the "crime of silence"

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BOSTON -- A few weeks ago, Cardinal Bernard F. Law met with an annually scheduled convocation of the Archdiocese of Boston's pastors and leading laity. By all reports, many among the laity harshly criticized Law for his decades-long and now-exposed efforts to hide and protect sex-predator priests under his supervision.

A few days later, the priest in the church I attend spoke of this event in his Sunday sermon. He seemed shaken by what he had seen and heard at the convocation -- by the openly expressed threat to the authority of the Catholic Church and even to the faith that the church serves. He pleaded with the parishioners to continue attending church, to continue believing. He admitted that the church, in its handling of cases of sexual abuse by clergy, had been guilty of "what could be called a crime of silence."

But then he said: Yes, it was a crime of silence. But it was not only the church that was guilty of this crime. No, he said, there was blame to go around. Lots of people had kept silent their knowledge or suspicions of priestly abuse: other priests, leading members of parishes, the parents of victims -- why, the victims themselves had contributed to the silence.

Yes, those little boys who suffered the vile and evil gropings of Father John J. Geoghan and his fellow sexual criminals in collars -- they too shared in the crime of silence. As a child sitting through a long Sunday Mass, I frequently wished I could walk out. But that was a matter merely of boredom. This was the first time I ever wanted to get up and leave a church out of disgust.

What has been revealed about the Catholic Church in recent years, and overwhelmingly in recent months, is clear. Over the course of at least decades, a large number of priests used their offices -- and used the exceptional trust manifested in the title accorded them: "Father" -- to sexually prey upon (mostly) adolescent boys who had been taught to look up to them as, literally, father figures.

This pattern of criminal abuse was not limited to a few priests or a few parishes, but involved the Catholic Church in America as a whole and as an institution. As many as 2,000 priests have by now been formally accused. Cases of serial molestation involving multiple victims have been reliably documented in dioceses ranging from Boston to Los Angeles to Cincinnati to Dallas to St. Louis to Bridgeport to Palm Beach, and on and on.

In case after well-documented case, the same pattern can be seen: First there are suspicions that a priest is "fooling around" with the altar boys, then complaints, then more complaints, then more complaints. Diocesan superiors take notice; so do diocesan lawyers. The complainers are urged to keep quiet, for the good of the church and the faith. No one tells the parishioners, no one tells the police, no one tells the children. The lawyers (good Catholics) stonewall and hardball; the church's doctors (good Catholics too) pronounce the priest cured, or cured enough; the bishop orders a quiet transfer to another parish; the whole thing repeats its terrible self. When necessary, the church pays out hush money, buying some more crimes of silence. Finally, after many lives have been crippled: exposure, scandal, a grudging apology.

This pattern is not accidental but obviously a matter of policy. The Catholic Church leadership, it has been overwhelmingly proved, knew -- again, at least for decades -- of widespread crimes of sexual abuse by its priests and systematically worked to conceal these crimes. Thus, the church -- again, at least for decades, and, again, not in one or two dioceses but across the country -- functioned to allow predator-priests to continue in positions where they might continue to prey. Leading prelates of the American church -- Law in Boston and Cardinal Edward Egan in New York among them -- stand implicated in this fashion, and so does the church hierarchy as a whole.

Let us be clear: Ultimately, this is not about individual criminal acts or individual failures in leadership. This is about the systematic corruption of an institution. This is about the church as a hierarchy and a whole betraying the faith and the faithful in the most serious fashion imaginable. It is about a massively powerful institution using its power to conceal and effectively perpetuate -- knowingly perpetuate -- crimes (and sins) of the most evil nature against the most innocent and vulnerable of the souls who trusted the church.

Betsy Conway, a sister of St. Joseph in the archdiocese of Boston, was quoted in the Boston Globe the other day: "This is our church, all of us, and we need to take it back." Yes.


© 2002 The Washington Post Company

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"When you turn your head and look the other way, you are just as responsible." - Ayn Rand

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