Betrayal (27 page)

Attorney Demarest said Church officials misused the treatment centers. “I don't think it's fair to blame the therapeutic community for problems,” she said. “The issue was not what they were doing but whether the bishops were listening. That's what the problem is. The bishops were the ones putting these men back in circulation.” And in March 2002, psychiatrists at the Institute of Living in Hartford charged that Church leaders intentionally disregarded their clinical advice — with sometimes-disastrous results. The institute, a secular psychiatric hospital situated on a leafy thirty-five-acre campus, had developed a specialized program for treating clergy and had been seeing a handful of priests every year. Cardinal Edward M. Egan had pointed to the institute's psychiatric reports as the justification to return priests to the ministry; some of them swiftly reoffended. Top psychiatrists at the institute quickly fired back at Egan. They told the
Hartford Courant
that Church leaders had used psychiatrists’ advice as cover to rush potentially dangerous priests back into ministry. “I found that they rarely followed our recommendations,” said Leslie M. Lothstein, director of psychology at the institute. “They would put [priests] back into work where they still had access to vulnerable populations.” Lothstein's comments marked a new chapter — and a clear break — in the relationship between the Church and psychiatrists.

In Mullin's case, psychologists were unable to determine the validity of the accusation against him. In their confidential report, written in November 1992, the psychologists said that Mullin acknowledged loaning his car to his accuser, “rubbing his back while tutoring him, twisting his nipples while horsing around, going on an overnight trip to the Berkshires, telling him he loved him, and making him the beneficiary of his life insurance policy for a period of time.” Mullin said his behavior may have been immature, but not sexual. “Father Mullin has consistently denied both sexual activity with and sexual interest in boys,” read the report, which Mullin willingly shared with a
Globe
reporter a decade after the traumatic treatment. “However, we believe that the behaviors he does acknowledge, such as twisting the boy's nipples, are cause for significant concern. We believe that most people would describe such behavior between an adult and a boy [as] at least inappropriate and probably sexual in nature.” After his treatment, Mullin was in limbo for some time, but six years later he won assignment to a church in Way-land, Massachusetts.

On a frosty Cape Cod evening in 2002, Mullin sat in the front room of his small, quiet home wearing a cardigan sweater pulled tight against the raw chill of late winter. His large frame filled an easy chair bathed in low-watt lamplight as he calmly discussed the details of how his clerical career unraveled. He viewed the existence of St. Luke as evidence of the Church's concern, saying, “I wasn't aware there was anyplace like that. Seeing all of it, I thought, the bishops know where they're sending all of us. They know the magnitude of the problem.” But he never saw his own behavior as part of that problem. “It was just one of those game-type things that adolescent, immature people sometimes do. … It was not a sexual-interest type of a thing.”

For years — presumably for centuries — the Church simply did not talk about sex with future priests. Seminarians were on their own to figure out what it meant to lead a life of permanent chastity, and many struggled. “There was nothing,” recalled Rev. Robert W. Bullock, who finished his training at St. John's Seminary in Boston in 1956. “We didn't talk at all. And then we emerged from this highly male, controlled situation into a very different kind of world, and that transition, for a lot of people, was harrowing. Looking back, I would have wished we were better prepared.”

Some seminaries offered experiences that seem to reinforce the notion of a Church deeply uneasy with sex. Writer Paul Hendrickson attended a seminary in Alabama, where for five years, from the time he was fifteen until he was twenty, he would routinely visit his spiritual director for what was supposed to be instruction in managing sexual desire. “I did so, more or less willingly, in the name of conquering impure temptation,” Hendrickson, the author of
Seminary: A Search,
wrote. “It was his idea, his proscription, his scenario. Sometimes it happened weekly. Sometimes it happened in the middle of the night. Sometimes it happened just before study period, or after evening colloquy, or when I had just come up from the gym. I'd go in, sit in a green chair beside his desk, unzipper my pants, take up a crucifix (it was called the Missionary Cross, and it had a tarnished green skull and bones at the base of the nailed savior's feet), begin to think deliciously about impure things, and then, at the point of full erection, begin to recite all of the reasons that I wished to conquer my baser self and longings. ‘Father, I'm ready now,’ I'd say. Having taken myself at his prompting to a ledge of mortal sin, I was now literally and furiously talking myself down, with the power of the crucified Jesus in my left hand. My director was always there, guiding me, urging me, praying with me.”

But in 1992, there were two events, one official and one unofficial, that dramatically transformed the way the Catholic Church thought about the training of future priests. The first was an order from the Pope to overhaul seminary education to include franker discussion of sexuality and celibacy. The second was the case of Father Porter, in which the intense media coverage of the serial pedophile from the Diocese of Fall River, Massachusetts, became a major topic of discussion among priests.

In March of that year, Pope John Paul II issued an apostolic exhortation,
Pastores Dabo Vobis,
instructing the bishops of the world to overhaul their seminary programs in light of “the circumstances of the present day.” Those circumstances included a persistent lack of candidates for the priesthood and the concomitant rise in clergy burnout. “Priests who have been actively involved in the ministry for a more or less lengthy period of time seem to be suffering today from an excessive loss of energy in their ever increasing pastoral activities,” the Pope wrote. “Likewise, faced with the difficulties of contemporary culture and society, they feel compelled to re-examine their way of life and their pastoral priorities, and they are more and more aware of their need for ongoing formation.”

“Formation” is Church-speak for education, training, and character development, and the Pope insisted that seminaries be restructured to focus on four areas of formation for new priests: human, intellectual, pastoral, and spiritual. The Pope placed a special emphasis on human formation, which he called “the basis of all priestly formation.” And a key component of that formation of a priest as a person was clearly understanding his own sexuality. “Of special importance is the capacity to relate to others,” the Pope wrote. “In this context affective maturity, which is the result of an education in true and responsible love, is a significant and decisive factor in the formation of candidates for the priesthood.” And the Pope declared that in an era when sexuality “is reduced to nothing more than a consumer good,” seminaries must be particularly attentive, “An education for sexuality becomes more difficult but also more urgent,” the Pope said. “It should be truly and fully personal and therefore should present chastity in a manner that shows appreciation and love for it.”

Even as seminaries were putting the Pope's orders into action, the Porter case began to focus broad attention on the issue of clergy sexual abuse, especially in Massachusetts. Seminaries began tightening their admissions requirements and watching seminarians more closely.

“In ninety-two, when the Porter case hit the seminary, the seminary didn't know how to proceed, but they knew whatever they were going to do, they had to address these issues,” recalled Edward Cardoza, the former seminarian at St. John's in Boston throughout much of the 1990s, who decided not to pursue ordination. “I remember one conference where the spiritual director got up and actually said, ‘As terrible as this is for the Church, it may well prove to be a sanctifying moment.’” Seminarians attended monthly conferences to discuss human formation, talked about their personal lives with spiritual directors, and took a course on human sexuality taught by a nun. “You were taught that even when the charism of celibacy and chastity is present and embraced, the attractions, the impulses, the desires will still be present. So the first thing you need to do is be aware that you are a human being, and no matter how saintly or holy you are, you will never remove yourself from those passions. But the idea was making prudent choices. You just walk away. Celibacy is a radical call, and you've made a decision not to act on your desire.”

Today, seminaries say they screen applicants rigorously. In Boston, for example, a young man must begin conversations with the vocations director a year before applying for admissions, and then the application process takes at least four months. Most seminaries require that applicants be celibate for as long as five years before starting the program, just to test out the practice, and students are expected to remain celibate throughout seminary as they continue to discern whether they are cut out to lead the sexless life of an ordained priest. Some seminaries screen out applicants who say they are sexually attracted to other men, but most do not, arguing that there is no evidence linking sexual orientation to one's ability to lead a celibate life. The seminaries attempt to weed out potential child abusers, running federal and local criminal background checks, but there is currently no psychological test that can accurately predict whether a man who has never sexually abused a child is likely to do so in the future. So seminary officials say that in the screening process, and throughout seminary training, they are alert to any sign that a man is not forming normal relationships with adults, or seems abnormally interested in children. Many potential applicants are turned away from seminaries, and every year some students are forced out. “Just because there's a shortage doesn't mean we should lessen our standards,” said Rev. Edward J. Burns, executive director of the Secretariat for Vocations and Priestly Formation at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. “A man is dissected in many ways when he comes forward to apply to a seminary. There are psychological tests to assess the psychosexual maturity of the man, because it's important they have a real grasp of their own identity. Tests are given to show any type of psychosis or mental imbalance. We do Woodwork. And it's not just tests — in seminary we live with them, and you get a clear indication of how a man lives out life. You can be sure that we're alert to any red flags.”

Many current seminary officials acknowledge what now seems obvious: screening standards in the past were inadequate. “Everyone hearkens back to the glory days when the seminaries were packed, but I wonder how many of them were people who never should have been priests,” said Rev. James King, director of vocations for the Indiana province of the Congregation of Holy Cross, the religious order that founded the University of Notre Dame. “It was the popular thing to do, or a desirable thing to do, satisfying one's family. We're talking about people who were there when there was no awareness about the need to do any screening. You had people who were psychologically immature in an era when seminaries didn't have an idea about psychological screening.” Today, as he sits across the desk from an aspiring priest, King said he looks not so much for the candidate with the highest test scores or most remarkable résumé or biggest collection of awards and achievements. He is looking for honesty. Someone who is genuine and straightforward. And he makes it a point to be clear that the priestly requirement for celibacy— a life without sexual activity of any kind, including masturbation — is not an ancillary part of the job. “The message pretty much is that celibacy is an absolute requirement,” said King. “Everyone has urges. Married people have the same struggles fundamentally. They get to have sex, but they don't get to have sex with everybody else and still be faithful to their commitment. There isn't a person alive who isn't a sexual human being. But we have to manage it in healthy ways. In many ways, married people struggle with this as much as we do. Celibacy is a gift, but it's not something that most people are cut out for,”

There is no magic trick to living a celibate life. Seminary instructors acknowledge that priests will have sexual feelings, but they encourage them not to put themselves in situations that heighten those feelings. They advise priests to pray for strength. And they frequently fall back on comparisons to married people, who the Church expects not to have sex with people other than their spouse, and single people, who, the Church teaches, should not have sex at all.

“I'll never forget when I was a vocation director, and a college student asked me, ‘What do you do when you get an urge?’ as if no one else would control it but a priest,” Burns said. “Everyone is called to holiness, particularly in their sexual life. How do we manage our sexual desires? By being people of integrity, with respect for other people's sexuality, and for our own sexuality. Celibacy is a gift we give, in order to live out a service of life for others. It is a call from God. We are meant to be celibate men, working to build a Kingdom, here and now.”

Today's seminarians are generally older than they once were, and seminary directors hope they are more mature. There are only nine high-school seminaries left in the country, and many men enter seminary only after they have completed college. Many have dated; some have been married. And dioceses now offer ongoing formation, a kind of continuing education for priests, to help newly ordained priests adjust to the challenges of living in a parish.

Of course, compliance is not universal. Some seminarians, and many priests, do violate their vows of celibacy, just as many married people violate their vows of monogamy.

Rev. Len Plazewski, director of vocations for the Diocese of St. Petersburg, Florida, has a recipe for a disciplined, healthy priesthood that he shares with the seminarians he supervises. It is a deceptively simple one. Have friends inside and outside of the priesthood, pals who don't feel the need to always address you as “Father.” Take time to relax. God is important, but so are sports and the arts and a trip to the beach. Have hobbies or other distractions that don't make a celibate lifestyle more difficult to pursue. “Obviously, if my hobbies consisted of going to strip clubs and searching the Internet for pornography, those things are not going to help me live a celibate life. But there is no magic pill…. In a certain sense, I came to realize that the love of a single woman was not enough for me; that my call to love wasn't focused on a single person or a single family. Yes, I'm celibate. No, I'm not having sex. But I am loving. Love is an important part of my life.”