Faith in Our Fathers
Catholic leadership crisis.

January 25, 2002 10:40 a.m.

he Catholic Church in America has a pedophilia crisis, but in truth, it's a crisis of leadership. Consider the following revelations the Boston Globe made on Thursday, based on court testimony and documents:

In 1996, as state authorities were preparing to arrest Father John Geoghan, Bernard Cardinal Law wrote to the man whom he knew to be a serial molester of children: "Yours has been an effective life of ministry, sadly impaired by illness. ...God bless you, Jack."

Brooklyn Bishop Thomas V. Daily, who oversaw Geoghan in his previous role as an auxiliary Boston bishop, explained the kid-gloves treatment archdiocesan officials gave Geoghan as "concern of the public reaction." Said Daily, excusing his own inaction: "I am not a policeman; I am a shepherd." Bishop Daily also testified that he believed at the time that priests had immunity from civil or criminal charges of sexual abuse.

Newly public Church documents show that Monsignor Francis S. Rossiter, the pastor at Geoghan's final parish, had been made aware that Geoghan had been removed from several parishes for abusing children. Yet he assigned Geoghan to work with altar boys and youth groups. When Msgr. Rossiter was questioned under oath last year about the matter, he first denied he knew about Geoghan's past, then when questioned a second time, replied, "I really can't say."

Even as Geoghan was removed from parish after parish following allegations of child molestation, his superiors, including two cardinals, wrote to him with kindness and warmth. Typical of these missives was this excerpt from a Law letter to Geoghan, upon reassigning him to St. Julia parish in 1989: "It is most heartening to know that things have gone well for you and that you are ready to resume your efforts with a renewed zeal and enthusiasm," Law wrote, extending his blessing "upon you and all whom you serve so well." In 1994, after Law suspended Geoghan yet again, following more molestation complaints, the cardinal wrote sympathetically to the monstrous cleric: "I realize this is a difficult time for you and for those close to you. If I can be of help to you in some way, please contact me."

Nowhere in any of these documents is there evidence that the churchmen who so agonized about the welfare of Father Geoghan ever showed concern for the children he was raping and fondling, or their families. Indeed, as the Globe reported, "With just one exception, the Geoghan records and the transcripts of depositions of church officials contain no hint that anyone around the cardinal urged him to remove children from Geoghan's reach until 1993."

There's no nice way to put this: The cardinal and his men come across as downright pathological. It is inconceivable that a normal person faced with a man who sexually abuses children would not react with horror and disgust. Yet Law and his men saw Geoghan as nothing more dangerous than a pitiful creature in need of tender loving care and endless second chances. The 130 violated children and their families were mere abstractions, of concern to the hierarchy only insofar as they had the ability to embarrass the archbishop publicly with their accusations.

Aside from Cardinal Law, there are five current bishops involved in the Geoghan civil trials, because they once served administratively in Boston and had responsibility for overseeing Geoghan. They are Daily of Brooklyn; Alfred C. Hughes of New Orleans; John B. McCormack of Manchester, N.H.; William F. Murphy of Rockville Center, N.Y.; and Robert J. Banks of Green Bay, Wis. Among them, these bishops are responsible for the spiritual welfare of 4.3 million Catholics. It is fair, indeed sadly necessary, for Catholic families in those dioceses to ask if their bishops still retain the sanguine view of priest-pedophiles that obtained during their tenure in Boston.

As it happens, the 1.6 million Catholic souls under Daily's care include my family and me. It hardly assures this Catholic father to read the bishop's protest that he is "a shepherd, not a policeman" when there are prowling wolves about. Worse is Daily's claim that during the time he was monitoring Geoghan, he didn't realize that priests were criminally or civilly liable for sexually assaulting children. The man is either lying under oath or is denser than a week-old bagel.

Perhaps it's more charitable to assume Daily is thick; the alternative is to consider that he is corrupt, a Catholic bishop who would perjure himself to protect his reputation. Still, it is hard to believe that a stupid man was the chancellor of the fourth-largest diocese in the United States. It is impossible to accept that a cleric this accomplished was unaware of one of the most basic facts regarding the legal status of priests.

Whatever the case, this is where the Boston rubber meets the Brooklyn road. This Catholic father has no confidence that his bishop is doing his part to keep children safe from child predators among the priesthood. One has to wonder if there are any Father Geoghans running loose in this diocese, implicitly protected by the willful ignorance of a bishop who considers himself a "shepherd, not a policeman."

The Geoghan story has finally become news here in New York, thanks to a Times report today. Empire State legislators, as well as state lawmakers across the country, should consider following their counterparts in the Massachusetts state Senate and passing legislation compelling churches to open their files to reveal evidence of past child-abuse cases among the clergy.

The credible threat of this action in his state forced Cardinal Law to declare on Thursday that he would order the Boston Archdiocese to do so voluntarily. Fine, but it's fair to ask: Do Boston Catholics trust this archdiocesan leadership to hand over the files? All of them? As Steven Rubino, a veteran victims' attorney says in my cover story in the new National Review, "I don't want to hear about another new policy until someone says to me that someone other than the fox guarding the henhouse has examined the files."

It's a shame that faithful Catholics have to be so skeptical of their bishops, but what choice have these men left us? A Catholic should never be put in the position of choosing between his children's good and that of the Church. Yet here we are. The Geoghan letters reveal a feudal mindset among the top leaders in Boston — including Cardinal Humberto Medeiros, Law's predecessor — in which the welfare of a known priest molester of children was paramount, and that of his young victims and their families did not matter at all.

For example: A relative of seven boys attacked by Geoghan wrote in 1982 to Cardinal Medeiros protesting Bishop Daily's request to the family "that we keep silent." The woman wrote that her family "never as much as received an apology from the church, much less any offer for counseling for the boys."

To which the cardinal responded: "While I am and must be very sensitive to a very delicate situation and one that has caused great scandal, I must at the same time invoke the mercy of God and share in that mercy in the knowledge that God forgives sins and that sinners indeed can be forgiven."

Cardinal Law said this week he had no intention of resigning his post. He also announced his intention to appoint an expert panel to study the best ways to handle priest sex-abuse cases in the future. Even now, he still doesn't get it. We don't need more expert panels and bureaucratic dodges. We need leaders with the vision and resolve to clean out the Augean stables, now.

Given all that we know in 2002 about the damage molesters do to their victims, and their incurability, why does it require a colloqium of Ph.D.s to determine that the way you deal with these monsters is to remove them from the active priesthood immediately? Why do I suspect this is patently obvious to, say, the night manager at a 7-11 in Dorchester, but not to the cardinal archbishop?

As far as protecting children and families from pedophiles in the priesthood, I'll paraphrase a great man and say it appears the Catholics of Boston would be better off if the local Church were governed by the first 500 people in the Boston phonebook than Cardinal Law and his underlings.