Twenty-four years ago February, I lined up with other second graders to receive my first penance. Three priests offered the sacrament. Most of my classmates formed a large queue in the pew adjacent to Father O'Sullivan's confessional. Something about him creeped me out, and youthful intuition motivated me to receive the sacrament from Father Williamson, an elderly priest evidently not as popular among seven-year-olds. Friday, the Vatican defrocked Eugene O'Sullivan, the priest my classmates flocked to confess their sins to.

At my parish, Father O'Sullivan had been in charge of altar boys. He was the closest in age to the school children, so his position would have made sense had he not been accused of molesting several boys nearly two decades earlier. We were ignorant of these charges, and it was normal for the austere reverend to walk the halls of my school and show up at basketball games at the local Catholic youth center. In 1984, two years after my first penance, a Boston area court sentenced Father O'Sullivan to probation for molesting a fellow parishioner. The Church, so we believed, sentenced O'Sullivan to a rehabilitation center out West. Before the news broke, my male classmates became eligible to serve as altar boys, but, to the despair of many of the young admirers of Father O'Sullivan, he was replaced. Would the new director of altar boys continue the tradition of bringing us to the amusement park? While I too pondered such important questions, I welcomed this development, but only quietly. Father O'Sullivan's physical appearance struck me as something out of "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." I was a Catholic, and this guy looked like he just stepped off the Mayflower.

Perhaps Father O'Sullivan really did receive treatment thousands of miles from Boston, but he soon found himself in several parishes in New Jersey. Art imitates life, as a subtheme of the Oscar-nominated film Mystic River mirrored the collaboration between the criminal justice system and the clergy that helped O'Sullivan elude real punishment for his crimes. And for most, the Church's punishment meted out this weekend, coming as it does more than forty-one years after the first abuse allegations against O'Sullivan surfaced, arrives a bit late.

O'Sullivan's conviction was the first of many for Boston-area priests. But he wasn't the only priest at my church who found himself embroiled in the abuse scandal. Another priest, who resembled a fat old woman and spent his spare time knitting, found a home at my parish. Shortly thereafter, abuse allegations surfaced (from a stint at another parish) and he agreed to leave the priesthood. This, too, was kept quiet. I learned of it just recently. One molester might be chalked up to one man's demons. Additional molesters, the law of averages suggests, indicate a problem that rises beyond the personal level to the institutional level.

For a faith that stresses salvation, redemption, and the universality of sin, permanently excommunicating the malefactors would never do. But why keep them in positions of responsibility? Why allow them in the presence of children? Why not defrock them (but not spiritually exile them) when their crimes became apparent?

First penance took on greater, if unrealized until a quarter-century later, significance for most of my classmates. For me, added significance came when I got half the school day off and "Space Invaders" as a present for reaching the age of responsibility. For others, added significance came when they comprehended that at seven-years old they spent time alone in a box face to face with a child molester. This is enough to shake your faith. For some, this was enough to shake their faith.

Also from St. Agnes were Fr. Balcom and Fr. Gillespe.

I would favor excommunication for these priests. God may be able to forgive them for their crimes, but I cannot.

Obi Juan: Father Balcom is the priest I obliquely refer to in the 4th paragraph. Father Gillespie replaced O'Sullivan as the priest in charge of alter boys. He was very popular at St. Agnes. He came across as a very normal and good guy. There's no charges that I know of that he molested anyone, only charges that at a bar he started saying dirty things to a woman and her daughter. This is bad, but it doesn't seem to merit discussing him in the same sentence as priests who sexually assaulted teen-age boys.

Regardless what the New Testament might say about redemption for such vermin, excommunication is not even enough. Someone who rapes children should be killed, period. Everyone knows the probability of repeat offenses is very high, yet we continue to let these animals out of prison after they supposedly paid their dues for a few years.

I agree. However since the Pope does not have the authority to kill people, excommunication.

Actually, Ben L's preference for execution would be more appropriate than Ben T's desire for "permanent excommunication." The Church doesn't make judgments that particular people are going to hell. Every sin (except for blasphemy again the Spirit) is forgiveable, and all human vermin capable of redemption: this is built into the sense of the crucifixion. But these guys still should get punished whether or not they're contrite and ultimately redemed: criminal punishment here and purgatory there. But if they aren't contrite and convert, then, as Jesus says: "it would be better for him to have a great millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea" (Mt 18:6).

As I understand it excommunication amounts to banishing someone from the church, not judging whether they will go to heaven or hell.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe excommunication involves denial of the Sacraments. Without the Sacrament of confession, mortal sins cannot be absolved. If mortal sins are not absolved at the time of death, the penalty is damnation.

I think pedophiles, clergy and nonclergy alike, should be summarily executed.

Yeah Ralph that is the reason that excommunication is so rarely invoked. It is still possible to have an excommunication lifted though as far as I know. A person just has to really work overtime to right themselves with the Church to be readmitted.

This is a great post Dan, thanks for writing it. Your last couple of sentences really strike the most important note for me. If the Church claims to offer the sacramental means to salvation then one's faith in Christ has to be the most precious relationship that the Church can seek to safeguard. If losing one's faith could lead to losing one's soul then many bishops who averted their glance, seminary director's who "didn't ask and didn't tell," cardinals and even popes may be in peril of their own souls for having been complicit through laxity or otherwise in the corruption of so many youths. And the scandal will lead to the shaken faith of many other Catholics who were already wobbly, or will keep untold numbers of people from approaching Christ through the Church because of their negative suspicions of priests. The scandal begins with individual young men and boys being seduced or abused by particular predators but ripples out to include countless numbers of individuals with destroyed faith.

The Church will be dealing with those consequences for decades to come.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe excommunication involves denial of the Sacraments. Without the Sacrament of confession, mortal sins cannot be absolved. If mortal sins are not absolved at the time of death, the penalty is damnation.

I think pedophiles, clergy and nonclergy alike, should be summarily executed.
Posted by Ralph at July 31, 2005 03:27 PM

I believe that one can still be redeemed via Good Works. Don't quote me on that though.

Well, I did not expect a Sunday sermon on such a wrenching topic. You're all pointing to hard issues that get below the surface of "scandal", like: just what must transpire between the sinner and his confessor... to acknowledge that the material vestments do not cloak moral depravity... for the sinner to beseech forgiveness from the yet-faithful... for the community to suffer the sinner...

I can't imagine this being adequately treated in the news media, or in a movie.

Actually, a priest mentioned it in a sermon last week. The man in the parable looks at his feild, wheat mixed with weeds, and proclaims: "Some enemy has done this." Even in the Church, the devil spreads his seeds.

Anyhow, re Brian's comment: of course excommunication can be absolved. That's my problem with Ben T's suggestion. If the bishop excommunicated one of these rotton guys, by appropriately confessing, etc., he could have it removed. Now, you can't make it permanent--because that would be equivalent to saying: go to hell, buddy. And the Church won't do that. I think Ben T's right to the extent that the Church could use it a symbolic punishment; "making a statement." But it couldn't be permanent, so other church punishment would still be required to my mind (in addition to appropriate criminal penalties).

The thing is, by canon law these guys are supposed to recieve a trial and then Church punishment. But in the same way that our criminal law prefers to avoid trials, in favor of plea-bargans, so did these bishops. The bishops prefered administrative "punishments" (read: going on retreat for a few months) and forgiveness, to the proper procedure demanded by Church law. It would be nice if these guys faced their trials, and faced excommunication and defrockment upon conviction.

I attended high school with and count among my friends many of the men featured in this article (http://www.natcath.com/NCR_Online/archives/110802/110802j.htm). I was fortunate at the time, I guess, that my mother had long since left the church and I did not encounter Fr. Hanley until I was 21. My wife and I were married by a drunken Fr. Hanley in 1981.

As a matter of procedure, defrocking and excommunication work to cross the T’s and dot the I’s. But, anything short of a life sentence doing hard time for these ba$tard$ wouldn’t be enough.

If an infiltrating pedophile doesn’t care enough about warping a child for his own pleasures, why would he care about being thrown out of the priesthood and banished from the Church?

Many Catholics who I know turn their eyes away from this horror. They can’t believe that the Church they know and love could allow these things to happen. But, it did and still goes on to a large extent. And if some people hadn’t stepped up, the molestation would still be business as usual.

Here in Boston, Bernard Law knew about the problems of his priests and his ego and high status allowed him to look the other way and in fact aid the perpetrators by moving them from place to place. But instead of being defrocked or excommunicated himself for aiding and abetting, he goes to Rome and gets a promotion. Kind of shakes your confidence in the system, don’t it?

Better off to not place men wearing robes above the law or to think of them to be anything more than common men called to work of the Church.

As a matter of procedure, defrocking and excommunication work to cross the T’s and dot the I’s. But, anything short of a life sentence doing hard time for these ba$tard$ wouldn’t be enough.

If an infiltrating pedophile doesn’t care enough about warping a child for his own pleasures, why would he care about being thrown out of the priesthood and banished from the Church?

Many Catholics who I know turn their eyes away from this horror. They can’t believe that the Church they know and love could allow these things to happen. But, it did and still goes on to a large extent. And if some people hadn’t stepped up, the molestation would still be business as usual.

Here in Boston, Bernard Law knew about the problems of his priests and his ego and high status allowed him to look the other way and in fact aid the perpetrators by moving them from place to place. But instead of being defrocked or excommunicated himself for aiding and abetting, he goes to Rome and gets a promotion. Kind of shakes your confidence in the system, don’t it?

Better off to not place men wearing robes above the law or to think of them to be anything more than common men called to work of the Church.

I hate to see evil men lie and sneak into the priesthood and give it a bad name. I also hate to see the profession that harbors the most pedophiles ignored -- schoolteachers. They insult, molest, injure, marry, and rape their pupils on a regular basis (at a 10 times higher rate than Catholic priests). I'm convinced that the media hates Catholics and feels it can trick people into believing that celibacy is the reason for the those few priests' perversion.

Ryan: I agree, mostly, but I don't think it's just that the media hates Catholics. It's just so much more shocking when a priest (or other religious minister) does this than when a schoolteacher, little league coach, boyscout leader, or step-father does it---even though the latter groups do this far more often than priests. Besides, rather than blaming the media, I think the bigger problem lay in the culture that has developed in the Church hierarchy. First too many homosexuals have been ordained; (creating a bit of a subculture) but also, there is a culture of psychologizing sin and of thinking that forgiveness should wipe out punishment. This is softy American BS that Church teaching solidly rejects; but that hasn't insulated the Church bureaucrats from these bad ideas.

ASDF: Law didn't get a "promotion," even if he didn't get a demotion, as he should have. Also, the problem is not that the Church thinks that "common men" become above the law by putting on robes. As I tried to point out earlier, both canon law and criminal law applies here, and the bishops tried to skirt both for the sake of convenience, pity, and avoiding bad PR.

Short: although his rank and status did not change, could you argue that his being moved from the Archdiocese of Boston to the Vatican is not a step up and thus a de facto promotion? Where it is technically true that his ecclesiastic rank did not change, he was certainly moved up in status with the move to Rome.

Especially under the circumstances, to have offended the Church and its members the way he did and to be moved out of harms way to a cushy, no heavy lifting job in the Vatican could be viewed as a promotion sort.

I would be hard pressed to believe that Canon law means much to Law or the reprobates he chose to protect. He and they should have been moved to jail. Permanently.

ASDF: Law was moved from one of he biggest, most visible, most powerful bishoprics in the most powerful country in the world to a powerless but cushy head of a Roman church. I disagree with his being given a cushy position of honor; but don't fool yourself -- power-wise, this is a big time demotion. It's not a "promotion." In fact, he may not even be a bishop any more, and in that case it would most definately be a "demotion" (though not enough of one).

Also: I didn't suggest that canon law was a substitute for criminal law; both apply. (My suggestion was that IF they were more serious about applying the canon law procedures, then this behavior wouldn't have been able to continue.) But I doubt Law did anything illegal--criminal negligance? Obstruction of justice? Maybe.