says it nicely. My pain is not with what happened—I mean, it was ugly and it hurt me—but my biggest complaint is with how the clergy handles it … because they don’t know what to do with me.
As the abuse went on through the 1960s, Jean got another idea:
I got to the point where I was going to call the bishop. I thought that would work. But I didn’t have the bishop’s phone number. And if I went home and dialed and tried to get the number, there would be a charge on our phone bill. And Mom knew every bill. And then I got to thinking that I couldn’t call him anyway because we were on a party line. And everybody would listen [to each other’s calls]. You would hear this click when they picked up the phone.
Once when Jean was fifteen, she did reach out to a priest in a nearby town. But consistent with the times, this priest, though very kind, did nothing more than encourage Jean to “protect” herself, to “stay close to the doors” so she could avoid or escape Father Bill. It never crossed his mind to report Jean’s abuse to the police. For all Jean knows, he never confronted Father Bill. His words were kind, but he did nothing to prevent further abuse. “He didn’t know any better,” Jean reflected. “The world was different.”
There is a part of Jean’s story that in many ways struck me as more painful to listen to than the details of her abuse—because it is a part of her hurting that was needless, impossibly callous, and mindlessly inflicted upon her by yet another priest to whom she first turned, well over thirty years after she was abused, in a first moment of vulnerability as she sought compassion and understanding.
As Dr. Applewhite explains, when an abuse victim first opens up and is vulnerable with another person about the fact of the abuse, the reaction the victim receives is of critical importance—and positive or negative, it imprints on the psyche of the victim.
When, as an adult woman well into her fifties, Jean first opened up to a priest outside of confession—one of her own parish priests—about her abuse, after going into some detail about Father Bill’s assaults on her, the priest became visibly agitated and finally blurted out: “You scare me.… You scare me!”
Jean was nonplussed.
“I know what people like you do to priests,” he snapped, “you make wild accusations and pretty soon we’re all suspect. So you can just stay away. I don’t want to have anything to do with you!”
Jean attempted to explain that she was not accusing him or much less all priests, but he cut her off. What then followed, in Jean’s state of defenseless vulnerability, was unimaginably insensitive, and would leave her tender conscience needlessly engulfed in turmoil for a long time to come. “And by the way,” the priest retorted, “supposing what you’re saying is true, what was your part in this?”
Jean shared her story with me for a number of reasons, but principal among them was that she wanted me to be able to communicate to priests—and seminarians—how not to treat a victim of sexual abuse who opens up to them in counseling or the confessional.
I asked Jean what she would say to other victims of sexual abuse:
Number one: what he did to you was not your fault. And I’m sorry it happened. That was all I wanted to hear. Rather than being told, “You scare me, and you’re a liar.”
Jean did not report her abuse to the diocese until well after Father Bill had died. She recalled how, when the diocesan review board was going to examine her accusation, she sought to speak to them in person. This was vitally important to her:
I wanted to be there when that panel met … I wanted them to know that what they were doing was valid and important in the Church.
Today, Jean continues to heal. The abundant spiritual healing she has already received, she acknowledges, came not without setbacks, periods of discouragement, and struggles. She shared that eventually it was after fervent prayer to the Holy Spirit that she finally received relief: she was able to forgive Father Bill, and the nightmares abruptly ended.
When I interviewed Jean, she made it clear that her ability to forgive her perpetrator was a gift that was nearly forty years in coming, something superhuman, something she could not do on her own. She had only very recently gotten to that place. “I want him to be in heaven,” she insisted, referring to Father Bill. And she hopes to see him there one day.
What is particularly remarkable about Jean—and so tragically differs from the personal stories of many other victims—is how her Catholic faith, her faith and trust in the Church, remained intact, notwithstanding years of sexual abuse. And the goodness—the genuine spiritual charity—she directs today toward her perpetrator no doubt leaves the reader (as it left me) off balance.
I was angered by her story. Incensed. Shaken.
The reader can’t help but ask: How could she, in her right mind, possibly want this man to be in heaven? Is she still in some sort of denial? And how is it that she did not lose her faith, that she did not walk away from the Church? We’ll have occasion to explore and answer these questions, and return to Jean’s story, in chapter 8.
As a closing thought, it is to be hoped that Jean’s home diocese where the abuse occurred will eventually make the option to publicize all the names of accused priests from the diocese with credible allegations against them, even if the allegations came to light only after the offending cleric was deceased. Such a policy corresponds quite simply to a fundamental requirement of justice. To be forthcoming in this way, as Dr. Applewhite has pointed out, is to provide the Church with the gift of truth. And in the matter of clergy sexual abuse, the Church’s absolute transparency is the gift we can ill afford to deny future generations of Catholics.
Chapter 3
A Heart-to-Heart about Catholic Priests
“Accept from the holy people of God the gifts to be offered to Him. Know what you are doing, and imitate the mystery you celebrate: model your life on the mystery of the Lord’s cross.”
—From the Rite of Priestly Ordination
Where to begin?
In light of the preceding chapter, it bears repeating that by far the vast majority of Catholic priests have never sexually abused anyone. Our thoughts should turn to that throng of priests, past and present, who have sought to live in earnest fidelity to the commitments they made the day of their ordination, priests who have striven for genuine holiness against great odds and amidst countless obstacles.
So, dare I begin this chapter with an expression of gratitude? That may sound self-serving, as I am a Catholic priest. But take it rather as the expression of my own lifelong admiration for these men who in so many ways have been my personal heroes, and who rendered me the greatest service a human person could ever offer by placing me sacramentally and existentially in touch with the Mystery of Christ.
Priests can also be, in very personal, often undisclosed ways,
