Crimes from inside Catholic church demand secular punishment
As Catholics, many of us are embarrassed, frustrated and angry.
God willing, this latest example of moral disregard by Bishop Robert Finn, Vicar General Robert Murphy and other “shepherds” in the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph will be the lance to pierce this long-festering boil of secrecy, abuse and cover up.
When Bishop Finn arrived here in 2005, he was one of a new wave of American bishops charged with turning the tide of public opinion away from the abuse scandals and back to core conservative Catholic values and respect for the church and its priestly vocations. Instead, Bishop Finn is up to his collar in a flood of renewed scrutiny and anger.
How did this happen again? The answer, as Finn said recently, is “the consequences of our human failure.”
He’s right. Priests and bishops are human. Humans often fail to do the right thing — especially when there is no real framework for accountability or threat of tangible punishment. Despite hundreds of detailed reports over the last 20 years, only a handful of pedophile priests and no complicit church supervisors have been subjected to civil punishment, i.e., jail time.
More often, the perpetrators (some two dozen suspected perpetrators from our two local dioceses, alone) are placed out of sight in the Catholic system and allowed to live wherever they’d like, without adequate warnings to their new neighbors and coworkers. Most are not formally defrocked, and many continue to receive paychecks from their home dioceses and go on to live out their lives unscathed and unsupervised.
As a communications consultant to the two area dioceses in the early- and mid-1990s, I had the uncomfortable experience of seeing a number of the accused sweat and squirm when called on the diocesan carpet, only to be “let go” and sent on their way. I heard their stories and denials and excuses firsthand. One I’ll never forget was “we never went all the way until he was of legal age.”
That one did me in. But until then I counseled the then-local bishops — who I believe really were committed to cleaning house — on how to be honest with the public without compromising anyone’s legal rights. We implemented a new “zero tolerance” policy and created a quasi-independent lay review board. I wrote many a statement articulating the dioceses’ sorrow for their priests’ abhorrent behavior and the dioceses’ plans of action going forward.
Sadly, the Kansas City-St. Joseph Diocese continues to make those same apologies and promises today, more than 15 years later.
Like most Catholics, I hold fast to the fundamental tenets of our church and consider our parishes and parochial schools invaluable centers for learning, spiritual reflection and friendship. Catholic charities and missions do incredible work, and most of our priests deserve nothing but thanks and respect for the guidance and comfort that they provide.
That said, we cannot allow crimes against our children, or complicity among the church leadership to go unchecked any longer. Not for one more minute. The time has come for us to harness our collective anger and embarrassment and use that energy to change the way our church and our dioceses operate, once and for all.
After all these years, it is starkly obvious to me that there will be no change for the better in the Kansas City diocese until men like Bishop Robert Finn and his Vicar General Robert Murphy are forced to resign, and criminals in collars are subject to secular trial and incarceration.
Pat O’Neill, of Kansas City, is a marketing and public relations consultant.
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