The Worthy Adversary

Author: Joelle Casteix

Another Disconnect: Nuns, Sex Abuse, and Vatican Investigations

I am guilty of instantly running to the defense of American nuns after the Vatican announced that women religious in the United States had “a prevalence of certain radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith.” Like most people, I remembered American nuns working with the most dejected among us – helping the poor, the sick, the homeless, and the fringes of society … and my junior AP English teacher Sr. Lorraine, who was in way over her head.

But I had forgotten something: The leadership of American nuns in the United States is also no stranger to child sex abuse and cover up.

Since 2004, SNAP has been trying to get the Leadership Conference of Religious Women (LCRW) to make some kind of statement on behalf of children who were sexually abused by nuns. There are a number of SNAP members and leaders who were sexually abused by women religious, and many of them feel like their plight is ignored. Eight years later, SNAP has received no response. Victims have been simply shut out of the conversation.

This week, the LCRW is meeting in St. Louis where they will figure out how they will respond to the Vatican report.

Outside of the meeting, members of SNAP and victims of sex abuse by nuns will be holding a press conference, asking that the bishops “appointed to ‘supervise the overhaul’ of their organization” carefully evaluate the cover-up of sexual abuse by nuns and secret settlements with victims.

Even I was a little shocked by what I learned. According the SNAP press release:

This week, SNAP also learned that a St. Louis man, who charges that he was molested by a nun, secretly got a $16,000 settlement last year from the nun’s superiors. The alleged abuser was Sr. Gretchen, who groped the then-eight year old second grade boy’s penis at a North County parochial school around 1969-70. (SNAP will provide copies of the previously undisclosed, signed settlement agreement.)

Similarly, nuns settled a civil child sex abuse suit in Connecticut in 2005 involving Sister Linda Cusano, who taught at Cor Jesu from 1988 to 1990.

Catholic officials alerted no one to the two settlements. Nor did they reach out – anywhere – to anyone else who may have been hurt by the nuns. The cases prove SNAP’s view that even now, nun supervisors conceal child sex crimes by their employees. Such secrecy endangers kids, SNAP maintains.

I’ll post the lawsuit and other documents as soon as they are made available.

I can’t help but wonder: doesn’t social justice begin your own accountability to those you have hurt? Isn’t it easy—especially since the number of victims by nuns is smaller than that in the church as a whole—to embrace the victims, acknowledge wrongdoing and foster healing?

August 7, 2012
Allegations at St. John’s University: Elder Abuse and Predatory Fundraising

St. John’s University in Collegeville, MN calls itself a “College of Distinction.” But in courtrooms in California and Minnesota, the Benedictine university also being called a predatory fundraiser and has been slapped with allegations of elder abuse.

Patrick Marker at Behind the Pine Curtain broke the story that:

Employees of the Order of Saint Benedict OSB (including St. John’s University and Saint John’s Abbey) engaged in “financial elder abuse” and “predatory fundraising”.

According to legal documents, Saint John’s is accused of:

1. Liability of Gratuitous Tranferee of Trust Property
2. Liability of Gratuitous Tranferee of Personal Property
3. Constructive Fraud
4. Participation in Breach of Trust
5. Breach of Fiduciary Duty
6. Financial Elder Abuse

The story is still developing, and I will report more as I learn it.

For those of you who don’t know about St. John’s: more than fifty members of the St. John’s community – including OSB monks, priests, visiting priests, seminarians and lay personnel – have been credibly accused of abuse since 1940. That’s a huge number of predators from a school as small as St. John’s, which only has approximately 2000 students. It’s smaller than the average high school.

It’s not a far stretch to see how a school whose officials covered-up for that many predators could also cover up alleged financial elder abuse.

(St. John’s is also the alma mater of my friend and colleague Patrick Wall, who has dedicated his post-priesthood career to helping the victims at St. John’s and other Catholic schools, churches and institutions.)

August 6, 2012
A Week of Arrests, Investigations and Shameful Responses

This week, three prominent priests have been arrested and/or investigated for sexual abuse:

In the Archdiocese of Los Angeles:

Father Luis Jose Cuevas, 67, a pastor of St. Athanasius Church on Linden Avenue, faces eight misdemeanor charges of sexual assault and one felony count involving lewd acts with a child, according to a complaint filed by the L.A. County district attorney’s office. Superior Court Judge James Otto set his bail at $260,000.

and

Santa Monica Police are investigating allegations that Father Rafael Venegas, pastor of St. Anne’s Parish, assaulted an adult woman in the church parking lot last September.

The response from Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez? Nothing. No words of solace for the alleged victims. No words of comfort for confused and scared Catholics. He sent his spokesman instead.

In the Archdiocese of Philadelphia:

Andrew McCormick, 56, has been charged with involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, statutory sexual assault, sexual assault, endangering the welfare of a child, corrupting the morals of a minor, indecent assault and indecent exposure in connection with an alleged 1997 incident, Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams announced Tuesday.

McCormick was one of the 21 priests placed on leave after the 2011 Philadelphia Grand Jury investigation of sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. It is estimated there are more victims.

Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput, who has no problem speaking out for “religious freedom,” is silent when it comes to the pain and suffering the children in his Archdiocese.

Both archbishops should be ashamed of their lack of pastoral leadership in such a painful time for their flock.

You can see the full list of Philadelphia accused priests here or here. Los Angeles’ list can be viewed here or here.

July 28, 2012
The Ruby Slippers Worked All Along: Spirituality in Spite of Religion

I am sitting in Chicago at the SNAP national conference.

And I can’t get the notion of spirituality out of my mind.

One of the more common questions I get from reporters is: How are you doing spiritually? For years, I didn’t know how to answer that. Friends like William Lobdell wrote books about it, but for me, spirituality was a foreign notion.

Like many people, I equated spirituality with organized religion. But this weekend just reaffirmed just how wrong that notion is.

Because I am not a member of an organized religion – and in fact am pretty disgusted by the thought – I believed that I was missing out on the essential spirituality of human existence. Catholic church officials reaffirmed my thinking by their wording of half-hearted apologies and some well-meaning but confused Catholics piled on with their statements about victims who are “broken,” “lost,” or “in need of the Eucharist.”

What they did was turn the survivor movement into a negative stereotype that could be “fixed” with a strong dose of Church-administered spirituality. But is a stereotype a stereotype if the “model” doesn’t actually exist? I am sitting in a room surrounded by amazing people who are a perfect example of the heart and spirit of the survivors movement. None are broken, lost, or in need of any sacrament.

I challenge the notion that spirituality can only be found in an organized church. Spirituality is the quest for growth and wholeness, driven from within. That cannot be taught from the pulpit, from a papal decree, or in the confessional. In fact, neither Jesus, Mohammed, nor the Old Testament prophets taught in churches or obeyed current church structure. Unlike them, I don’t find my spirituality in a concept of God, but at least my thoughts of spirituality come from a strong tradition,

Spirituality for me is individual moral conviction and the individual courage to act upon it. It is expressed by the courage to love, the courage to feel and the courage to embrace the world around me. It is the courage to stand up and speak out for the silenced. It is the goal of going to sleep every night hoping that I have done at least one thing to make the world a better place. When I attend events like this weekend, surrounded by people who share the passions that I do, I strive to engage, embrace and enrich myself and others.

Am I perfect? Hell no, nor do I try to be (outside of my nasty perfectionism). Do I impose my moral value system upon others? Only when it involves the cover-up of child sex crimes and other injustices.

And I feel whole. And I continue to fill my spirit. When I look at my son, I see everything that is beautiful and perfect in the world.

For years, I wondered if I even had a spirit. Now, I realize that I have been wearing an operational pair of ruby slippers all along.

July 28, 2012
A Bittersweet Anniversary

This weekend marks the five-year anniversary of the 2007 Los Angeles Archdiocese’s $660 million settlement with more than 500 victims of child sexual abuse by priests, religious, employees and volunteers. While the financial settlement has allowed many Los Angeles victims to get therapy, healing and a sense of justice, the real reason many of these victims came forward still remains elusive.

To date, the public still has not seen the tens of thousands of pages of sex abuse and cover-up documents. Those are still “stuck in the system,” and the latest ruling by an LA judge will require that all names in the documents be redacted.

Hundreds of former priests are still living unmonitored and unsupervised in communities full of children. Although the LA Archdiocese pays for retirements of many of these men, they refuse to take responsibility for the safety of children around these known predators.

And Cardinal Roger Mahony, who supervised many of these predator clerics? Well, he’s enjoying retirement.

Despite this, we cannot ignore the bravery and tenacity of the Los Angeles victims who fought long and hard – and received more justice than thousands of victims across the nation. Fortunately, the fight for justice is not over.

July 15, 2012