Family photos

Marci A. Hamilton, “Philadelphia Is the Ireland of America“

Here is what we have in Philadelphia: The Cardinals’ cover up of the abusers left child predators in ministry. They may have been moved from parish to parish, or school to parish, but they performed the standard sacraments for one family after another. That means that in addition to sexually assaulting children, they presided over untold numbers of christenings, first holy communions, confirmations, marriages and funerals. So one Catholic family after another has family photos of precious rites of passage that include a pedophile.

My own child was christened by an undisclosed pedophile, who suddenly left St. John the Evangelist in Morrisville without explanation. We later learned he had ruined the life of an adolescent boy, and his entire family. Who knows who else?

I’ve attended several confirmations presided over by a monsignor who has since come to face criminal charges for his role in covering up abuse and sheltering abusers from prosecution and discovery by shuttling them from parish to parish. But the diocese’s newest list of 21 priests credibly accused of abuse hit closer to home.

One of those priests is a man my wife grew up calling “Uncle Father.” When she was a child, he stayed with her family in their home for several weeks while he was between parishes. Now we know why he was transferred. Nothing untoward happened during his stay there, but it’s another vivid, personal illustration of the diocese’s priorities. Keeping thing quiet was more important than keeping children safe. They thought they could preserve parishioners’ trust by covering up abuse rather than by punishing it.

Hadn’t they ever read the most terrifying verses in the Bible? Weren’t they listening? Jesus told his disciples:

Beware of the yeast of the [religious leaders], that is, their hypocrisy. Nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known. Therefore whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered behind closed doors will be proclaimed from the housetops.

“Uncle Father” presided over the funerals of both of my wife’s parents. Her first reaction to seeing his name on the diocese’s most recent shameful list was to be grateful that her father hadn’t lived to see it. She was sickened and saddened, but not surprised. The diocese’s treatment of those who were divorced had already convinced her to expect the worst.

But Pop always wanted to believe better of his church and this news, the betrayal of his most personal trust, would have shaken his foundations.

That’s what it’s doing to many people throughout the area. All those families that Hamilton describes, with “photos of precious rites of passage that include a pedophile” are now struggling to see if they can — or even want to — make a distinction between their church and those leaders in it who betrayed them. Or between that church and the God it taught them to worship. Their trust has been broken and so their capacity to trust is broken. They have lost their faith — if not their faith in God, then their faith in humanity.

Tens of thousands of families are in desperate need of trusted pastoral care, yet are unable any longer to trust those who had been, for most of their lives, the source of such care and guidance. Where will they turn now?