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  Report Could Shake Church Hierarchy

By David O'Reilly
Philadelphia Inquirer [Philadelphia PA]
October 2, 2005

From Scituate to Needham, from Gloucester to Salem, 62 parishes across the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston have been closed and sold to help raise the $85 million it owes to hundreds of victims of clergy sex abuse.

But in six other Boston parishes the lights have stayed on, in open defiance of Archbishop Sean O'Malley.

Angry at the prospect of seeing their parishes closed - and furious at the abuse and cover-ups that forced the closings - parishioners are camping out in their sanctuaries, holding prayer vigils, and even conducting lay-led services with Communion consecrated by sympathetic priests.

"What you are seeing is a profound rejection of the [archbishop's] right to call the shots," activist Ann Doyle of Reading, Mass., said last week.

Could it happen here?

A recent Philadelphia grand jury report, revealing that two previous archbishops had covered up the crimes of as many as 169 abuser priests, could damage the moral authority of local bishops, some observers say.

But others say the traditional conservatism of Philadelphia Catholics suggests that no revolution is likely here, despite an initial public uproar about the revelations.

Leonard Swidler, professor of religion at Temple University and a veteran Catholic activist, said he expects the hierarchy to keep parishioners on a conservative course.

"I'm afraid that most Philadelphia Catholics will not do much of anything," Swidler said.

Despite any anger at bishops, surveys show that Catholics who are active in their parishes and fond of their local priests tend to stay active and devoted despite the scandals, according to Dean Hoge, a leading scholar of American Catholicism.

Nationally, Sunday Mass attendance has fallen slightly since the clergy scandal erupted in Boston in 2002, but along a trend line that was already evident, Hoge, a sociology professor at Catholic University of America in Washington, said in a telephone interview Friday.

The Boston scandals led to abuse revelations in nearly all the nation's 195 Catholic dioceses. Last year, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops reported that about 4.3 percent of all Catholic priests ordained since 1950 had been credibly accused of improper sexual contact with a minor.

And yet, Hoge said, "the losers in all this are the bishops."

A 2004 attitude survey he co-conducted for Notre Dame University found that American Catholics identified clergy sex abuse as the greatest problem facing the church, and that "nearly three-fourths of the respondents said the failure of bishops to stop the abuse was a bigger problem than the abuse itself."

"Older and more active Catholics tended to have more confidence in bishops than did younger Catholics or those less involved in church activities," Hoge reported.

Yet even in scandal-plagued dioceses, "local pastors and priests in most cases remain beloved and appreciated," he said.

Those Philadelphia Catholics eager for more lay responsibility and for greater fiscal accountability by the archdiocese hope the grand jury report will stir up rank-and-file Catholics in ways hitherto unseen here.

"I'm not talking about a mass uprising, but a lot more demand for openness," said Richard Taylor, part of the steering committee of the Philadelphia area chapter Voice of the Faithful.

The lay activist group voted Thursday to call a prayer vigil outside Cardinal Justin Rigali's residence on City Avenue, Taylor said. "We're hoping Catholics will realize they don't have to take this [abuse and cover-up] lying down - that they can protest evil even in their own church."

No date has been set for a vigil. Chapter spokesman Walter Fox said it may wait until early November, when Cardinal Rigali returns from a weeks-long synod in Rome.

Taylor views the archdiocese as among the nation's most conservative, and much of its laity seem "passive," he said.

Terry McKirnan, a spokesman for Bishop Accountability, a Boston-based Web site that posts documents related to the clergy crisis, last week described the Philadelphia grand jury report as "the most graphic and shocking of all the reports that have come out.

"I hope it would hit people between the eyes," he said in a telephone interview. "But I think I'm pessimistic about the anger being significant enough to provoke change."

Swidler, the Temple professor, expressed similar views.

"It's going to be interesting to see whether or not [financial] giving in the Philadelphia area shrivels up significantly," he said, noting that area Catholics have traditionally tended to believe the "church leadership is right on everything."

Clergy sex abuse has cost the nation's 195 Catholic dioceses more than $1 billion in settlements, verdicts, legal fees and counseling since 1950, the Associated Press reported in June.

More than a third of the costs were incurred since 2002, when the scandalous revelations began to pour out of Boston.

Despite the grand jury report released Sept. 21 showing that sex abuse and its concealment in the Philadelphia Archdiocese may have rivaled Boston's, Pennsylvania's restrictive statute of limitations has kept civil suits to a minimum.

In February 2004, the archdiocese released data indicating that it had paid $1.45 million for counseling and legal settlements to an undisclosed number of victims between 1950 and 2002.

The latest figures available from the Philadelphia archdiocese show stable charitable giving. Total parish offertory collections were $151 million in fiscal 2000, $156 million in 2001, and $162 million in 2002, according to the church. Overall giving directly to the diocese was put at $13.9 million in fiscal 2001, $15.9 million in 2002, and $16 million in 2003.

Charles Zech, an economics professor at Villanova University, said his polls indicate that anger over the abuse scandal has been felt mostly in financial giving - and it has targeted bishops.

Parish giving has generally remained steady nationwide, he said, but the number of donors to diocesan campaigns has dropped off markedly. Wealthier diocesan donors have typically picked up the slack, Zech said. Across the board donations to the monthly fund drives of the U.S. bishops' conference also are way down, he said.

"One thing the scandal has done was awaken people to how little they knew about [church] finances," Zech said recently. "I think there is some feeling that if there had been better transparency, they would have seen the payouts [to victims] and might have nipped this much sooner."

 
 

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