Word: priestly
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Today Brett is on the run and still officially a priest, despite pleas to defrock him. Egan, now Cardinal and Archbishop of New York and perhaps the pre-eminent prelate in the U.S., is under heavy fire to explain his handling not just of Brett but of other pending cases of priests whose abuses he allegedly hushed up while in Bridgeport. For Martinelli, there's still no solace. He would, he says, have settled for nothing in cash if he just could have got a public apology...
Dioceses lapsed into a pattern of denial and deception. They treated sexual pathology as a moral failure and crime as a religious matter. The Roman Catholic Church is a stern hierarchy that has always kept its deliberations secret, policed itself and issued orders from the top. An obedient priest moves up in power by keeping his head down, winning rewards for bureaucratic skills and strict orthodoxy. When Cardinals are created, they take a vow before the Pope to "keep in confidence anything that, if revealed, would cause a scandal or harm to the church." When it came to sex abuse...
...allegations came to diocese attention, the bishop, a power unto himself who often operated as if ordination gave him a share of the Pope's infallibility, acted as prosecutor, judge, sentencer. Desperate to retain even sinful men, as the number of priests shrank alarmingly, and ever putting the image of the church first, bishops refined the system. Convince the family that publicity would harm the faith. Don't report to the police; don't warn the parish. Treat the priest with confession, time out at a discreet rehab center and Christian forgiveness; then let him resume duties...
Devout families--and predator priests frequently chose their victims from the most ardent parishioners--had been taught for generations to exalt, respect and trust priests. Who could imagine dear Father Tim--who came to dinner, played with the kids, counseled mom, acted like a dad--would do something so sinful? Doubting the priest would cost you your spiritual security. When Ralph Sidaway told his mother roughly 65 years ago that a parish priest had molested him, "she beat the crap out of him, because you don't say that about priests," says Sheldon Stevens, a Florida lawyer who handled...
...Even if it has grown easier for adults to reveal shameful incidents in their past, it's still hard to get young males to come forward while the abuse is going on. "The last thing I want to do as a teenager is run around telling everybody some priest gave me a b___ j__," says John Falls, a grown-up Californian who says he was molested by his boyhood priest. Says Neil Blake, a New Mexico lawyer litigating abuse cases: "I don't know if priests are still out there molesting kids, because they won't tell anyone about...