Offending priest handled “by the book” by Episcopal Church leader
The Episcopal Church’s diocese of Nevada sought to calm an uproar over a former Benedictine monk who admitted sexual indiscretions with a parishioner before he was ordained an Episcopal priest by Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, who is now leader of the 2.3 million member U.S. church.
“It looks to me like she handled the situation by the book,” Bishop Dan Edwards said of Jefferts Schori’s actions regarding Fr. Bede Parry, a church organist and former Episcopal priest.
Jefferts Schori became the 450-year-old church’s first female leader when she was appointed presiding bishop in 2006.
Parry, 69, is a defendant in a Missouri lawsuit filed last month over his admitted sexual relationship with a male parishioner at a summer camp run by a Roman Catholic monastery. He has since resigned from the priesthood and from All Saints Episcopal Church in Las Vegas, Edwards said.
Jefferts Schori ordained Parry in 2004, aware that he had offended while a Benedictine monk at Conception Abbey, which runs a large monastery in Northwest Missouri.
Jefferts Schori and a committee of clergy and lay people were also aware that Parry went for treatment, but that a subsequent psychological examination in 2000 found he was a sexual abuser who had a proclivity to reoffend with minors.
Jefferts Schori forbade Parry from having contact with minors, under the church’s decade-old policy, “Safeguarding God’s Children,” that requires windows on all doors and does not allow children to go somewhere with a single adult.
Spanish Catholic priests criticise corporate sponsorships for papal visit
A group of 120 Spanish Catholic priests have criticised church leaders for signing up a list of high-profile corporate sponsors for a visit by the Pope in August, saying authorities had given in to temptation. In a rare joint letter, the priests told Archbishop of Madrid Cardinal Antonio Maria Rouco Varela the sponsorship deals reinforced the impression the church was a privileged institution.
“It’s been necessary to form a pact with the economic and political powers which reinforces the image of the church as a privileged institution, close to power, and the social scandal this implies, especially in the context of the economic crisis,” the priests said in an open letter. Organisers of Pope Benedict’s visit, scheduled for August 18-21 as part of the celebrations of World Youth Day, have mounted a nationwide advertising campaign, backed by well-known multinationals and Spain’s top companies.
Corporate logos of the companies, including Coca Cola , Telefonica , Santander and Iberia , fill the sponsorship page of the official visit website www.madrid11.com/.
“To trust in the strength of power and money … is to give in to a temptation as old as the Church,” said the letter. “No one can serve two masters. You cannot serve both God and money,” the letter said, citing the passage from the Bible, Matthew 6:24.
Read the full story by Paul Day here.
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Belgians molested by Catholic priests to file suit against Vatican
Belgians molested by Catholic priests will go ahead with their legal proceedings against the Vatican for damages despite an offer by local bishops to compensate them, their lawyers said on Wednesday. Pope Benedict enjoys diplomatic immunity but other Vatican officials and Belgian bishops will be summoned to testify in the case, lawyer Walter van Steenbrugge said.
Christine Mussche, another lawyer for about 70 victims, said the Vatican failed to intervene even when it learned about the scandals in the Belgian Church. Over 500 cases of alleged abuse have been registered in the past year. “There were instructions from the pope that said those things had to be kept secret and silent,” she said, adding the Church could be guilty of harmful neglect under Belgian law.
The Belgian bishops’ conference said on Monday that it would set up a commission to compensate victims molested so long ago that their cases can no longer be prosecuted. Some reported cases go back several decades. “As long as there are no concrete results from the arbitrage commission, the victims will continue the procedure,” Mussche told a news conference.
Several victims explained why they were part of the suit which the lawyers said they would file in Ghent in September.
Read the full story by Robert-Jan Bartunek here.
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Dutch Catholic order hit by pedophile group scandal
A Roman Catholic order of priests sacked its leader in the Netherlands and disciplined another priest Monday after the two publicly defended pedophile sex, an issue haunting the worldwide Church in recent years.
The scandal erupted over the weekend when RTL radio reported the priest, named only as Rev. Van B, had been a board member of a lobbying group advocating sex between adults and children. He told RTL that few children suffered from such relationships. Asked about the case, Rev. Herman Spronck, leader of the Dutch Salesians, said he agreed pedophile sex could be accepted.
“Herman Spronck is no longer the delegate from the Salesian delegation in the Netherlands,” his superior Rev. Jos Claes, leader of the Salesians in Belgium and the Netherlands, told RTL. “We fully distance ourselves from the words we find in your interview with Herman Spronck.” Rev. Van B “can longer perform any pastoral duties as of today,” he added.
The Dutch Salesians used to run boarding schools where many of the 2,000 complaints of clerical sexual abuse of boys emerged when the scandal broke there last year. It has admitted to paying hush money to some victims.
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Report says U.S. Catholic sex abuse “historical”, critics see coverup
A church-sponsored study on Wednesday blamed poorly trained priests and a deviant society for the Roman Catholic Church’s sex abuse crisis, but victims dismissed it as a whitewash of an institutional coverup. The largest study ever done on youth sexual abuse by U.S. Catholic clergy concluded that priests were no more likely to abuse than anyone else, gay priests were not more likely than straight priests to abuse, and the priestly vow of celibacy was not directly to blame.
The study, conducted by researchers at John Jay College in New York and covering the past 50 years, also found clergy abuse cases have dropped since the 1980s.
“There’s no single cause of the sexual abuse crisis … and the problem is largely historical,” study researcher Karen Terry told reporters at a Washington news conference. “It is consistent with patterns of increased deviance in society during that time” in the 1960s and 1970s, she said, adding that rates of abuse within the Church were comparable to that of organizations like schools and clubs.
Priests unprepared for a life of celibacy turned mentoring relationships into abusive ones, she said. Poor reporting of clergy abuse cases to civil authorities and a pattern of transferring of abusive priests to other parishes by some bishops have cast a cloud over the Church.
A group that represents victims of clergy abuse said bishops continue to cover up crimes, and that shame leaves many more victims of abuse silent. “Predictably and conveniently, the bishops have funded a report that tells them precisely what they want to hear: it was all unforeseeable, long ago, wasn’t that bad and wasn’t their fault,” said David Clohessy, executive director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP).
Read the full story here. The full text of the report is on the website of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) here.
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Top Vatican expert on sexual abuse explains new Catholic guidelines
Mons. Charles Scicluna, the Justice Promoter in the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) and its top expert on clerical sexual abuse issues, gave the following interview to Reuters Television on Monday to explain the Roman Catholic Church’s new guidelines for dealing with priests accused of molesting children. The Vatican told bishops around the world earlier on Monday that they must make it a global priority to root out sexual abuse and cooperate with civil authorities to end the scandals that have tarnished the Roman Catholic Church’s image around the world.
Scicluna, who hails from Malta, has been a key contributor to Vatican documents on sexual abuse.
WHAT DOES THIS LETTER INTEND TO DO? “The circular letter intends to help individual bishops around the world to develop guidelines on how to process cases of sexual abuse of minors by clerics, by priests, and also to produce a set of best practice guidelines which would ensure the creation of safe environments for young people in the Church. It’s intended to help and to strengthen the resolve of bishops in responding adequately to the cases they have in their local situations.”
WHAT KIND OF STANDARDS IS THIS TRYING TO SET? “It talks about formation of communities and clerics, the ability to recognise the signs of abuse — because that’s the first point in adequately responding to abuse — but also future formation of priests, the respect of boundaries, and also information that would insure and ensure that priests have the necessary skills to lead celibate lives, as they should.”
WHAT DOES IT SAY ABOUT HOW LOCAL CHURCHES SHOULD DEAL WITH CIVIL AUTHORITIES? “Local Churches have to take account and take into consideration the civil law which is in their own countries. They have to follow any laws which specifically concern reporting cases to the civil authorities. They have to follow the civil law in their country.”
IS THERE ANY CONFLICT BETWEEN CHURCH AND CIVIL LAW? “There is no conflict between Church and civil law to the extent that the civil legislation considers sex abuse of a minor a crime and asks that people are brought to justice and that they are assured a fair trial.”
THIS SEEMS TO BE SENDING A CLEAR SIGNAL TO BISHOPS THAT THEY ARE ULTIMATELY RESPONSIBLE FOR WHAT GOES ON IN THEIR DIOCESE. IS THAT RIGHT?
Here we are in 2011 and they’ve finally been given permission to cooperate with the authorities. However, when the Belgium cases first started coming out, the Pope condemned the priest that worked with the authorities. Then it was discovered that 13 victims committed suicide…then the Pope apologized. Which has to make one wonder if he was more concerned about being discovered than he was about the children. I have little ability to take anything the Vatican says as anything other than blowing smoke when more and more cases of coverups keep coming out. How are they able to lead their congregations going into the future when they haven’t done everything they could to make up for the past? And how can anyone take an institution seriously when it talks to children about telling the truth when the men at the top dabble in so much deception. The truth is that the fact that pederasty is even mentioned confirms that there have been priests doing it from the beginning. Why would they start an ancient European practice out of no where?
Over 800 complaints to Austrian Catholic Church sexual abuse commission
An Austrian commission investigating sexual abuse cases in the Roman Catholic Church said on Wednesday over 800 people had come forward to register as victims in the past year. Over a third of the cases have been settled, the head of the commission, Waltraud Klasnic, told a news conference. She said the number of complaints showed that the church must screen priests more carefully and look into their mental state before allowing them to qualify.
Klasnic said the commission, which was set up a year ago, was also looking into the structures that allowed such abuse and violence to occur, according to remarks carried by the Austria Press Agency (APA). Around three-quarters of the 837 complaints involved male victims. The commission does not pass legal judgment but hands over plausible cases to the authorities and most have the cases processed so far have involved compensation.
Abuse scandals in Austrian Catholic institutions have badly damaged the religion’s image with a record 87,000 people quitting the church in 2010. Hundreds of reports of child sexual abuse in Austrian Catholic institutions were triggered by the resignation of an arch-abbot in Salzburg last April after he admitted to sexually abusing a boy 40 years ago.
The abuse crisis has also hit the United States and several other European countries, including the pope’s native Germany.
The church plays an important role in Austria, a socially conservative Alpine country of 8 million, where around two-thirds of people described themselves as Catholic in 2008.
via More than 800 approach Austrian church abuse commission | Reuters.
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Teh church is filth and perhaps the worst criminal organization in the western world.
Back about 1000AD the church stopped priests from marrying, and in the queerest marriage of them all, had the priests married to the church, including getting a wedding ring.
the reason was so the church and not the priests family would inherit his property.
Aand that is a primary component of what led to and continues to lead to sex abuse.
If the church wanted to stop the abuse, they wouldn’t get rid of gay priests but make sure only gays could be priests. This way they could have the priests still married to the church, but getting their satisfaction from other age appropriate partners.
Guestview: “Trifecta” of bad news launched Catholics4Change blog
The following is a guest contribution. Reuters is not responsible for the content and the views expressed are the authors’ alone. Elizabeth E. Evans is a freelance writer, columnist and priest-in-charge at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Honey Brook, Pennsylvania.
By Elizabeth E. Evans
Three seemingly unrelated events – and Susan Matthews found herself at a crossroads.
Reading a letter to the editor assailing the “apathy” of local Catholics… Recollecting an essay she had written when the first grand jury report dealt her family a personal blow… Overhearing a conversation between two older women critical of the victims of an accused priest.
It was, as Matthews wryly recalls now, this ‘trifecta” that impelled her to act. Outraged at the predator priest scandal that has overtaken the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, the Huntingdon Valley resident and mother of two started a blog, Catholics4Change.com.
In February, a grand jury report alleged that as many as 37 local Catholic priests were left in parishes in spite of “credible” abuse allegations. Since then 26 priests have been suspended for allegations or abuse or other boundary violations, two as recently as last week.
In the little more than a month, Catholics4Change (which has close to 25,000 hits within the past two weeks) has become a rallying point for local believers. And Matthews (a former editor of the archdiocesan paper currently a freelance writer and QVC guest host) and another aspiring reformer, Kathy Kane, have become the center of a lively and impassioned debate that goes beyond protecting children but to holding church hierarchs accountable.
i would like to comment just briefly as there is really much too much to say about this that will eventually come out. the movement that you mention has very few followers. the number of hits is not indicative of support. myself, have looked at least 100 times to just check what people are posting-most of the time it is too specious to comment on. even if there are 25 people like me, that sure isn’t a lot of people if you compare with the number of catholics in philadelphia. there are not many who comment-and it is the same people anyway. a lot of the commenters do not make sense. people are upset, but susan mathews and company are NOT the face of philadelphia catholics. that is a fact.
Inquiry cites almost 2,000 Dutch Catholic sex abuse reports
Almost 2,000 people have declared themselves this year victims of sexual and physical abuse while they were minors in the care of the Roman Catholic Church in the Netherlands, an independent commission said on Thursday.
The investigation into abuses dating back to 1945 shows that the Netherlands ranks second worst behind Ireland for known cases in scandals that have rocked the Catholic Church in Europe and the United States. The church-appointed commission’s findings were requested by the Dutch bishops’ conference after cases surfaced involving paedophile priests in the Netherlands, Belgium, Ireland, Germany and other countries.
“I am very respectful of the people who came forward because declaring yourself a victim is a big step,” said Wim Deetman, a Protestant former education minister and former mayor of The Hague who heads the commission, of the 1,975 reported cases.
Asked whether the report could lead to pressure for a shake-up in the church hierarchy, Deetman said: “It is too soon to say that. We will see that at the end of next year after discussions with a lot of people. But the bishops conference has asked us to look at managerial responsibilities.”
Deetman said the Church had waited too long to come up with a professional approach to complaints about abuse and urged it to set up an effective system of financial compensation for the victims, a special organisation to assist them and Church disciplinary action if needed.
Read the full story here and a factbox on sex abuse cases shaking the Catholic Church in Europe this year.
The full report (in Dutch) is in PDF here.
from UK News:
A priest’s guide: How to Swim the Tiber Safely
About 50 Church of England priests opposed to the consecration of women as bishops are expected to be in the first wave of Anglicans to take up an offer by Pope Benedict and convert to Rome. The traditionalist priests will be joined by five bishops and 30 groups of parishioners, in a structure called an ordinariate, or a Church subdivision, in the new year.
About 300 priests switched in the early 1900s when women were ordained as priests. Then they did not have the comfort of moving over in groups, and nearly 70 returned to the Anglican fold.
Here, one priest explains why he stayed, while another describes why he returned.
Peter Bolton, left, was a priest in the Church of England for 10 years before becoming a Roman Catholic. Just one year later he returned to the C of E. Since his return he has served in parishes in Salford, Watford and Weston-super-Mare. Recently he took early retirement on grounds of ill health. The opinions expressed are his own.
Why did I come back? Because I had not counted the cost. I knew I would lose house and income – I was a Vicar – but I had not reckoned on the utter loneliness of the experience, the personal cost.
Priests and people in the local Catholic Church were wonderful. The Bishop was kindness itself. There was a warm welcome for me. But what I had not understood in advance was the damage my becoming an RC would do to relationships with those I had been close to in the past.
But I will never forget how I felt when I realised how much my own mother was hurting because I had gone to Rome, or how my best friend could hardly bring himself to speak to me for days after my Reception and Confirmation. There were others too.
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Resident FaithWorld Expert
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I am a member of the Episcopal Church. This article has missed a lot of details (for example, the lawsuit is a civil, not criminal, lawsuit against the Roman Catholic Abbey where the man was a priest, no Episcopal church or other body is named as a defendent, nor even is the priest himself, and he has had no incidences of abuse reported since 1987. He was received as an Episcopal priest in 2002).
The article also has at least one major thing incorrect. In the article as written:
“Jefferts Schori and a committee of clergy and lay people were also aware that Parry went for treatment, but that a subsequent psychological examination in 2000 found he was a sexual abuser who had a proclivity to reoffend with minors.”
However, from the report (where some of the article’s quotes are taken from): http://www.episcopalnevada.org/index.php ?option=com_k2&view=item&id=156:stateme nt-regarding-resignation-of-fr-bede-parr y&lang=en
“It has been reported that there was a psychological examination showing that he was likely to repeat his offense. No such report was sent to the Diocese of Nevada and, to this day, we have no knowledge of its existence other than an assertion by the plaintiff’s personal injury lawyer in a John Doe lawsuit against the monastery. [...] The Diocese of Nevada, however, did have our own independent psychological evaluation done by a psychologist and it did not indicate any pathology or risk.”
From the people who have the archives relating to his reception, this report doesn’t exist. A cynic might say that this is “covering up,” but the reporting done here in this blog doesn’t address that question; rather, it either assumes it or has bad information.