O’Brien priest worries that church wants to ‘crush’ him

Key figure behind allegations of inappropriate behaviour attacks Catholic church’s response to complaints

By Catherine Deveney

A key figure behind allegations of inappropriate behaviour by Cardinal Keith O’Brien has launched a powerful attack on the Catholic church’s response to the complaints, saying he fears the church hierarchy would “crush” him if they could.

stop-victim-blaming1Last Sunday the Observer revealed that the former priest, along with three serving priests, had reported O’Brien’s behaviour to the Vatican, prompting the UK’s most senior Catholic to resign the following day. Now the former priest, who says he was the subject of unwanted attention by O’Brien when he was a 20-year-old seminarian, has come forward to explain why he made his allegations public and to lambast the Scottish church leadership’s reaction to last week’s story.

He is “disappointed” by the “lack of integrity” shown by the Catholic church. “There have been two sensations for me this week. One is feeling the hot breath of the media on the back of my neck and the other is sensing the cold disapproval of the church hierarchy for daring to break ranks. I feel like if they could crush me, they would,” he told the Observer.

He added that he was shocked when Peter Kearney, director of communications for the church in Scotland, claimed O’Brien’s resignation was not linked to the Observer story and that the church did not know the details of the allegations.

Kearney said he was unable to comment on suggestions that a new complaint had been lodged as a result of last week’s story. When asked to outline the church’s programme of support for complainants, he said only that they would be directed to Antonio Mennini, the Papal Nuncio, the Vatican’s ambassador to Britain, to make a formal statement.

“The vacuum the church has created has allowed whimsy and speculation to distort the truth,” the priest said. “And the only support I have been offered is a cursory email with a couple of telephone numbers of counsellors hundreds of miles away from me. Anyway, I don’t need counselling about Keith O’Brien’s unwanted behaviour to me as a young man. But I may need counselling about the trauma of speaking truth to power.”

The former cleric says he feels that he, rather than the cardinal, has been the subject of scrutiny. “I have felt very alone and there is a tendency to become reclusive when people are trying to hunt you down.”

He said he felt particularly angered by demands that the identity of the four complainants be revealed: “To those who want to know my name I would say, what does that change? And what do you think I have done wrong?”

He said that when the four came forward to the church, they were asked to make sworn signed statements to Mennini. But they were also warned that if their complaints became public knowledge, they would cause “immense further damage to the church”. The church, he says, failed to act quickly and appropriately, adding that he fears the matter was in danger of being swept under the carpet.

“For me, this is about integrity. I thought it was best to let the men and women who put their hard-earned cash in the plate every Sunday know what has been happening. If you pay into something you have a right, but also a duty, to know what you are paying for.”

He said that the men’s complaints were not maliciously motivated. “I am as sinful as the next man – as my partner and pals frequently remind me. But this isn’t about trying to own the moral high ground. I feel compassion for O’Brien, more compassion than the church is showing me, but the truth has to be available – even when that truth is hard to swallow.”

He also dismissed suggestions that the accusations contain an element of homophobia. ” This is not about a gay culture or a straight culture. It’s about an open culture. I would be happy to see an openly gay bishop, cardinal, or pope. But the church acts as if sexual identity has to be kept secret.”

Complete Article HERE!

Cardinal O’Brien’s confession turns spotlight on Scottish Catholic church

Admission of sexual misconduct exposes former head cleric and church to claims of hypocrisy especially over gay rights

By Severin Carrell

The Scottish Roman Catholic church is facing a series of questions about the conduct of its former leader and its attacks on gay rights, after Cardinal Keith O’Brien admitted to a secret sexual life dating back decades.

O’Brien is expected to face a more detailed investigation by the Vatican after admitting to incidents of sexual misconduct throughout his career, which started in 1965.

HypocritesAfter a week of denials over allegations of sexual conduct and approaches by four men, the cardinal said on Sunday he was guilty of conduct that had “fallen beneath the standards expected of me”.

In a statement that left questions unanswered about the nature of that misconduct, he added: “To those I have offended, I apologise and ask forgiveness. To the Catholic church and people of Scotland, I also apologise.”

Those admissions are likely to supersede the original Vatican investigation, first revealed by the Observer, into formal allegations levelled against O’Brien in early February by three serving priests in his former diocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh, and a former priest.

The latter said he left the priesthood after he was sexually propositioned by O’Brien in the 1980s. Other incidents involving O’Brien, who became archbishop in 1985 and then cardinal in 2003, included a series of “drunken fumblings” and unwanted advances, church sources said.

His remarks are an admission that he breached ecclesiastical codes on celibacy and against homosexuality, and that his officials misled the Vatican, the Scottish church and the public in their denials following the Observer article.

While the Vatican inquiry is expected to remain confidential, and will be set up once 116 or so of the church’s cardinals gather in Rome elect Pope Benedict XVI’s successor within the coming days, it will ask O’Brien for further details about that misconduct.

It also exposes the cardinal and the Scottish church to claims of hypocrisy, and raises questions about whether other senior figures in the church knew about his private life and covered it up or failed to take action.

It also emerged last week that a fifth priest had reportedly made accusations to the Vatican against O’Brien late last year, concerning an incident in 2001. In 2003, O’Brien took office as a cardinal, signing an oath about upholding the church’s teachings: until then, he had been regarded as a liberal archbishop.

O’Brien has since become notorious among equal rights campaigners for his vigorous attacks on gay marriage and gay adoptions, calling homosexuality a “grotesque subversion” and “harmful to the physical, mental and spiritual wellbeing of those involved”.

Colin MacFarlane, director of Stonewall Scotland, which named O’Brien “bigot of the year” last year, challenged the cleric and the Scottish church to explain why he had not apologised directly to the gay community.

“We note with sadness that the cardinal didn’t find it in him to apologise to gay people, their families and friends for the harm his vicious and cruel language caused,” he said.

Church officials confirmed on Monday that O’Brien had left Scotland for an undisclosed location to rest and escape the furore over his admission of misconduct. He had been due to attend this week’s conclave in the Vatican. Before being disgraced, he had been scheduled to visit a parish in Dunbar, East Lothian, after retiring on his 75th birthday later this month.

Professor John Haldane, an adviser to the Vatican and a leading commentator on Scottish Catholic affairs at St Andrews University, said the O’Brien affair raised a number of “broad lessons” for the church and a challenge to the Scottish church to reform itself.

Writing in the weekly Catholic newspaper the Tablet, Haldane said the church was guilty of double standards for denouncing homosexuality as an inherently disordered condition while knowing many of its priests and trainees at its seminaries were gay, or wrestling with their sexuality. Regardless of their sexuality, priests ought to be made to explicitly pledge to remain wholly celibate or leave the priesthood, Haldane said.

He added that the Scottish church should abolish at least half of its eight diocese – a throwback to the size and power of the pre-reformation church.

The Scottish church is struggling to fill five bishop vacancies. It has only three full-time, permanent bishops or archbishops in post. It needed a new body of at most six lay advisers to help in that transformation, Haldane said.

Catherine Deveney, the journalist who broke the original story in the Observer, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme none of the four accusers she had reported on was pursuing a personal vendetta against O’Brien.

“One of the individuals concerned said that to take the cardinal on as an individual himself would have been like running into a brick wall,” she said, adding: “These men are spiritual men – they want to see an open and transparent Catholic church as a result of this, they don’t want to see it destroyed.”

Complete Article HERE!

Cardinal Keith O’Brien: how Britain’s Catholic leader fell from grace

By Catherine Deveney

What is it about a gold mitre, a flowing robe, a flash of cardinal red that so clouds our judgment? It is as if we believe these things hold a kind of magic. Don them and the wearer becomes pure and invincible. No human urges, no troublesome sexuality. Some people are naively enthralled by hierarchy. Priest, good. Bishop, better. Cardinal, best of all. The four complainants in the Cardinal O’Brien affair, who have accused him of inappropriate behaviour, haven’t rated much sympathy within this strange moral hierarchy. “Who are they?” I have been asked all week. “Where are they?” has been another frequent question. But I have rarely been asked: “How are they?”

Cardinal Keith O'BrienA narrative has begun to be embroidered on the cardinal’s magic mitre. A fairytale. He is named but his accusers are not, and therefore the accusations are invalid. Let us be clear about one thing: the three priests, and one former priest, who have made complaints are not anonymous. They have given sworn, signed statements to the papal nuncio. The unnerving thing about the hunt to “out” these men (my phone has not stopped ringing with offers to “make it worth my while”) is that it suggests people who have suffered traumatic events have no rights over how to tell their story, or how much information is made public. We demand not just that the appropriate authorities know names – we, the public, should know them, too.

In purely human terms, the story of Cardinal O’Brien’s resignation is tragic. He had spent a lifetime reaching the upper echelons of his church, but after allegations of inappropriate behaviour made in the Observer last Sunday his fall from grace took just 36 hours. Not one of the four complainants takes any satisfaction from that. This is not about the exposure of one man’s alleged foibles. It is about the exposure of a church official who publicly issues a moral blueprint for others’ lives that he is not prepared to live out himself. Homosexuality is not the issue; hypocrisy is. The cardinal consistently condemned homosexuality during his reign, vociferously opposing gay adoption and same-sex marriage. The church cannot face in two directions like a grotesque two-headed monster: one face for public, the other for private.

There have been some misunderstandings about the timing of this tale: ridiculous accusations about the complaints spoiling the cardinal’s retirement and having “the whiff of payback” for petty jealousies. Then it was suggested that this was all a conspiracy to prevent Keith O’Brien going to the conclave.

But in many ways this story was overtaken by events. The four complainants made their statements to the papal nuncio, Archbishop Mennini, around 8 or 9 February. On 11 February the pope resigned. The first response the complainants received from the nuncio said O’Brien should continue to go to Rome because “that will make it easier to arrange his retirement to be one of prayer and seclusion like the pope”. The complainants recognised church subtext. In a message to me one wrote: “This is saying, ‘leave it to us to sweep it under the carpet and you can forget about it. It will fade away as if we have dealt with it.’ Not acceptable.”

On 22 February, the cardinal gave an interview to the BBC about going to the conclave. He also said that church rules on celibacy should be reviewed. Informally, the men heard that the church was unhappy about that interview. Action would be taken. The cardinal would not go to Rome.

So did the church act because it was shocked by the claims against the cardinal or were they were angry he had broken ranks on celibacy? Two days later, the Observer published the story.

But why had the men waited so long to report allegations dating back to the 1980s? The answer is that people who have suffered trauma are not public property. They have the right to come to terms with it in their own time and express it in their own way, when they are ready. Being ready can simply be a collision of circumstances. Often, it’s as straightforward as realising you are not the only one.

Sometimes as a journalist, you hold one piece of a jigsaw puzzle for a very long time. Gradually, you pick up another piece, and then another, until the picture clicks together and makes sense. I had known one element of this story for years: the former priest’s. Let’s call him Lenny. Now married, Lenny had been approached by the cardinal while a seminarian. Lenny says the cardinal was his spiritual director and used bedtime prayers as an opportunity to make advances to his young student.

“I knew myself to be heterosexual,” he says, “but I did say to others that I thought it would be easier to get through seminary if you were gay.”

Last month I received a call from Lenny. He was very shaken. He had had a conversation with a priest – we’ll call him Peter – whom he hadn’t spoken to for years. Peter told Lenny about an inappropriate relationship the cardinal had instigated with him. Two other priests were drawn in: Kenny and John. Both had experienced unwanted advances from the cardinal.

“I’d never wanted to ‘out’ Keith just for being gay,” says Lenny. “But this was confirming that his behaviour towards me was part of his modus operandi. He has hurt others, probably worse, than he affected me. And that only became clear a few weeks ago.”

Last week there were claims the cardinal did not know details of the allegations. How could he respond, the implication was, if he did not know what he was being accused of? That was simply untrue. Last Saturday, the day before the Observer printed the story, the cardinal did not respond to calls and messages left for him. The Scottish Catholic Media Office was approached. Peter Kearney, the communications director, asked for the allegations to be put in writing. They were. In that email, four separate allegations were outlined. At the end, a direct question was posed: “Is it true that the cardinal has broken his vow of celibacy?” The allegations could not have been more specific.

Kearney certainly seemed to understand at the time. His response was brief: “The cardinal is consulting his lawyers. These claims are contested and should not be published.” But I had four statements that described the cardinal attempting to touch, kiss, or have sex with people in his care.

“He started fondling my body, kissing me and telling me how special I was to him and how much he loved me,” one had written. One of the statements was five pages long. Given the strength of the evidence we had, the Observer chose to publish the story.

There have been many questions about the four complainants that cast doubt on them and their motives. So let me tell you about the men I have come to know. They are men of conscience and integrity who desperately want to do “the right thing”. Men who love the church but recognise that the way it covers up scandal and hides wrongdoing is damaging. On a personal level they are funny, kind, spirited, generous, conventional and unconventional in different measures. But above all they are brave. Peter wrote to me saying it had been the worst week of his life. He couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep. Each of those men spoke out knowing it could ruin their lives. Some of them were trying to work out what order they might be able to take refuge in if the church disowned them for speaking.

The biggest sin in the Catholic church has historically been “scandalising the faithful”. That is why the abhorrent cover-ups of child sex-abuse scandals have been part of the church’s history. They shield their own – and if you speak against them, you stop being their own. Archbishop Tartaglia of Glasgow – who caused outrage last year when he linked the tragically premature death of David Cairns MP to his homosexual lifestyle – publicly said prayers for the cardinal at mass in Edinburgh after being named as the cardinal’s temporary replacement. He invited the cameras in while he did it. It is right that the cardinal is given adequate support. It is not right if the church pretends that he is the victim in this. The gold mitre, the cardinal’s robes, do not make him more worthy of support than the men in ordinary clerical collars.

It seems there is a great deal of displacement activity going on in the Scottish Catholic Church. It is not the behaviour of the four complainants that should be concentrated on. It is the behaviour of the cardinal. How big a crisis this is for the church lies in its own hands. The signs so far do not suggest a new era of openness. But, as the church itself proclaims, redemption is always possible for a sinner.

Priests tell me there is a “gay culture” in the Scottish Catholic church – but not an open, healthy one. In some ways, perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise. The church has always had a deeply cynical side when it comes to sexual morality. Lenny recalls being a young priest, accompanying an older priest who would rise to great heights in the church. The older man was drunk and was ranting about men who left the priesthood. Why leave to have sex? Why didn’t they just visit a sauna and go to confession in the morning?

A cardinal does not resign overnight over trivia. Some people have questioned, though, whether his alleged behaviour constitutes abuse. After all, this involves adults, not children. One commentator even suggested it’s all just a scandalous homophobic plot. That completely misunderstands the nature of the power a spiritual director has over his seminarians and a cardinal has over his priests. Lenny gave up his priesthood when O’Brien was promoted to be his bishop. He did not want to be in his power. “He harmed me in so many ways,” he explained.

And ask Peter if this story involved abuse. Peter has undergone long-term psychological counselling. His experiences with the cardinal are part of his records. Peter admits he even contemplated suicide. And still people are shouting “Reveal yourself!”

Why should he?

A few nights ago Lenny had a dream. He and his fellow complainants were in a cold, damp church, searching for a piece of scripture for a funeral. The Bible they were looking in was tattered. They could not find the words. When he woke, Lenny knew exactly the passage they had been hunting for: Ecclesiasticus 2. He wants the words read at his own funeral, to be acknowledged in the end as a priest.

“My son, if you aspire to serve the Lord,
Prepare yourself for an ordeal…
…Since gold is tested in the fire
And chosen men in the furnace of humiliation.”

There is the superficial gold of the mitre, and then there is solid gold. The church has to learn the difference. When Lenny told the others his dream, one said he, too, had dreamed about their situation. His dream had been simpler. Keith O’Brien had asked their forgiveness for his behaviour. All of them had granted it.

Complete Article HERE!

Scottish cardinal admits improper sexual conduct

Thank you for your honesty, Cardinal!

By Joshua J. McElwee

Cardinal Keith Patrick O’Brien, a Scottish archbishop who resigned last week following accusations of improper sexual conduct with priests, has admitted that “my sexual conduct has fallen below the standards expected of me as a priest, archbishop and cardinal.”

cardinal-keith-o-brien-QUITSO’Brien, who as a cardinal is entitled to take part in the secret vote to determine the next leader of the Roman Catholic Church, had previously announced he would recuse himself from the vote so as to not attract media attention.

The archbishop of Saint Andrews and Edinburgh in Scotland until the Vatican announced his retirement Feb. 25, O’Brien has been accused of improper sexual contact with three priests and one former priest in incidents over the last three decades.

O’Brien had previously denied the allegations through his spokesman. On Saturday, he released a statement acknowledging improper acts and asking forgiveness.

“In recent days certain allegations which have been made against me have become public,” O’Brien said in the statement.

“Initially, their anonymous and non-specific nature led me to contest them. However, I wish to take this opportunity to admit that there have been times that my sexual conduct has fallen below the standards expected of me as a priest, archbishop and cardinal.”

“To those I have offended, I apologise and ask forgiveness,” wrote O’Brien. “To the Catholic Church and people of Scotland, I also apologise.”

“I will now spend the rest of my life in retirement. I will play no further part in the public life of the Catholic Church in Scotland.”

Complete Article HERE!

Sex, power scandals to loom over Vatican pre-vote talks

By Tom Heneghan

The sex and power scandals haunting the Catholic Church look set to play a big role in meetings before next month’s papal election after two senior cardinals called on Tuesday for more internal debate about them.

flip a coinA leading support group for victims of clerical sexual abuse also made what it called a “last-ditch plea” to Pope Benedict to use his authority before resigning on Thursday to discipline bishops who have protected predatory priests in their dioceses.

The abuse issue took on new urgency after Scotland’s Cardinal Keith O’Brien, accused of improper behaviour with young priests, quit as Edinburgh archbishop on Monday and pulled out of the Sistine Chapel conclave to elect a new pope.

A Scottish Catholic Media Office spokesman has said O’Brien was taking legal advice and contested the “anonymous and non specific” allegations against him.

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, now the only British prelate due to attend pre-conclave talks among cardinals at the Vatican next week, said in London the sexual abuse of children was the most serious scandal in the Church.

“That will be one of the main things the cardinals will be discussing,” said Murphy-O’Connor, who cannot vote because he is over 80 years old but can join the cardinal electors in their closed-door discussions about the challenges for the next pope.

French Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran said in a newspaper interview that the cardinal electors, who number 115 after O’Brien stepped down, should also be informed about a secret report on Vatican corruption prepared for Pope Benedict.

The retiring pontiff has decided to reserve the report for his successor, but the three cardinals over 80 years old who drew it up will be allowed to inform the cardinal electors about some of its findings during next week’s consultations.

ASKING TO NAME NAMES

“The cardinal electors cannot decide to choose this or that name to vote for if they don’t know the contents of this dossier,” Tauran told La Repubblica newspaper.

“If it’s necessary, I don’t see why they should not ask for names,” said Tauran, a former Vatican foreign minister who now heads its department for interreligious dialogue.

Italian newspapers have been speculating for days about conspiracies and alleged sexual scandals inside the Vatican that may have influenced Benedict to become the first pope in some six centuries to step down rather than die in office.

The Vatican has accused these newspapers of spreading “false and damaging” rumours in an attempt to influence the cardinals who are starting to arrive in Rome for the pope’s farewell meeting with them on Thursday.

Two directors of the United States-based abuse victims’ network SNAP arrived in Rome on Tuesday to draw attention to their demands for tougher Church policies.

“We’re here to make a last ditch plea to Pope Benedict to use the remaining hours of his papacy to take decisive action to protect kids,” said David Clohessy, national director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

He acknowledged that Benedict had met some abuse victims and made some strong statements condemning the molestation of minors by priests, but said he only acted under public pressure.

“We long for the day when Church officials announce that this cardinal or this bishop is being demoted because Church officials have found proof of wrongdoing and Church officials want to clean things up,” he told journalists.

SNAP saw no papal candidates ready to fire bishops for shielding wrongdoers, he said, but added: “It’s hard to believe there aren’t some cardinals who are grabbing their colleagues by the lapels and saying ‘We simply have to do better’.”

CATHOLICS CRITICAL OF ABUSE HANDLING

Spanish Cardinal Julian Herranz, one of the three who drew up the secret report for Benedict, echoed the Vatican attack on the media in an interview on Monday with the daily El Pais.

“This wanting to see snake pits, warring mafias, internal hatreds – all this is absolutely false,” he said.

Because conclaves are such secretive events, it is hard to see what effect the heightened public pressure over the abuse issue might have on the cardinals who will elect the next leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics around the globe.

Italian newspapers, which dedicate several pages a day to the papal story, have begun mentioning Cardinal Sean O’Malley as a possible “clean hands” candidate because he was sent to Boston to deal with abuse scandals that erupted there in 2002.

But other factors could lead them to choose a man whose main strengths lie elsewhere, such as an aptitude to promote its “new evangelisation” drive, aimed at rekindling the faith in Europe and boost it in other regions.

Recent polls in two important national churches, in the United States and Germany, show that Catholics give their leaders low marks for their handling of the abuse crisis.

A Pew Forum poll last week showed U.S. Catholics have become increasingly critical, with those saying Benedict has done a poor job rising from 40% in 2008 to 63% now.

A survey in January for the weekly Die Zeit showed that only 28% of German Catholics polled believed the Church really wanted to clean up the mess the scandals have caused.

Complete Article HERE!