Deliver Us from Evil Page #9

what they think?

You just do what you want to do

to take care of yourself.

To hell with them.

That's what you got to do.

We're trying to uncover the truth.

We're here to support you

and we're here to support

all of the other kids,

because this is big business

to the Church.

This is money to the Church.

It's like a big corporation.

We have to ask ourselves

who's paying for this nightmare,

for this crisis?

Who is obliged to get involved?

I think we all are.

One of the things that I've seen

in my time with people like yourselves

has been a change in the understanding

of what church is.

Many of us, when I ask you,

"When you hear the word 'church,'

what comes to your mind?"

Most of us will think

of bishops, the Vatican,

the hierarchy, church buildings.

That will be changing,

it is changing,

because church is us.

It's right here in this room.

25 years ago,

Tom Doyle called

the bishops to action

and put a plan before the U.S. Catholic

Conference of Bishops,

a comprehensive plan

to address the crisis

of pedophilia in the priesthood.

Basically, they wrote a report

and said this is going to

be a massive crisis

that's going to cost the Church

a billion dollars unless you do something.

They found that there was

a national crisis

of children being

sexually abused by priests

on a massive scale.

I didn't know what they were doing.

I thought that they would

take it and do something

because they were...

the Catholic Bishops

Conference in the United States

were forever giving

pronouncements on everything

from nuclear war to the Boy Scouts

to animal husbandry to chewing gum.

You name it,

they were giving pronouncements

on the morality

of just about everything.

But on this, they stonewalled.

Cardinal Ratzinger,

now Pope Benedict,

was head of what's called

the Office of the Congregation

for the Doctrine of the Faith.

The head of my church,

the successor to Peter,

the Holy Father,

was the person in charge

of making sure

that priests didn't hurt children.

He was in charge of that office

from 1978 until 2005.

He did a very poor job,

and basically was the one person

besides the Pope

who could have stopped it,

and he didn't.

What the bishops did

is they squelched the report...

they went back to their dioceses,

and they carried on as normal.

They knew children

were being victimized,

and they did absolutely nothing

except insure that law enforcement

and the public

and the faithful would not find out.

The bishops have known that bishops,

priests, and deacons

have been sexually abusing children

since the fourth century,

and it's been a severe

major, major problem,

and they've never really

been able to curb it.

Basically, you have a sexualized priesthood.

It's been sexualized for years,

that looks at child sexual abuse

no different than it does

if you're having sex with a woman

because it's all a violation

of clerical celibacy.

If all sex by definition was bad sex

because you weren't supposed

to be having it,

then pedophilia is just

another kind of bad sex.

There is no basis in the scriptures

for mandatory celibacy.

It's not mandated by Christ.

It's not justified

anywhere in the gospels

or in the life and times

and sayings of Christ.

All 12 apostles were married,

with probably the exception of John.

The first several dozen popes

were married and had children.

It's something that the institutional

Church leaders

began to think about

and tried to impose

at least from the fourth century.

Married priests, when they died,

their inheritance

went to their oldest son.

So the institutionalized

Church leaders,

desiring to stop this practice,

began to mandate celibacy

so that when a priest's property

had to pass after he died

it would go to the bishop

or to the Church.

What we have to remember

is a lot of the priests

who have been reported

as offenders

went into the seminary

at a minor seminary

at ages 14, 15, 16.

They may have been thinking

about a vocation even earlier.

They got stopped.

They got literally arrested

in their psychosexual development.

They're nurtured in an attitude of negativity

toward relationships, toward women,

toward marriage,

and toward sexuality,

and they never really

fully understand

what any of these are all about.

So when these men

became unable to be celibate

or when their sexual urges

overpowered them,

they sought out victims

who they experienced at some level

as psychosexual peers.

where the vast majority

of priests in the western U.S.

Went to the seminary,

Perpetrators of children.

that became to be perpetrators,

somebody would take action.

In Boston, after the final

settlements were made

for about $85 million

a couple of years ago,

one of the priests said publicly

at an interview,

"Thank God this clergy crisis is over.

Now we can get back to normal. "

The situation was far worse

than even what the most hardened cynic

thought was going on.

Cardinal Law, who was

the archbishop of Boston,

presided over some

of the worst sexual abusers

in the history of the Church.

It was something that ultimately

caused Cardinal Law to step down.

You would think, if you presided

over the abuse of dozens of children,

that that would mean

you would be sent to a punishment.

You know, the Vatican

didn't even make it a secret.

They thought he was

unfairly accused in the media.

They made him

the cardinal archbishop

of this church in Rome,

and he actually presided

at Pope John Paul II's funeral Mass.

What's happening in Los Angeles

does in many ways dwarf

what happened in Boston.

As of June 2002,

we had over 100 criminal

investigations ongoing,

and that encompassed

over 100 individual priests.

What that tells you is how large

the scope of this problem is.

I think the Vatican is looking for a way

to say "We've solved this,"

and they are scapegoating...

because so many of the victims

were male victims,

they're scapegoating

the homosexual priests

and saying "If we get rid

of the homosexual priests,

then we'll be rid of this problem. "

Most men who abuse children

are heterosexual.

The Bishops' Conference, I think,

would like to project that this problem

is now over with.

It's taken care of.

They have solved it,

and it's now under control,

which is a normal corporate approach

to something of this nature.

I'm sure that the guys

in Enron thought that, too,

when they were discovered.

Every day, every week,

I learn of another child, young adult,

offended by a cleric

who hasn't been disclosed

before this day,

and my fear is, my belief is,

that there are not hundreds,

but there are thousands

of offenders

yet to be exposed and disclosed

still roaming the churches

in the landscapes in this U.S.,

and tens of thousands...

tens of thousands worldwide.

What is a good Catholic?

A good Catholic traditionally

is someone who kept

their mouth shut,

their pocketbook open,

you know...

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