#442: “Spotlight” Gets the Story Right

Cast Members and the Boston Globe people they play

“Spotlight,” which portrays the Boston Globe’s investigation into clergy sex abuse, is possibly the best newspaper movie ever made.  Certainly it deserves comparison with “All The President’s Men.”  Viewer reactions will of course vary widely—but for me, this brilliant film provoked a myriad of memories.    

In 1989, as editor of the weekly  Catholic Free Press in Worcester, Massachusetts, I organized our coverage and wrote editorial comment on a sex abuse scandal at Mount Cashel Orphanage, operated by the Congregation of Christian Brothers in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada.  I assumed, like many others, that this was an isolated incident.  But Owen Murphy, my editor emeritus with 34 years at the paper, assured me that it was the tip of an iceberg. 

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One day in 1990 Murphy’s phone rang.  It was our bishop and publisher, Timothy Harrington, enraged that our recent annual directory for the Diocese of Worcester included the name of a priest under the heading “On Assignment Outside the Diocese.” It turned out the priest had abused a Worcester child, and the bishop had cut a deal with the family: if they would keep quiet and avoid court action, he would remove the priest, and he promised them the priest would never work with children again.  But the directory listed his location at a parish in the southwestern U.S., and the family, infuriated, had already called the bishop.  Since the bishop was our boss, Murphy apologized for embarrassing him--when the truth was we had exposed the bishop as a liar.

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In 1991 my father asked me a favor.  It seems our hometown paper, the Saugus Advertiser, had printed a letter to the editor attacking a former priest of Blessed  Sacrament Parish by the name of John Geoghan. The writer accused Geoghan of molesting several altar boys, and called on the diocese and local authorities to punish him.  This upset my father, an old school Catholic who considered such letters anti-Catholic scandal mongering.  He wanted me to write a reply letter both rebutting the writer and scolding the newspaper for publishing such inflammatory “trash.”

As gently as possible, I told my father that I understood his reaction but felt it would not be prudent to write such a reply.  I pointed out cases where priests had abused children, and I said there was no reason to believe Saugus was immune to such dangers.  It was possible, I told him, that the accusations were true.  The very idea stunned my father.  He was disappointed by my reaction, but to his credit he was not disappointed in me.   
 

John Geoghan

Years later, of course, Geoghan was exposed as the molester of up to 100 children in six parishes, was convicted in 2002, and was subsequently beaten and strangled to death in prison in 2003.

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In 1993 I wrote a short piece on clergy sex abuse for the Atlantic Monthly.  In it I reported many of the points, on a national level (and relying especially on the work of Jason Berry and Richard Sipe) that the Globe’s Spotlight Team uncovered in Boston in 2001-2002.  First, such abuse was widespread.  Second, the Church faced huge liability payments and even bankruptcies.  Third, church authorities (especially bishops) were systematically covering up the problem.  Fourth, this cover-up involved “recycling priests” to new locales where they often molested more children.  Fifth, Bishops also cut deals with families to keep cases from going public.  Sixth, the phenomenon was finally coming to light, after decades or even generations, for one reason: some Catholics, after generations of submission, were finally willing to sue the Church. (“Spotlight” portrays what happened when a newspaper decided to sue the Church.)

The Atlantic accepted my piece, paid me for it, then told me they would not publish it “for lack of space.” (Ironically, the 1993 was the same year the Boston  Globe published James L. Franklin’s piece revealing that priestly abuse in Boston parishes might be widespread.  The story was buried in the Globe’s Metro section, and it took eight more years for the full story to reach the front page.)

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As “Spotlight” shows, the Globe’s 2002 stories triggered an explosion of accusations.  In one scene reporters scan a list of suspect priests.  At the top of one page is the name of my B.C. High debate coach, with whom I traveled for 20 weekends a year over a three year period.   

 Atop another page was another Saugus priest, George Rosenkrantz, whose “Marriage Encounter” workshop my wife and I had once attended at Blessed Sacrament. He was also giving away

George Rosenkrantz

some of his library; my bookshelves still have books bearing his signature.  A third abuser worked with me when I ran the Religious Education Program at Saint Ambrose Parish in Dorchester.  Many church workers like me gave our trust to priests who were molesting children.  We also feel betrayed, though our suffering cannot compare with that of the survivors.

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But perhaps my most vivid memory came the week in January 2002 when the Spotlight team’s story hit the headlines.  That week my work included conducting a retreat day for a parish staff whose pastor, Father Jack, was an old family friend from his days as a young priest in Saugus.  The Globe story overwhelmed our planned agenda, and became the day’s central topic.  

 During the long sharing we learned that many staffers knew victims, often family members.  But the bombshell was Fr. Jack’s own confession of triple suffering.  First, he told us what he had never told anyone: that he had himself been abused in the 1940s by a seminary professor, and chose to say nothing because he believed (1) no one would believe him and (2) he would be expelled.  Second, he was assigned to St. Margaret’s in Saugus in 1950 to assist the new pastor, who was replacing a molesting priest (that man was exiled to Ireland for “penance” but later would be recycled to another Boston parish).  The new priests had two orders: clean up the mess, and keep it quiet.  They did—so Jack was silent a second time.  Third, in the 1960s Jack became chaplain at Cardinal Spellman High School in Brockton, where much of his work was spiritual counseling and confessions.  He found himself counseling students who reported being abused by their pastor at nearby St. Ann’s in West Bridgewater.  It happened that St. Ann’s pastor was the very same priest who had abused Fr. Jack in seminary nearly 20 years before!  Jack could only pray that his silence was not the reason more kids were suffering.

But Jack’s silence ended that retreat day in January 2002, and later that week he told his family for the first time.

At the end of the day, Jack drove me to the nearby station for my train back to Boston.  Waiting for the train in his car, we spoke of the day and his feelings.  He admitted feeling relieved to finally get the truth (and its heavy burden) off his chest.  He expressed hope that more people would speak up.  He proclaimed his own goal to get his abuser’s name removed from the front of St. Ann’s parish center.  (To my knowledge, that name remains on the building to this day).  But amid all these cathartic emotions, he seethed with anger at the Boston Globe for parading the Church’s shame as front page news, in full public view.  In his eyes, it was high time to tell the truth, but it was the business of individuals and families and parishes--not newspapers.  Some of his venom, I knew, was rooted in a common perspective that the Globe was anti-Catholic.

I could not not reply.  “But after all, Jack,” I said, “the Globe is just doing its job.  This story is the Church’s fault, not theirs.  And, to tell you the truth, this is just the kind of public service investigative reporting that wins Pulitzer Prizes.”

Naturally, Jack was not happy to hear that--but I was right: the Globe Spotlight Team got its Pulitzer. The movie shows how they earned it.

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2015

#411: Cover-Up

Ever Since Watergate, Americans have believed that “The cover up is worse than the crime.” Has the U.S. Catholic hierarchy STILL not figured that out?

Two events this week remind us that not only is the Church’s sex abuse crisis still with us; it is also still cause for worry.  For there is fresh evidence that, even now, some members of the hierarchy just don’t get it.  In particular, this week’s events--one in Chicago and one in Geneva--show a hierarchy still torn, among its own members, between apology and denial. 

The denial came to the fore when Bishop Francis Kane, vicar general of the Archdiocese of Chicago, held a news conference concerning Wednesday’s court-ordered release of documents relating to cases against 30 priests accused of child abuse.

Bishop Kane began by apologizing for the abuse itself, and admitted that the archdiocese had been wrong not to act more forcefully, but then denied any cover-up by Chicago bishops:

It was just they didn't realize that it was such a terrible thing, and so I think they did relocate people, but it was not intended as a way of covering up things.

But Marc Pearlman, a lawyer representing 200 of the victims, took exception to the Bishops claim:

The issue is not when the abuse happened; the issue is what they did once it was reported….I think that the files will show a systemic plan over decades in this diocese, along with many other dioceses, to conceal sexual abuse, to conceal who the predators were, and to put the interests of the predators and the institution above the interests of innocent young children…Until there is public disclosure and transparency ... there is no way people can learn about it and make sure it does not happen again,"

Bishop Kane also said, “It's humiliating as a priest to know there were other priests who did something like that."

In both of his remarks, Bishop Kane speaks for many bishops (past and perhaps even present) who find it “humiliating” to acknowledge that priests abused children but impossible to acknowledge that bishops and others covered it up.  Of course, it was precisely this “humiliation” that induced bishops to keep such matters quiet—they were too embarrassed to admit the truth.

What they still don’t get is that, for the vast majority of Catholics who were not touched by the abuse itself, the cover-up is a much greater scandal, and denying it continues to damage the Church’s credibility.

So the question arises: how could Bishop Kane say there was no cover-up?  Perhaps it is a matter of definition. Perhaps he and others think that, if previous bishops underestimate the problem, the result was they did nothing about it—and that was not, at least intentionally, a cover-up. To me, such a view is disingenuous at best.

To clarify, it may help to use a concrete example, so let me tell a story.  A true story.

This happened more than 60 years ago in a small town in the Archdiocese of Boston.  One fine day the pastor of the local parish took a group of altar boys on a field trip.  At some point during the day he sexually accosted one of the boys.  The boy broke away, and had the presence of mind to hitchhike home, where he told his father what had happened.

On his return with the rest of the group, the pastor found the boy’s father waiting for him at the rectory--with a shotgun.  No violence resulted, but the diocese was contacted.  That night, a limo arrived at the rectory carrying the archbishop’s minions, who removed the pastor to the limo, thence to Logan Airport, and finally onto a night flight to exile in Ireland, where he arrived the very next morning.

A team of three priests was assigned to the parish, with instructions to calm the family involved and “avoid any scandal” over the event--that is, keep things quiet (one of those priests told me this story years later).  So the parish never knew what had happened or why their pastor had disappeared literally overnight.

Three years later, he returned from Ireland and became pastor of a parish in another part of the diocese.  No one there ever learned the story either.

Now this story, while dramatic, is not at all unusual.  In fact, it reflects a pattern that was remarkably consistent from diocese to diocese in the U.S. throughout the 20^th century.  In case after case where abuse was charged, the Church’s managers--the bishops--dealt with accusations by taking the following steps:

1. They removed the priest, usually on short notice, with either no public explanation or a phony one.

2. They bargained or bribed to prevent victims and their families from exposing the priest, often in the name of “avoiding scandal.” In many cases, families were promised the priest would never deal with parishes or children began.

3. The priest was sometimes sent away for “penance” and/or for “treatment,” often to a facility operated for that purpose.

4. The priests who remained or who replaced the abuser did not inform the parish about anything that had transpired.  In some cases, they themselves were not informed.

5. The accused priest was generally recycled to another parish or even diocese, either immediately or on his return from exile.  The new parish was told nothing of his record.  If he was assigned under a pastor, even the pastor himself was often not informed of the man’s history.

6. Of course, in a large percentage of cases the recycled priest repeated his offense, abusing more children in his new setting.

One is tempted to say: if this is not “cover-up,” what is?

Let’s grant that bishops honestly failed to recognize that a crime have been committed, so civil authorities were not notified.  Let’s even grant that bishops failed to understand the deep damage done to the children and their families.  The fact remains that no attempts were made to protect future victims, for that would have required notifying others--other parents, other families, other priests, as well as pastors (and sometimes other bishops) under which the recycled abuser was assigned.  Instead of taking steps to prevent further abuse, bishops acted to end each incident quietly and then keep the problem itself quiet.

In a 2010 novel that Robert B. Parker wrote as part of his celebrated “Spenser” series, private eye Spenser interviews a university police officer about the way the university handled the case of a professor named Prince, who had been seducing his students.  Spenser says, “So the university decided to do nothing about Prince.”--and the campus police chief replies: “No, they decided to keep it quiet…That’s doing something.”

Indeed, keeping abuse quiet is doing something--something called covering up.

Bishop Kane seems unable to acknowledge that, whether they “intended” a cover-up or not, bishops managed to cover up the problem so effectively, in diocese after diocese, that the history of abuse was kept quiet for decades (and probably generations) before it finally exploded into public view.  Over the years, dozens of bishops knew the facts and kept them secret.

One of the released Chicago documents, for example, includes former archbishop John Cody telling a priest not to worry about one girl’s 1970 accusation of prior abuse: “The whole matter has been forgotten,’’ he told the priest. “No good can come of trying to prove or disprove the allegations.’’

Sorry, Bishop Kane.  “Cover-up” is the right label for such behavior.

Meanwhile, Vatican officials were appearing before the U.N. Commission on the Rights of the Child in Geneva, where they had been summoned to explain their compliance with the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child (which the Holy See signed in 1990).

While attempting to persuade the U.N. panel of their resolve to fix things, the Vatican’s envoy nonetheless refused to accept a “buck stops here” responsibility.  Instead, he passed the buck for responsibility back onto the local bishops, insisting:

Priests are not functionaries of the Vatican…Priests are citizens of their own states, and they fall under the jurisdiction of their own country.

Yet a U.N. Committee investigator pointed to cases where priests were transferred from one diocese to another, with Vatican approval.  And Vatican guidelines only require notifying local authorities if local laws require it.  Many bishops in the United States led efforts to prevent such reporting laws, including a 10-year legislative campaign to prevent clergy from being designated as “mandated reporters” under the Massachusetts law--a campaign which failed only after the Boston scandal broke in 2002.

The Vatican denials of responsibility ring hollow for one simple reason: while not responsible for the management or discipline of individual priests, the Vatican is responsible for the performance of local bishops.  And since the practice of recycling accused abuses was so widespread, we might ask: by failing to remove or even discipline bishops who covered up, did not the Vatican become complicit in enabling abusers?

In short, both local bishops and Vatican officials fell prey to the same failure: because they did not act to be part of the solution, they made themselves part of the problem.

As the U.N. Committee chairperson said:

The view of committee is that the best way to prevent abuses is to reveal old ones--openness instead of sweeping offences under the carpet…It seems to date your procedures are not very transparent.

Transparency, accountability--these are the hallmarks of a solution.  The failure to employ them is the failure of those who remained part of the problem, not by abusing children but by covering up the abuse by others--and in doing so, enabling abusers to abuse again.

It is high time to stop denying that cover-up happened and enabled abusers.  It is time to begin the long process of rehabilitating the crippled credibility of the U.S. hierarchy.

The last thing we need now is a cover-up of the cover-up.

  © Bernard  F. Swain PhD 2014

#393: Lost and Found--Pope Francis Retrieves Vatican II

After nearly 35 years of Catholic officials obscuring the vision of Vatican Council II, the new pope may already be rescuing its legacy.

The recent homily in which Pope Francis proclaimed Christ has redeemed all humanity, even atheists, has triggered seemingly endless commentary in the media - - print, electronic, and online. (homily text & video at http://en.radiovaticana.va/news/2013/05/22/pope_at_mass:_culture_of_encounter_is_the_foundation_of_peace/en1-694445).

But most of it misses the point.  Amid the debates--over “Did the pope endorse universalism?” or “What is the difference between redemption and salvation?”--most observers (other than James Carroll) miss these facts: (1) Francis’ remark about atheists was neither new nor controversial; (2) his real shift was to leap back over the legacy of John-Paul II and Benedict XVI to invoke the extroverted optimism of Paul VI.  He thus retrieved Vatican II’s version of the Church’s mission - - a version that has been out of favor for 35 years.

Francis may be simple, but he is not simple-minded, so his startling break with his predecessors is couched in his soft proposal to build a “culture of encounter.”

Why does this matter?  Because an “encounter culture” is quite different from the “counter-culture”--and that difference could re-set the Church’s course for years to come.

If memory serves, I first heard the Church described as a “counter -culture” nearly 30 years ago, when Bernard Law took

Bernard Law

over the Archdiocese of Boston in 1984.  Six years after the election of John Paul II, he used the term to express his conviction that Catholicism should not conform or even adapt its traditions to the demands of modern culture.  Rather than blend Catholic faith with the surrounding secular culture, he wanted Catholics to hold fast to an alternative way of life that would “counter” prevailing mores and values.

Back then I found his terminology clever but troubling.  As a child of the 1960s, I already considered myself a proud member of the “counter-culture”--but to me that meant a wave of progressive movements ranging from rock music to civil rights to antiwar politics to the sexual revolution to the questioning of all authority, including church authority.  We were rebelling against much of post-World War II American culture: its conformity, its complacency, its superficiality, its materialism, its militarism, its racism, its spiritual impoverishment.

What Bernard Law called “culture-culture” meant something quite different.  It included scolding Boston College (as well as the students and parents gathered for commencement) for not being true to  its Catholic identity.  It included refusing to allow women to serve as Eucharistic ministers.  It included refusing to allow a Knights of Columbus fundraiser to serve alcohol.  It included forcing the Archdiocese’s charismatics to move their annual conference to the cathedral (despite its inadequate seating capacity) and then imposing his own agenda on the day.  Law was not into questioning authority.  For him, “counter-culture” meant imposing authority to make sure Catholics behaved the way he wanted them to.

I admit I resented this theft and reshaping of the term “counter-culture.” But I soon learned he was not alone. Increasingly in the 1980s and 1990s, US bishops, conservative commentators, and some theologians promoted the “counter cultural” mission of the Church on issues like abortion, sexual morality, “catholic identity,” priestly celibacy, sex education, and eventually same-sex marriage. 

They were so successful that the term “counter-culture” lost its original meaning for people like me, and came to be a code-word for a move to establish a certain understanding of Vatican Council II. This understanding saw the modern world embracing a “culture of death” and countered it with a “culture of life.” The opposition was as clear as black and white, and treated every church position as non-negotiable.

Vatican II

Within the Church itself, this movement was labeled “the reform of the reform.” It was driven by the belief that Catholicism after Vatican II had become too friendly, too accommodating to the modern world around it, and was in jeopardy of losing its own identity.  Supposedly this was the fault of those who exploited the “reforms” of Vatican II as an excuse to abandon traditional teachings and practices in favor of every new cultural trend.  Only by “reforming the reforms” could the Church achieve its “true mission” as a counter-culture.

That is why, in rejecting this view, Pope Francis is provoking such reactions.  In theory, no one is more “counter” to Christian faith than an atheist.  Yet Francis asserted that:

The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics.  Everyone!...  Even the atheists.  Everyone!

This is what Francis means by a “culture of encounter”: that whoever does good, regardless of their beliefs, creates a common ground where we can meet one another:

If we, each doing our own part, if we do good to others, if we meet there, doing good, and we go slowly, gently, little by little, we will make that culture of encounter: we need that so much. We must meet one another doing good. ‘But I don’t believe, Father, I am an atheist!’ But do good: we will meet one another there.

Such talk rings loud echoes for me of the talk Pope Paul VI gave at the final session of Vatican II in 1965:

Secular humanism, revealing itself in its horrible anti-clerical

Pope Paul VI

reality has, in a certain sense, defied the council. The religion of the God who became man has met the religion (for such it is) of man who makes himself God. And what happened? Was there a clash, a battle, a condemnation? There could have been, but there was none. The old story of the Samaritan has been the model of the spirituality of the council. A feeling of boundless sympathy has permeated the whole of it…But we call upon those who term themselves modern humanists…to give the council credit at least for one quality and to recognize our own new type of humanism: we, too, in fact, we more than any others, honor mankind.

Paul is clearly talking about an encounter between the Church and secular culture that can produce a working partnership--and he knew full well that some Catholics would criticize the openness required for such an encounter:

The council…has been deeply committed to the study of the modern world. Never before perhaps, so much as on this occasion, has the Church felt the need to know, to draw near to, to understand, to penetrate, serve and evangelize the society in which she lives; and to get to grips with it, almost to run after it, in its rapid and continuous change. This attitude, a response to the distances and divisions we have witnessed over recent centuries…between the Church and secular society—this attitude has been strongly and unceasingly at work in the council; so much so that some have been inclined to suspect that an easy-going and excessive responsiveness to the outside world, to passing events, cultural fashions, temporary needs, an alien way of thinking...may have swayed persons and acts of the ecumenical synod, at the expense of the fidelity which is due to tradition…We do not believe that this shortcoming should be imputed to it, to its real and deep intentions, to its authentic manifestations.

Observers have mostly overlooked this key fact about Francis: he is the first post-Vatican II pope!  The last five popes were all participants of the Council between 1962 and 1965, but Francis was only a seminary student.  He heard about the Council like the rest of us, from various reports and the media and perhaps by word of mouth. Unlike Benedict, who by the Council’s end felt it was moving too far and getting out of his control, Francis received the Council’s work as a blessing.  He took Pope Paul’s openness as an inspired vision.  Indeed, in his homily he warned against negative attitudes that insist on a “counter-culture” instead of an “encounter.” As reported by Vatican Radio, he contrasts the “counter” of the apostles with the “encounter” of Jesus:

The disciples, Pope Francis explains, “were a little intolerant,” closed off by the idea of ​​possessing the truth, convinced that “those who do not have the truth, cannot do good.” “This was wrong...Jesus broadens the horizon.” Pope Francis said, “The root of this possibility of doing good – that we all have – is in creation.”

Francis is, in effect, depicting Jesus as a bridge-builder among people.  This fits perfectly with our belief that Jesus is the Christ that bridges the gap, not only between people, but also between the human family and the divine family we called Trinity.  And this also fits perfectly the role of the pope, whose titles include “Pontiff” (from pontifex, meaning bridge-builder).

Francis demonstrates reaching out to Encounter

Francis contrasts this open-minded bridgebuilding encounter with the close-minded attitude that leads to conflict: “This ‘closing off’ that imagines that those outside, everyone, cannot do good is a wall that leads to war.”

This reminds us again of Paul VI, who described the Church's role in the world this way addressing the United Nations in 1965:
We here celebrate the epilogue of a weary pilgrimage in search of a conversation with the entire world, ever since the command was given to us: Go and bring the good news to all peoples.

Paul VI Addressing the UN General Assembly

 I, for one, am delighted and encouraged to hear the new pope talk this way.  Such talk is important not because it is about atheists but because it is about Catholics.  Francis is saying we should not be a people content to “counter” those who differ with us.  We must, as a matter of our faith, have the courage to “encounter” them.  
This means we must engage in a true conversation--not simply sharing our faith-based message, but also listening to the message of modern, even secular culture with an openness to the possibility that its message also brings wisdom that can enhance and enrich us.

Not only that, but Francis is saying we must build an “encounter culture” that leads away from conflict to the peace that Christ promised:

“Doing good” is a principle that unites all humanity, beyond the diversity of ideologies and religions, and creates the “culture of encounter” that is the foundation of peace.

For me, there is hope yet that the real renewal of Vatican Council II has not been lost on this pope, a man who has the wisdom to see the dangers lurking in the modern world but also has the courage to reach out and encounter it.  This was the true message of Vatican II, which has been nearly lost amid all the “counter-culture” negativism of recent Catholic leadership. I’m beginning to think that Francis is just the man to rescue Vatican II for us--just in the nick of time.

  © Bernard F. Swain PhD 2013