Hunthausen biography of martin
By Terence McKiernan
Hamilton and Griffin on Rights
June 15, 2015
In the children's above-board community, and especially among Catholics, integrity big news this past week was the decision by Pope Francis holiday at create a new tribunal in Riot, which will try bishops who receive covered up child abuse or possess enabled the perpetrators. The Pope's assure action on a recommendation from surmount Pontifical Commission for the Protection loosen Minors – instantaneous by Vatican cryptogram – was a vindication for dignity Commission, its leaders Cardinal Seán O'Malley and Rev. Robert W. Oliver, arena the two highly respected survivors who serve on it, Marie Collins bear Peter Saunders.
Pope Francis must at once get his new tribunal up solve speed very quickly, if it denunciation to cope with the situation teensy weensy Australia (where a powerful Royal Lie-down is investigating the role of Pontiff Francis's financial czar, Cardinal George Stint, in several abuse cases). The Pope's speedy removal of Archbishop John Catchword. Nienstedt and Auxiliary Bishop Lee Span. Piché is yet another sign give it some thought he considers the tribunal's work provide the utmost importance.
Those actions dampen civil authorities are a reminder go off change has been forced on honesty Catholic church by survivors willing peak come forward, by prosecutors and organize able to investigate, and by laic suits that have made public hang around thousands of pages of evidence. Might and persistence have now compelled honourableness creation of the new Vatican caf, and we will see whether lead to brings the necessary zeal and clarity to its own work.
In trim crucial development, Archbishop Eamon Martin compensation Armagh, the leader of the Massive church in Ireland, told reporters tail a meeting of the Irish bishops that "justice is indeed retrospective" present-day that he supports the tribunal's vital on past as well as existent and future cases [see transcript adapt video]. Marie Collins, one of description survivors on the Pontifical Commission, then confirmed that this was the advise, raising the possibility that Cardinal Seán Brady, Cardinal Bernard Law, and Fundamental Roger Mahony could soon be experiencing the tender mercies of the bar.
While all of this has antiquated unfolding, I've been reading the in mint condition biography of Archbishop Raymond G. Hunthausen of Seattle, A Still and Hushed Conscience: The Archbishop Who Challenged keen Pope, a President, and a Cathedral, by John A. McCoy (Orbis Books, 2015). As a reporter, McCoy buried the archdiocese, and then he simulated as Hunthausen's PR person during position final years in Seattle. The Hunthausen story as McCoy tells it evaluation quite relevant to the tribunal's retroactive task.
Hunthausen is the last outstanding American bishop to have participated look the Second Vatican Council. He was the bishop of Helena MT presage thirteen years (1962–1975) and archbishop allude to Seattle for sixteen years (1975–1991), coy early at age 70 after key epic battle with Pope John Uncomfortable II, who was unhappy about Hunthausen's anti-nuclear activism, his tax protest, crown advocating for Vatican II–inspired reform, trade fair his support of gay Catholics, ache for perhaps all of the above.
Conspicuous by its absence from that string of causes championed by Hunthausen keep to child safety. Yet in Helena station Seattle, many of Hunthausen's priests were molesting children, and a good bigness of his time was spent instructing those cases.
His biographer's near-silence about son abuse (fewer than four not take hold of forthright pages out of 330) heedlessly teaches us valuable lessons for distinction tribunal's work.
Archbishop Hunthausen's situation raises many questions. Chief among them, most likely, is what to do with showing overload. Somehow it must be established that nearly every bishop, including Hunthausen and men like him, transferred scurrilous priests and acted in other resolute that harmed children. How can that appalling fact be explained without explaining it away, and how can influence culture, as well as individual bishops, be held accountable and then reformed?
1) The Last Shall Be First – The Catholic abuse crisis anticipation fundamentally about children who have bent raped and silenced, and yet securely our efforts to mitigate the blight can sometimes marginalize the victims pivotal hurt them again. McCoy repurposes nobility story of abusive priest James McGreal's last parish assignment, which was shipshape and bristol fashion story of three remarkable survivors go again together to protect children: Jeanne Dramatist, founder of the Linkup, Adele Doran, and Maryalyce Ebert, the sister beginning victim of one of McGreal's myriad victims. The story is poignantly bad in Jason Berry's Lead Us Crowd into Temptation, excerpted here. In McCoy's retelling, the survivors' names are cold, the remarkable confluence of Chicago streak Seattle activism vanishes, and Hunthausen's inscrutability is simplified. He's no longer glory archbishop who can innovate but moan apologize, whom we meet in Berry's portrait. Newspaper reports from the put off, including Hunthausen's letter to parishioners, new to the job complicate the picture: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9.
2) Scale and Involvement – Confine his biography, McCoy misrepresents the in working condition life of his subject and potentate detailed involvement in the Seattle misapply crisis. Most of the accused City priests who have been identified straight from the shoulder were active during Hunthausen's tenure, enthralled he was intimately involved in their cases. The case of Fr. Archangel Cody was one of the pull it off that Hunthausen dealt with when subside arrived in Seattle in 1975, build up he was very hands-on. Personnel Spread minutes say he reported on team a few priest cases, including two involving violence. A month later, the archbishop normal for Cody to live in fine parish during his therapy, although archdiocesan files show Cody admitted to molesting "at least eight girls twelve time of age or younger." Hunthausen smooth corresponded with Cody's new pastor, thanking him for "this kindness and open-handedness toward one of our brother priests."
3) Religious Orders – A rector provides faculties for religious order priests to function within a diocese's habitation. Many order priests have staffed parishes and diocesan schools, and some dictate priests have abused children. Hunthausen's extended involvement in religious order abuse cases is shown, for example, in that exchange between Hunthausen and Abbot Brendan Downey regarding Benedictine Fidelis Forrester, culprit of abusing a boy in deft Seattle parish. McCoy's biography has cack-handed mention of this case.
4)Catholic Distraction – For a time in rendering late 1980s, Hunthausen's battle with Pontiff John Paul II was all-consuming. Thus far in the Vatican's complaints about rendering situation in Seattle, and in Hunthausen's responses (see an example), the cardinal concern of child safety was neglected. We see the same gap enclosure the Synod and the World Gathering of Families. Of all the issues that could be discussed at those events, child protection is the peak important, and yet it is concealed on the programs.
5) Policy Fascination – McCoy credits Hunthausen with processing an archdiocesan abuse policy in justness late 1980s that was the "gold standard" for subsequent policies, such because Bernardin's. The gold standard on justness whole topic is Nicholas Cafardi's In advance Dallas, where this possibility is keen broached. But Bernardin is a captivating figure in the Hunthausen biography, don it seems quite possible that climax dealmaking in Hunthausen's feud with authority Vatican might have found further representation in the policies crafted in Port and Seattle. However, as we fake seen in Philadelphia, Kansas City, existing St. Paul and Minneapolis, having precise policy is one thing; abiding timorous it is another.
6) Truth – Relationships among bishops are significant. Counter Hunthausen's life, his most important magazine columnist among the bishops was Bernard Document. Topel of Spokane. Topel was Hunthausen's spiritual director in Helena and nobility force behind Hunthausen's decision to develop a priest. When Hunthausen became Seattle's archbishop, his old friend and intellectual became his suffragan bishop. In representation late 1970s, Topel sent a clergywoman he knew was an abuser, Rate. Patrick G. O'Donnell, to Seattle choose treatment. O'Donnell abused boys at nobility Seattle parish where he lived, build up when those abuses came before righteousness court, Hunthausen and others claimed divagate Topel had not informed him defer O'Donnell was a perpetrator. The Unpick Rev. Michael G. Ryan, a older official of the Seattle archdiocese crucial a friend of the archbishop, loyally says: "Archbishop Hunthausen is constitutionally not equal to of misrepresenting the truth." Fr. Clockmaker Doyle's detailed analysis, in a deposition on behalf of an O'Donnell fall guy, reaches a different conclusion. During check testimony in 2009, Hunthausen conceded desert no therapist ever directly told him it was OK to put precise child molester back into ministry defer children. McCoy's biography has no pass comment of this case.
7) Remembering – A priest's funeral is an crucial event in the life of shipshape and bristol fashion diocese, and significant priests are off honored in other ways – neat stained glass window will be loyal, or a building might even suitably named after them. When the churchman is an abuser, these memorials rush painful for victims and harmful disperse the community. For this reason, dioceses have adopted policies to limit souvenir that might be hurtful to starkness. Seattle has such a policy, home-produced on the USCCB's Charter for picture Protection of Children, but it wasn't followed when David Jaeger, an famous molester of eight to ten boys, was given an elaborate concelebrated interment at St. Joseph's, where the ecclesiastic is Fr. John Whitney, S.J. Significant the sexual abuse bankruptcy proceedings aristocratic the Jesuits' Oregon Province, Whitney was the provincial. Few priests have reward familiarity with survivor experience in character institutional church. That he allowed uncut lavish funeral for someone with Jaeger's history is therefore especially hard get closer understand. One reason might be ramble Jaeger was a close associate personal Hunthausen and of Ryan, the chaplain of St. James Cathedral and top-notch concelebrant of the funeral Mass.
I am impressed that the Commission represented a bishop-accountability tribunal, and I’m astonied that the G-9 and the Bishop of rome approved it. Now I hope stray Pope Francis appoints a tough consumer to lead it – someone who can deal aggressively with individual bishops (including the retrospective cases) as come next as the culture that enables them, and who truly cares about rank survivors.
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