Trust and Confidence

In a recent issue of America, Archbishop Harry Flynn of St. Paul and Minneapolis reviewed the accomplishments of the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People (10/18). While there is much to praise in his article, I would respectfully but emphatically disagree with two arguments he made.

Archbishop Flynn states: To keep children safe and to restore trust and confidence, it became necessary to remove all offenders. The charter’s one-size-fits-all approach makes no distinction between rape and a kiss or an inappropriate touching over the clothes. It makes no distinction between a serial predator and one-time offender. It makes no distinction between an offense committed yesterday and one committed 40 years ago. This makes no sense and is unjust. It panders to those who thirst for vengeance. The church cannot yield to vengeance. To do so is to betray the Gospel.

Also, the charter has an all-or-nothing approach to ministry. Given the concerns about returning offenders to parish ministry, why would it not be sufficient, in appropriate cases, to assign an accused priest to ministry that involves no contact with children?

The church teaches that ordination results in an ontological change. A person takes on a new identity. He is a priest forever, not merely an employee who can be fired. It seems that the credibility of the bishops has been so damaged by the poor judgments of some bishops that all are afraid to make any distinctions or to exercise any judgment.

Archbishop Flynn says that accused priests are afforded the protections of canon law. This is simply not true. In my experience with helping hundreds of priests, when a priest is accused he is guilty until proven guiltier.

Dioceses routinely engage in the practice of name and shame, whereby a priest against whom there is found to be a suspicion of misconduct with a minor is publicly named and removed from ministry. Once the bell of child abuser is rung, it can never be un-rung.

Often the diocese will announce that an accusation is credible or even substantiated. Such a finding is based mostly on the impressions of the initial interviewer of the accuser, with little investigation and no cross-examination. Such a process is contrary to canonical due process and fundamental fairness. It is small comfort to have a canonical trial after a public lynching.

Many canonical processes will turn out to be inconclusive. In the secular courts, that would result in the accused being freed. But an accused priest cannot return to ministry unless he can prove the allegation to be false. Once an allegation has been declared to be credible, the burden of proof shifts in effect to the priest to prove his innocence. Bishop Howard Hubbard of Albany did this successfully through an independent investigator, but it cost his diocese over a million dollars. Evidently Bishop Hubbard saw that a canonical process would be inadequate to clear his name. An ordinary priest who is accused does not stand much of a chance. All priests are vulnerable. There is a double standard.

In the past two years, the bishops have accomplished a great deal in addressing the problem of sexual abuse of minors. However, when the bishops review the charter, they must correct these two injustices.

Finally, in sharp contrast to Cardinal Avery Dulles’ previous article in America entitled Rights of Accused Priests (6/21), Archbishop Flynn’s article illustrates the difference between Cardinal Dulles’s assertionthat making decisions must be based on the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the authentic teachings of the church, and in this case as found particularly in the Code of Canon Lawand continuing to base decisions on the inadequate charter.

Joseph Maher

Take Joseph Epstein’s essay, The Green-Eyed Monster: Envy Is Nothing to Be Jealous Of, which provides a vivid rationale for the virtuous life. Epstein contends, without much reference to religion, that envy simply makes us miserable, while others among the seven deadly sins are rather fun. Epstein elevates only a few human beings above the temptation to envy: Socrates, Jesus, Marcus Aurelius, St. Francis of Assisi and Mother Teresa of Calcutta. The rest of us, he insists, are human enough to be subject to jealous bouts. I daresay those who read this brief reflection where it first ran, in The Washington Monthly, hardly suspected Epstein of being a spiritual writer. But so he is, in Zaleski’s definition and mine. Whatever else it may do, spiritual writing helps us to believe that virtue is possible. Mostly I prefer my spiritual writers with a high charge of theological energy. But for some who might be wary of the religion that so attracts me, Epstein’s essay offers the sort of practical wisdom one finds in the Book of Proverbs: be virtuous because it will make your life work.

By contrast, religion figures strongly in James Fredericks’s essay, Masao Abe: A Spiritual Friendship, which recounts a long friendship between a Buddhist and a Christian. Some years ago, I enjoyed a fine Japanese lunch with my friend and teacher, Masao Abe, the great exponent of Zen Buddhism and leader in the dialogue among Buddhists and Christians. Posing some dilemmas of inter-religious dialogue, this essay also defines and describes spiritual friendship: Friendships that reach across the boundaries of community, doctrine, scripture, asceticism, and liturgy that separate religious believers should rightly be recognized as new opportunities for exploring Christian spirituality. Strangeness between two persons of different cultures and faiths is part of Fredericks’s central interest. For him this strangeness is an aspect of the friendship’s depth. Together the two spiritual friends explore such ideas as emptiness and self-emptying and what such notions mean in their different traditions. But they do not hurry to close the gap or insist that both belief systems are about the same thing.

Grace makes its strongest appearance in The Grace of Aridity and Other Comedies, by Kathleen Norris. With her usual dry wit and keen eye for detail, Norris exposes the underside of grace: If grace is so wonderful, why do we have such difficulty recognizing and accepting it? Maybe it’s because grace is not gentle or made-to-order. It often comes disguised as loss, or failure, or unwelcome change.

Some of the briefest selections are among the most riveting. They are poems. Dan Bellm’s Parable begins, I lit the candles of the Sabbath and covered my eyes... and leads the reader right away into the depths of the heart. On the page opposite, Scott Cairns takes Jerusalem as his central figure in Hidden City:

And now I think Jerusalem abides untouched