Deliver Us From Evil

It must be a sign of the times in Hollywood that I can't find too many good films to watch when I go to the video store. I end up getting odd documentaries on Religion and kids. The last one was about Jesus Camp, this round it was a film about the Roman Catholic Church pedophilia crisis. The film is called "Deliver Us From Evil."

I was raised a Catholic, went to Catholic school until fourth grade. Until the age if eight or so, I was sure I was going to be a nun. Although I left the Church in my teens, I have no animosity toward it. In fact, I appreciate that I grew up one as in the 60's it was the only religion in the Midwest that I knew of that had a highly developed ritual component and some recognition of the feminine in it.

Sexuality and Spirituality are the two topics I spend most of my mind pondering. Where and how the two interesect are my greatest areas of interest and academic study. My BA is in Religious Studies and I have lots of training in wholistic approaches to Sexuality. While the issue pushes my buttons, I also have a great deal of compassion for those who are sexually attracted to children. I understand that sexual fantasies can be violent, dark, and go places that society would deem deviant, bad, evil, etc. I also understand that most humans get these urges in one way or another. Feelings and thoughts are very difficult things to control. They come unbidden and oftentimes are unwanted. They can produce shame and guilt, sometimes torturing the individual as they try to find internal balance between the person they want to be and these dark thoughts.

We can't always control out thoughts. But we can control our actions. This is the line I wish to draw in this issue. It's not that I want priests to eternally burn in hell for their urges. I just want them to stop molesting children. And I want the Church to admit that they handled this incorrectly, to apologize to the people who's lives have been ruined by being abandoned by their Spiritual Teachers and the institution they support emotionally and financially.

I knew this was big, I had read articles here and there, been appalled, made my jokes about it, felt my anger, all that stuff. But it always hits home harder when you see the faces, hear their stories, listen to their cries of anguish at loosing trust in humanity and God. Things in particular that were new to me:

-The pope, when he was Cardinal Ratzinger was the highest official in charge of this issue. At the end of the day, he is responsible for the way the Church is treating the abused kids and their families. This is the peer the Cardinals chose to be the leader, the Line from St. Peter, the highest authority. The man who abandoned the most helpless of his "flock." And the crime was not only that of sexual predation, it's compounded by the role of the perpetrator. If a priest is the messenger and holder of the Faith here on Earth, holding a position of God to a child, this child then gets to try and heal, as best they can, that they were raped by God.

- That the Church strikes deals with the priests and financially supports them after they get out of jail. It works deals with DA's so that sentences are reduced, then when the offender is out of jail, takes no responsibility for the community that the felon is released into. The one priest showcased in the film, Oliver O' Grady, only spent seven years in prison, then was released into a community filled with children in Ireland. No authorities were notified of his conviction and prison stay. I found this appalling.

- That in California alone, there are over 650 of these cases being investigated and tried. Estimates are that only 20% of all victims report this form of abuse. One seminary had 10% of its graduating priests arrested as pedophiles. O'Grady is thought to have abused hundreds of children, some as young as under one year old. It's often difficult to guage what's going on inside someone just by their outward demeanor, especially when they are being filmed. But I sensed very little true remorse in the man....or even a real understanding of gravity of what he had done. There were times when they showed him writing letters of apology to the children. The majority of the letters were about him. His experience, where he was today, how he felt.

-Not only the children, but whole families were emotionally annhilated. Imagine a father's anguish, hearing that the priest who he and his wife had taken into their family, treated him as one of their own--a man of God in a Church he trusted. Then to find out that this trust had been so terribly violated by harming the person that they were sworn to protect. And then discover that the reason your daughter didn't tell you is because you said you would kill anyone who harmed her, and her friend told her that if someone kills someone they have to go to jail for life. I cannot imaging the pain.

I would imagine that there's really very little I can share here that is new on this. But I want to add my voice to others who wonder how it is that a church heirarchy that assigns itself the right to dictate the sex lives of literally millions of consenting adults, cannot tend to its employees/ representatives do behind closed doors. Things happen. I don't hear the abused people wanting anything more than an acknowledgement of what happened, help paying for their therapy, and, most important, the knowledge that practices and policies that allow this to continue will stop. I get that above all, they want to ensure that future children can be allowed to practice their faith and pray to their God safely and without the fear that they will be raped.

Pictures:

movie poster from here

Oliver O'Grady free to roam the streets in Ireland from here

Monsignor Cain, O'Grady, Cardinal Mahoney combined still from depositions from here .

In his deposition, Monsignor Cain said that one of the reasons that Grady was not more closely watched at first was because his first reported abuse was with a girl. That wasn't considered perverse enough to warrant action.