The sins of the fathers — -covering up their choices and their crimes
If you are a practicing Catholic these days the news swirling around the faith has been rather daunting and ugly. Ever since the Boston Globe won the Pulitzer Prize in 2003 for exposing a vast coverup of child sex abuse within the Boston Catholic Diocese and the subsequent movie chronicling the investigative reporting that revealed the crimes and coverup the Catholic Church has been in the center of the storm as the issue of pastoral abuse has gone viral. In my small town, the widening scandal tested both our faith and our memories. The numbers of affected clergy, their names, and parish affiliations through the years, was sad news to most of us. Who wanted to believe the dark truth that lay beneath the rock of our faith? Representatives of the faith that has gone to war over choice made their choice clear- they chose to sacrifice young impressionable boys.
Church leaders, some who took part in the scandals themselves, were also complicit in the coverup — -choosing doublespeak rather than transparency. The false denials, unexplained transfers of assignments, and hushed payments over the years could now be understood to be in service to the veiled secrecy protecting criminals within our midst. The revelations caused many of us who were mass servers to think back. I had come in contact with at least nine of the more than 90 offenders whose names were released. Some I served as an altar boy, others I encountered in school, one I had taught as a young middle school student. Before the scandal broke many of the offenders were simply allowed to “confess” and move on to other parishes, other schools. Some were even elevated into positions of power further entrapping the truth.
Among the faithful, there were rumors — -cautionary tales kept under wraps for fear of shame and humiliation. Our town was the home of a small diocese that served immigrant families who worked in mines, steel mills, and built a railroad industry. The parishioners spoke Irish, Italian, German, Russian, Polish, French, and any number of other European languages. There were ghettoes with Lebonese families within a few blocks of the Italian neighborhoods, and each little neighborhood was the setting for a church with a devout following. To priests serving these parishes was given the awesome power of being the intermediary between mortal and spiritual needs — -they were “fathers”, confessors, counselors… and some were monsters in black robes who used the cover of religion and the power of faith to lure then mostly poor, mostly young, and most vulnerable children whom they “chose” to violate.
The American bishops have threatened to deny Joe Biden the right to receive the sacrament of Communion because politically he has refused to assert his personal views on abortion on others. No one should need to lecture Biden on the value of human life and how precious and ephemeral it is — -especially from the members of a clergy who chose through their own sins of omission or commission to prey upon the children entrusted to their care.
The moral stance the bishops have adopted is wafer-thin. They should instead be asking for absolution for their own sins and those of their pedophile brothers — — and for the incalculable harm their own moral lapses have inflicted on the born.
Originally published at https://vincerizzo.substack.com.
