Tomorrow is Easter, the holiest day on the Christian calendar, redolent of rebirth, resurrection and immortality. The altars are piled in lilies and chrysanthemums, but this year, I detect the aroma of burning witches.
By now the world knows of the hideous scandal in Boston, where John Geoghan, a priest, was moved from parish to parish by bishops too forgiving or too lazy to confront the problem until his victims numbered 130. They know, too, that around the country priests by the hundreds are being pulled out of ministry. In this diocese "several" priests have been sent off because of "credible" allegations. The definitions of "several" and "credible" are being left up to diocesan officials who aren't explaining.
"There must be people who have been unfairly charged by people who have an agenda," said one lifelong friend. I will call him Jim. He is a priest. And 15 years ago, I watched from the sidelines as he was wrongly accused and nearly destroyed.
He's an innocent man, but the accusations are so ugly he can't safely use his name to proclaim his innocence nor name the diocese in which his story played out. This is what it has come to: as the guilty are found, the innocent must hide.
Jim's entire career has been spent working with church youth. I have known him for more than 30 years and am a Catholic today because he spent time showing my friends and me the best side of the faith. He worked with young men who were just discovering their own sexuality, around the same time they were discovering their own angers and insecurities, and never once did he offer anything other than advice and patience.
Fifteen years ago he was summoned to his diocesan chancery. There had been an accusation. The bishop would not tell him who was making it, nor offer details. All he said was that Jim had been accused of sexual contact with children. How does a man defend himself against something like that?
In a court of law, such an allegation would have been taken out with the trash. But this was not a court of law.
"He said that he, as bishop, had to act. I was willing. I accepted that," Jim said.
He was dispatched to St. Luke Institute, a clinic in Suitland, Md., where he was examined for days by a team of psychiatrists and psychologists. It was humiliating.
"I've been around kids all my life and nothing has happened," Jim assured them. They gave him a battery of tests. They showed him Rorschach blots. Then they sent him home with a diagnosis: non-pedophilic personality. Doubtless he'd add it to his resume -- Father Jim, certified non-pedophile.
In days to come, through a lawyer and some folks back at his parish, Jim learned that his accusers had previously fingered one of their teachers the same way and had been discredited. One accuser's father later told friends about going to confession. Overcome with remorse, he told them, he admitted to pushing the accusations against Jim knowing they were false. Jim could never check that one out further. The seal of the confessional is absolute. He couldn't ask the priest who heard the story. Once again, because he adhered to the strictures of his faith, all he was left with was the version of an accuser he could not confront.
The allegations collapsed under their own implausibility. So did Jim's connection with that parish. His bishop couldn't send him back. Unlike Boston, where church officials, confronted with crimes against children, lawyered up and acted more like Philip Morris than a church, Jim's bishop -- much like the bishop in our city -- took no chances. It is worth remembering, though, that erring on the side of caution can exact a human toll as well.
When he heard about the erupting scandal in Boston, and sensed the hysteria as decades-old allegations resurfaced, Jim wondered how many men were about to share his fate.
Too many bishops have done their clergy no favors in the way this scandal has been handled. Stonewalling and an inability to distinguish between privacy and secrecy merely amplified every revelation. It has been compounded by the fact that bigots on the left, angry at a church that has retained an exclusively male hierarchy, and on the right, where a chance to bash gays is rarely neglected, have looked at this situation the way a hobo eyes an empty boxcar and clambers aboard.
Jim returned to the ministry quietly, enthusiastically, trying hard to wrestle his anger into submission and keeping it to himself.
"I try to think I'm showing the best side of the church, even though I saw the worst side," he told me. "Christ's church I never doubted. But man's church needs help."
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