CONFESSING SOME DOUBT
Sex abuse horrors wear away at faithful who wonder if the flock is really where they belong
YORK, Pa. – On Palm Sunday, Barbara Hoover exited Brougher Chapel with a palm frond in her left hand.
The 76-year-old retiree sized up the church in front of her and sighed, visibly upset.
“I don’t know why I’m still here,” she said, throwing her hands up. “I don’t know why I still go.”
In Portland, Oregon, Norma Rodriguez, 51, hustled up the steps of St. Mary’s Cathedral of Immaculate Conception, eager to get a good seat.
A lifelong Catholic, Rodriguez attends Mass weekly, praying for everyone she knows. She hasn’t been deterred by the sex abuse crisis that has engulfed the Catholic Church for the better part of two decades. It’s not her place to judge, Rodriguez said.
“This whole thing, it makes me pray more,” she said.
In Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Sara and Nathan Hofflander brought their
“On good days, it feels like it’s possible to make some change in the church, and on bad days, it doesn’t. And the bad days are often linked to these big news stories where you just see how deep the power, abuse and corruption lie in the church.”
Maria Michonski, 24, student at Vanderbilt’s Divinity School who started to have a contentious relationship with the church five years ago when she came out as queer
“The church is not about the humanity of its individual actors. It’s focused on God. It’s not focused on the individuals who make it up.”
Michael Vanderburgh Says he was abused by a priest as a child but raises millions of dollars for Catholic charities
“I have lots of concerns, and that’s why I stay involved. I’m not totally enamored with where we are. But I’m not so disassociated that I’m ready to walk away.”
Richard Jones A retired consultant who has attended Most Blessed Sacrament for the past 16 years
three young daughters to Palm Sunday Mass, then joined the bustle of people chatting and enjoying a hot meal during St. Lambert’s yearly parish dinner.
Sara Hofflander, 32, grew up Catholic; Nathan Hofflander, 40, joined in 2011. The fallibility of clergy doesn’t faze him. “We are all broken in some way,” he said.
The U.S. Catholic Church is at a crossroads.
As millions of devout followers filled the pews this Easter season to celebrate the religion’s most important holiday, others hovered at the door, hungry for community and spiritual guidance but furious at the church’s handling of the decades-long sex abuse crisis in which young children were raped and abused by priests who were often protected by their superiors.
Seven months after a damning grand jury report in Pennsylvania revealed that 1,000 children had been abused at the hands of more than 300 priests, and as state attorneys general across the nation investigate churches, a Gallup poll published in March found that 37% of U.S. Catholics are considering leaving the religion because of the sex abuse crisis and the church’s handling of it. That’s up from 2002, when 22% of Catholics said they contemplated leaving after The Boston Globe published a series that initially exposed the abuse.
On Palm Sunday, the start of Holy Week, the USA TODAY Network sent 13 reporters out to parishes across the country to talk with dozens of Catholics about their faith and the scandal that’s left churches bankrupt after milliondollar settlements, exposed thousands of accused priests and left unknown numbers of victims struggling to rebuild their lives.
Reporters visited white, black, Latino and Korean majority churches in cities and rural areas from California to New York, from Florida to Guam, as priests across the world spoke of repentance, forgiveness and new life.
Many Catholics – most of whom were raised in the faith and can’t imagine celebrating major milestones without it – want the church to have a rebirth after the abuse crisis. But as church leaders refuse total transparency and justice for victims, some wonder whether that will ever come.
In El Paso, Texas, Maria Pacheco normally watches Mass from home, when she tunes into a Spanish-language TV station. On Palm Sunday, a friend offered the 76-year-old a ride to church.
“Sometimes I wonder,” Pacheco said, “if I were to come and say confession, would he have committed worse things?”
Questioning the institution
In Nashville, Tennessee, as 8:30 a.m. Palm Sunday Mass let out, well-dressed Catholics streamed out of the Cathedral of the Incarnation.
Maria Michonski, 24, a student who said the clergy sex abuse crisis contributed to questions about her faith, was not among the faithful.
Michonski grew up in the Nashville diocese, went through the city’s Catholic school system and studied theology at Saint Louis University. Her contentious relationship with the church began five years ago when she came out as queer.
For a while, Michonski stopped practicing. Now she attends Mass sporadically.
“I don’t tithe to the diocese,” Michonski said. “Continuing to amass power and wealth inside a system that is so clearly broken feels very unconscionable to me.”
But she can’t walk away entirely. “On good days, it feels like it’s possible to make some change in the church, and on bad days, it doesn’t,” she said. “And the bad days are often linked to these big news stories where you just see how deep the power, abuse and corruption lie in the church.”
‘I felt spiritually abandoned’
For Maureen Roden, the pull of tradition wasn’t enough.
Roden, who lives just outside Washington, grew up in “your typical Irish Catholic family.” She and her three siblings were raised in the church. When she married – her husband was raised Protestant – and started having children, she decided they would be baptized Catholic, too.
On the morning of Jan. 6, 2002, her two girls were dressed in their Sunday best and eating breakfast when Roden saw The Boston Globe’s story. Appalled, she told her husband they wouldn’t go to Mass that day. She hasn’t been back since.
“This was my moral authority, This is who I went to for moral direction,” said Roden, 53. “I felt so angry and so betrayed. Not only that there were pedophiles in the church but that they knew about it and covered it up.
“I could not bring my children to that church and say, ‘These are your leaders.’ I couldn’t put my money in the collection basket. I felt spiritually abandoned.”
She and her husband churchshopped for a few months, but everything felt off. Members of the Unitarian Church wearing sweats to Sunday service bewildered her. When she suggested they try a Jewish synagogue, her husband gently asked if she was ready to give up her 63 Christmas albums.
They settled on a Presbyterian congregation, but it never felt quite right. Roden missed the tradition of Catholicism, in which anyone anywhere can attend Mass on any given day and hear the same order, prayers and liturgy. She found comfort in that structure. Without it, she felt lost.
But she struggles to see how the church could bring her back to attend another Mass or put money in the collection plate.
“As a society, why should we expect any less from the pope than we do from the principal at our children’s schools?” Roden said. “If a teacher sexually assaulted a child, that person would be fired immediately, and the police would be called.”
Holding strong to faith
In other parts of the country, many Catholics acknowledged the hurt their spiritual leaders caused, but they were unwavering in their beliefs.
In the U.S. territory of Guam, Johnny Villagomez said he lost trust in the Catholic priests who were named in Guam’s clergy sex abuse revelations since 2016. But he and his wife, Linda, have not lost faith in God or the church.
“Who else is going to take care of the church if not us, the believers?” said Villagomez, 75, a retired wildlife conservation officer.
That same sentiment was expressed in Atlanta, where on a rainy Palm Sunday, parishioners filed into the sanctuary at Most Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church, collecting palm leaves from a wooden table set up in the lobby area. Next to the leaves, a white basket overflowed with packets of the morning’s Scripture reading: Luke 23: 1-49. That passage details Jesus’ crucifixion, including when Jesus cries out to God, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”
To Richard Jones, who has attended Most Blessed Sacrament for the past 16 years, the abuse crisis signals a need for greater engagement.
“I have lots of concerns, and that’s why I stay involved. I’m not totally enamored with where we are. But I’m not so disassociated that I’m ready to walk away,” said Jones, 79, a retired consultant.
Younger members feel that way, too. In Tempe, Arizona, about 60 people gathered at the All Saints Catholic Newman Center on the Arizona State University campus. One of the congregants was registered nurse Angela Jungbluth, 29, who has been Catholic since birth. The sex abuse scandal shocked her, but she never questioned her commitment to Catholicism.
“I think the truth runs deeper than the sins of really evil men,” she said. “My faith is not held together because people are good, it’s more because God is good.”
The constant stream of new accusations is challenging for the survivors of clergy abuse.
Michael Vanderburgh, a father of four in Dayton, Ohio, struggled for years to reconcile the abuse he allegedly endured at the hands of a priest with his decision to remain a Catholic.
He chose to separate the religion he loved from the church leaders he said betrayed him.
“The church is not about the humanity of its individual actors,” said Vanderburgh, 47. “It’s focused on God. It’s not focused on the individuals who make it up.”
A few years ago, he led the largest fundraising campaign at the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, bringing in more than $100 million. He’s executive director of another Catholic charity, the Society of St. Vincent de Paul in Dayton.
Though Vanderburgh said he thinks the church has made strides toward strong safeguards for children, he doesn’t mind that church leaders are taking a beating for their failures. Catholics, especially abuse survivors, deserve a full accounting, he said.
Future priests promise change
In Southern California, members of St. Bridget Chinese Catholic Church in central Los Angeles said leaders understand the need to confront the scandal head-on.
“They probably provide a lot more training than we ever feel like we needed to make sure it doesn’t happen,” Peter Chan, 44, a lifelong Catholic and sales manager, said as about 70 people gathered for the English Mass after a service in Cantonese.
In Nashville, the Rev. Edward Steiner, pastor of the Cathedral of the Incarnation, tries to be frank with his congregation.
“A person that I’ve kind of got a great rapport with but who’s also very blunt and direct just simply said, ‘Father, I don’t know that I can take anymore. Could you please give me a reason to be a Catholic?’ ” Steiner said.
Parishioners aren’t the only ones searching for answers. Future leaders are, too.
As Rodriguez walked inside St. Mary’s Cathedral in Portland, Saul Medina handed her his navy blazer and asked her to save him a spot.
Born in Guadalajara, Mexico, Medina felt a call to the priesthood roughly 10 years ago. At 36, he’s studying at Mount Angel Abbey just south of Portland. Stories of clergy abuse have infuriated him and left him heartbroken.
They also emphasized the responsibility he’ll have when he leads his own congregation.
He said he has a responsibility not just to live his life with integrity and hold other Catholic leaders accountable but to create an environment where everyone feels comfortable speaking out if something seems amiss.
The church is supposed to bring people closer to God, Medina said, and the only way to do that is to adopt a zero tolerance policy.
As he climbed the steps to walk into Palm Sunday Mass, Medina paused.
“Pray for me,” he said. “Pray for us. Pray for us that we can tell the truth.”
Reported by Patrick Anderson, Sioux Falls Argus Leader; Maria Cortes, El Paso Times; Dan Horn, The Cincinnati Enquirer; Mike Ellis, Anderson Independent Mail; Nicquel Terry Ellis, USA TODAY; Haidee Eugenio, Pacific Daily News; BrieAnna Frank, The Arizona Republic; Kristin Lam, USA TODAY; Thaddeus Mast, Naples Daily News; Holly Meyer, Nashville Tennessean; Samantha Ruland, York Daily Record; Lamaur Stancil, Treasure Coast Newspapers