The Courage of One

Former Minnesota priest Jim Fitzpatrick is courageously speaking about the child sexual abuse crimes by Father Thomas Adamson and the cover-up by the Bishops of Winona.

Almost 50 years ago, Fitzpatrick broke the silence about what distraught parents from Caledonia told him about the priest and notified Winona Bishop Edward A. Fitzgerald about Adamson the very next day.

Fr. Jim Fitzpatrick served the Church as a pastor and teacher from 1963-1973. Fitz left active ministry in 1973, married and continued serving the Church as a parish administrator in the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis. And he would remain in the dark about Adamson.

After Fitz’ report in 1965, Adamson was cycled from parish to parish, treatment center to treatment center and diocese to diocese.

Unknown to Fitz, Bishop Loras Watters, successor to Bishop Fitzgerald, had reports from four experts about Fr. Adamson—the Institute for Living (a well-known Catholic treatment facility), a local priest therapist, the Bishop’s own priest personnel board and the Servants of the Paraclete. All said that Adamson was fixated on boys.

Finally, Bishop Watters, under the Hierarchy’s policy of omertà, applied the “geographic solution” and ordered Adamson to Saint Paul, where the “scandal” could be better controlled.

By this time, Fitz was working as a church administrator. He received a call that Auxiliary Bishop Robert J. Carlson had assigned Fr. Thomas Adamson to his parish. Fitz immediately called Winona and asked Vicar General Father Donald Schmitz if Adamson was still sexually abusing boys. Schmitz—according to Fitz—said yes. Fitz threatened to resign. Carlson instead transferred Adamson to another parish.

This story is informative on several levels. First, many Roman Catholic priests have one first-hand story about a fellow priest who sexually abused a child.

For example: with Adamson, dozens of priests, members of the personnel boards and bishops in Winona and Saint Paul (pastors, chancellors, vicar generals, auxiliary bishops, bishops) had reports on Adamson. But only one broke with the rule of omertà.

In addition, the hierarchy will and does use coercive power in order to silence whistleblowers—right out of Machiavelli’s “The Prince. According to Fitz, Auxiliary Bishop Carlson told Jim Fitzpatrick the price he would have to pay (firing and black balling) if he went to the police or press about Adamson. Nota Bene, Carlson was promoted and now is the Archbishop of Saint Louis.

Lastly, some will criticize Fitz for not breaking the chain of command sooner and calling someone outside the Church. But I commend Fitz for following his conscience, speaking now and demonstrating by example how to put children first.

My hope is that the thousands of priests and lay ministers in Minnesota who know about perpetrator priests will follow the example of Jim Fitzpatrick. I hope they will follow their conscience, break their silence and report what they know.

There is hope, and Jim Fitzpatrick is leading the way.

 

 

MORTAL SINS on BookTV

Click here for a great segment on BookTV about MORTAL SINS with the author, Michael D’Antonio.

The segment, filmed in New York City, includes a panel with me, Barbara Blaine (SNAP founder and president), Thomas Doyle (priest and advocate), attorney Jeff Anderson, and expert Richard Sipe.

Accident or Pattern?

Christian Brother Julian McDonald CFC testified in Australia’s Victoria Inquiry last week that the extraordinary level of child molestation at the Irish Christian Brothers school in Ballarat is CERTAINLY AN  ACCIDENT OF HISTORY.  Brother Julian is the Provincial and former chancellor of Australian Catholic University.

I applaud Brother Julian for naming the culture of secrecy and his accurate reiteration of the hierarchy’s version of the history of child sexual abuse an ACCIDENT.

Let’s pause for a moment and think about what Brother McDonald said. Was it an accident, a chance occurrence, a “coinkydink?” Or is it an ancient pattern and practice of criminal behavior in the Catholic Church?

Let’s start by looking at the history of the Irish Christian Brothers and then at the Catholic Church in various parts of the globe.

The Canadian Christian Brothers at Mount Cashel Orphanage were first criminally investigated in 1975. That investigation was snuffed even though two brothers admitted wrong-doing. A second investigation began in 1982, a third in 1989 … all of which culminated in a Royal Crown investigation, popularly called the Hughes Inquiry.

The American Christian Brothers filed for bankruptcy protection from child abuse survivors’ claims in 2011. Nearly 500 survivors from Damien Memorial High School in Hawaii to Bergen Catholic came forward to expose dozens of brothers who molested children in U.S. based Irish Christian Brothers schools.

Is it an accident of history that Rome has removed over 22 bishops for sexually abusing children?

Is it a chance occurrence that 30 Jesuits from three continents accused of sexually abuse children ended up in the Jesuit run Diocese of Fairbanks, Alaska?

Is it a coinkydink that more than 256 bishops, priests and religious are accused of sexually abusing children just in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles?

We are well beyond the tipping point in history: Child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church is part of the criminal fabric of the Bishops’ robes.

 

My upcoming talk at the University of Wisconsin, Madison

If you find yourself in Madison, please join me at the UW Madison Global Legal Studies Center on Thursday, February 28. Click on the link for more details.

Patrick J. Wall at the University of Wisconsin, Madison

Catholic Clergy Child Abuse Investigations Since 2005 … and a Papal Resignation

The German Pope’s resignation today as the Bishop of Rome (for health reasons) is the final lie in his Papacy. Since 2005, Benedict XVI’s church has been the subject of  more civil and criminal inquiries of the Church since the time of the Protestant Reformation.

Just look at the sheer volume of child abuse and financial abuse inquires during Benedict XVI’s reign. The real story is how these worldwide child abuse inquires brought on the first resignation of a healthy Pope in eight centuries.

Click on the links to read the full reports.

Germany

German Bishops Halt Child Abuse Inquiry

Australia

Australian Prime Minister Julian Gillard announces National Inquiry of child abuse in the Roman Catholic Church

Belgium

Report on wide spread child abuse in Belgian Church

Bishop Roger Vanghuewe resigns after child abuse accusations  

Mexico

Reverend Marcial Maciel, Founder of the Legionaries of Christ, was removed in 19 after first being removed as head of the Order for sexually abusing children in the 1950′s

United States

Los Angeles – Cardinal Roger Mahony’s 1985-2011 coverup of 128 priest perpetrators is revealed and Benedict XVI remains silent

Milwaukee – In the midst of planning for Bankruptcy and moving assets to shield them from child sex abuse survivors, Archbishop Dolan pays for the perpetrators silence.  Pope Benedict XVI rewards Dolan and promotes him to Cardinal

Philadelphia – After two grand Jury Reports Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua knowingly keeps priest perpetrators in ministry, orders the destruction of the evidence and his Vicar for Clergy is criminally convicted

New Hampshire

Ireland

Cloyne Report   

Ferns Report 

Murphy Report

Ryan Report 

Amnesty International Report

Italy

Genoa

Vatican Bank inquiry

Verona

Vatileaks and Monsignor 007

Peeling back the thin, sacred veneer

The calendar year opens today with simultaneous court appearances by two of the largest Roman Catholic Archdioceses: Philadelphia and Los Angeles.

In Philly, jury selection begins in the criminal trials of priests accused of sodomy and child sexual abuse. These cases will continue to expose the “omissions” of Cardinals Anthony Bevilacqua and Justin Rigali.

In Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Times and Associated Press will argue for the release of unredacted secret personnel documents of priests and bishops accused of sodomy, rape and sexual abuse of minors.  These documents expose the “acts of commission” by Cardinals Manning, Mahony and Levada.

This opportunity in L.A. for public accountability does not come twice in a lifetime.  The Cardinals’ fingerprints are on these documents.  If produced unsanitzed, they peel back the thin, sacred veneer covering the Cardinals’ business practices.

Not since Judge Sweeney ordered Boston’s Cardinal Law to turn over the documents in 2001 have we been at such a crossroads for child protection.

It is a tragic hour in some ways—that hour when the hierarchy is driven to reckon with themselves.  When every avenue of procedural distraction has been cut off and when documents are produced that these men penned that prove their acts of omission and commission and how they protected their own reputations over the safety of children.

Twenty years later, I look upon my ordination

“His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor, and to gather the wheat into his granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” Luke 3:17

Twenty years ago this week I was ordained a Roman Catholic priest at Saint John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota. My ordination was performed by then-Bishop Jerome Hanus, O.S.B.

At the time, I knew I was being sent to a one-year assignment where I would fill in for monk who had been yanked from Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton, after a victim came forward and accused the monk of child sex abuse. This was not my first emergency assignment. The previous year—before I was ordained—I was ordered to replace a monk who had been working as a faculty resident at Saint John’s University. He had also been accused of sex abuse.

I was assured by Chancellor of the University, Abbot Jerome Theisen, O.S.B. that these were isolated incidents. Unfortunately, they were not.

In 1992, I could not imagine that hundreds of priests and religious currently in ministry were child molesters—or that the moral decay included Priors, Abbots and Bishops. But I would soon learn. After six years of hearing confessions and being a “company man,” I saw first-hand that the rot of clerical sex abuse of minors is centuries old (read the Didache) and that the knowledge of abuse runs all the way to the Pope.

Hearing confessions and performing the Sacrament of Penance is life changing for every priest. A priest is forever separated from lay people the moment he starts to hear the confessions of men and women in his parish. I will never forget—nor can any human—the first time I heard confessions of child molestation or murder. What affected me even more was that the penitents knew that they held the privilege and that the priest may never do anything about it. That was when I truly understood the lesson behind the myth of Sisyphus.

But is there hope now? I believe there is.

In the face of all this crime, I learned that criminals are eventually exposed, or as the Gospel says, the chaff will be burned.

There have been several major paradigm shifts during the past 20 years:

• It is no longer unconscionable for people to understand that Roman Catholic deacons, priests, religious and bishops have sexually abused minors. A majority of people understand that this is a real problem that must be stopped.
• The public understands that church officials at all levels have covered up abuse, promoted abusers, and marginalized victims.
• Prosecutors and detectives know they can get a conviction against a Roman Catholic official without fear of being fired or voted out of office.
• Grand Jury, Royal Crown and bankruptcy investigations across the globe have exposed the system of abuse, cover-up, and shuffling molesters from post to post, and
• The internet and global communications have exposed child-molesting clerics to a global audience, allowed victims to network, and shined a bright light of truth into a 2000-year history of abuse.

But this change in child safety has gone beyond the Church. We have learned that any group with leaders revered as gods are incapable of self-policing. Whether it is the Hasidim, Boy Scouts, Penn State Football or Roman Clerics—once leaders are revered as gods, crime and cover-up are soon to follow.

As Augustine of Hippo (highlighted by Thomas Aquinas in his teaching on fraternal correction) said,

You become worse than the sinner if you fail to correct him

God willing, I look forward to the next twenty years.