Accusations of sexual abuse often provoke disbelief and comments “How could he have done such a thing? He done so many good things.”
Parishioners still leap to the defense of priests accused of abuse. In New York:
A Marine Park Catholic church dedicated its Christmas display to a priest accused of sex abuse, drawing outrage from one of his his alleged victim’s family.
Msgr. Thomas Brady, 78, a retired pastor at Good Shepherd Church, was placed on administrative leave after he was charged in October with attempting a “criminal sex act” on two teenage boys – but officials at the church still dedicated their annual tree lighting to him and posted a sign in his honor in front of the church.
The sign, still posted Monday, says the tree lighting “is dedicated to Monsignor Thomas F. Brady for his Service to and Love for the People of Good Shepherd.”
The dad of a then 13-year-old boy who accused Brady of molesting him in the church rectory said he was furious to see the display at the church, where his family are longtime parishioners and his son attends the parish school.
“That’s a slap in the face,” he said. “Take it down. That’s hurtful. You’re gaining support for Brady, but what about the victims?”
Many parishioners have backed Brady, who was pastor at the church for more than 20 years before retiring in 2009 and was also a chaplain for the Fire Department, and insisted the accusations couldn’t be true. The priest has suffered several strokes and is battling lung cancer.
Family friend Mary Ann Moran, 54, said although Monsignor Brady performed her mother’s funeral and she appreciated his efforts to unite the neighborhood after Sept. 11, she was angry he would be honored after the accusations came to light. “I understand how we feel so connected to the priest,” she said. “In any other job or organization, someone who’s been arrested for sexually abusing a child would never be honored just for doing their job.”
This priest may or may not be guilty. The courts have to decide. But his good works do not mean he could not have committed a crime.
Abusers do many good things; they are seemingly altruistic and willing to go out of their way to help other people. But this altruism is in the service of narcissism. The narcissist wants others to have a good opinion of him, so he may do good things. But the purpose of these good actions is to feed his self-image of being a good person.
He wants to think of himself as a good person even though he may also do terrible things. He does so much good that he is entitled to whatever he wants, including sex with children. He may do some mental creative accounting: “The good I do far outweighs any bad things I may do,” or he may be grandiose and feel he is not bound by the rules to which ordinary mortals are subject.
Those around him often feed his narcissism and grandiosity; the clergy and parishioners in New York may be doing that to Thomas Brady. And if there are other victims, they see how the parish will respond to accusations.
Lee, perhaps the connection isn’t with narcissism but with compensation. Perhaps these pedophiles believe that “good works” will compensate for their egregious misdeeds in God’s eyes. I think that’s the key. Sadly, the Church encourages this kind of thinking with the whole theology concerning “indulgences.”
It’s all about what they want, everyone and everything else is secondary. These people are like tornados plowing through others’ lives, creating chaos and ruin.
I wonder whether this Fr. Brady is another spiritual son of Francis Spellman.
What is the difference between “administrative leave” and “suspension”? Is A.L. a euphemism? Are they virtually the same thing? Or, is there a technical (canonical) difference?
The continued public devotion toward Monsignor Brady reminds me of what life was like to my Grandmother’s eyes, back in Ireland in the late 1800’s. Being from the coast she, the mother of a priest, was stunnned to see that in the farm lands if someone put a roman collar on a broom stick, the entire village would genuflect to it.
Still the same, for some.
AW
Sad very sad! When they going to learn?
I just want to reiterate my own experience of people who make a show of being religious while simultaneously breaking Commandments in their private lives. I have know four such people in my 66 years who were like that, always leaping to defend the church from any criticism and being actually very literate about church doctrines. One was the pastor at the parish in my hometown, who upon being introduced to me as a visitor told me that I should join the true church. He was later sent to prison for abuse of altar boys while bribing them with collection money. My point is that these people compensate by being models of the religious life. I guess that makes them think there will be enough merit for them to compensate for either the inability or the unwillingness to reform or change their extremely destructive behaviors.
Janice, such people forget (or never learned) what Jesus said (and thought) about religious hypocracy. They will have their reward, though it won’t be what they imagined.
The ‘look at all the good things I’ve done’ defence is always used by the pervs and their defenders. Yeah, they make sre you hear it over and over again at 100 decibels or more!
“does so much good that he is entitled ”
Rather I feel that there is a compartmentalization occurring. What a man does, what he teaches and how he acts can be very different. A priest may be striving to teach honestly, but has his own personal frustrations which he medicates through his (vile) sexual acting out.
If one looks to the recently resigned CA bishop or Bishop Lahey in NS, one can see this disconnect.
Some addiction specialists do agree with the “reward” theory but I see it differently
SmF, I think you’ve hit on something. Compartmentalization is the problem with a lot of Catholics’ response to the sex-abuse crisis. They devalue the predators’ actual behavior and overemphacize his theological, political and liturgical views (which are irrelevant to the abuse of children).
I believe Soloviev said that the Anti-Christ will appear when Christianity becomes more of a philosophy than a relationship, or something like that. Well, in the Catholic and Calvinist precincts, that transformation has been taking place for centuries. We see the results when Catholics value theological, philosophical and liturgical “correctness” over morality — they are right in front of our eyes.
One wonders at what point parishes will finally start to eye the clergy with a certain degree of distrust.
My own father did a lot of wonderful good things in his life. He also abandoned my pregnant Mother and I, when I was 2.
No one would ever try to tell me that all those good things should absolve him of responsibility for abandoning us.
Why be so complacent about an accusation of the crime of pederasty?
I could welcome a prayer vigil for such a situation, but the horribly insensitive actions reported of parishioners from coast to coast in these situations, that’s every bit as scary as hearing your priest accused in the first place, if not more so.
Are parishioners in other countries engaging in this behavior?
http://www.theinquiry.ca/wordpress/charged/bishop-raymond-lahey/archbishop-martin-curries-statement-regarding-raymond-lahey/comment-page-1/#comment-267501
The perpetrator as victim
Well, when you have theological powerhouses like John Hardon, SJ, blowing off sexual molester Donald’s McGuire’s showering and receiving massages from a 16 yr old boy, who also had Penthouse and Playboy in the room they shared as “objectively defensible” but “imprudent”, why is it any wonder that the people in the pews have apparently had their consciences just as blunted?
(http://www.sfweekly.com/2012-01-11/news/mother-teresa-catholic-church-john-hardon-donald-mcguire-child-abuse-jesuits/)
I take particular interest in the McGuire story because my husband went on several retreats given by this pervert. This was the first I read of the Hardon connection to McGuire’s reinstatement to ministry (after which he molested even more children, of course), and to read Hardon’s blase reaction to McGuire’s behavior was more than disgusting.
When the orthodox leaders of the Church (he worked on the Catechism, for heaven’s sake) have so little concern when a priest accused of molestation admits to showering with, receiving massages from, and being aware of the possession of porn by the 16 yr old he is traveling and sharing a room with (!!), it’s hardly surprising the pewsitters are shamefully complacent.
I think Vatican II had the same effect on the Catholic Church as Gorbachev’s glasnost and perestroika did on the Soviet Union. In both cases, the leadership tried to form a more open institution. In both cases, the response was far more intense than the leaders realized or could control.
The basic difference is that Marxism lost credibility with the Soviet people decades prior to Gorbachev. Cynicism about the system was rampant and helped bring it down. For the most part, Catholics have no such cynicism (yet) about their own ideological underpinnings. For now, they can compartmentalize Church theology from ecclesiastical structure. However, since one ultimately relies on the other (at least according to the bishops, whose main goal is to preserve the structural status quo), that’s an inherently dishonest bargain.
When Catholics make the connection — and when Catholics fully realize how pervasively corrupt their leadership really is — then Pope Benedict will get his wish of a smaller Church, though certainly not in the way he hoped or imagined.
BTW, gentle readers, if you want to understand how someone like Fr. Hardon can be so blase, just read this post from Msgr. Charles Pope from the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C. concerning “obedience”:
http://blog.adw.org/2012/01/is-being-a-bishop-like-herding-cats-it-shouldnt-be/
The Catholic faith and Catholic Church are all about highly legalistic rules and regulations which crowd out and take precedence over the actual gospel. I don’t think these men really understand how twisted and perverted it is to sexually abuse a child. To them it’s a much bigger sin to miss Mass on Sunday. They have their priorities wrong and have substituted the Catholic Church for God .
RIGHT ON, BETH!!! I’ve been saying that for years on Catholic blogs. It’s refreshing that, finally, somebody sees what I see. 🙂
Even the legalism has broken down into almost nothing. One who expects perfection out of the Church always will be disappointed. However, over the past century or more the Church has experienced a sharp decline in discipline. The Church already was in serious decline before Vatican II. The Council managed to sweep away the legalism that remained from the old days and ushered in a period of even greater moral chaos. All roads lead to Rome. Rite of Sodomy by Randy Engel certainly leads me to believe that the corruption, at least of the sexual sort, has come out of Rome and infected pretty much every part of the Church. Somebody in Rome had to know about Cardinals Spellman and O’Connell. Yet these two were allowed to corrupt the American Church for decades, setting the stage for an even greater explosion of chaos after Vatican II.
Check this out!
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Roman-Catholic-Priest-Parish-Orange-County-Dolan-Child-137663168.html
If I read the report correctly, the Archdiocese is more concerned with WHEN the priest fathered the child rather than the REALITY that the priest went off to a career/vocation in which he could never REPSONSIBLY care for the offspring he fathered.
The story of the Tanzanian priests reminds me that we should expect more of the same. African clergy often have women and children, and many African priests are now coming to America, as “missionaries” or as refugees.