A PRIEST’S LAMENT
Cleric writes critically on abuse and cover-up
It isn’t easy being the good shepherd in an era of sex scandals and shattered trust in the Roman Catholic Church. Here is how a leading cleric began a piece in a quarterly magazine, Gaudium, produced by his Ottawa-based religious order: “I write this not only as a priest, member of the Companions of the Cross, or the General Superior of the Community, but also as a sickened and discouraged member of the Body of Christ, the Church.” So writes Father Allan MacDonald, a leader of the Companions of the Cross, which began in 1985 and now numbers about 40 priests, including Christian Riesbeck, now an auxiliary bishop with the Archdiocese of Ottawa. Father MacDonald writes that he’s been living with the “scourge and disease of clerical abuse and coverup” in the church since his ordination in 1994, not long after Mount Cashel erupted in Newfoundland, the first of many institutional scandals in Canada. It is an amazingly candid piece, in which he says he doesn’t blame the average faithful for being discouraged, to the point of throwing their hands up in frustration. “I have not wanted to wear my priestly attire in public lest someone think me an abuser,” he writes, admitting he has felt deflated and “lied to.” Nor does he spare his superiors — not named immediates, but in the broader sense. “The continuing revelations of people being abused and reduced to objects without power, status or value stir me to anger at priests who are wolves in sheep’s clothing and bishops who are PR experts rather than pastors of souls and who knew about what was happening but did/said nothing.” Father MacDonald declined to be interviewed, in fact expressed the view that his writing should not be republished. However, he is both in a leadership position with the order and the co-editor of the quarterly, so it can hardly be a surprise that his admissions would be widely shared. His piece, entitled Jesus is in The Boat, comes at a time when Ottawa’s archdiocese continues to deal with the criminal and civil liability fallout from a number of high-profile cases, including a fairly new allegation directed at Bishop John Beahen, who died in 1988. As revealed in the dogged reporting of this newspaper’s Andrew Duffy, the archdiocese paid out in excess of $700,000 to the victims of Rev. Dale Crampton, a notorious Nepean pastor who jumped to his death in 2010. And more suits are outstanding. Barry McGrory, 83, meanwhile, has since been defrocked after the church paid out $300,000 to one of his victims. Once the pastor at Holy Cross Parish in Ottawa, he still has outstanding criminal charges. There are many more — at least 41 victims involving 11 priests, a 2016 calculation by this paper revealed — and many more in other places. Only in August, Ottawa Archbishop Terrence Prendergast himself was lamenting the resignation of a U.S. cardinal, Theodore McCarrick, for a string of allegations of sexual misconduct, much of it directed at young seminarians. “Along with many others, I am heartbroken,” the archbishop began a column in the Ottawa Sun in August. “Learning about this high-profile case of abuse in the Church, along with similar situations in Australia, Chile and Honduras, causes me great distress. Many bishops, priests and lay Catholics in the U.S. and in Canada are rightly angry, chagrined and bewildered.” The archdiocese said in a statement that, shortly after the McCarrick revelations and an explosive abuse story in Pennsylvania, the archbishop encouraged priests to “come together in their respective pastoral regions (supported by, and in the presence of the Episcopal Vicars) to share their concerns and feelings about these cases and allegations and how it was affecting their morale.” If the position of the Catholic Church was once to bury these scandals, that evidently has started to change. One of the first items visible on the website of the Archdiocese of Ottawa is a pointer to an 184-page document called the National Guidelines for the Protection of Minors, just released from the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops. Further along the site is an invitation to report cases of suspected sexual abuse to a local email address. The archdiocese also has a “safe environment office”, created in December 2017. This aims to prevent sexual abuse by creating awareness, providing training and getting the whole church community on the same page. “In the near future, we will focus on equipping parishes with additional safe screening measures and propose wellness plans for clergy to support them in the difficult realities of being a cleric in today’s society,” a statement from office administrator Michèle Clermont reads. Father MacDonald turns the gloomy start to his piece to a more hopeful argument about why Catholics should stay in the fold: because faith is not based on the conduct of individual men and women, good or bad, but on a relationship with God. And, from that point of view, it is better to be “in the boat” — even if feeling seasick — than in the water drowning, spiritually. Among his tips are a suggestion not to judge the entire priesthood on the actions of “criminals” and to support clerics who are fighting the good fight and trying to change the direction of the church, its schools and ministries. “Don’t use this as an excuse to commit spiritual suicide, even though priests and bishops have committed crimes and spiritual murders.” To contact Kelly Egan, please call 613-726-5896 or email kegan@ postmedia.com Twitter.com/ kellyegancolumn