Topeka Capital Journal
March 20, 2002

The Most Reverend James P Kelleher, archbishop of the Catholic Diocese of Kansas City in Kansas, which includes Topeka, wrote in the current issue of the diocesan newspaper about what he called, “a most delicate matter – the question of abuse of youth by Catholic clergy.”

He said the actions of the guilty priests, “have shocked the nation and shaken even the trust of many Catholics. Whatever the understanding they had of the terrible damage they were doing to youth at the time of their dirty deeds, there can be no excuse for what they did.”

Later in his statement he said, “What troubles me deeply is what these sordid revelations do to the image of the church.”

Actually, what the priests did hasn’t damaged the image of the church much more than what their superiors didn’t do. In Boston, the priest accused of molesting more than 130 boys wasn’t immediately kicked out of the priesthood or turned over to the police; he was just moved to another church to cover his trail, and that went on for 20 years.

Allegations of sexual abuse by priests have been heard in other cities, such as Dallas, where the church paid out $119 million to men who came forward to say they were molested when they were altar boys.

Covering up abuses and paying off victims has been a pattern the church has followed, and that may have “shaken the trust” of parishioners, even though the church says it won’t use their regular contributions for the payoffs.

Archbishop Kelleher said, in effect, the church will survive, with the good priests doing the work of God and the pathetic few making the headlines. It’s always that way, And the Archbishop says the media will pounce on the mistakes.

“The secular media,” he wrote, “has always held in contempt (the church’s) position on human sexuality, on fidelity to our vows, on the sacredness of every human life, born or unborn; now given the occasion to highlight a ‘sex scandal’ in the Catholic Church, they cannot resist the opportunity.”

I disagree. The story hasn’t been overplayed. There are more than 60 million Catholics in the country, and that figure alone makes this a story of great national interest. I believe any media outlet that hasn’t carried this story has shortchanged its readers, viewers or listeners.

The archbishop is seriously underplaying parts of it. He explained the main focus of the problem as “an incident 40 years ago in Boston, which has made repeated headlines.” in reality, it is a continuing story, and recently Boston Cardinal Bernard Law suspended 10 priests and notified prosecutors of allegations against others.

As for the media, it was a newspaper that brought to light the Boston cover up, And just this week, it was a newspaper that revealed a similar cover up in Connecticut.

The Associated Press says there are about 47,000 priests nationwide. Some psychologists say if you took the same number of male basketball coaches and scout leaders, there would be the same percentage of child molesters in each group. But one of them, quoted by the Washington Post, said priests have more victims because they are allowed to operate longer before they are caught.

The lawyer who won the $119 million judgment in Dallas has been tracking allegations against priests accused of abusing children, and she told the Post her updated total will be about 1,500 out of the roughly 60,000 priests who were active in the United States since 1984.

If she’s correct, that’s a relatively small number of misfits who have been able to cast a shadow over an army of good men. The church is 2,000 years old, but it apparently has yet to learn how to cull the criminals from its ranks.