National
Catholic Register
June 14-20, 2002
by
JOHN BURGER
Register Staff Writer
With a doctorate in psychology from Columbia University, Franciscan Friar of the Renewal Father Benedict Groeschel has worked with priests in difficulties at a retreat house in the Archdiocese of New York. Through the years he has interviewed more than 400 men who have left the priesthood and helped 85 return.
He has written a new book on the recent sexual-abuse scandals in the Church, From Scandal to Hope, in which he issues a call for reform and renewal. Catholics must either "move definitively toward reform or … go back into even deeper mediocrity and confusion," he writes.
Archbishop-designate Timothy Dolan of Milwaukee, writing in the preface, calls Father Groeschel "a man with a keen spiritual and pastoral sense."
Father Groeschel spoke with Register staff writer John Burger about his book and about what the Church needs to do to recover.
You
have been working with priests for 28 years as a psychologist and spiritual
director. We see now that many of the clerical sexual-abuse cases date back 10,
20, 30 years. Why has it blown up to something of seemingly huge proportions
only recently?
Part of the reason is because the media wanted to blow it up. Catholics have
handled this problem exactly as everyone else who has worked with youth has. The
media wanted to destroy the credibility of the Catholic hierarchy.
Unfortunately, we gave them the sword with which to do it.
Considering
reports of sexual abuse among lay teachers and by clergymen of other
denominations, do you think the Catholic Church has been unfairly put under the
microscope for the past six months?
Teachers [who have committed sexual abuse against students] have been
transferred from one school to another. Other religious groups have told me
they've had this problem [of abuse] as well. In my book I quote [Pennsylvania
State University] Professor Philip Jenkins, who said that every denomination and
religious group has its share of sexual-abuse cases and that some of the worst
have involved non-Catholics.
What
are some of your thoughts on the U.S. bishops' response to the problem? Is there
something else that needs to be done to prevent further cases of abuse?
The media didn't leave the bishops much choice. What's lacking is due process
for a priest who has been accused, whereby he can defend himself. And I think
the Vatican will require them to have such a due process. If a person confesses,
of course, you don't need such a process, but if he doesn't, that person has a
right to face his accusers. All you need to get any one of us taken off the job
is an accusation. I asked a bishop what makes an accusation plausible. He told
me that if it's not delivered on a flying saucer, it's plausible. Also, there
needs to be a lay board to review some of these cases.
You
say the media didn't leave the bishops much room to work. But aren't the bishops
their own men?
A lot of people went along with the media, rejecting the idea that the media was
doing this for anti-Catholic reasons. The viciousness of the attack of
newspapers, with people like Maureen Dowd of The New York Times, or The Boston
Globe, left them no place to operate unless a lot of Catholics came to their
defense - and they didn't come to their defense. Part of the reason they didn't
is that this is just such an awful thing.
Unfortunately, bishops have tended to listen to lawyers and psychologists. In all the years I studied psychology I never once heard the word "pedophilia." The psychiatrists were totally unprepared to deal with it. Everyone thought it could be cured.
Otherwise, I thought the bishops tried to address the problem well. The document they produced at their meeting in Dallas was done under great pressure. They worked hard on this whole issue. Everyone says they were negligent. They may have been misled, but they were not negligent.
Do
you think the bishops sufficiently addressed the root of the problem?
The root of the problem is a spirit of dissent that has gone through the Church
in the United States since right after the Second Vatican Council. In my book, I
quote [papal biographer] George Weigel on this. This spirit has caused people
not to take sin as seriously as they should, and that's led to a lot of
difficulty.
That has to be addressed by everybody, not just the bishops and priests. This is a time when people have to make a lot of noise - that they want reform in Catholic education, liturgy, devotion, the use of Scripture, the pro-life movement, religious life and the priesthood.
The impetus has to come from the people; they have to demand a real reform in the Church. But there's no sense demanding reform unless they're willing to start with themselves. I don't think we've been observing the life of the Church and the Gospel.
The
Church has lost its credibility in the eyes of many. How can it restore that
credibility so that people will respond to its call to holiness?
It can restore it by a thorough review of Catholic education and services, which
have become extremely secularized. This is a wake-up call that we've been off
the track, particularly in the seminaries. This is a moment to look at the whole
thing.