Bishops must support the children of priests

David Weber
The Tablet
May 15, 2015

The Irish bishops have pledged to fund all counselling needed by clients of a new support group for the children of Irish Catholic priests, Coping International. Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin added: “I pray that Coping will be able to find ways which will bring the children of priests and their natural parents together for the benefit of both.” David Weber, the son of a priest, says globally thousands of people are affected

While much justified coverage has been devoted to child abuse by members of the Catholic clergy, a different issue, with again children as the main victims, has been largely neglected by the media and governments: the discrimination faced by children whose father is or was a Catholic priest.

Many rights thought to be basic in any modern society – the right to know one's father and be able to have open contact with him, the right to receive child support not attached to conditions, and the right to inherit from one's father, are being denied to children of priests, resulting in a discrimination that has consequences long into adulthood.

The numbers of those affected are far greater than most people would expect. A 2010 Guardian article estimated a figure of 1,000 children were born to priests in Britain and Ireland. In Germany, the initiative I co-founded, Menschenrechte für Priesterkinder (Human Rights for Children of Priests), estimates a figure of around 3,000. I am the son of a German mother and an Australian priest.

When I gave these figures to Bishop Hans-Jochen Jaschke, an auxiliary in Hamburg, in a discussion programme, he replied "we don't have exact numbers, but 3,000 is a figure that is probably quite accurate".

The number of those affected who have demanded an end to the discrimination they have suffered remains low. The majority of those who contact our initiative, which focuses on the political and legal aspects of the issue, and those who turn to private support groups, demand that they remain anonymous for fear of the financial and social consequences. While this is understandable it is clear that change can only begin when those discriminated against speak out.

While a child of a diocesan parish priest might sometimes have secret contact with his or her father, (who might often live close by), in my experience, the payment of child support is attached to a confidentiality agreement that results in immense pressure on the child not to tell anyone who the father is (and to, say, not even inadvertently call him "Dad" in public). Religious priests who father a child may be sent into mission on another continent.

The 2014 report on the Vatican’s compliance with the UN convention of the right of the child was almost revolutionary therefore in recommending that “the Vatican find out who [the children of priests] are, [and] take all necessary measures to ensure that the rights of those children to know and to be cared for by their fathers is respected.“ The convention effectively became the first secular authority since the introduction of the Church’s celibacy rule in 1022 to officially reprimand the Church on its treatment of children of priests.

Therefore the UN report is a threefold appeal: to the Catholic Church to end the discrimination of children of priests, to governments to do more to protect children of priests, who are also citizens, from such discrimination, and to the children of priests themselves, to more courageously fight for their rights.

It is exactly what needs to happen now.

David Weber, co-founder Human Rights for Children of Priests

Vatican official praises 'Modern Family' for raising family issues

Ines San Martin
Crux
April 15, 2015

Politics has no monopoly on making strange bedfellows, as a senior Vatican official paid tribute to Hollywood on Thursday for raising the profile of family issues, specifically citing the American sitcom “Modern Family,” a show that features two married gay men who adopt a baby, plus an older divorced dad who remarries a woman half his age.

Along with writings of Pope Francis and other Vatican initiatives, Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia told the United Nations on Thursday that thanks to “phenomena like the media production ‘Modern Family,’ or same-sex marriage initiatives in a significant number of jurisdictions, the family has become the subject of increasingly intense interest and discussion.”

Paglia is head of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for the Family, the office organizing a “World Meeting of Families” in Philadelphia in September that Pope Francis is scheduled to attend.

Unfortunately, Paglia said during an event to mark the UN’s annual “Day of the Family,” discussion about the family has become “unproductively ideological.” It centers too much on definitions of the family unacceptable to one political current or another, and on economic considerations.

“It is important to realize that the family is not an ideology,” Paglia said.

Instead, he said, family is a complex of human relationships characterized by love, fidelity, commitment, sacrifice, trust, conflict, joy, fruitfulness, nurture, respect, celebration, protection, memory and faith.

LCWR evaluates end of mandate

Dawn Cherie Araujo
Global Sisters Report
May 15, 2015



In a statement released this morning, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious acknowledged the sadness and public humiliation they experienced during the six years they were under Vatican review, but they said they hoped the process would be a valuable learning experience for both the wider church and community.

This is the first time LCWR has spoken publicly since last month’s conclusion of the Vatican oversight of their group. They had maintained public silence on the matter for 30 days, per the Vatican’s request.

"We believed that the sanctions called for in the CDF mandate were disproportionate to the concerns raised and we feared the sanctions could compromise the ability of the LCWR officers and members to fulfill the mission of the conference," LCWR leaders wrote in their statement, adding that were times of darkness when "a positive outcome seemed remote." But they did ultimately get that positive ending, encouraged, in part, by the prayers of their supporters around the world.

LCWR, an association for the elected leaders of women religious communities in the United States, has more than 1,500 members and represents almost 80 percent of Catholic sisters in the country.

In 2009, the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith began a doctrinal assessment of LCWR as a result of its “radical feminist themes” and “problems” promoting church teaching on topics such as homosexuality. The investigation concluded in 2010, and two years later, the doctrinal congregation issued both its findings and a mandate for implementation of the assessment, appointing Seattle Archbishop J. Peter Sartain to supervise the process.

The mandate – as well as Sartain’s oversight – was given a lifespan of five years, so when it ended last month after only three, it was considered abrupt and unexpected by some. Yet LCWR president Immaculate Heart of Mary Sr. Sharon Holland told Global Sisters Report, it was anything but.

“It was a very intensive three years of work and dialogue in coming to the conclusion,” she said.

The statement from LCWR today doesn't give details about the process of working through those discussions, but it does give an outline: Through sustained prayer and contemplation, the LCWR leaders say they were given the strength to stay at the table and to have difficult conversations. They also thanked Sartain for his sincere manner and genuine respect, which they say made them confident that honest dialogue would in fact foster mutual understanding.

In last month’s joint statement from LCWR and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Gerhard Müller, head of the doctrinal congregation, said his office was confident that LCWR had proven its mission to foster a religious life that is “centered on the Person of Jesus Christ and is rooted in the Tradition of the Church.”

In that same statement, Sartain said it had been an honor to work with LCWR leadership and members and called the dialogue between the sisters and the bishops a “blessing from the Lord.” He has not yet, however, responded to GSR requests for additional comment, now that the requested 30-day silence has expired.

read full article at Global Sisters Report

$3 million in legal fees paid by Kansas City Catholic diocese in the past fiscal year

Judy L. Thomas
Kansas City Star
May 10, 2015

The Kansas City-St. Joseph Diocese paid more than $3 million in legal fees on sexual abuse cases in the past fiscal year, raising the total litigation costs to more than $10 million since one of its priests was charged with producing child pornography four years ago.

The figures, published in a diocesan report covering the year ending June 30, 2014, don’t include legal costs incurred after that date associated with a $9.95 million settlement in October involving 32 victims, some of whom alleged abuse going back several decades. The diocese said last week that those numbers weren’t yet available.

Even without those figures, the diocese has paid more than $27 million in settlements and litigation costs related to priest sex abuse cases in the past four years.

A recent report released by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops shows that the Kansas City diocese isn’t alone. Since 2004, the Catholic Church nationwide has paid nearly $3 billion in costs related to the sex abuse scandal, according to an annual survey by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University.

In fiscal 2014, dioceses and religious orders spent $119 million on settlements to victims, therapy and attorneys’ fees, the survey found.

More than half of those payments — 53 percent — were settlements to victims, with legal fees accounting for an additional 24 percent. The remainder went toward support for offenders and therapy for victims and offenders.

The church also spent nearly $32 million on safe environment training programs, background checks and other protective efforts.

The survey was included in an annual audit of how dioceses are complying with the requirements that U.S. bishops established in their 2002 Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People.

The survey found that the number of priest sex abuse cases in the church continues to decrease. More than 80 percent of the 294 credible allegations of abuse reported in the past fiscal year dated back more than 25 years, with most occurring from the 1960s to the 1980s.

Though the report showed positive progress, “we must remain ever vigilant in the protection of children,” Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville, Ky., president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said in a news release last month.

“Though our promise to protect and heal made in 2002 remains strong, we must not become complacent with what has been accomplished,” Kurtz said. “It is my hope and prayer that as we continue to fulfill our promise, the Church will help model ways of addressing and bringing to light the darkness and evil of abuse wherever it exists.”

In Kansas City, the diocese spent about $6 million in the past fiscal year on sexual abuse cases, according to the diocesan report. Among the expenses:

▪ Nearly $2.9 million in legal fees and $2.3 million for settlements of “historical abuse claims,” or lawsuits that alleged abuse dating back decades.

▪ More than $200,000 in legal costs and $430,000 for settlements of lawsuits filed against the diocese involving Shawn Ratigan, the former priest convicted in 2012 of producing child pornography. (The diocese said it did not pay any legal costs for Ratigan’s personal defense.)

▪ More than $239,000 for legal proceedings involving a breach-of-contract lawsuit filed against the diocese in 2011 by victims with whom the diocese settled for $10 million in 2008. That lawsuit resulted in a $1.1 million settlement in August.

The diocese also spent about $100,000 on the office of its ombudsman, an independent contractor whose job is to field and investigate reports of sexual abuse, and nearly $200,000 on its Office of Child and Youth Protection.

The expenses are covered by the Diocesan Property and Casualty Insurance Program, which the diocese said is funded from insurance premiums paid by all parishes, schools and other diocesan institutions, along with interest income on property and casualty reserves.

Local Catholic Tom White, a vocal critic of how Bishop Robert Finn handled the Ratigan case, said it’s disheartening to see how much money the sexual abuse scandals have cost the church, especially in attorneys’ fees. Finn resigned last month.

“If there’s money to be paid to the victims, by all means they should get their just deserts for their pain, because it will never go away,” he said. “But the rest of that money could have gone to feed the poor or any of those kinds of things that are in current need.”

Kansas City priest defends Finn, alleges ulterior motive in bishop's prosecution

Brian Roewe
National Catholic Reporter
May 6, 2015

A priest's letter alleging political motivations for the prosecution of Bishop Robert Finn prompted responses Wednesday from both the local prosecutor and the apostolic administrator of the Kansas City-St. Joseph, Mo., diocese.

Fr. Gregory Lockwood, parochial administrator of Christ the King Parish in southern Kansas City and a close friend of Finn, said while mistakes occurred in the case of former priest Shawn Ratigan, currently serving 50 years in prison for child pornography, he questioned the legal process that led to Finn's 2012 misdemeanor conviction.

Finn resigned April 21 as head of the diocese, with Kansas City, Kan., Archbishop Joseph Naumann named as its administrator. In October 2011, Finn and the diocese were charged with failure to report suspected child abuse in relation to Ratigan, who pled guilty in 2012 on federal charges of possessing and producing child pornography. In September 2012, a Jackson County judge found Finn guilty on one misdemeanor count of failing to report.

"There were definitely mistakes made in handling the situation by people who, it turned out, were in over their heads, but there was never any malice, or impulse to cover up anything," Lockwood said in a letter inserted in the weekend bulletin addressed to Christ the King parishioners.

He continued: "There is no forbearance or forgiveness for this man who pled no contest to a politically motivated charge filed by an ambitious prosecutor with strong ties to the abortion industry, so that he might save his local church the pain and cost of a public trial. The statute used was not even applicable to what happened, but such is our legal and political society."

The accusation of ulterior motives led Jackson County prosecutor Jean Peters Baker, who brought the charges against Finn, to respond by saying Lockwood's letter contained "misinformation" and "misstatements."

"I run this office as a prosecutor, not a politician, and I have sought convictions for those who have harmed our community," she wrote in her own letter -- a copy of which was obtained by the Kansas City Star -- to Christ the King parishioners and Naumann.

"As your prosecutor, I am guided by this truth: no one is above the law, no matter our position or title. Children especially nee this to be true, and abused children's lives may depend on it," Baker wrote.

In his own brief statement, Naumann said there's nothing to gain "by picking at old wounds."

"While everyone has a right to free expression, in my opinion it serves no good purpose at this point to rehash a story that has had so many tragic consequences. There is nothing to be gained by picking at old wounds and speaking uncharitably about one another," he said.

Addressing descriptions by Lockwood of "champagne corks popped" and celebrations following Finn's exit as head of the diocese, Naumann said he was "disheartened" that some have responded with attacks on Finn and the church.

"My prayer is that when the new Bishop arrives he will find a Catholic community united and eager to work with him in making the love of Jesus more alive and tangible in our community," the archbishop said.

In his letter, Lockwood, who also serves as secretary for seminarians in the diocesan vocations office, attributed Finn's resignation to "a long, bitter, nasty campaign by many of our brothers and sisters, who, for whatever reason, were convinced that he needed to go." He said the push for Finn's departure had less to do with the Ratigan affair and more so with Finn rejecting "their view of church reality" largely tied to Vatican II ideas.

"If this had happened on another, more popular bishop's watch, the aftermath we have seen would not have occurred, because the motivation for the mob-scene that ensued was Bishop Finn's fidelity to a classical concept of the church, not the cover-up of any misconduct," he wrote.

"No one has won anything here; we've all lost. An honorable man has been unjustly disgraced, and we have sacrificed his dignity and our own in a rush to punish and destroy, things antithetical to everything our common faith represents," Lockwood said.

Bishop Robert Finn: the rest of the story

Fr. Thomas P. Doyle
National Catholic Reporter
May 5, 2015

The Vatican's sterile announcement of Bishop Robert Finn's resignation was a typical but unsuccessful attempt by the Holy See to sanitize the harsh reality of a failed bishop. It was a removal disguised as a resignation. The absolute need for accountability of bishops would have been far better served had Finn been publicly removed rather than offered the thin camouflage of resignation.

The reason for his resignation in the oblique canonical language of the announcement was his inability to continue to fulfill his office because of "another serious reason" (canon 401.2). Much of the media focus was on Finn's 2012 conviction of failure to report Shawn Ratigan, a Kansas City priest who had child pornography on his laptop. There's a lot more to it than that. Whether Finn was an overall effective leader was the main point that Archbishop Terrence Prendergast, the Vatican investigator, looked at. One of his worst failures as a leader was the disastrous way he handled clergy sex abuse cases. This is the other chapter of the story.

Between 2005, the year Finn was appointed, and 2015, there have been at least 94 cases filed against the diocese. Some of these involved allegations of serious sexual abuse that goes back decades -- abuse covered up and mishandled by Finn's predecessors. In many cases, Finn was not part of the cover-up because it was all out in the open by the time he arrived. His failure, the extent of which cannot be understated, was in the way he responded to the victims who resorted to the civil courts. And, as an aside, the main reason most victims have gone to the civil courts is because they have been denied any justice, support or deserved compensation by the church's administration.

Finn pretty much ignored victims. In his 10 years as bishop, he met with two and possibly a couple more, but not to extend pastoral care. His meetings with victims were all part of legal proceedings. From all sources queried, there is no evidence he ever reached out as a caring shepherd to any of the people whose lives had been ravaged by the Kansas City priests.

He did his dirty work through his lawyers. Although some bishops when asked about the toxic antics of their attorneys try to dodge the issue by claiming it was the lawyers and not them, the cold fact is that the bishop hires the lawyers, sees that they get paid, and approves their strategies. Unlike the victims' attorneys, who are paid on a contingency basis, the church's lawyers are paid by the hour whether they win or lose. The lawyers for the Kansas City diocese were paid a lot under Finn's reign.

Then we come to the long, ponderous journey of some of the abuse cases through the legal system. The victims' attorneys, basically one firm, were faced with a constant barrage of motions, deposition notices and other legal roadblocks to prolong the inevitable. The only winners were the lawyers, and the major losers were the laypeople of the diocese who actually provided the money through donations to pay for Finn's campaign against the victims.

The legal costs to the diocese are in neighborhood of $24 million. Included in this amount is a fine of $1.1 million imposed by the court because the bishop failed to honor some of the terms of one of the settlements. He, and consequently the diocese, agreed to do certain things that they intentionally failed to do. The people of the diocese paid for it.

I was an expert witness in some of the civil cases. At the end of some of my reports in the section of expert opinions, I wrote, "The diocese has continued to re-victimize the victims and to harass their families by means of a protracted legal process." The defense lawyers never challenged me on this during my seemingly endless deposition. It was true. Hiding behind the abuse of the legal system looked like a safe way to clobber the victims without being blamed, but it didn't work.

The harassment came in a number of forms. I was deposed in one case, a case of wrongful death brought by the parents of a 14-year-old boy who had committed suicide after being sexually abused. In that case, the defense lawyers took 200 depositions and filed approximately 2,000 motions, many of which were motions for dismissal. This was an incredible waste of money and time, especially since the diocese settled the case for more than $2 million.

One of Finn's staunchest defenders has been Bill Donohue of the so-called Catholic League for Civil Rights. Donohue held a rally in Kansas City in defense of Finn in 2011. This was when Finn was on trial for failing to report suspected child abuse. Donohue proclaimed, "There was no complainant and no violation of law."

For the nonviolation, Ratigan was sentenced to 50 years in prison, and Donohue revealed another level of his ignorance about child abuse. A month later, he attacked Jon David Couzens, an abuse victim. Couzens brought a suit against the diocese that ended in a settlement. Donohue called it a "soap opera yarn" and branded Couzens not only a lair but said he had been implicated in a "drug-related murder." One of the victims in this "soap opera yarn" was the young boy who took his own life at age 14 after being sexually assaulted. Imagine how his parents felt when they saw their son's abuse referred to in such derisive and dishonest terms.

Couzens sued Donohue for defamation. The case was dismissed not, as Donohue erroneously reported in a recent news release, because it was "bogus." It was dismissed because it was filed in the wrong state. The reason had nothing to do with the substance -- but then, accuracy and facts have never been a barrier to Donohue's rantings.

Donohue's credibility is close to zero, so ordinarily, I would not waste a sentence on him. However, many people make the egregious mistake of thinking he speaks for the Catholic church. His regular ravings against the victims of clergy sex abuse could be dismissed as such by most people, but they are deeply hurtful to the victims and their families, who were suffering enough without having Donohue spew his venom on them.

Finn could have stopped Donohue, but he didn't. Over the years, Donohue has expressed great concern for doctrinal orthodoxy and obedience, which appear to have supplanted basic Christian decency and charity.

Another sad chapter in the Kansas City leadership vacuum was Finn's unsuccessful campaign to close down the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, the world's oldest and largest survivor support organization. He did this in cahoots with Cardinal Raymond Burke of St. Louis and Burke's successor, Archbishop Robert Carlson. They had their lawyers try to force SNAP to disclose confidential communications with victims. SNAP had to defend itself in the legal arena, and this was costly.

The lawyers' game plan was to accomplish what the bishops hoped for; namely, the hastening of SNAP's demise by draining its resources through useless litigation. SNAP was not a party to either of the cases used as launchpads for this legal maneuver, but that didn't matter: SNAP is a threat to the bishops, so it had to be snuffed out. The outcome: Finn and Burke have both been sidelined by the pope, and SNAP is still standing. So who was on solid ground in that dispute?

The real hero in that nightmare was SNAP's national director, David Clohessy. He withstood the withering attacks of the lawyers; he protected the victims' privacy; and he survived the vicious and dishonest attacks on him personally and on SNAP by Donohue.

While a few have suggested that Finn was ousted for ideological reasons, nothing could be further from the truth. Finn had to go, not because he is an ecclesiastical conservative who tried to take the diocese backward in time and re-gild the monarchy, but because he either forgot or never fully realized that when Christ referred to "the least of my brothers," he was referring to those most debased and rejected. In the church of Kansas City, the "least" were those who needed Christ's love the most: the people violated by the church's own priests.

[Dominican Fr. Thomas P. Doyle is a canon lawyer and longtime advocate for victims abused by Catholic clerics. He is also co-author of the 2006 book Sex, Priests and Secret Codes: The Catholic Church's 2,000-Year Paper Trail of Sexual Abuse.]

Cardinal Burke renews attack on 'Pope's theologian' Kasper

Christa Pongratz-Lippett
The Tablet
April 30, 2015

In a long interview in the German daily Die Welt on 24 April, Cardinal Raymond Burke renewed his attack on Cardinal Walter Kasper, whose “merciful” solution for remarried divorcees who wish to receive Communion was discussed at last October’s Extraordinary Synod.

“We are bound by the Magisterium. But some Synod Fathers, above all Cardinal Kasper, want to change it. So I had to make myself very clear. Clashes at Synods, incidentally, are nothing unusual. Think of the early Councils, the Arian heresy, for instance, when Athanasius even became physically aggressive,” Cardinal Burke recalled.

The cardinal said a change to church teaching at the next synod in October would present him with a dilemma: “I would have to speak to the Holy Father and ask him how I can remain loyal to the truth and at the same time not break my vow of obedience,” he said adding, “That is precisely why I speak out so clearly. The Holy Father should know that not everyone thinks like Cardinal Kasper.” The German cardinal has been praised by Francis and nicknamed "the Pope's theologian".

Cardinal Burke also described homosexuality as an “ailment” which was not genetic but largely depended on a person’s environment. He also recalled that St John Paul II had ruled out women’s ordination “once and for all”.