaction, how they rationalized the Church’s strict rules with their lives. There were all manner of thought processes. for example, the Church Canon is absolute celibacy, yet some gay priests noted that that means “do not marry.” So, since they interpreted that it didn’t say, “no sex,” that they would just have sex.

I can just picture the bureaucrat in the Vatican Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, in around 1982, actually READING Wagner’s dissertation, and the survey results. Once he realized that this document was being reviewed by public media in the United States, he would be running down the hallway to the new Prefect of the Congregation, just installed in 1981. This was Eminence Ratzinger, the reactionary leader of the efforts of the Vatican Curia to reverse some of the liberating visions of the 1962 Vatican II Council. That vision certainly could NOT be allowed to include gay priests who were active socially. Father Wagner would ultimately pay the price of his revelation of reality.

–John Minck
Palo Alto, CA
June, 2013

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Scandal fear led to sex abuse cover-up

Cardinal Pell apologises to inquiry for Catholic cover-up of child sex abuse and says church will pay compensation but not huge US sums.

By Genevieve Gannon

AUSTRALIA’S most senior Catholic, Cardinal George Pell, has admitted the fear of scandal led to cover-up in the church.

Cardinal PellHe said former Melbourne archbishop Sir Frank Little was involved in a cover-up and a former Ballarat archbishop destroyed documents.

He denied he personally covered up offending.

“No. Never,” he told a Victorian parliamentary inquiry into child abuse on Monday.

He agreed under questioning that the fear of scandal led to a cover-up.

“The primary motivation would have been to respect the reputation of the church.

“There was a fear of scandal.”

Cardinal Pell, who is the Archbishop of Sydney and a former archbishop of Melbourne, has apologised for the abuse committed by clergy.

“I’m fully apologetic and absolutely sorry,” he told the Victorian parliamentary inquiry into child sex abuse.

“That is the basis for everything which I’ll say now.”

Cardinal Pell said the church had dealt with child sex abuse “imperfectly” and had not understood the damage being done to victims.

“I would agree that we’ve been slow to address the anguish of the victims and dealt with it very imperfectly,” he told the inquiry.

“I think a big factor in this was not simply to defend the name of the church.

“Many in the church did not understand just what damage was being done to the victims. We understand that better now.”

Cardinal Pell said the sodomy of children was always regarded as totally reprehensible.

“If we’d been gossips, which we weren’t … we would have realised earlier just how widespread this business was,” Cardinal Pell said.

He admitted lives had been ruined as a result of the cover-ups.

He agreed the systemic cover-up had allowed paedophile priests to prey on children.

“I would have to say there is significant truth in that,” Cardinal Pell said.

He did not believe there had been a culture of abuse.

“I think the bigger fault was that nobody would talk about it, nobody would mention it.

“I was certainly unaware of it.

“I don’t think many, if any, persons in the leadership of the Catholic Church knew what a horrendous widespread mess we were sitting on.”

Cardinal Pell agreed that placing paedophiles above the law and moving them to other parishes resulted in more heinous crimes being committed.

“There’s no doubt about it that lives have been blighted.

“There’s no about it that these crimes have contributed to too many suicides.”

Cardinal Pell said former Melbourne archbishop the late Sir Frank Little did cover up offences in one instance and spoke to nobody about the offending.

“Yes, Archbishop Little did cover up but he inherited a situation where there were no protocols and no procedures, and for some strange reason he never spoke to anybody about it,” he said.

Cardinal Pell said he had discovered “in the last few weeks” that former Ballarat Bishop Ronald Mulkearns had destroyed documents.

The inquiry has heard that Bishop Mulkearns was aware of child abuse accusations against paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale but simply moved him to a different parish.

“His actions were followed by disastrous consequences,” Cardinal Pell said.

But he said both men would never have intended to aid the offenders.

Cardinal Pell denied church assets were hidden in trusts.

“Our assets are not hidden in trusts,” he said.

“Church officials can be sued. Church officials have been sued.

“We have always met our obligations for compensation.”

He agreed the church’s assets in Australia would “certainly be very considerable”.

Cardinal Pell said the church is ready to pay victims whatever the law commands.

Australian compensation – a maximum of $75,000 – was low compared to the US but compared quite favourably with the vast majority of the world.

“We will pay whatever the law recommends is appropriate compensation.

“Many of the victims aren’t particularly interested in money. The more important thing is due process, justice and help with getting on with their lives.

“The church will continue to fulfil its obligations as they’re defined in Australian society and will continue to try to help victims.”

Cardinal Pell insisted a reduction in the number of offences suggested that the Catholic environment was very safe.

“I pray, and I think it’s reasonable to say and I hope, that the worst is behind us,” he said.

“We have implemented a massive cultural change.

“The crime is totally regrettable. The damage is enormous.”

Complete Article HERE!

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Leading dissident priest slams covert pope selection process

A leading dissident Austrian priest whose call to disobey some Roman Catholic teachings drew a rebuke from Pope Benedict last year urged Church leaders to throw off their secrecy and canvas churchgoers on who should lead them next.

Rev. Helmut SchuellerRev. Helmut Schueller, head of a group of priests who openly challenge Church positions on taboo topics such as priestly celibacy and ordaining women, said selecting a successor to Benedict was a chance to embrace public debate.

“If things were going well, the conclave fathers would at least be going out to the Church grassroots and calling meetings to really hear what the faithful expect,” he told Reuters in a phone interview on Wednesday.

“I find inappropriate this whole method that the cardinals withdraw into their own circle and something leaks out now and then about who might be under consideration,” said Schueller, whose group is getting increasing attention abroad. “Most of the faithful know hardly anything about these people.”

Some 117 cardinals will enter a closed-door conclave at the Vatican in mid-March to elect a successor to Benedict, who stunned the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics on Monday by saying that he would step down on Feb 28.

There are no open campaigns or declared candidates for the post and cardinals are forbidden by Church law from revealing who they voted for. Many cardinals choose their favourite after a series of discreet contacts in the days before the election.

CODED LANGUAGE

One front-runner is Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, whose deputy Schueller once was in the Vienna archdiocese. His decision to debate with rather than discipline his dissident priests may count against Schoenborn among hard-line cardinals.

Schueller said such an important decision required all the time and effort needed to form a broad consensus rather than letting a small group of top leaders decide this in secret.

“A billion Catholics are listening to what is (being discussed) in entirely secretive, coded language,” he complained, calling it undignified that the laity hear about the process only from journalists reporting from the Vatican.

“This passive waiting around is repugnant. It’s really time, and commensurate with the dignity of the faithful, that (the cardinals) put their cards on the table,” he said.

Reformist Austrian Catholics have for decades challenged the conservative policies of Benedict and his predecessor Pope John Paul, creating protest movements and advocating changes that the Vatican firmly rejects.

Benedict, who for over two decades before his 2005 election was the Vatican’s chief doctrinal enforcer, singled out the Austrian rebels for criticism last April while restating the church’s ban on women priests.

The German-born pontiff said he would not put up with open revolt from clerics and lay people.

VATICAN RULES UNCHECKED

Schueller said an outsider from Africa or Latin America would have his work cut out for him to take on Vatican insiders.

Two-thirds of today’s Catholics live in Latin America, Africa and Asia and Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana and Cardinal Odilo Scherer of Brazil are among those mentioned as candidates.

“The biggest problem is that the Vatican establishment rules unchecked over the global Church. Any pope who takes this on has to be well positioned…has to act strategically and has to get lots of cooperation from the bishops of the world,” he said.

But even support from a broad basis might not be enough for a new pope to put his stamp on the Church, he said.

“What good are (such) authorisations for the pope if the system quickly takes him prisoner? This is coming out more and more in the analyses and may have been a significant factor of the resignation” of Benedict, he said.

Complete Article HERE!

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UnHoly Communion

Some months ago a fellow contacted out of the blue and identified himself as Hank Estrada. Apparently he found me through the Gay Catholic Priests Facebook page. Hank went on to introduce himself and tell me about his latest book, UnHoly Communion-Lessons Learned from Life among Pedophiles, Predators, and Priests. This immediately piqued my interest. His book was published just weeks before my book, Secrecy, Sophistry and Gay Sex In The Catholic Church: The Systematic Destruction of an Oblate Priest in the summer of 2011. After a short conversation on Skype we decided to exchange book and read each other’s story. Hank was way better than me in getting this job done. In record time he plowed through my rather ponderous book and we spoke again on Skype in the earl fall.

Hank complimented me on my work and we spoke for nearly an hour about the many church related experiences we had in common. You see, Hank was a Claretian seminarian in Los Angeles, California around the same time I was Ordained and Oblate priest in Oakland California.

UnHoly CommunionI told Hank that I had yet to get to his book. I apologized for being so slow and promised that I’d get to it as soon as possible. Well it took me way longer than I thought. It’s astonishing how life seems to get in the way of of my best intentions. At any rate, I finished Hank’s book yesterday, Christmas Day. Curiously enough, Hank had some time to spend yesterday afternoon so we met on Skype once again to discuss his book.

UnHoly Communion-Lessons Learned from Life among Pedophiles, Predators, and Priests is primarily a story of the indomitable human spirit. Hank’s story is harrowing — years of childhood incest with his pedophile uncle while his alcoholic family lived in denial.  His escape to what he believed to be a safe haven, the Church, only to be sexually abused by a trusted superior.   And how the leadership of his religious community added insult to injury by ignoring his story and shamefully protecting the sexual predator in their midst permitting him  to move from one victim to another.

Despite all of the abuse, deception and betrayal, Hank triumphs. He is now a nationally recognized spokesman and tireless advocate for male victims and adult survivors of sexual assaults. In 1986, he founded the first national nonprofit organization to support non-offending adult male survivors. His book, despite the difficult subject matter and candid recollections of his ordeal, is really a testament to all of us who have been through similar experiences. It is a message, presented in a very accessible, matter of fact style, of hope, support, and encouragement.

I was particularly touched by his perception, as a seminarian, of the Catholic priesthood that he aspired to join. He perfectly captures the moral and ethical minefield that each priest and religious faces. And how easily it is for any one of us to succumb to the dark side. I quote…

While living in a community of Catholic priests and brothers, I quickly learned about the many personal benefits a religious clergyman receives throughout his priesthood, among them prestige, privilege, protection and often unchallenged influential power over parishioners. Could these questionable benefits lead to arrogance, self-righteousness, and a false sense of invincibility on the part of the priest? What about the sense of accountability, respect, adherence to faith, protection of the innocent and being true examples of Christ’s presence in the world? I witnessed as these men who wore a traditional black suit with white “Roman” collar, undeniably the most recognizable symbol of the Catholic priesthood, were frequently sought out, pampered, given unlimited trust and attention, and had people constantly offering to do things for them. Internally, I questioned some priests I saw take the spiritual “gift” of priesthood and turn it into something they bartered with, a way to control parishioners, as saying “If you treat me special, I will pray and give you blessing from our Lord.”

Hank’s book, UnHoly Communion-Lessons Learned from Life among Pedophiles, Predators, and Priests is a must read for anyone interested in knowing the truth about life in the Catholic Church. His thoughtful and reflective presentation is not about grinding an ax, although he has every right to do so. It’s all about being honest, primarily with himself, then with his family, his religious community, and us. Because it is precisely this honesty that will help him, them and us from shirking our responsibility to be more vigilant in terms of protecting the most vulnerable among us.

Thank you, Hank, for your witness. And thank you for calling us to uncover our eyes and see things, not as we would like them to be, but as they really are.