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St. Anselm parishioners, staff and clergy came together Aug. 29 to share their thoughts on the most recent clergy sex abuse scandal at the invitation of Father Jose Shaji, pastor, seated far left. (Photo by Christina Gray/Catholic San Francisco)
September 13, 2018
Christina Gray
In the days following the Pennsylvania grand jury report Aug. 14 that lifted the veil on seven decades of child sex abuse by more than 300 Catholic priests in that state and the church leaders who covered it up, Catholic San Francisco approached daily communicants at local parishes after Mass and asked them for their thoughts.
A handful did speak to us (see boxon Page 6). Most wordlessly waved the question away with tears or fury in their eyes or said they were too upset to talk about it.
In Marin County, the pastors of St. Anselm Parish in Ross and Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Mill Valley sensed that communication and community are needed in any disaster and invited parishioners to separate group “listening sessions.”
Catholic San Francisco sat in on one of them at the St. Anselm parish hall in Ross Aug. 29.
For two hours, about 25 parishioners including the pastor candidly shared feelings and theories about why the church they love is in crisis again and about what, if anything, they might be able to do about it.
The participants gave Catholic San Francisco permission to use the remarks of the speakers named in this story.
“The fact is, we are faced with a church that has real issues,” said Father Jose Shaji, St. Anselm pastor. “I know that all of you feel the pain because the church is very important to you.”
A ‘call to arms’ for laity
Pastoral staff, parish council members, ministry leaders and other parish stalwarts proved that they were not there to merely grouse. This was a “call to arms” for laity who believe they might be able to help “save the church,” said pastoral council chair Joan Mann Thomas.
“The church is facing a crisis that it hasn’t faced perhaps since the Middle Ages,” she said. “The outcome could be very much the same if the laity does not react,” she said.
The format for the gathering was unstructured and unmoderated except for an opening prayer and statement by Father Shaji and two readings, including a passage from Psalm 37:
“Be not vexed at the successful path of the man who does malicious deeds. Give up your anger and forsake wrath. Be not vexed, it will only harm you. For evildoers will be cut off, but those who wait for the Lord shall inherit the land.”
Father Shaji noted he had recently thanked St. Anselm school parents at a dinner hosted by the parish the week before the school year began.
“A pastor of a parish thanking parents for trusting us with their children,” he said. “It is no longer easy for them to believe that their children are safe. It has come to that.”
Initially, talk centered on identifying the “root cause” of child sex abuse among clergy.
“Why this happened, there are a lot of theories on this, but I think we’re afraid to call it by its name,” said Mann Thomas. “There are sexual predators in every institution in the land. We just seem to have an overabundance of them.”
One man wondered whether normal sexual development was stunted by those who entered the seminary at a young age and formed by others with the same lack of development. Another believed the problem was “all the homosexuals in the priesthood.”
“I don’t have any facts and figures to base this on,” said Joe Burke, “but there are obviously, I mean I think, many gays in the priesthood and that is one of the main underlying causes if not the cause of the problems of abuse.”
“I disagree with what Joe said,” said Arleen Hansen, turning to face him. “I have a gay son and he is not a pedophile. There are more straight men who are pedophiles.” She said that one of her sons was abused by a straight relative. “It took him years to open up and tell me and it ruined his eventual marriage,” she said.
‘Clericalism,’ celibacy questioned
The hazards of priesthood celibacy and clericalism were also considered, and Father Shaji, a priest for 26 years, offered a personal perspective.
“When you come out of the seminary, you believe that you are superior to everyone else,” he said. ‘I am a priest, I am consecrated, I am above you.’ This can give you a feeling that nothing and nobody can touch you.”
He said he also believes the priesthood can be attractive to people who are “not comfortable in the world” for a number of reasons. “I don’t know how to put it, but some people come to hide in the priesthood,” he said.
A visiting priest from Africa who is a student at the nearby San Francisco Theological Seminary in San Anselmo said the media was “bombarding” people with news about abuse in the Catholic Church that he felt was out of proportion to reality.
“I was shocked to find that it is just 1 percent of priests who have this issue,” he said, calling media saturation of the sex abuse scandal, “the activity of the evil spirit trying to destroy the church.”
Daly Schreck, a longtime parishioner from Pennsylvania and a former Catholic school teacher, said that she was “grateful” to the press that in 2002 exposed widespread child sex abuse by clergy that took place in the 1930s, ‘40s and ‘50s. “We wouldn’t know about any of these things if it weren’t for our free press,” she said.
Father Shaji mentioned the late Richard Sipe, a former Catholic priest whose studies of the sexual behavior of Catholic clergy were referenced in the movie “Spotlight.” Sipe concluded that between 6 percent and 9 percent of clergy have been sexually involved with minors and that only about half of priests are celibate. Other studies dispute this figures.
In 2002, the U.S. bishops commissioned a comprehensive study of sexual abuse by Catholic priests and deacons across the country. The John Jay College of Criminal Justice report published two years later covered a 55-year period between 1950 and 2005. It reported abuse rates among clergy in the range of 3 percent to 6 percent.
According to Father Shaji, it was Sipe who linked the failures of celibacy among church leaders to a system of secrecy and hypocrisy in which the abuse of minors could take place.
Reflection on ‘good priests’
To many, it was the protection of predators by church leaders and the clerical self-protection it revealed that was the most disillusioning.
“What hurt me and what brought out a lot of anger for me was the cover-up by men of God who we put on a pedestal and whom we trusted,” said Maureen Dear, who leads the parish’s spiritual life committee.
Schreck said that in the military, an officer who gets a command he feels is unlawful is bound to disobey it. “But that does not apply in the church where it’s blanket obedience no matter what,” she said.
She lost hope, she said, when Marie Collins, one of two survivors of clergy sex abuse appointed by Pope Francis to the Pontifical Commission for Minors in 2013, quit in 2017.
In her resignation letter, Collins wrote that, “The most significant problem has been reluctance of some members of the Vatican Curia to implement the recommendations of the commission despite their approval by the pope.”
The group felt laity should have a role in the selection or removal of church leaders, including priests.
“My father was Lutheran and his church congregation could hire and fire their minister,” said one man. He didn’t see anything similar happening in the Catholic Church – ever.
“I don’t see why the church would want to give up the power they have,” he said. “My question is whether I want to continue to participate in an institution that doesn’t seem to really care about what its people think.”
Mary Wilkinson teared up as she talked about her brother, a retired pastor.
“I want to say something for priests,” she said. “All of us are here today because of priests. My brother is a priest, a good priest. It pains me to see what this has done to all priests. But we’ve got a lot to work on here.”
She referenced Catholic historian Kathleen Sprows Cummings’ Aug. 17 opinion piece in The New York Times, “For Catholics, Gradual Reform Is No Longer an Option.”
The author said the grand jury report changed her from a person who sought gradual progress in the church from within an existing framework of norms and organizational structures to one who sees the possibility of “nothing less than radical, wholesale reform.”
Father Shaji agreed that women in particular can no longer be “neglected” by the church.
“We make them saints after they die but they have no role in the church while they are alive,” he said. “Look around, it is women who fill the pews. Giving them administrative power will change the way it operates and the way the church thinks.”
Maureen Bennett recalled the excitement after the publication of “Lumen Gentium,” the dogmatic constitution of the Second Vatican Council more than 50 years ago. The document magnified the “common priesthood” of the laity.
“This was the passport for the laity to have a voice,” she said. “What happened?”
The group felt strongly about creating an “action plan” of some sort and is forming a committee for that purpose.
“We can’t just talk,” said Mann Thomas. “That isn’t going to cut it anymore.”
Overcoming ‘powerlessness’
Catholic San Francisco spoke to Father Pat Michaels after he invited his parishioners to the Our Lady of Mount Carmel parish hall in Mill Valley on Aug. 27 for the same purpose. More than 35 parishioners took him up on it.
“One of the things that really came out of this is how powerless people feel,” he said. Participants spoke about struggling with the idea of leaving the church, or about “sending a message” to bishops by withholding financial support, “all efforts that demonstrate whatever power we think we have.”
An Aug. 17 letter from Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone asking the faithful to share in “acts of reparation” for the sins of the church was largely lost on the group, said Father Michaels, even making some angry.
“Many Catholic adults don’t understand that Jesus suffered and died for us and that suffering for the sake of each other’s sins is a part of our tradition,” he said. Only one person in the group beside himself knew that and “she is a convert.”
“I think what the archbishop was getting at is that this is ultimately a communal problem, and in many ways we participated in its creation,” Father Michaels said. “Every time we put a priest up on a pedestal or were afraid to question a priest or a religious we kept them held above us.”
Father Michaels did not moderate the group but did find teaching moments throughout. “I was told once by a youth minister that the worst thing you can do in the midst of a crisis is leave. All you do is rob it of any good you can bring to it,” he said. “I left them with that.”
Daly Schreck, Joe Burke, Maureen Dear, Joan Mann Thomas
OTHER MASSGOERS REACTTim Gallagher
St. Boniface, San Francisco
The crisis has been “a long time coming. But forgiveness is the key if we truly follow the Lord. He always knew of people’s sinfulness. But he always turned it around and said, no matter the trouble you are suffering, I forgive you. Now go and sin no more.”
Dennis McLaughlin
St. Boniface
“I am saddened that people will look at all of this and paint a broad brush against all of religious and clergy because they are certainly overwhelmingly wonderful people … Every incident is heartbreaking. If there is any silver lining to take away in all of this it is that the church seems to be on the right track in cleaning things up and having a zero tolerance policy for priests or brothers who abuse those they are supposed to be serving.”
Chris Stockton
Sts. Peter and Paul, San Francisco
“Criminals, including the recently disclosed priests, who sexually abuse children, should be lawfully punished and should not be allowed to be priests, bishops or archbishops.”